LAYING DOWN YOUR LIFE
People who call themselves followers of Jesus are especially conflicted on the issue of laying down their lives for others. They understand that Jesus laid down his life for them, but they do not have a clear understanding of what it means for them to lay down their lives for others as is commanded in these scriptures:

Lacking sound, symbolic interpretations of what life Jesus is referring to in these scriptures, Christians conclude that the commandment pertains to their physical life. Because the story they know about Jesus’ death and resurrection appears to involve his physical death, they assume that dying a gruesome physical death for the sake of others is something that God might ask them to do sometime just as so-called martyrs have reportedly done. But until the time that God calls on them to risk their life in some dramatic way, they assume that they have satisfied the commandment by practicing their religion.

Religion that interprets the Bible literally keeps people from understanding what it really means to lay down their life. Doctrines about suffering and dying are not an especially compelling message that will attract people to join a religion. Any religion that teaches such a doctrine would not last long in this competitive religious world that attracts and retains followers by tickling itching ears with smooth talk. False prophets may talk abstractly about dying to sins of the flesh, but never about dying to the sin of religion which is the sin that God has in mind in his commands to not worship other gods and to destroy the religious nations that surround them.

But we cannot just blame religion for tempting us to sin in these ways. It is convenient to blame the devil and demons for our temptations, but when we look outside ourselves for someone to blame, we ignore that own minds are always at work in developing and preserving our religious lives. We see this in the example of Eve who yielded to the temptation to be religious when she ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve’s temptation models our own personal temptations when we decide that religion is pleasing to the eye and good for spiritual food (i.e. it appears to satisfy our need for a good life now and after we die).

Religion, symbolized as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, deceptively promises a quick and easy path to God-likeness and wisdom. God, on the other hand, makes no such promises. In fact, what God promises is a life of tribulation and suffering for anyone who aspires to righteousness. In fact, laying when we lay down our lives for others, we willingly and purposely choose to enter into tribulation.

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of the tribulation that Jesus’ followers choose.

When we consider temptation in the context of the choices that God and religion offer, it is easy to see why Eve was successfully tempted by religion. And, seeing that, we can also see why we also are successfully tempted by religion.

Having yielded to temptation to practice religion and become addicted to it, we are faced with the challenge to gain freedom from it. God gives us a chance for redemption from religion by resisting temptation to participate in it in the future. But we, like Eve, need to first sort out and rationalize conflicting information we get from God and religion. Here are the basic issues involved when we are tempted:

These completely different and opposite propositions are the essence of the temptations that both Eve and Jesus encountered. These are also the temptations that all religious people face — even though they do not know that they are being tempted.

The reason religious people don’t know that they have been successfully tempted by sin is that they have been deceived and intoxicated with religious doctrines that say that all that is required of them if they want to go to heaven is to interpret and apply the literal words of the Bible. This is the mantra for both Jews and Christians. This way of thinking is the filter through which all scripture is read and understood. It is a stronghold of wrong thinking that is very hard to overcome. In fact, this stronghold can only be breached by God when he chooses to open the eyes of stubborn religious people who begin to show signs that they doubt what religion teaches. Only then can they begin to listen to what God wants to tell them with their heart instead of listening to False Prophets.

Eve’s discourse with the serpent is a parable of the challenge we all have dealing with religion. It is a summary of the rationalizations that we entertain in our minds and hearts when we observe the apparent benefits of religion and then choose religion instead of God. This story is retold in many different ways when we read about the temptations and failures of all Bible characters — except for Joshua, Caleb, and the true prophets. Even Solomon, with all his wisdom and wealth, yielded to temptation when he took foreign wives and worshiped their gods. And it is our story as well because our natural minds, our internal rationalizations, our friends and family all tell us that religion is necessary for a good life now and for eternity. These are all adversarial influences represented by the serpent who deceived Eve.

STUDY TIP: See Serpent, Devil, Satan, Demons, Evil Spirits and Anti-Christs for more about adversarial influences.

While we cannot ignore the conflict with external enemies that constantly tempt us to join, or rejoin, one religion or another, the most difficult enemy to battle is the one that is within us. This internal enemy is the one that compels us to want to preserve and advance the religious life we know and cherish. It is the enemy that constrains us from sacrificing the religious life we know and cherish for the sake of new life for ourselves and others.

STUDY TIP: See Pride, Arrogance, Boasting, Power and Humility for more about the internal enemy.

The sad, but shocking truth is that religion is so attractive and so satisfying that it can take over our life. We can become so involved in the doing of religious activity organized and managed by men that we totally ignore what God is speaking to our hearts. When this happens, religion becomes an idol and our life. This is the toxic effect that religion has on people who do not listen to God’s spoken voice.