Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

On Scripture - The Bible

Home

Home
Progressive Christian
Lip Service – But Where Is the Heart?

Lip Service – But Where Is the Heart?

Last updated on: September 5, 2012 at 8:28 pm by Odyssey Networks

Lip Service – But Where Is the Heart? 2012-09-05T20:28:59+00:00 Odyssey Networks

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

By Dirk G. Lange

Human beings want religion not God. Or, to put it slightly differently (and perhaps in a more nuanced manner!), they all too easily equate religion with a very particular, culturally determined, idea of God. They name their religion – their rites, their laws, their stories – divine or Bible-based. They find mystical origins for their laws turning those laws into unquestionable truths.

Watch the Video: What Contaminates a Life?

Efrain Agosto, a Professor at New York Theological Seminary, discusses the Biblical text Mark 7:1-8, 14-15 and 21-23, featured in the ON Scripture: The Bible article, “Lip Service – But Where Is the Heart?”.

However, what really happens is a domestication of God. God is made into what “we” want God to be, usually just a better more perfect version of ourselves. The result? God is certainly honored. God is part of the landscape and discourse. Yet, God is honored only with the lips but far from the heart. God is abandoned and replaced with culturally constructed versions! And human traditions (precisely a culture’s prejudices) are divinized.

Of course, everyone and every group needs some structure to regulate its life. This is why we have laws in the first place! But “law” can take on many forms. Rituals, for example, help frame life from our youngest childhood onwards. A nation needs its rituals as well, its stories that identify and set it apart (stories that get repeated unceasingly in heightened electoral periods!). But when the structures we create are identified with God, when the insights and traditions that formed a nation are uncritically mythologized, even distorted, God is fossilized, engraved in stone and finally even used as a weapon of judgment. God then is actually far from that structure, from those stories, from that tradition. For God cannot be fit into any one structure. God cannot be reduced to any one nation or class.

This weekend, we are caught between two national conventions, determining and setting the political agenda and rhetoric for the next few months (and maybe years). God will be invoked by both sides (whether God likes it or not!). Lip service is quick and easy but also very dangerous. American political rhetoric takes God and turns God into a national religion: God becomes the explanation rather than the question. “God” is cited as the source of our rights yet these rights are very culturally defined – the right, for example, to carry guns (who else in the world considers this an inalienable right?!) but not to have health care. Anyone who opposes this invocation of God is labeled an unbeliever or, perhaps even worse, as opposed to the God of America (see the recent article by Norman Lear, “Paul Ryan: God Says That I Can Carry a Gun?”).

I’m reminded of a text by Russian Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov in which he boldly states (long before Rob Bell) that hell is not part of God’s creation but rather the invention of so-called “good” people. The “good” people need a place to put all those who are not like themselves (the poor, the unsuccessful, gays, single mothers, etc.) – all those who don’t follow the “laws” as the majority defines them! The possibility of judging, condemning others makes the so-called “good” people more self-assured and confident in their own salvation. God is forgotten and only national, patriotic, “American” traditions remain.

How quickly these “good people” can condemn God! The traditions themselves are not bad but it is what human beings make of them. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come…” Jesus teaches his disciples.

Is religion banished? Certainly not! The book of James speaks explicitly on this subject: Religion that is pure and undefiled, religion that knows the disruption that is God, is not concerned with its own goodness or purity. It is not caught up in the business of judging other. Rather, it cares for orphans and widows.

In the Bible, “orphans and widows” is code language for the marginalized and outcast, those who cannot defend for themselves, those who do not have equal “rights” – precisely the ones that so-called “religious folk” condemn! Religion is directed not to individual purity but towards communal well being, and especially the well-being of the neighbor. In another passage, Jesus says it this way: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Religion is made for humankind. Humankind should not be forced to fit a particular idea of the religious person! The astonishing (and scary) aspect of religion turned into legal or ritual or cultural (patriotic) observance is that Jesus, as marginalized one, as crucified one outside the city walls, is once again left out of the picture! God is abandoned. There is only lip service.

Can we turn to the apparently sacrilegious observance of a group like the Russian punk band Pussy Riot to find a contemporary expression of dissidence – a dissidence similar to the non-observance of Jesus’ disciples that so angered the Pharisees? As they demonstrated in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, albeit a political demonstration but defined by them as a punk prayer, were they not also breaking all the norms and rules that a tightly controlled political system had put in place when it comes to cultural and religious performance? In that prayer of kicking and screaming and invocation for freedom and justice, have these women not displaced human tradition and turned God’s house back into a house of prayer? They offer us a radical example of those who speak the truth from their heart, defending the voiceless and innocent (Psalm 15). Perhaps it is finally the dissident who dwells on God’s holy hill!

Learn more about the ON Scripture Editorial Board Click here

Learn more about ON Scripture Click here

Like ON Scripture Click here

Follow ON Scripture Click here

ON Scripture is possible by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment

On Scripture

American Political Rhetoric

new york theological seminary

ON Scripture the Bible

Paul Ryan. Paul Evdokimov

Pussy Riot

Previous Post

August 23, 2012

The Politics of Betrayal: John 6:56-69

Next Post

September 6, 2012 Poverty, Wealth, and Equality? James 2:1-10, 11-13, 14-17

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category On Scripture Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz