Jesus Gives “New Being,” Above Religion . . .

THE BURDEN OF RELIGION

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.—Mt. 11:28

In The Shaking of the Foundations Paul Tillich writes as follows about these words of Jesus: “The burden he wants to take from us is the burden of religion. It is the yoke of law, imposed on the people of his time by the religious leaders, the wise and the understanding, as he calls them in their own words—the Scribes and Pharisees, as they are usually called. Those who labor and are heavy laden are those who are sighing under the yoke of religious law. And he will give them the power to overcome religion and law; the yoke he gives them is a ‘new being’ above religion.”

Those of us who have been “religious” all our lives may be reluctant to think of religion as a burden, but that is the thesis of this essay, for we believe Tillich is right in his interpretation. Our point is not, of course, merely that religion is often burdensome, but that in Jesus we have that new creation that saves us from the defeat of religion and law. Perhaps Paul of Tarsus says it better than Paul Tillich, for in Rom. 8:2-4 it reads: “In Christ Jesus the life-giving law of the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death. What the law could never do, because our lower nature robbed it of all potency, God has done by sending his own Son in a form like that of our own sinful nature, and as a sacrifice for sin, he has passed judgment against sin with. in that very nature, so that the commandment of the law may find fulfillment in us, whose conduct, no longer under the control of our lower nature, is directed by the Spirit.”

This is not necessarily a reference to the inadequacy of the law of Moses, but to the insufficiency of any human endeavor in gaining justification. The “law” that the life-giving Spirit delivers us from is the principle of self-sufficiency, which Paul describes as “the law of sin and death.” The law of human works can end only in sin and death.

When the apostle says that only Jesus can do “what the law could never do,” he refers to all law, whether the moral law, the law of Moses, or the humanistic law that relies on man’s ingenuity. It refers to any system, plan, institution, ideology, theology, philosophy, or doctrine that is inherently carnal in that it trusts in man’s devices. We devise plans and schemes in which we place our trust, fully assured that we are right, and in being right we are saved—so long as we stay right, that is.

It is indeed the burden of religion that drives us to find our own way through law. We can never have any real joy and assurance, for we never know just how well we have measured up to the demands of law. By saturating ourselves with the Word and dedicating ourselves to the commandments, we climb our uneasy course up the ladder of salvation. When we suppose that we have about made it, we come tumbling down into a sea of remorse and uncertainty. We pray for forgiveness, hoping that the Lord does not come before we get things straightened out once more, and again we begin our weary way up the ladder. Up four rungs only to slide down six!

What a cheerless and weary religion this is, and yet it describes so many of us who rely on plans instead of the Man. We hardly imagined that Jesus was talking about us when he spoke of those who “labor and are heavy-laden.” We always supposed he referred to the weary of the world, not to “the Lord’s people” in the church. Jesus is ready, of course, to receive all of earth’s downtrodden, but in this context, when he invites those who are burdened with a load too heavy to bear, he has reference to oppressive religion. His yoke is good to bear, his load is light. The ecclesiastical demands of the Pharisees were impossible.

There is something about all this that “the learned and wise” cannot see. In the same passage we find Jesus thanking the Father that it was his will that “these things” were hidden from the wise and learned and revealed to the simple. The contrast here is not between the intelligent and the unintelligent, but between those who trust in their own system and those who rely upon God’s grace. The simple are those with broken spirits, who realize that their own righteousness is as filthy rags. Jesus is teaching us that it is the heart, not the head, that is the home of the gospel. Intellectual power can be to the glory of God, and “simple babes” can be the vehicle for such power. It is intellectual pride that makes for oppressive religion. It is not that ignorance must go with faith, but that lowliness must go with trust. The “simple” are not childish, but are child-like.

If Jesus came to lift from men’s shoulders the burden of religion, it would be expected that religion would turn its rage upon him who would deliver the oppressed. The first law of institutionalism, especially religious institutionalism, is to preserve itself. It will thus seek to destroy whoever threatens it. And this was the case with Jesus, for it was religion that murdered him. The famed evangelist, Billy Sunday, had a way of slapping his knee with his Bible and crying out, “Don’t forget that it was religion that killed Jesus.”

There is no question but what religion all through history has had its dark side. It has featured frenzied orgies, burned witches at the stake, warded off devils with holy water, and preferred magic and superstition to science and reason. The search for truth has actually been hindered by religion, for it has persecuted those who have dared to question old ways of thinking. Religion has also been a strong anti-moral force in human affairs, for it has relied more upon fear than upon reason. The great moral leaders have often been non-religious, while the most rapacious and licentious have been popes, priests and cardinals. Those most responsible for progress in human decency and benevolence have been atheists and deists, while the most tragic chapters in human history find the church in the ascendency. It is noteworthy that Jesus had more good to say about prostitutes than about religious leaders. Even Dante, a faithful son of the church, puts popes in hell.

