Religion Kills

RELIGION KILLS
By Sean Dietrich

When I first met Jesus and started to follow him, I had two roads that immediately offered themselves to me. I could learn to love Jesus in simplicity, let him weed out the sin in my life and teach me to be his follower. Or I could follow the religious pathway, try and weed my own sins out, and please the Father on my own.

Sadly, I chose door number two! Religion.

Of course no one decides to follow rules and laws on purpose, it naturally happens when you choose religion. I loved Jesus and I wanted to please him, so I tried to follow the traditions that were set before me. I did my best to follow the business-like schedules that surrounded me, but I could feel my new love for Jesus slowly slipping away the more I got "plugged in."

I spent a long time hiding from Jesus in my religion. I am so glad he came through the fog, grabbed my hand and set me free! Jesus has been taking me on an incredible journey ever since I left my traditions and found him.

JESUS, THE ANTI-RELIGION

A bit of warning: Don't read the New Testament if you are satisfied with your religion! Jesus will shake your world too hard. He shook religion so hard in 33 A.D that they killed him for it! Imagine being killed by respected religious figures for honestly critiquing their traditions? I've found that mankind loves their familiar traditions and gets very touchy when you question them.

The most interesting thing I found in the New Testament was that Jesus didn't come to establish a religion here on earth like I had once thought he did. He came to wipe it out instead! Jesus constantly freed people from anything that smelled like a ritual or a blind tradition. He was always assaulting the religious leaders of the day, and calling them back to the simple relationship that God always wanted. He accused them of shutting the doors of heaven for everyone else!

It's no mistake that Jesus was constantly breaking the traditions of men. Traditions like Sabbath keeping and touching lepers, etc. He could have followed man's traditions if he would have wanted to, but he didn't. Why was Jesus such a downer on religion? Because he felt the same way about religion the Father does.

DON'T STRUCTURE YOUR LOVE

My wife and I enjoy spending time together. But imagine if my wife and I began to add structure and religion to our marriage, like people do in their relationship to Jesus? It would eventually suffocate the life out of the marriage. I can't imagine reading through our past love letters for one hour in my easy chair every day, simply because I am required to do so. Yet many Christians do this with their bible every morning. They read and pray out of obligation and not out of complete and total love!

My wife and I don't have to schedule meeting times together. We live together. We are together all the time. We find ourselves working through everyday life together, because we love each other. Why should our relationship with Jesus be any different? He wants more than bible reading and prayer, he wants our life and our love.

Jesus gave us a perfect example of the relationship he desires with us, by sharing life with his disciples. The disciples had a real-life relationship with Jesus, and they "served" only him. Jesus wants the same relationship with us. Like it says in John; He doesn't want to call us slaves (of religion) anymore, he wants to call us friends.

Thank you for making me your friend Lord! You're the best friend I ever had!!


The above was written by Sean Dietrich. Sean is, in my opinion, a very talented and gifted musician. His music is very anointed by God. All of his music is on his site and available to listen and download for FREE. What a blessing! He also has some wonderful articles and a newsletter which you can sign up for. "Religion Kills" was from his recent newsletter. I encourage evryone to check it out here.Jesus wants a relationship with all of us, not a dedication to dead religion!


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