Episode 58: What Is Religion? The Myth of Being “Non-Religious.”

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: I had a fascinating conversation with a brilliant man the other day, and he began by telling me that he was not

love. Religious, but that he believed if people followed the basic tenets of the Bible, that our culture would be a much better place. And so, I want to this is kind of a solo gig today. I really dug into that idea and it was important enough, I thought I would just share it with you solo. I love doing podcasts with my dad and with having other guests, but sometimes the Lord just requires us to be versatile when He gives us a thought, we need to share it.

So the idea that we kind of discussed and I’ve kind of developed just by asking the Lord to show me how to talk with people that claim to be not religious, it kind of introduces this question of what is religion? Is it a belief system, a set of traditions? Is it church attendance? Or is it something much deeper? Something that really touches every single person, affects every person, even those who claim they don’t believe in God.

And just kind of start out with this truth that I kind of have ferreted out of by studying some statements by atheists and just studying God’s Word. And the truth is religion is whatever we center our life around. It’s what owns our time, our thoughts, our emotions. It’s what we sacrifice for. And by that definition, really everyone is religious.

I mentioned earlier that I kind of went through and looked at some of the lives of some of the most brilliant and outspoken atheists. And it’s so fascinating that even they have recognized that every human being worships something. I read an excerpt by David Foster Wallace, who was a novelist and essayist known for a book called Infinite Jest, is what he’s best known for. But he wasn’t religious. That in fact, he often said he didn’t believe in organized religion.

But then in a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 02/2005, he said, and I’m going to quote, There is actually no such thing as atheism. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. He went on to say, Pretty much anything you worship will eat you alive. Worship money and things, you’ll never have enough.

Worship your own body and beauty, you will always feel ugly. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need even more power over others to numb your own fear. You know, this is a great quote. I mean, he wasn’t preaching, he was just observing reality. And he understood what the Bible talks about and that we were all created to worship.

In fact, and really the only question is whether our worship gives us satisfaction and more life and better life, or whether it drains us. You know, before I kind of dig into what God’s Word says about religion and worship, I just wanna kind of tag on to what David Wallace said with, you know, some of the other atheists who kind of admitted the same thing. For example, Christopher Hitchens, who was an atheist author of the book, God is Not Great. He said, everybody has a religion. It is the worship of self.

It’s so interesting that even in rejecting God, he admitted our instinct is to enthrone something. And without God, it has to be ourself. I mean, what else do we have? Right? Aldous Huxley, who was a British writer and philosopher and social critic, best known for Brave New World, he said, he admitted, Man’s most pressing need is to worship something.

He wrote that in his treatise Ends and Means in 1937. I mean, this guy was a really bright guy. He was a famous biologist, a defender of Darwin’s theory of evolution. And yet he made this admission that we must worship something. And I just want to give one more example.

A French philosopher and novelist and playwright who lived in 1905 to 1980 was kind of a leading voice of the idea of existentialism. Jean Paul Sartreau, he made It’s so interesting that he held the belief his entire basically his entire life that he was a lifelong atheist. And he, in fact, even declined the Nobel Peace Prize in literature in 1964, saying he didn’t want to be institutionalized, which is kind of interesting. He kind of had this philosophy that you are your choices and his ideas shaped modern psychology, literature, theology, ethics. And what’s interesting is at the end of his life, he gave an interview with Pierre Victor in April 1980.

So, it was a year he died. And the quote in the article was, I do not feel that I am a product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who is expected, prepared, prefigured, in short, a being whom only a creator could put here. And this idea of a creating hand refers to God. I cannot deny that my whole being cries out for God. I cannot forget it.

Of course, you can imagine this quote shocked many as it was a 180 departure from what he lived and represented his entire life. And so, it’s really interesting that even the most atheistic thinkers agree on one thing and that is the human soul needs to worship. It was made to worship. We were made to worship and it will worship something. We all worship.

So, let’s kind of go back to this question about what is religion? Because that is a fascinating question. And I think it helps put us all, every human, on equal footing so that we can replace divisiveness with civilized discourse among humans, because we have this need to worship and we all can agree that we have some kind of religious bent. And so going back to what we call religion and how we define religion, it is really whatever we center our lives around, whatever we center our worship around. And I think if we’re honest, what that does, it gives us a baseline to have discussions instead of arguments.

