HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE
One of the influences that keeps people in religion is the belief that they will be alone, unloved and socially adrift if they are not part of a religious community. Typically, religion provides the environment that affirms and validates us humans and as members in good standing of a community of like-minded people. The unspoken fear of religious people is that without a religious community, they will die socially and emotionally for lack of love and a sense of belonging that religious communities afford to them as members. The following kinds of questions keep them from leaving religion:

What will happen to me after I die? Religion, especially my relationships with other religious people, is very important to me. Who will my friends be if I should leave? Where else would I go to make new friends? Who will pray for me when I have troubles? Religious music is very important to me. How will I satisfy my desire to sing and worship with others if I leave religion? What will my family think about me if I should leave? Will my family still love and accept me if I stop practicing their religion? Who will hold a funeral for me and bury me after I die? Who will baptize my children and teach them about God if I am not part of a religious community? What will my friends think about my intellect, integrity and spirituality if I abandon the religion and beliefs that I have embraced for so many years? Will my religious friends and family be offended if I reject the religious beliefs and practices that they value so much? Will they shun me or reject me? How would I know that God is pleased with me if I am not religious? How could I be so stupid as to be deceived by religion? What do I do with the religious beliefs and practices that I learned from the Bible? Is everything I learned wrong, or can I salvage some of it? Who am I that I should reject the religious beliefs and practices that so many learned, wise religious people have studied so much? I have an identity as a religious person. What will my identity be if I leave religion? I have always believed that being religious is necessary to have a good relationship with God. If I stop practicing religion, does that mean I wasted all the time, money and effort I invested in religion? I put my trust in religious leaders and in my religious community. Who do I trust if I quit religion? If I stop being religious will I still go to heaven or will I go to hell? The Bible says that we are to pay tithes and offerings. If I stop being religious, and if religion is sin, how do I satisfy God’s commandments regarding tithes and offerings? Religious leaders who earn incomes through religious organizations and ministries will struggle with the extra burden of finding a new way to earn an income.

In a very real sense, these are life and death issues. That is why the Bible uses the term “death” to describe internal struggles of the heart and external struggles in our relationships with religious people. The death, however, is not of the physical body but of the soul or heart that is worn down with weariness in trying to answer the questions that resolve the conflicts.

STUDY TIP: See ADDICTED TO RELIGION AND AFRAID TO QUIT for more about the difficulty of quitting religion.

Also see Death, Resurrection, New Life, Salvation, Forgiveness, Heaven and Hell, and Two Deaths.

Staying faithful to religion protects us from the inner and outer conflicts we would encounter if we should decide to leave our religion. Staying faithful to religion means we don’t have to go through the process of being humiliated by leaving it. But, even if we do stay, there is always tension — sometimes low and sometimes high — when someone leaves the community or is expelled from it for religious reasons, or when internal conflicts and abuse are exposed.

It does not matter if people leave voluntarily or involuntarily. There is always a sense of loss and separation that raises questions about how people would treat us if we left voluntarily or if we were expelled/rejected for wrongdoing. After all, religion is where most of our friends and relatives are. The thought of being separated from them is unpleasant at best and frightening at worst. If we try to imagine separation, it would be, in a very real sense, like a death. And so, to avoid having to deal with the prospect of separation, we toe the religious line and do only what our fellow religionists expect us to do. No more and no less. That is the safe thing to do.

In summary, it could be said that people stay in religion because it satisfies most of the sixteen basic human desires catalogued by Steven Reiss in his book Who Am I? The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Behavior and Define Our Personality. Here are the 16 basic desires. The order of presentation is without significance.

Power is the desire to influence others.     Independence is the desire for self-reliance.     Curiosity is the desire for knowledge.     Acceptance is the desire for inclusion.     Order is the desire for organization.     Saving is the desire to collect things.     Honor is the desire to be loyal to one’s parents and heritage.     Idealism is the desire for social justice.     Social Contact is the desire for companionship.     Family is the desire to raise one’s own children.     Status is the desire for social standing.     Vengeance is the desire to get even.     Romance is the desire for sex and beauty.     Eating is the desire to consume food.     Physical Activity is the desire for exercise of muscles.     Tranquility is the desire for emotional calm.

