Life's Daily Challenge Devotional

Religious baggage hinders purpose

“But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in," Matthew 23:13.

To the humble,

In order to walk in purpose you must leave behind old thoughts and subsequent patterns of behavior...baggage that has been with you most, if not all, of your life. This takes tremendous humility, resolve and courage. I want to let you know up front, that the hardest bags of all to check, are those based on faulty religious thinking.

You see, we as human beings, become very artful at avoiding issues that we don’t want to face. We have a vast arsenal of defense mechanisms that prevent us from seeing things as God sees them. Often times, we build defenses that are religious in nature. What better defense than to justify our position in the name of God?

Religious thinking can be self-contrived, but often it is handed down to us. We simply fail to question teachings and methods that have been passed down through a long line of well-intentioned people. It’s kind of like the young girl who was making Thanksgiving dinner with her mother. Like so many years before, she stood, watching mom cut both ends off the ham before placing it in the roasting pan. This year, however, she asked her mom, “Why?” Her question caught mom off guard. She really didn’t have an answer, other than she had watched her mother do it this way when she was a little girl. Curiosity got the best of mom, so she decided to give her mother a phone call. Both, she and her daughter were surprised to find out that grandma didn’t have an answer either. Their search finally ended by calling great-grandma. The answer they got was both funny and embarrassing. Great-grandma said she had to cut both ends off the ham because her baking pan was too small and she couldn’t afford to buy a new one. Think of the waste throughout the generations because no one dared to question tradition!

This funny, but sad story sums up the tragedy of religious thinking when it’s not based in the living presence of God, Himself. This is exactly the kind of structure that Jesus Christ confronted when He came to the earth. His people missed Him in the midst of their religious observances.

Centuries of well-intentioned practice don’t necessarily make something true. Everyone who comes to Christ is a mixed bag that must be sorted out. Some of what we believe is truth, some is faulty tradition that we’ve never questioned and some is our own wrong interpretation about God. Your beliefs, both questioned and unquestioned, all came from somewhere. Are you courageous enough to question their origin?