While religion has talked a lot about love, the fact remains that it has struck more terror in the human heart and wrought more cruelty than any organization in history. Cruelty has been its chief virtue. “Bloody” Queen Mary burned people at the stake for not believing in transubstantiation; John Calvin burned the scholarly Servetus for holding that Jesus was “the son of the eternal God” rather than “the eternal son of God.” Even in colonial America heresy was a capital offence, and human sacrifice is still practiced in some primitive religious societies.

Religious cruelty is real even in our own ranks. We have learned to be rude to those we label with some stigma. We’ll let missionaries starve in the field if they don’t keep believing and behaving to suit us. We’ll fire ministers and professors who dare to question, and oftentimes without any notice or due process, a moral lapse seldom witnessed out in the world. We often discredit an honest pursuit of excellence, while rewarding mediocrity. We’ll separate married people and breakup homes in order to defend some ambiguous view of marriage and divorce. Some people murder with a sword, but many of us have destroyed brethren by means of a vitriolic attack in our papers. “Bloody” Mary was guilty of homicide, Hitler of genocide, but we of fratricide. The Master assures us that he who hates his brother is a murderer. He came to lift men from the oppression of hate, fear and murder, and that includes us.

The struggle for social justice has been hampered by religion. In our own southland the clergy defended slavery as a divine institution, and the American church has been far more concerned with its own welfare than the plight of the deprived and oppressed. The church has consistently been conservative in reference to social justice, identifying itself with the powerful and the rich, and it has not taken the initiation in a single movement for human decency. It has not spent so much as a tithing of its income for the poor, for the whole of its wealth goes to strengthen its hold over its followers and to enhance its own stature.

There is no way to estimate the harm done, the misery wrought, and the happiness destroyed in the lives of young people whose hearts danced with love but who dared not marry “out of the church” (and so married some prude in the church); or in the life of many a weak women who have been conditioned to suppose that birth control is equal to murder; or in the lives of the thousands who would grow in mind and spirit unto mature souls in Christ if it were not for the obscurantism of ministers and priests, many of whom even assume such prerogatives over men’s lives as to tell them what to read. Then there is the horror of mental illness, much of which has been caused by a religion of fear. More unhappiness has come from church fusses than from bar-room fights. Many a woman has been denied the beauty of meaningful womanhood and motherhood, even to being stripped of her own individuality, because of the misfortune of marrying some religious kook.

This was the religion that murdered Jesus. It regulated and legislated what people wore, what they ate, where they went, how they went, what they could lift, where they could spit, whom they could touch, and even how they were to tie knots and wipe a sore. Concerning which religionists Jesus said: “They make up heavy packs and pile them on men’s shoulders, but will not raise a finger to lift the load themselves” (Mt. 23:4)

A letter from one of our readers recently described her husband as “not religious but spiritual.” That is the point we make about the burden of religion. It makes people religious, providing them only with a false and shaky security, without making them spiritual. It is even better not to be spiritual, for the more one becomes like Jesus, caught up in his love and grace rather than with party loyalty, the more uncomfortable it will be made for him. Dedication to social justice can actually destroy one’s position in a religious institution. One’s money is blessed more when it goes’ into fashionable ecclesiastical real estate than when it is given to buy some poor Negro a set of dentures.

The sad truth is that many of our own beloved brethren are weary with religion. They are burdened with laws too heavy for them to bear and impossible for them to keep. They are heavy-ladened with being so right that they are made unaware of the depths of grace. They are weary of being good and thus cannot realize the joy of a heart that praises God and cries out “Thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord.” They are starved by humdrum preaching and are hungry for the bread of Life, for Jesus himself.

It was religion that burdened Paul to the point that he cried out in despair, “Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death?” Doom is an awful word; it goes with words like terror, fear, and anxiety. And yet these terms are often more descriptive of people’s religion than such lovely language as peace, joy, and hope. Paul felt that he was doomed because of his reliance upon a religious system. “When I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach,” he moans with despair. “In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law” describes once more the burden of religious systems that only imprison their adherents.

In triumph the apostle found his way out. Who will deliver him from such religious oppression? “God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God!” was his answer, and it must be the answer of us all.

Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today and forever. He still speaks to souls burdened by religious austerity: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The Master is so merciful as to save us from our religion. And what a glorious deliverance that is!—the Editor