Looking at these needs in their broadest sense, we can easily see that religion satisfies most of them in the following ways:

Religion provides an organization in which people can gain power to influence others. This is especially true for religious leaders. Even though religion is generally highly structured in terms of its rituals and doctrines, it provides a certain amount of leeway, or independence for individuals to pick and choose the religious activities that fit their particular needs and desires — as long as they comply with the basic does and don’ts of the religion. Religion provides opportunities for people to exercise curiosity in their desire for Biblical knowledge. Religion provides a ready-made environment in which anyone can be accepted and included —  as long as they comply with the basic does and don’ts of the religion. Religion functions like a business. It depends on order and organization and financing to keep the religious machine working smoothly and reliably. Religion provides an environment in which people can earn honor from others. It also provides a place where people can express their loyalty to their religious heritage and their friends by believing and practicing the same religion. Religion provides opportunities to express idealism regarding social justice issues and take initiatives that will ensure that other people will go to heaven and not to hell. Religion is basically a social contact between people who share religious beliefs. The religious organization agrees to provide a package of religious services (e.g. teaching, worship rituals, music, fellowship, sacraments, baptisms, marriage, burial, etc.) Members agree to support the organization with time, money and good public behaviors that will preserve the organization’s good reputation and make it attractive to new members. Religions affirm and teach family values that are consistent with the values of members. Religion provides organizational structures in which members may earn social status within the organization and within the larger community by supporting it and advancing its goals. Religion provides a military kind of organization in which people use their standing with God to take vengeance on the devil and subdue godless religions. Religions satisfy the desire for beauty through architecture, clothing, music and pageantry. Religion acknowledges the desire to consume food through fellowship meals and sacraments. Religion subtly acknowledges the desire for physical activity through ritualistic worship behaviors (e.g. singing, dancing, standing, sitting down, waving arms, etc.). Religion always works to create a peaceful, tranquil environment in its architecture and worship activities.

Religion, of course, never uses these terms to attract or retain adherents. Religion always puts a spiritual spin and uses scripture to justify why it is desirable, good and necessary.

The benefits/rewards of religion are so ingrained in people that they rarely stop to question if religion is what God wants or not. People who would publicly express any doubt about the legitimacy of religion would soon be expelled as  heretics. They have broken the social contract that demands that they support, preserve and advance the religion.

Religious people intuitively understand that expressing doubt and breaking from religion will sooner or later result in separation from religious friends and family. They may not articulate their fears, but they also subconsciously understand that when they break the contract they lose all the benefits/rewards that automatically accrued to them while they were religious. They had a good life while religious, but if they should stop being religious, that life will end. In a very real sense, they will die. That is what God symbolically refers to when he talks about death. It is not physical death but it is the kind of anguish and pain that people suffer when they make the transition from being religious to no religion.

The reality is that we are deceived into believing what religion always tells us: “Those who do not believe as we do are spiritually lost and going to hell.” Motivated by this statement, most people stay faithful to their religion and do their best to save others from spiritual destruction.

Religious people like to say that they have faith and that they trust God for all things. The reality, however, is that they really put their faith and trust in their religious institutions, the people who share their religious beliefs, and the rituals and traditions practiced and promoted by the religion. They are deceived in what they believe and why they believe it.

Being deceived and having good intentions, however, is not an excuse for staying religious when God calls religion sin. He has given us the Bible and will teach those who are willing to listen to his voice so that they can sort out the holy from the profane. But, preferring to listen to false prophets, religious people trust men for teaching. Thus they die full of worldly knowledge acquired from men, they lack faith that comes only by hearing God’s voice. This is why God condemned religion when he said “this people worship me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

And so everyone has a very real need to renew the good social and emotional fixes that religious habits — even those that do not embrace God — provide. And those who do not practice a formal religion create their own rituals and habits that satisfy these needs that are common to all humans.

AUTHORS’ NOTE: It could be said that those who have left religion learn to find satisfaction in other ways because religion no longer works for them. They have learned that religion does not deliver on the deception that religion connects people to God and are looking for new ways to make that connection. The Religion Detox Network exists for this purpose.

