In The Master's Service

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THE LOWEST USES OF RELIGION

Elder Mark Green

There have been many vile and ungodly things that have been done in the name of religion. True and pure religions resist such usage, but the more that a particular religion strays from the truth, the more it lends itself to the perverse designs of sinful men. Men have joined churches in order to gain leads to sell more of their particular products or to establish themselves in the community for business purposes. People have belonged to the most prestigious religion in a city in order to promote or preserve their social standing. No end of citations could be made as to how people have used religion for the most selfish and base purposes. Of those, however, perhaps two have been the worst.

Our Lord told His disciples, "They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service (John 16:2). The religion of the meek and lowly Lamb of God has never been persecutorial in nature.

Whatever persecution has been done under the name of Christianity has been Christianity falsely so called, and has no relationship to true Christianity. The most severe discipline the church can impose is excommunication. Corporal and capital punishment and confinement in prison fall under the authority of the magistrate or the civil authority. All the church has ever asked from the civil authorities is to be left alone to worship in the manner we believe to be right. We have never sought to impose our beliefs on others by the sword; we have only asked the freedom of speech to be able to proclaim our beliefs and to persuade others, if they are interested, that what we believe is indeed the truth.

Men who would use their religion to harass others purely because of a difference of doctrine and practice have descended to the depths of arrogance. How weak is that religion that must compel men by law to believe it! How little validity must its claims have if such measures must be taken to propagate it! Only the most perverse minds would not desire peace and prosperity and freedom, and the tenets of true Christianity, if followed closely by a people, will result in those wonderful situations, both religiously and civically; but when we can walk in sin without men seek, in the name of Christianity, to compel by law and the sword or to otherwise persecute others who are living godly and responsible lives, merely because they disagree with them religiously, they have ceased to promote Christianity and have begun to promote those things that are diametrically opposed to it. Only the most haughty and prideful of men would use religion to this end.

The apostle Jude noted, "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 4). Men who use religion to facilitate their fleshly lusts or to seek to remove from them any guilt as they wholeheartedly follow their lascivious ways have dragged religion into the gutter. God's children do sin, and sometimes we sin grievously, and we verily believe that if we are indeed His we are covered by the blood of our Savior and no sin that we commit will be held against us before the bar of God's eternal justice. However, if we are His, we need not think God's reaction. If we sin willfully, there remains for us "a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation" (Hebrews 10:26). We need not think that God will allow His children to take that path without chastisement. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Some men have designed their religion to facilitate their sins. When a man concocts such a religion, we may be sure it is not true religion, not the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is true that genuine and heartfelt confession of sins relieves us of the felt burden of our transgressions and restores us to a condition of a felt fellowship with the Father, but no amount of confession ever removed the legal guilt of sin. When men devise their religion so that they may live in the basest of ways and then (they suppose) remove all legal stain of guilt by giving money or going through some religious ritual, then they have made their religion an assistant to iniquity. Whatever purpose religion has, it should be manifest to all that it ought to be an inducement to righteousness, not to sin.