Organized Religion and the Road Less Taken

Step by Step

Like so many others in today’s world, I’m on a spiritual journey more intense than any other I have been on before. It’s said so often by so many, “I am spiritual (or a Christian, or a Believer – fill in the blank for yourself), but I am not religious.” Has religion gotten a bad rap lately? Or are things just catching up with it, with closer scrutiny and more questioning? Countless masses are seeking answers, and quite frankly, I hear over and over again how religion just is not satisfying their queries.

When I was a little girl, my father taught me that I was an American by birth, and a Baptist by the grace of God. My granddaddy was a Baptist, his daddy was a Baptist. . . it had to remain perpetual. Please do not misread the intent of my statement. It was within the Baptist church I gained a vast knowledge of Biblical education, was baptized and spent some of the most valuable parts of my youth and young adult years. But, I’ve always had a lot of “whys” in my life. I was the studious kid in Sunday school and youth group when it came to reading my Bible. If I heard something in a sermon, chances were pretty good I’d go home and check out its authenticity.  Many times I’d return to the big red brick building, walking up the front steps with my Bible firmly tucked under my arm, and try to address my question during Sunday school class. Why had we always been told there were three wise men, when nowhere in the Bible does it elude to how many wise men actually took part in the Nativity – or that perhaps they didn’t even make it for the birth at Bethlehem. We are told they visited the house and the child. A bit of studying would denote Jesus was approximately 2 years old, thus Herod’s reasoning for the massive slaughter of all male babies under the age of two. It was the shepherds who made it to the manger.

So, now I continue seeking, asking questions and finding answers. But, more importantly, with great passion and fervor, I want to know God more intimately. I want a relationship so close that I can’t tell where I end and Spirit picks up. I now get the whole Trinity thing, and that was one thing I was always told would just have to remain a mystery. I am that temple Jesus referred to, the place where God dwells, and He must dwell in Spirit. I’m sure you’ve heard it said, but more than human beings with a spirit, we are spirit beings within a human body. I am determined to see with my spiritual eyes and hear with my spiritual ears, seek with my whole heart, mind, soul, body and spirit to know what God has purposed for me to accomplish while on this earth.

Questioning organized religion, may see me brought to task. Asking some deep questions may be viewed as rebellious,

Where the answers are...

but it is to God I must go, and to God I must answer. The manners in which far too many churches focus on the minutia of doing, rather than the essence of being God’s love extended, wearies me.

So, here is a lesson from two wise men. One is Robert Frost, the other is Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Frost writes in his poem, The Road Not Taken, “… I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

And in red letters I find these words of Jesus: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV) (Italics are mine for enunciation)

The road less traveled

Yep, as for me, I think I’ll take the road less traveled, the narrow one that only a few will choose. For I have faith, and trust with all my being, that if there is another road God has for me, He will lead and guide me to that place.