Viral Jesus

This religious junk really pulls you down until you find yourself in really bad places.

My name is Ross. I am religious. I took my last shot of religion two weeks ago, but have been sober since. I want to tell you my story, and I’ll try to be as honest as possible. I took my first shot of religion when I was 16 years old. I got my first dose from my sister. Then for almost a year and a half afterwards I didn’t have much access to religion. My sister was away at college and had given me my first fix (along with a beautiful encounter with Jesus). I was on my own. I didn’t know where to get my next fix. So at that stage mostly I had Jesus and an old Bible, and that little bit of Evangelical religion my sister gave me.

All of that changed when I went to college. The first week I was there I was introduced to some people who had a serious religious habit. They introduced me to some heavy stuff. Within weeks I was seriously hooked. I learned that I had to have “quit times,” were I read the Bible every day out of religious duty or God would not be pleased with me.

I was trained to believe that my form of Evangelical religion was a better, purer brand of religion than the dangerous smack like Roman Catholic, Pentecostal and Main Line Protestant. These people were seriously addicted to religion, and their religion was bad. We, on the other hand, knew how to handle our religion. In fact, we were in denial, which is one of the first signs of addiction. We honestly didn’t think we were actually religious at all because we were using the pure stuff, with no dangerous additives.

These religious junkies introduced me to religious prayer. Prayer was a duty. There were only four types of prayer that were really acceptable. We could remember these acceptable religious prayer forms through the acronym ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. Any other form of prayer was a dangerous adulteration to the pure stuff. There were dangerous religious additives I was told to avoid, when having a good snort of pure religious prayer; Pentecostal/Charismatic speaking in tongues, for example, was pure poison! Any other form of prayer was probably some Roman Catholic mystical gobbledygook that was not only dangerous but silly. It was always best to stick to the pure high grade stuff.

My fellow religious addicts told me I had to go to church every week because that was where I could score a better grade of religion. Since I was already hooked, I did as I was told, and frankly I wanted my next fix. These church meetings were where one could get some heavy stuff. The main dose there was the religious church service. This was a heady cocktail of religion that included pews, pulpits, powerful titled leaders called pastors, some elders, deacons, a set religious patterns called the order of service, some mindless singing and Sunday School. There were many other religious ingredients in this cocktail, but I think most of you are probably religious addicts too. Hopefully you are on the road to recovery. But recovering religious addict or not, you know exactly what a religious church service feels like.

My habit got so serious that the church service cocktail was no longer satisfying. I wanted to score some real heavy stuff. I was told that the really good stuff was reserved for the clergy and missionaries. And, in order to be clergy, I had to go to a Bible college and then seminary. These were places where I could indulge my religious habit without limits. I went to a Bible college and learned every religious form known to Evangelicalism. I was now not only scoring my religion, I was shooting it straight into my veins.  What a rush it gave me. When I was doing religion I thought I was really pleasing God. I was on a serious high that made me feel superior to all those foolish non-Christians and even the bad Christians who didn’t “do” the right brand of religion.

But soon the high wore thin. I needed an even heavier fix. Where could I get it? I was told the only way to really get a religious rush, at my level of addiction, was to become a pusher. I could sell my brand of religion as a missionary, I would be paid to indulge my habit and I could get some really high grade religion for free in the process.

I found a truly religious mission organization that was into some heavy smack. They did their Evangelical religion by using business methods. When a religious junky is on the business method high, he nearly goes crazy thinking that by using business methods the junky can actually control God’s agenda or at least do God a series of big favors. The stuff made our heads so muddled that we actually thought God liked us to do this junk. When you are doing it, it feels so good. It made us feel so superior. But for a serious junky like me, that high can only last for so long.

Then a strange thing happened. Even the best religion wasn’t satisfying me anymore. It all began to feel hollow. I’d do all the religious stuff, quite times, dutiful religious prayers, going to church services, selling my religion to others, even being up the religious distribution chain by being the boss of other religious missionaries; but I couldn’t get high any more.

One day I found myself talking to Jesus once again. It had been so long since I had actually connected with him and not just some religious form or duty. I just told Jesus I loved him. With all that heavy religion I was doing, it had actually been a long time since I had told Him that from the heart. Soon I found that I wanted to seek just Him without the religious trappings of Evangelical religion. The more I sought Him, and not religion, the more satisfying my encounters with Him became.

He opened my eyes and showed me that he never wanted all this religion in the first place. He took me back to the Bible. I read it, not out of duty, but with a passionate desire to find Him in the pages. I began to realize that as I read His Spirit was actually opening my eyes and speaking to me.

This is what he showed me. He never designed Christianity to be a religion. The more religion we humans add, the farther it actually drives us from God. Jesus just wants us and He wants us to have him. The religion gets in the way of the relationship.

That was sixteen years ago. My journey out of religion has been a long and hard one. Every time I think I’ve finally kicked the habit, the Holy Spirit shows me another claw religion has on my soul. But, the more I put aside my religious habits, the more I encounter Jesus. Now I have a new community of fellow recovering religionists. We are helping each other find and stay focused on Jesus. It is beautiful, simple and deeply spiritual.

That’s my story. If you are religious, I hope you can find a group of fellow religious junkies who are on the path to recovery. But, most importantly, recovery will never happen unless you seek Jesus, only Jesus, nothing more than Jesus. He is the only source of power that is capable of shaking the monkey off our backs. And the more you follow Him, the more your faith will become deep, intimate and personal. And, coincidently the more it will look like the early followers of Jesus we read about in the Bible. They were focused on Jesus, not religion.