I’m not sure if you’ve ever had a moment when you are praying and you feel like the Lord is ‘nudging’ you with a thought. It’s maybe not audible, it’s not necessarily a vision, but your mind just starts thinking about a principle that you hadn’t previously thought of before.

I had one of those moments as I was praying this morning.

My mind began to think about religion and how religion works in the world of Kingdom living. The thought led me to this passage in the book of Matthew. It’s at a point in the gospels where Jesus is being criticized by both the Pharisees & Sadducees (religious leaders in His time). They have been testing Jesus with questions, trying to trip Him up.

He responds to their critique like so;

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Matthew 23 23:24

This might seem like a strange thing to say. Often when I first read Jesus’ responses, I think they sound strange. However, once I read more, think more, and pray more, I realize I am the strange one for missing what He was trying to say.

In this instance, Jesus was getting at the heart of the religious spirit that many of the religious leaders had. He did this by focusing on their generosity practices. He describes the generosity practices they have been keeping. This was something that would have been done fairly publicly for people to see, which is why Jesus referred to this. Jesus starts with describing their practices around giving a tenth (the tithe) of their spices. The Pharisees were doing what was right by tithing their spices. Jesus wasn’t trying to say that this was wrong. However, there was something missing from their hearts in the middle of their practices. Jesus was trying to get to what the bigger deal was.

He always was doing this.

He wanted to know what was going on in their heart. Jesus wanted to confront the religious spirit that lurked inside of them. He goes on to tell them that the most important things in life were justice, mercy, and faithfulness and they needed to have those in their lives as well as practising their tithing.

He then follows up by saying something that looks even stranger culturally as he talks about gnats and camels. Let me try to explain.

Hmmmm…..yeah, while this was a good action, Jesus saw and declared that these acts were done as a way of displaying their holiness in front of others. Their goal was public adoration rather than a private act of adoration to God. He had seen it done by them on other occasions, and He would also have discerned it spiritually as He watched them. Jesus then pushes the example by flipping it to an extreme by talking about them swallowing a camel. Of course, no one swallows a camel by accident, and the religious leaders would never have eaten camel meat. Jesus is drawing an obvious line here. He is trying to say that they are being so careful to look right on these small things publicly, but they end up missing the good things, the big things, the important things, and are, in effect, ‘swallowing a camel.’

While this still might seem a little crazy to our 21st century ears Jesus is revealing something about the religious spirit.

It looks respectable.

This is what makes it deceptive, and quite attractive, to humans. In the west we tend to love right and wrong as a rule. We generally prefer science to art, we like to know where the line is so we can colour inside it, we want to know if we are right or wrong, guilty or innocent. Religion offers us that chance. Do this, don’t do that, it says. It doesn’t want to get bogged down in a proper relationship with God because then it gets complex.

However, God doesn’t abide by our rules. He doesn’t always color inside the lines we have drawn. He confounds us with the things that He does. We have no grid for that kind of thinking. When true relationship with God is embraced, grace and mercy come into the story. Those two tend to mess up religious lines. Grace and mercy forgive criminals on death row; they make a way for adulterous women, robbers, and wrongdoers. They allow the broken to find wholeness and the lost to be found. They feel like a threat to right and wrong.

That’s what is happening here in this exchange with the Pharisees and Jesus, and it happened time and time again in the gospels. Whether it was Jesus‘ disciples in trouble for picking heads of grain on the sabbath or healing someone in the temple, showing love to a woman in her monthly cycle, or hanging out with tax collectors, religion always attacked Jesus and tried to catch Him out for doing wrong.

A religious spirit will always seek to find the lowest common denominator and create lines of right and wrong, good and evil. But don’t be deceived into thinking it is doing this to honor God. Religion always seeks to honor the self, never God.