Carol Purcell

I know, I know……we aren’t supposed to be offended.  But, I was!  Why?  Because a man accused me of ’saying I was religious.’  To be exact he said, “You say you are religious and yet you won’t take me off your email list, and I don’t want any more of your emails.”

First of all, I didn’t know he wanted off.  It is so easy….there is a link at the bottom of each message where anyone can unsubscribe.  For some unknown reason that did not work.  So he was ‘hot’!  I got the job done as soon as I knew there was a problem.  I don’t send those emails out from my office….they go through another company (a really good one) Automated Sales Machine.  We only want those on line with us who are blessed by the messages.

The statement that I said I was religious….got me ‘hot’…..one thing I live by and try to impart is that following and believing in Jesus is relationship not religion.  Religion is what man must do for God and Christianity is what God has done for man. 

Well, I argued with myself (a little), “Why did that upset me?”  Then I decided to look up religion and religious in my concordance to see what it actually means.  That was a surprise, because it means to worship or worshiping.  And, religion and religious are only used 7 times, all in the New Testament.  I pulled up definition from Webster’s Dictionary:  “concerned with sacred matters or religion or the church; “religious texts”; “a member of a religious order”; “lords temporal and spiritual … having or showing belief in and reverence for a deity; “a religious man”; “religious attitude”

I had thought it meant a form of doctrines or beliefs of any kind, like Buddhist, Mormon, Muslim,  New Age, Satanism and those all have doctrines about ‘working’ or pleasing a god, or the ‘god within’.   In Christianity we accept Jesus into our heart, believing He is the ‘Way, the Truth, and the Light’ and we have eternal relationship with God, by His mercy and grace, not works.  Then because we love Him we do work and serve Him out of desire not obligation!

This did give me a little different perspective.  However, I think the words have come to mean what I described for most people, i.e. Tom Cruise refers to Scientology as a religion. 

I did do what I preach…..I forgave the man and prayed he would know Jesus personally, that he would be blessed and God would take all judgment out of my heart.  Amazing how God does just that when we do our part.  So now I guess I am truly religious and might even say that because I do worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  I doubt that I would claim it very often because I would never want people to misconstrue my meaning.  Jesus is great, I am not.  I am blessed and important in the scheme of things as is everyone reading this Blog.  I have great confidence in knowing who I am in Christ Jesus, (See  Home Study page at the right, #4 for more on that.) and extremely thankful for all He does for me!  But my self-worth is in Him not what I do.

P S I am sure this will not be the last time I am offended….and it does matter what we do with an offense.  It is to the glory of man to overlook an offense (Prov 19:11) and certainly shows ‘class’…..I’m going to work on that!

 Pressing in and pressing on….