This question dawned on me this morning whilst reading from the Book of Hebrews. I’m not sure if there was actually a particular passage that motivated me to reach this line of thought, it just came kinda came to me.
So what do I mean? Well, first I would state that I believe the only organised religion that has been directly established by God is that which is tied to the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament. Notice I didn’t say “Judaism” as Judaism is a more modern concept.
I’m talking about the bare roots original that God planted on Mt Sinai. The Ceremonial Life He presented to the Israelites. This is what I mean when I refer to organised religion in this sense.
The question arises because I think back to individuals such as Abraham. Today he is a model of faith and is known as the “friend of God” Yet he had no scripture, he had no temple, he had no priesthood. The closest he had to this was the practice of offering sacrifices to God, a practice established by God when He first clothed Adam & Eve following the Fall.
Even in these cases, Abraham would not build some elaborate altar, but would simply pile up stones. Cutting the stones was seen as a dishonour to God (interesting that).
The point is that Abraham had righteousness accounted to him by God. He was “accepted” in a sense.
Now, moving onto Israel. Here you had a people who had been under the foot of the Egyptians for around 400 years. Many generations had grown up around and within Egyptian culture and society. Now whilst I cannot say this for certain, it seems to me that this would have been their first exposure as a nation to the concept of organised or ceremonial religion.
Were the prophets before this? It doesn’t seem like it. Did they know the name of God? I don’t believe so. Did they even actively follow God? That’s debatable.
What we know from reading the account of the Israelites and looking at their history is they had a habit of looking to the cultures around them and drawing comparisons. Following this, if you look at many of the laws they were given, some of them may seem slightly odd.
For example, why would God tell the Israelites not to mix two different kinds of fabric? Why was this considered an abomination? We know now that no physical object is evil in and of itself or has power in and of itself so what was the purpose of this?
Well it would appear that God’s reason for commanding this was due to the cultures around Israel. Many of their laws were there specifically to separate them from those around them, to distinguish them and keep them from essentially “contaminating” themselves. The reason they were told not to mix fabrics was because there were certain cultures who did so in their worship of fertility gods, believing that this would somehow grant them fertility.
We also learn from Jesus that particularly the laws of divorce were given due to the hardness of the hearts (that is minds) of the Israelites. Put another way, they may not have accepted the commands otherwise. Why is this? I believe it has a lot to do with their background (and probably another reason why the wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until that generation died out).
They came expecting certain things from a God because they had become used to this kind of organised, ceremonial religion that they had experienced in Egypt. Otherwise, they may not have accepted God at all (and we see what happened when He did not meet their ill-founded expectations in the incident with the Golden Calf). Now I’m pretty sure God could have done something drastic to make sure they toed the line, but He instead extended grace towards them.
He did a similar thing when He allowed Israel to appoint a king over them. I don’t believe this was God’s will for them but because He was faithful to their wishes and out of grace He allowed them, knowing He can use all situations to bring about good. And of course good has come of all this, as through it all we have attained salvation.
So, it would seem that God gave them a ceremonial, organised religion as a concession to them due to the hardness of their minds. Seeing their need, He acted in such a way (the agape way) to ensure that as many as possible would accept Him by giving them something akin to what they would expect.
I believe God’s intention has always been God Acknowledged Life.
He wants us to live life, and a life that acknowledges Him and is founded on Him. Essentially you don’t fully get this from ceremonial or organised religion.
It’s one reason why most of the cleansing the Israelites had to do was for ceremonial reasons.
With all of this fulfilled, the need was no longer there for such a system. We were now free to live life, free of the conditions that were contrary to us (as Paul would say).
It seems God will concede to our traditions or expectations, knowing the end from the beginning and knowing that He can use such situations as tools. One way or another, His ultimate will is done.
But I can’t help but think that there could have been an alternative and that we may have gotten to the right stage sooner.
Many ask why Jesus didn’t come sooner. Perhaps it was because the hardness of our minds would not have allowed Him to come sooner. It simply wasn’t optimal.
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