And that’s kind of the point of this podcast is if we understand that religion is not limited to a belief system, a denomination or set of moral rules, but rather it is what you revolve your life around, then we can begin a discussion about, okay, so is your religion satisfying you? If you, you know, and then you can start to analyze. I mean, it’s not hard to figure out. What do you think about the most? What do you worry about the most?

What do you believe most deeply will give you satisfaction? And this is kind of where the discussion with the man I mentioned in the first part of this podcast kind of turned to, because I wanted to make sure he understood that even God acknowledged throughout His Word, the hypocrisy and dissatisfaction in empty religion when compared to a worship of the one true God and worship being making God the center of everything. I kind of went to Isaiah chapter 58 because it kind of has the whole package in there. It kind of starts with God exposing the illusion of religious behavior and the illusion being what it will that it will gain something for your soul that will satisfy you. He says in Isaiah 50 eight:two, They seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness.

The people looked really religious. They fasted, prayed and acted pious, but their motives were selfish. They wanted God’s blessings without God’s heart. They asked, well, why don’t you answer our prayers? Was Of course, he’s God.

He’s omniscient. He could see through their performance. He knew they were doing religious acts for attention, for control and not out of love. And God called them out. In verse four, he says, Indeed you fast for strife and debate and to strike with the fist of wickedness.

In other words, their fasting wasn’t humility, it was self righteousness. And they used spiritual behavior as a weapon to appear holy while mistreating others. God rejected their noise. That’s all it was. Their prayers were just noise.

And then he goes on to define not only what it looks like to make him the center of their worship, their hearts worship, but also the benefits of truly worshiping Him as the center rather than using Him for their own mercenary desires. And it’s so interesting that in Isaiah 50 eight:six, he says, He encapsulates it, Is this not the fast that I have chosen to lose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens? I love it that God was contrasting the idea that religion without relationship makes us slaves to ourselves, but relationship with Him as the center, in other words, where He is the center of all we desire, frees us from the yoke of sin. And so this true relationship with God produces selflessness because he goes on to say in verse seven, Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked to cover them? You see, God is giving us very tangible examples of what selflessness looks like, but it’s not just that service for ourselves.

It’s that service as a product of our love for God, because we can feed the hungry, we can clothe the poor, we can do all these good works without God on the throne of our heart. And that just becomes another religion, another form of worship without satisfaction because it’s coming from us and not from God. And this ties in so well with what Jesus said when he reiterated what the 10 commandments, the first the 10 commandments says, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, in Matthew twenty-two 37. In other words, it’s not doing for God without God, it’s being with God and doing things His way and His timing and with the resources that flow directly from being in His presence. Of course, you know, as an aside, we know that we cannot be with God until we’re reconciled with God through the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.

This idea of true worship or true religion, meaning what God teaches us in his Word is meaningless until we are born again. Because until our soul and spirit are made alive in Christ, then we do not have the ability to communicate with God and thus have relationship. A dead person cannot communicate with me because their body is dead. Well, a person who is dead to God because they have not been made alive through Christ, through the gift of salvation, also does not have the ability to have relationship with God and thus live in his presence. And so, all you’ve got really is religious practices without the relationship.

And I think that’s why we find so many people who claim to be Christians or who claim to quote, know God, end quote, but who are deeply dissatisfied. And in fact, so much so that people who are searching for satisfaction for their own soul, look at Christians and say, I don’t want that. If that’s what your God looks like, I want nothing. I don’t want any part of that because you’re no better off than I am. And this kind of leads us to a discussion about what are the modern religions of our time that have overtaken us as Christians and made our religious lives centered on the wrong things.

And I can attest to this, that we have the religion of work and success, and I’ve been caught up in that religion so many years of my Christian life, where I was The biggest worry I had is making money. The biggest concern I had was how am I going to win this case? My biggest part of my life was dedicated to making money. And I didn’t realize that that had become my religion until I reached the breaking point. And so here I was living out this warning that Jesus gave in Matthew sixteen twenty six, he said, What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

Even though my soul was born again, I was living as if the only important thing in my life was gaining the world. And so, I was clearly dissatisfied because it eventually broke me. We also have the religion of pleasure, of being comfortable. Christians, when we pursue our constant need for entertainment, for ease, for self care, And that’s what we long for the most. Oh, I’m working for the weekend.

