When Religion Replaces Christ

All right. Now, I hope I can do this both fairly and kindly. I have no desire to be cynical or critical. The first list, or kind of people with their own little lists, I would call basically people from what is known as a holiness background, which is related much to Methodism and carried over into many sections of the Pentecostal movement: the Church of God, Pentecostal Holiness, and others.

Now, basically, all holiness people have their own little list of rules. And it’s mainly negative. They’ve got a list of rules about, mainly about women, too. What women may wear, how women may adorn themselves, how long their dresses should be, and a whole host of other things. I suppose many of us are familiar with those rules.

I’ve never been specifically associated with the holiness movement, though some members of my family have been. But I have been very closely associated with the Pentecostal movement, and much of their thinking and practice is actually a carryover from holiness. I think, in many cases, they don’t realize that. And I’m very, very familiar with Pentecostal rules. Believe me, I could quote them in my sleep. They relate to what you may eat and what you may drink, or not drink, where you may go for pleasure and entertainment, what kind of clothes women should wear, whether you should indulge in mixed swimming, and on, and a whole host of similar things.

A good many years back, I was teaching in the leading Pentecostal assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark. I was teaching a six weeks’ Bible course, and I was living in a home in one of the suburbs of Copenhagen. And I had to take the streetcar into the center of the city every day to get to the church. And I needed to know exactly where to get off the streetcar. So, I picked out a very distinctive statue in the middle of Copenhagen. It’s a very unusual statue. It’s in granite with a metal, the actual body is in metal. And incongruously enough, it’s a statue of a bishop named Bishop Absalom, who was one of the founders of Copenhagen. But this bishop is seated on a prancing horse and brandishing a sword, which isn’t, you know, our idea of a bishop today. And his name was, as I say, Bishop Absalom. So, every time I saw Bishop Absalom on his horse, I knew I had to get off the streetcar.

Well, after I’d been teaching these Pentecostals for about 3 weeks, I was so weary of their negative attitudes that I gave them a little lecture. And I said, “I want to tell you about Bishop Absalom.” Of course, they all knew who Bishop Absalom was, the statue on the horse in the middle of the square. I said, “I want to tell you some things about Bishop Absalom. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t go to movies, he doesn’t dance, he doesn’t gamble, he doesn’t swear. But he’s not a Christian, ‘cause he has no life.” And the essence of Christianity is life. I think they got the message.

“Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the traditions of the, from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, ‘Touch not; taste not; handle not,’ which all are to perish with the using?”

They’re all related to things that have no permanence.

“After the commandments and doctrines of men.”

I would have to say that’s a pretty accurate description of holiness teaching.

Now, I want you to understand that I am not saying that all those rules are necessarily wrong. Many of them are good rules. What I am saying is, our righteousness does not consist in keeping those rules. Also, I have to observe that rules tend to get out of date. That’s one of the marvels of the Bible, that it’s survived 2,000 years or more, and it’s not out of date. To me, that’s one of the clear evidences of its inspiration. ‘Cause a lot of our little religious rules are sadly dated. I’ll give you two examples. I was growing up, or rather, I was, let me say, I was raising a family in a time when the radio was considered, quote, “worldly.” And real good Christians didn’t listen much to the radio. So, we had that little rule, but we didn’t foresee television. And along came television, and nobody’d made rules for television. See, we were unprepared. Some people did make rules. And then we had a rule that Christians don’t go to movie theaters. But when television came, then you could get the movie in your house without going to the theater. And there were no rules against that. But if you analyze it objectively, which is worse, to go to something that’s wrong outside your house or to import something that’s wrong right into your house and expose everybody in the house to it? If it’s wrong, it’s twice as wrong inside as outside.

Then there was another rule, which was that women didn’t wear lipstick. I don’t, many of you can’t even remember these rules. As a matter of fact, nowadays, it’s almost old-fashioned to wear lipstick. But in those days, it was considered the thing. Well, the rules were made before eye shade came along. So, there were, there were no rules for eye shade. So, this is really a fact. You could see, for instance, let’s say, the wives of the Assembly of God pastors in a meeting. No rouge, no lipstick, but eye shade until they looked like ghosts. Well, if that isn’t ridiculous, you know, I don’t know what is. I don’t say that to be unkind, but it’s just an example of how totally inadequate our little human sets of rules are.