Those who remain religious, however, remain deceived about religion’s claims that religious discipline and ritual are the exclusive way to connect to God and secure his favor in this life and in the afterlife. They do not realize that their religious behaviors are only cultural traditions that are actually offensive to God who looks at the heart and not the outer body or what the physical body does. If they knew their hearts like God knows them, religionists would know that they, like other addicts, use religion for the short-term satisfaction it delivers while participating in their various religious activities (i.e. rituals) — especially with coreligionists who share their addiction to a particular religious tradition.

Like all other addicts, religionists must repeat (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, annually) their rituals because the benefits/rewards (e.g. emotions, spiritual highs, tears, joy, laughter, grief, satisfaction, sense of community with others, etc.) of a religious event don’t last. Being addicted to these feelings, religionists are compelled to repeat the religious activity again and again in order to recreate the intoxicating excitement aroused by participation in religious activity. And, if they do not recreate the event with some regularity, they will experience a kind of withdrawal that hungers for those feelings in their minds and bodies. These are the physiological origins of the toxic nature of religion. They are also evidence of human pride that craves to be validated often. They are common to all humans and all religions.

STUDY TIP: See PRIDE HAS IT REWARDS and this link for more about religious pride.

Because the positive, affirmative feelings that religion arouses are greatly enhanced when they occur in the company of other, like-minded religionists, they organize themselves into religious groups that build structures and create governing bodies designed to ensure that the community environments in which religion functions will be preserved and advanced so that religionists will never lack for a place to practice their rituals.

STUDY TIP: See FEELING GOOD IS NOT NECESSARILY SPIRITUAL for more about the benefits of participation in religious rituals.

Religionists are deceived into believing that all these good feelings are effected in their bodies (i.e. mind, emotions, physical senses) by God because he is pleased with their religious activity and rewards them by allowing them to experience all of these good feelings.

STUDY TIP: See HOPE FOR A BIG REWARD for more about rewards.

Putting a spiritual spin on it all, religionists believe that the good feelings they experience while worshiping are a kind of blessing in which God reaches down to touch his people with something tangible in their bodies. These feelings encourage repetition and provide incentives for including others to join the religion (i.e. evangelism). In their deception, Jews and Christians do not realize that all of these feelings are common to all religions — even those that do not recognize the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Conveniently ignoring that faith cannot be observed, they have been deceived into believing that it is all a matter of faith and do not realize that it is all a matter of religious flesh which can be observed.

That the benefits of ritual do not last should not be surprising. God says clearly that rituals done in a certain place at a certain time, according to regulations (i.e. religious laws), are Old/First Covenant religious sacrifices that are not able to cleanse the conscience. Because these regulations are based on  Old/First Covenant laws, they are not part of the New Covenant and not the priesthood of Melchizedek (the model for Jesus’ priesthood and the priesthood of New Covenant disciples). We see this explained in Hebrews 9:1-14:

Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.

COMMENTARY: See Two Covenants and The Law for a review of the Biblical origins of Jewish and Christian rituals.Old/First Covenant religionists who interpret the Bible literally, pride themselves on their sincere attempts to organize their religious doctrines and rituals according to the details of physical structures and fussy rituals found in the many Laws of Moses. Because they focus their efforts on the literal words of Old Testament scripture, however, they totally miss the symbolism that is explained in Hebrews 9:1-14.

1. For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place.

COMMENTARY: The outer tabernacle symbolically represents the physical architecture, furnishings and religious artifacts that are common features of all religions. In a sense, the outer tabernacle also represents the physical human body that actively participates in religious worship based on literal scriptures.

Hebrews 9:1-14 explains why rituals taught by men only have the appearance of wisdom and are only traditions created by religious leaders for others to follow. This is why Jesus had such harsh words for the Pharisees about their religious traditions.

Ritualistic religious ceremonies practiced over and over again have the force of law within the religious community in which they are practiced. This fact, among others, indicates that religious ceremonies are Old Covenant religion because New Covenant disciples are not obligated to observe any religious law. Moreover, Old Covenant religionists who continually follow religious ceremonies which are conceived by and supervised by religious leaders are considered by God to be slaves to those religious leaders — a condition that leads to death.

Jews and Christians will have a hard time accepting the fact that they are slaves to anything or anyone. Christians like to say that they are slaves to Christ, but ignore that Christ said that they could have only one master. If they could see their hearts as God sees them, they would understand that all of their religious leaders are their masters because they receive their teachings about God as interpreted from the literal words of the Bible from them and not from the voice of God.