I can’t wait for the weekend so I can go have fun. Or I can’t wait till 05:00 so I can relax and enjoy life. Instead of looking at our perspective has switched from making our focus what we anticipate, what we hope for is the comfort or pleasure of a season rather than God being our greatest comfort, our greatest pleasure, our greatest delight, and then extending our delight to our workplace, to the things that are hard, right? And so, again, we’re just kind of identifying some of the Christian religions that we kind of get caught up in. We have the religion of relationships, maybe our significant other, our spouse, our family, our friends, our children, and they become the center of our emotional security, our financial stability, whatever that looks like.

But people make poor gods. They change, they fail, they die. And, you know, it is just, you know, Jeremiah the prophet said, Cursed is the man who trusts in man. You know, we do what we all do it. We all, you know, I may work really hard to build an office team and if I’m trusting in them more than I’m trusting in the Lord, then if it falls apart, I fall apart.

And really a true revelation of what our religion is, is what will devastate us if we lose it. And we do that in all kinds of things. We do it with our image and approval. If our life revolves around our social media likes, our beauty, our status validation, we’re worshiping what’s in the mirror. And entropy takes that over that sooner or later, we’re all going to get saggy and die, right?

But we do it. We dedicate a lot of time and money and effort to our image. And just another one, is, I’m just kind of thinking here, the religion of ministry. This was all throughout the Bible, especially Jesus when people that he scolded the most were the religious leaders who had replaced their good works with a relationship with God. And we all do it.

It’s easier to go serve a meal to the homeless than it is to spend quiet time with God because that requires our heart. Our heart must be in it. But the beautiful thing is when our heart belongs to God, serving meals to homeless people becomes an extension of God’s heart rather than an effort that’s done in our flesh. And we then have the double opportunity to bring God’s presence to the people that we’re ministering to as opposed to our own presence, which can’t offer them really much beyond our own lifetime. So I kind of want to The next point in this is I think the most beautiful point about true religion and that is the benefits.

And I kind of want to go back to Isaiah chapter 58, because it’s got me really excited about the benefits of truly worshiping God with our whole heart, all of our soul, all of our mind is they’re phenomenal. The reason I got excited is because I’m like everybody else. I tend to fall into the wrong kind of worship. I tend to default to the carnal mind, so to speak, instead of the mind of Christ, because those grooves are cut so deep. We have habits, we have ways of acting and things that we believe in that are so deeply entrenched in our thinking process that we don’t even realize that we’re defaulting that way.

And so we have to train our brain to have God’s perspective. Which that podcast we did about God’s perspective has just It’s been a huge game changer for me in how I view other people, how I view my own life, what I do with my time. And so, follow-up on what is religion is very timely for me. But I want to read Isaiah continuing in chapter 58, which gives us this breathtaking contrast between the barren soul of any false religion and the flourishing life of worshiping God and making Him the center of our life. It says in Isaiah 5eight 11, The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones.

You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. These are some amazing promises. God promises us in verse eight, light. He says, Your light will break forth like the morning. Think about that.

When the morning light breaks through on a stormy after stormy night, you’re drawn to it. It gives you peace and comfort. He’s saying that we’re going to have His light and it’s going to break forth in the darkness. Everywhere we go, we’re going to bring light and clarity to a dark, confused world. And man, that experience, not only we’re experiencing this light, but we’re allowed to give that light to others because you can’t hide the light of God.

If it’s in you, you’re not going to be able to hide it. Healing and restoration is another thing. Your healing shall spring forth speedily. This is really interesting because I have a lot of friends who like to focus on physical healing. But one of the things that I think that God gives us is He does allow us to have certain infirmities because gives us a greater opportunity to bring glory to Him and really bringing people to His kingdom.

I think about Joni Erickson. She was the young lady who was paralyzed from the neck down at a very young age and in a diving accident. And as a result, her life took a completely different trajectory. She has had ministry opportunities that she would have never had had she not had that accident and God didn’t heal her. She has I’m sure that she would say that she is in a place where she has had far more opportunity to bring people into the eternal kingdom of God through sharing the gift of salvation in her story than she would have ever had had she not had that injury.

