Just flush it!

Philippians 3:7-8

⁷ I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.⁸ Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.

A lot of times when I read Philippians 3 I am drawn strait to these verses and I tend to think about all of the “stuff” in our lives that when compared to Christ is garbage. However when you read it in context with the first six verses you can tell that Paul is talking about religion, and indeed religion is garbage. Some Bible translations even use the word dung in place of garbage. Religion is about rules and things where Christianity is about Christ. In the first 6 verses of this chapter Paul says at one point in his life he was so religious that went around killing Christians.

Satan uses religion as a weapon in his war with Christians and he uses it very well. Religion has done more damage to the Gospel message than you would ever imagine. Christianity is about relationships not religion. Religion is about following the rules; it’s about symbols, rituals, leaders, and the like, where true Christianity is about knowing Jesus and your relationship with him and nothing more. If may sound strange but there is no room for religion in the church.

Jesus was not religious and Hitler was, so don’t be religious. We all need to run from religion because it is dung. So if religion starts creeping into your life or if you have already become religious just flush it and concentrate on your relationship with Jesus because in the end that’s all that matters everything else is dung.