By consistently listening to their religious leaders, Jews and Christians prove that they are slaves to religion and those religious leaders by faithfully following religious practices (e.g. music, sermons, baptism, circumcision, communion, etc.) prescribed by governing religious authorities. These practices, written down in books, prayer guides, and orders of religious service (e.g. liturgical guides, Sunday church bulletins), and directed from high places at the front of a synagogue or church, are modern examples of written codes of law of sin and death. And because religious leaders carefully design and supervise these rituals — even in churches that claim to be non-liturgical — these leaders are, in effect, gods whom the people serve by following the rituals they design and supervise.

Of course, religious people do not see their liturgies/ceremonies/rituals as laws or their religious leaders as gods. Nor do those who read their Bibles  understand that God abhors all activities commonly associated with religion. Their error exists because of failure to wrongly interpret Old Testament references to cities, kingdoms and nations as  geopolitical organizations instead of as religious organizations that exist to protect and advance their own unique brands of religion.

Applying a correct symbolic interpretation of nations as religions, it is easy to understand why God warned his people against following their customs (i.e. religious ceremonies, rituals) and against associating with them in any way. It is also easy to understand why God directed Israel to utterly destroy the religious kingdoms (i.e. cities and nations) that occupied the Promised Land. And because following the customs of these religious nations always involved following their gods, it is easy to understand why God considered following the religious customs of these nations to be sin.

New Covenant disciples do understand, however, whether intuitively or consciously, that all religious laws energize the sinful, religious nature for death and that they are no longer subject to those laws but are led by the spirit. They no longer need anyone to teach them anything, especially things about God and religious regulations, because they have the spirit to teach them all things — including the when, where and how of true spiritual worship. That is why New Covenant disciples have no need for religion and all of its rules and traditions created by and administered by religious leaders.

What we observe in the current phenomenon of people leaving religion is  people breaking free from slavery to the laws that religion imposes on them because they know, or at least suspect, that religion is full of deception and lies. If they were totally convinced that religion was all truth, they would not reject it.

Religious people who continue practicing their rituals, on the other hand, still have a sense that all is right between them and God while they are performing their rituals, and maybe for a short time afterward. Unfortunately they do not know that rituals do not cleanse the conscience or to make anyone perfect in God’s sight. Thus, for lack of a clean conscience, they  are compelled  to keep practicing their rituals and making sacrifices and offerings in an ongoing effort to remain in God’s favor. At least that is what they have been told.

The reality is, of course, that it is the favor of other religionists that they are working so hard to retain. This is another deceptive lie that they have believed. Failing to understand that God actually hates all their ceremonial festivals, offerings, and religious posturing. Failing to understand what God means by worshiping in spirit and truth, religious people continue to put all their confidence in worship that they can do in and with their physical bodies (i.e. flesh).

Religious people pursue righteousness through religious works as a matter of regulations (i.e. laws) prescribed in the doctrines of their religion. They are not motivated by the kind of faith that God wants. They have fallen for the deception that religious ceremonies, rituals, festivals and faith are identical. They claim to have faith, but they really put their trust in the efficacy of religious works (e.g. going to church, prayer, singing religious music, eating and drinking sacraments,  baptism, reading the Bible according to a schedule, paying tithes, helping others, etc.) that they perform with their physical bodies, usually while manipulating a physical religious prop (e.g. building, music, books, incense, bells, candles, sacraments, water, clothing, money, etc.) that has been designed by and made by mortal men. Their trust is in religious activities and props that can be seen, touched, tasted and heard. They effectively put their trust in doctrines created by generations of religious leaders. Their faith is not in God.

True spiritual faith is not associated with any religious work accomplished in or through the physical body. Nor is it associated with any physical prop to which some spiritual value (i.e. holiness, sacredness) has been assigned. The fruits of true spiritual faith are all unseen conditions of the heart. These are all exactly opposite to fleshly, soulish faith which can be observed by others who see or hear religionists acting out their faith or hear reports of their so-called faith in action. This is pure religion — not spiritual faith which cannot be seen. That they are imagined to be the same is a lie and deception.