So healing and restoration, of course, we’re talking about the soul here. We’re talking about when we’re born again, we are healed, we are in Christ and we’re restored. But bringing our flesh into line is kind of the part that that’s the challenge. And, you know, Paul talks about that Romans chapter seven, he’s like, you know, when I would do good, evil is present with me and what my soul wants to do, my body doesn’t want to do. And I’ve got this conflict constantly raging.

And so the soul finds restoration in worshiping God and loving Him with all that we are. And the body just is brought into subjection, whatever that looks like, because we’re all made differently. We all have different gifts. We all have different limitations. And then the Bible says, Your righteousness shall go before you and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

And this is in verse eight. Can you just visualize God being our protection? I always think of the story where, Elijah the prophet was surrounded by the Syrian army and his servant came in the house and said, We’re going to die, I’m paraphrasing. We are surrounded by the most powerful army in the world. And Elijah said, Open his eyes, Lord.

And then the servant saw the host of heaven surrounding the Syrians. And that’s the vision that we get when That’s why Stephen, while he was being stoned, could pray for the people that were stoning him. That’s why so many martyrs have died a terrible death and have not been afraid because they have God’s perspective. And that perspective came from loving God, making him the center of everything we do. We cannot have God’s perspective if our worship is directed on something less than God.

And this again is a beautiful thing. We have answered prayer. You know, this was kind of the complaint in the beginning of Isaiah 58. People are hypocrites, they’re saying, why don’t you hear our prayer, Lord? And the verse in verse nine says, You shall call and the Lord will answer.

When our worship of God is genuine, He answers our prayers. And the reason that we know that is because we learn to stop having our perspective and begin to have God’s perspective. And in God’s perspective, we see the wisdom of sometimes Him saying no. We see the wisdom in wait, but without his perspective, meaning where our perspective is tuned in on something less than God, which is usually self, right? We can’t see the answered prayers.

But when we worship God, we have complete confidence that the prayers that we’re going to pray or that we pray are going to be answered. The other part of that is when we have God’s perspective, His Spirit shows us how to pray. So our prayers are directed away from self and directed more for His glory. Again, these benefits are just they’re so amazing. Verse 11 says, The Lord will guide you continually.

Think about that. The God who creates everything that we love, everything that we value, who created us, He’s saying, if you will worship me, I will guide you continually. I’ll guide the decisions that you make about whether to take a client or not take a client, whether to hire this person or not hire this person, whether to talk to this person about me or not talk to this person. I mean, it is so amazing. I’ve seen it and it’s so addicting.

It’s addicting to see God continually guiding us. Verse 11 says, He will satisfy your soul in drought. Is so I mean, we have a world full of hardship. We’re not going to avoid it. I mean, there is no avoiding hardship.

And we go through sometimes periods of our life where we feel like our world has crashed in. And that’s not people who worship other things besides God. I mean, if your parent dies or if your child dies, that’s not just a small matter that you can go, well, if I just worship God enough, I’m not gonna feel pain and sorrow. Yes, you’re gonna feel, we’re gonna feel we’re created to feel and to experience the different gamut of emotions. But what God is saying is that in the midst of these hardships, our soul will remain satisfied.

You know, we’re still going to experience those emotions of sorrow, but they will not lead us to despair. And because our hope, our greatest hope is in Christ. Verse 11 says, He will strengthen your bones. You know, God gives us strength when we’re weary. We have the ability to fight the good fight and do it until we draw our last breath.

When we are keeping God as the center, then every day, every hour, every minute that we’re given, we can be strengthened. And Paul the Apostle said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He didn’t say, I can do all through myself. He knew that even his breath depended upon God. And then just a few more of these verses, they’re just so good.

In verse 11, it says, You shall be like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. And the believer who is making God the center of their life is like a refreshing well, refreshing spring. You walk in and people know they are in the presence of love. You talk and people know they are in the presence of peace. You wrap your arms around someone and comfort them and they can feel the presence of God.

In other words, the fruit of God’s spirit is the dominant characteristic of our life. The wisdom that God gives us is far beyond our own wisdom. And because when we are worshiping God as the center of our life, then his ways become more our ways. And we operate with a supernatural wisdom that goes beyond our own brain, our own carnal mind. And man, that is so powerful.

