Religion: a Wasteful Exercise in Futility

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

I cannot bear your worthless assemblies...

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;

Stop doing wrong.

Learn to do right; seek justice.

Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;

Plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1: 13-17

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1: 27

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Matthew 25: 37-39

Jesus never wanted a cult/religion to be built around him or to be turned into an object of worship. He invited people to come and follow him. Today, we have a lot of worshippers of Christ and very few followers. He always sought the attention of people away from himself and to his heavenly father. The Hebraic religion, the religion to which Jesus belonged and also the God of Hebraic religion, Yahweh, whom he called as his father, were understood by Jesus as having nothing to do with cultic practices, but with an invitation to an ethical living, of which the primary concern is justice, an active concern for the least of these our brothers and sisters - the most vulnerable and oppressed in our society.

Jesus makes it clear through the parable on the last judgment that acknowledgment of him is not the criterion for ones passage to God’s kingdom. In fact, as far as the passage is concerned, even if one does not acknowledge Jesus but cares for the least of these brothers and sisters, he will find a place in the kingdom of heaven. Those named as “the righteous” in the parable of the last judgment cared for the least without recognizing Jesus. This is most evident in their reply: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ To which the response was: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Justice in the bible is not neutrality or giving everyone his due, but rather it is skewed in favour the poor, the orphan and the widow and the stranger. They are the most vulnerable and defenceless for whom God alone is the helper. That is the meaning of Eleazar-Lazar, one whose help comes from God alone. Justice is to defend the cause of the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Rationale for this preferential option for the widow, the orphan and the alien is set out in the context of a God (Yahweh) who is opposed to slavery and exploitation and his liberating action in history - liberating the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt.

Deuteronomy 24: 17- 22:

Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

Jesus through the parable of the labourers in the vineyard had inverted all our understanding of justice. God’s justice was demonstrated in that the same wage was paid to all labourers irrespective of the hours of work they put in and those who had came last and worked only an hour in the vineyard were paid first. Jesus was living out the justice of God as he reached out and responded to the needs of the last, the least and the lost. Jesus understood his mission as that which extended to the sick and the sinners. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’, for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

‘Sinners’ in the gospels does not mean somebody who has committed a grievous ‘moral’ wrong, but those who, because of their lower socio-economic status in society, cannot fulfil all the ritual requirements of Jewish law. Shepherds, the poor, women, the handicapped, the sick and those that suffer from leprosy - they all constituted the community of sinners and outcasts in Jesus’ time. Jesus sent out his disciples with instruction to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God had come near; to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons and preach the gospel to the poor. It is this mission that has been passed on to us.

How faithful are we in fulfilling this mission? Do we have the same compassion as that of Jesus or even that of our forefathers, in reaching out to the poor and the outcasts of our society? Even when the state insists that we follow the criteria of social justice in running our educational institutions, we take shelter behind our minority right to run them as profitable ventures, without any social commitment and undermine all efforts to provide justice to weaker sections of our society. As Christians we are very good in talking about love in such amorphous and sentimental language, but when it comes to practicing love, going beyond acts of charity and alms giving, through legislative measures that ensure equity and meeting the basic survival needs of the poor, we, as a Christian community, are the most reactionary.

Brazilian Arch Bishop Helder Camara once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist." We refuse to delve into the structural aspects of poverty and deal with it. We leave righting of wrong relationships, working for justice and righteousness, to Communists, when the call to us is so sharp and clear,”seek Justice”.

We are today plagued by innumerable Christian churches and groups that turn Christianity into a cult that will meet their materialistic and selfish preoccupations. We are after Christ for his miracles and what he can do for us in terms of physical wellbeing and material prosperity. Nobody is there to follow him taking up their cross; to undergo the suffering that working for justice entails. Working for justice would involve more labour, study, intervention and confrontation on behalf of the poor, the widow and the orphan. We waste all our resources for building and maintaining church buildings, parish halls and top heavy, hierarchical ecclesiastical structures and other paraphernalia associated with them that we have hardly any money to spend for the orphan or the widow or the alien, for a suffering world. Thus, we have made Christian religion a wasteful exercise in futility; of priestly over-lording and wide spread corruption.

What is the point in changing one bishop by another or one dispensation with another, while the dispensation is that of religion? After all what we call Christianity is a religion that we carry around for our respectability. A white cassock or purple rob hanging on a stick easily becomes an object of veneration. It is immaterial who is behind the cassock; even if he be a crook of the first order, we will gladly have him to “confirm” and “sanctify” our decisions and significant events in our lives. We bent our knees before them and submit to their dictates and allow ourselves to be fleeced to have these significant events conducted in pomp and glory before the public with callous disregard for the spiritual significance of them. We allow ourselves to be enslaved and exploited by these religious structures. But if we throw off the cloak of respectability and divine sanction and have them celebrated in ways that would make sense to us, be spiritually uplifting, and sanctifying our lives and relationships, it would be an extremely liberating experience; but we are not prepared for it.

Essentially what Jesus did for us is to liberate us from religion - priesthood, temple, and sacrifices - what the writer of Hebrews describes as “dead works” to serve the living God. Jesus calls us not to be religious but to be responsible to ones fellow human beings and creation; to set right all our relations so that they would eventually be one of mutuality and caring, enhancing our life and the life of the planet in which we live. We are called to seek justice and seek that in our history. It is also to seek and find God in history and in the most deprived and vulnerable in history.

History and the human liberation in it are shaped by responsible decisions by human beings and not by miracle or by positing a God who would deliver for us what humans cannot achieve. The God of Jesus Christ and that of the Bible, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “is weak and powerless in the world and that is the only way in which he is with us and helps us. Matthew 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.” That is what we see on the cross - the man for others, who takes responsibility for fellow human beings and the rest of creation. Bonhoeffer’s conceptualization of a “religion-less Christianity” is something worth pursuing in the days to come.