Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-183

THE RELIGIOUS DIMENSION

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James 1:27.

You’ve heard Jung’s famous comment, ‘Among all my patients in the second half of life… every one of them fell ill because they had lost what the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them have been really healed who did not regain their religious outlook…’ In animistic tribes, and in sophisticated civilizations, people have been incurably religious. Secularism and ‘scientism’ have not eradicated this primal instinctual need. As Edmund Burke wrote in a letter to a friend, [‘We humans] are by our constitution religious animals’.

Religion addresses questions of ultimate meaning and purpose: and if life loses its meaning we become mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually ill.

One’s religion, wrote J.M.Barrie, is whatever one is most interested in. So Christianity, attending church, may not be our primary religion (it may be golf, or playing the stockmarket). And ‘church’ may not be primarily religious either: it is sometimes a social club with a bit of religion tacked on every Sunday.

God, you are much more beautiful than religion. Help me to be religious – but more, help me to transcend religion and know you. Amen.

Shalom! Rowland Croucher <> Director, John Mark Ministries: counseling and consulting services for pastors, ex-pastors, church leaders and managers. http://jmm.aaa.net.au (5000+ articles) http://priscillasfriends.org/ (Pastors’ wives)