Religulous? Yeah, maybe so.

So this past Saturday night I watched Bill Maher's new documentary Religulous. I'd actually wanted to watch it for quite some time and was thrilled when two friends said they'd just bought it.

The movie, quite frankly, didn't shock me at all. In fact, I agreed with many of Maher's main points. Maher's primary thesis is that religion does more harm than good in the world, and each tradition's fight to gain followers becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy of the end times as it battles other religions, thereby sustaining hatred and war in the world.

Essentially, Maher's thesis rests in suspicion of organized religion. What good does religion do? Maher wonders. Why would I put my faith in something so hypocritical? He asks. From the main world religions in particular, Maher hears something along the lines of, "You, come lead a wonderful life with us in our truth, and then we'll make everyone who disagrees miserable in order to prove ours is, in fact, the good life!"

Many "religious" people are much less the picture of piety and instead reek of contradiction, malice, and self-importance. They haven't mastered the essence of their professed faiths and instead parade around their "correct" positions on the hot button topics of their choosing as God's finite opinions on those topics. Reinstate America as a Christian nation! Have an abortion if you want to go to Hell! God hates the gays! I pick on Christianity, but this ignorance occurs within each religion's "religious". And, of course, these examples represent the extremes. Still, all of us who associate with a religion are guilty of this sort of contradiction on some level. It is what makes Bill Maher suspicious of religion; it is precisely the subject of which we need to be aware as we seek to learn and grow in our faiths and lessen that discrepancy between what we believe and how we act.

What I am continually learning more and more in regards to Christianity, however, is how, if I am to truly abide with God through the person of Jesus Christ, there will be many fewer reasons for anyone to be suspicious of Christianity. That is due to the distinctness of Christianity from any other religion found in it revolving entirely around a relationship in which God offers to every person on Earth His unconditional love. Though I desire to live as God intended humans to live, I am not bound to a particular code of behavior, a bunch of rules, or the Jewish Law. No, I live through Christ's law only, a law of love. This is precisely where so many Christians get tripped up: they think up a law of God (for instance, one written by a gun-toting, gay-hating, anti-science, colonialist Jesus) and thereby limit God, simultaneously tainting the name of Jesus and hurting the cause of Christianity. Each Christian does it in small ways -- I know I am just as guilty of hypocrisy as anyone else -- though it is normally the big ways that make onlookers truly suspicious of Christianity.

It must be acknowledged that, even if we overcame all hypocrisy among Christians, there would still exist unbelievers whose hearts were not persuaded by the love of Christ. Bill Maher, it seems, is also one such person. Though his film mostly focused on practices and ideas overly emphasized by various religious practitioners (thereby seeming silly to onlookers) and the fault of religions to be more divisive than inclusive, Bill Maher is, at heart, skeptical of the idea of God in general. He is afraid of what happens when religions butt heads, but he is first convinced that God is a foolish idea. If God doesn't exist, then why do I need to restore my life to Him through repentence, cleansing, atonement? If I don't see Sin in the world or sins in my actions, than why would I live as if such an idea existed? Bill Maher is suspicious that religion is the real creator of evil in the world because Bill Maher the skeptic doesn't feel in his own heart a longing for a better life with the Creator.

To the Bill Mahers of the world, Christians -- even the most studied, relational, incarnational Christians -- are "like the stench from a rotting corpse." For

to God we [Christian believers] are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some we are a scent of death leading to death, and to others, a scent of life leading to life. / This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No -- but at least we don't take God's Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets to sell it cheap. We stand in Christ's presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. we get what we say straight from God and say it as honestly as we can. (2 Corinthians 2:15-17, HCSB/Message)

For the Bill Mahers of the world, I pray that the Lord will soften their hearts, that they may soon perceive the "God-sized hole" in their hearts, the idea at which they've scoffed up until now. I pray they may replace shunning religion with seeking relationship. I pray that their lives will be enriched because, in believing in evil and Sin, they also will experience in God's presence a greater goodness than any good they thought they knew before.