Reddit reviews The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus

Glad to help out! No problem, hope it helps in your journey! Funnily enough, falling out of organized religion in order to more closely follow God is essentially the message of Jesus, as Bruxy Cavey explained in his book The End of Religion.

Ah! But there is the interesting truth hidden in there -- by providing a sacrifice (himself in flesh), God showed just how much he values each of us. (For a good read -- try Bruxy Cavey's book 'The end of religion' -- http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Religion-Encountering-Spirituality/dp/1600060676 or his recent teaching series (podcast & video available) titled 'Why did Jesus die?' http://www.themeetinghouse.com/teaching/why-did-jesus-die/ )

Examples of this are riddled throughout the old testament, take for example Abraham pleading on behalf of Sodom. He asks God if he finds 50 righteous in Sodom, will he spare the city? God responds yes, and then Abraham asks if he were to find 45, would God spare the city?

Yes. This goes on until Abraham asks if he finds just ten righteous in Sodom, will God spare the city? God's response: Yes.

Jeremiah 5 goes on and mentions if even one righteous person is found, Jerusalem would be spared of it's destruction.

If God cares about each of us, and shows no favor amongst us, how is it that he can forgive us when we wrong one another in such grievous ways?

It would require a great sacrifice (with Christianity stemming from Judaism, where sacrifices were used for atonement/redemption from sin) that perhaps even the Jewish people at the time didn't expect. Worse, they too put him to death when there was no fault found in any of his actions.

Jeremiah 5:26:
“Among my people are wicked men
who lie in wait like men who snare birds
and like those who set traps to catch men.

Like cages full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
and have grown fat and sleek.

Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it,
they do not defend the rights of the poor.

Should I not punish them for this?”
declares the Lord.

I think often this comes down to semantics. One Christian says "I hate religion", another says "but religion is vital." It sounds like they are diametrically opposed. But, really, when they get talking, they are just defining "religion" differently- they actually largely agree with each other.

One big proponent of this idea of "hating religion" is Bruxy Cavey, an anabaptist pastor of a large group of churches in Ontario. I would recommend The End of Religion if you really want to dig into this.

Here is a quote from it that basically sums up this author's thoughts:

>the primary mission of Jesus was to tear down religion as the foundation for people’s connection with God and to replace it with himself- the Divine coming to us in our own context and our own form. This is what Jesus called ‘the kingdom of God.’ It is God and his people, living together the way he originally intended.

He defines religion as "any reliance on systems or institutions, rules or rituals as our conduit to God". This is bad, according to Cavey. Jesus is our only conduit to God.

This guy doesn't think that the church, sacraments, and other "religious" things are necessarily bad. Heck, he is the teaching pastor of what could be described as a mega-church: structure is a big part of what he does. But he says these are bad when they replace relationship with God. Another quote is something like

>Structure [religon] is to serve the substance [relationship with God]. It is not bad, but is when it replaces the substance. Structure is only the enemy when we view it as our means to salvation.

Bruxy Cavey. The End of Religion.