Religious or Spiritual?

There was a talk show host on for Quinn and Rose this morning that set my blood to boil, so I thought that I would share it with you to may be consider my logic. The conversation was on the Chick-Fil-A and Dan Cathy's stance on traditional marriage. I was so proud of our brothers and sisters this week who participated in the Chick-Fil-A appreciation event last Wednesday. It was good to see that christians everywhere still have the sense to rally at the call.

Now on to my issue. The conversation continued into the Gay and Lebian response to Chick-Fil-A's appreciation day, which was the "kiss-in". All over the country, the gay and lesbian activists arrived at Chick-Fil-A's dinning areas and practiced public displays of affection in view to other christians and Chick-Fil-A employees. This understandably upset many christians around the nation and the christian blogs were set ablaze with righteous indignation.

So what was my issue? Well this talk host host fell into one of the greatest traps of Satan there is. Tolerance! He believed that if christian truly have faith, then they should not worry about this event. Like most of the traps of Satan there is a glimmer of truth in this statement. You see we are to have faith and not worry, but we are not called to tolerate sin. We are called to be holy not to lay down and die.

The talk show host went on to explain how he was raised methodist and is now part of a non-denominational church. He considers himself spiritual but not religious.

Let me lay down the logic here. To be spiritual means that you have the right attitute. A person can be spiritual but not right with God. This is why Christ taught that Christians would worship in both "Spirit and truth" (John 4:23). This is also why the Apostle John taught the early Christians to "test" the spirits (1 John 4:1). Religion is the practice of faith. This is why James the Brother of the Lord says "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." -James 1:27 (KJV) So if the spirit is attitude toward God and religion is practice of the faith, How can one be spiritual without being religious? This is faith without works! Therefore a spiritually dead man says such things.

Should Paul have just had faith when the Corinthian man married his step mother at the Corinthian Church and did nothing? Should Peter have just had faith and not warned us about the snares of Satan? Should Paul again had faith and not warned us of Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim 1:20)? Should the Apostle John have had faith and not told the church of Diotrephes' sins (3 John 1:9)?


Brothers and sisters, what happens when the salt loses it saltiness?