Originally Posted by
truthpaste
While I say an actual relationship with God is crucial for each individual, I would also warn that religion is the main reason most people never find that living relationship with God. This isn't easy to explain in text, but here's a first attempt.
In the same way americans think you can run holding in football, the word - 'religion' - is viewed by our mainly secular society as anyone who excercises any form of faith in any form of greater being or someone who performs rituals or practices of any kind.
In the middle of such 'fog' - we end up eagerly looking for the irrational examples found in the mix and end up throwing out religion and all other faith as irrelevant. In fact all religion is hopeless as far as Almighty God is concerned, and only invented to stop us seeing what we really need - the Bible calls them 'cunningly devised fables'.
Or to put it another way, flood the world with fake Rolex watches, say they are the real thing and eventually people (let down by their performance) assume all Rolex watches, even the real ones, are unreliable.
Religion is ultimately dead and is something that can only be observed on the outside, whereas faith in Christ happens on the inside and will always manifest itself on the outside in every aspect of someone's life; in their speech, their priorities, their ambitions and their key reason for living. Someone put it like this, if you hired a detective to follow me for 7 days, they should collect enough information to convict me of being a Christian!
Hoping that starts to answer your question, I'm very happy to explain any of the above in more detail or answer any new questions you may have. And thanks for asking such an important question.
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