When people say, How did you know that? How did you even know to say that? We can reply with confidence, It’s not me, it’s God. So, it’s so amazing that the Lord offers us these benefits. When we make him the center of our worship.

Just kind of finishing up Isaiah 58, it says in verse 12, You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. So God uses us to restore others. And then finally, verse 14, I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. Wow. It just reminds me that if I contrast my life before I made Christ my center and after, and I’m not saying I’ve arrived.

And there are times when I take God off a throne, don’t get me wrong, it’s a struggle. But if I contrast generally the period of time that I can look back and say, was the center of my life, even as a born again Christian, God was not on the throne. And today where I have become more and more addicted to God being on the throne of my life, I can tell you it is a life of joy, which is deep, deep satisfaction, a life of freedom and a life of spiritual abundance. There’s nothing more impressive and addicting than seeing God take over your life and the abundance that He gives us in return for our surrender, surrendering the throne to Him every day. And I mean, when the Bible says your life stops feeling like a desert and becomes a garden, that is such explanation because we all know what both of them look like.

So, you know, I want to encourage anyone who’s listening to this to think about that. Does your life feel like an oasis in a watered garden or does it, do you just feel dissatisfied? Do just feel like you have to have more all the time that you’re constantly anxious? What keeps you up at night? What do you think about the most?

What do you anticipate the most? What captures your greatest desire? When I think about my life, when I don’t surrender to God versus when I do surrender the throne to the Lord, man, it’s just no comparison. There are so many modern religions that will seal the throne from the one true God. And we just need to be aware of that.

We need to be aware that when we feel anxiety, when we have lost our peace, when we feel dissatisfied, in other words, we’ve lost our joy, when we feel like our life is meaningless and we constantly feel like we’re missing out or we don’t have enough, then I would challenge you to ask yourself, is God on the throne? Is He your greatest delight? Because when you make Him your greatest delight, He gives you more than you can even ask for or imagine. The challenge for myself in this Even when I was talking to this man, I was like, Man, this is a challenge to me because I could see that he had very little satisfaction in his life. And I’m grateful he was open to having this discussion with me because it was a cordial discussion.

And I was praying as we were talking that he would see genuine love, that he would see real peace, that he would see true satisfaction. And even now I’ve been praying for him and just asking the Lord to send faith and repentance to him so that he will see Jesus for who he is. And that is the one who wants to save him and reconcile him to relationship and lead him in an abundant life. So, think the question really for all of us is to think about, you can’t remove this thing called worship from your life, but you can redirect it. And God created us for his glory.

And so, ask yourself that thing that you think about, that thing that you dream about, that person that you spend your time and money trying to please, can that person satisfy you? Or when you capture that goal, will you always want more? And is that thing or person draining your resources, keeping you from having a restful sleep at night, keeping you from having complete peace or satisfaction? Jesus said in John four fourteen, Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst. The water that I give him will be in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

Oh man, isn’t that beautiful? And I am also reminded of the Psalm that says, Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Wow. He gives us the desires of our heart when we don’t even know what our heart really desires because He changes when we worship Him. He changes our desires and makes our desires like His desires.

And we know that God is always satisfied. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. And when he is on the throne of our heart, we have everything we need.

If today’s episode stirred your heart, we want to invite you to go even deeper. At gofaithstrong.com, you’ll find a growing library of faith based resources designed to encourage, equip, and strengthen your walk with God every single day. Whether you’re searching for meaningful devotionals, real life testimonies, Christ centered blog posts, or soul stirring music, it’s all there, created to meet you where you are and lead you closer to where God is calling you to be. We believe that walking in faith doesn’t just happen on Sundays. It’s a daily pursuit.

That’s why everything we do at Go Faith Strong is focused on helping you live boldly for Jesus Christ. Our podcast is just one piece of the journey. There’s so much more waiting for you. Resources to inspire your prayer life, deepen your understanding of the scripture, and help you share the gospel with others. So visit us at gofaithstrong.com and explore, read, listen, worship, and be encouraged.

Your life matters. Visit us at gofaithstrong.com. Hallelujah. He rescued me.