Did God Give us a Religion, or a Relationship?
I continue to see comments lately that pit “relationship” against “religion”, as though there’s a new trend with Christians trying to distance themselves from “rules” that they might be expected to follow. The latest I heard was " Religion gets you to church, but relationship helps you grow in your faith ". Other examples are, “ Having a religion is against my relationship ”, or “ God gave me a relationship, not a religion to follow ”, or “ I have a personal relationship with Christ, I don’t need a religion’s rules to tell me what to do ”. There are various ways of saying it, but the main message is that “ Christ gave us a relationship with Him, not a religion to follow”, and it's an incredibly short-sighted and incorrect view of what Christ has given us. The religion that Christ gave us to follow is a reflection of our relationship with Him . "Religion", from the Latin "religio" means to bind oneself [to something]. In this case, our Christian