Home Pastors Articles for Pastors Why Christians Hate “Religion” and Why We Yell Pharisee Too Quickly

Why Christians Hate “Religion” and Why We Yell Pharisee Too Quickly

There are some Christians who prefer structure, authority, discipline and hard work. 

They want to schedule their Bible-reading and they need to check off a calendar and they want to attend church on a weekly planner. 

They tithe to the exact dollar and they dress up every Sunday and they would never ever curse, not even after getting a papercut from their latest Oswald Chambers devotional. 

And I think that’s OK. 

I don’t think religion has to be such a bad word all the time. Again, effort is not legalism, because legalism is legalism.

I think God has room for the highly devout church guy who sits in the front row because God respects our individual dignity and personalities. God does not mock the button-up bravado of the sincerely stiff worshiper—because this sort of Christian is still a sinner in need of grace, like you and me, and we’re not called to treat him based on any other parameter.

God has wired each of us differently. 

Some Christians will drink a beer and smoke cigars and get tattoos and pray in the woods by the river with a handmade journal and Lecrae and Mumford and Sons and Nirvana in their iPod—because this is how they meet Jesus. 

God has a limitless imagination to speak to each of us in a wild variety of ways. 

To limit this is to limit God, and I don’t ever want to suckerpunch His sovereignty.

Jesus loved Matthew, the downright dirtiest tax collector of them all, and Jesus loved Paul, the hottest Pharisee in history.

Jesus loved Mary Magdalene, a disturbed woman with a severe demonic psychosis, and Jesus loved Martha, the proficient taskmaster, A-type personality. 

Jesus loves you and the other guy too.

If you’re really down on these “Pharisees” and religious church people, maybe it’s time you get to know them. 

Maybe you can quit trying to irritate them so much; maybe you can quit trying to shock them with cute rebellious uprisings to get a reaction. Maybe we can all slow down on blogging such harsh things about the “typical church” and tradition. 

You could probably learn a lot from them, because there is no them, and so we could learn from each other, and that’s how we grow to know this love that saved us.