The Yoke of Religion

"Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

I've fallen in love. I've fallen in love and I want to marry...a book. Can I marry a book?

I've rarely come across a book that has so many profound insights gathered between it's pages, so many earth shattering revelations, so simply put, as The Shaking of the Foundations by Paul Tillich, the great existential theologian. I mentioned this book in my last post on existential Christianity, and I've been reading it some more. It's a collection of sermons that he delivered 'in a language avoiding traditional terms'. For a great theologian, that might just mean that he makes himself understandable! But levity aside, it also means he speaks through theory and into practice in a way that resonates profoundly.

Why? Because he names things. He unrelentingly names the human condition. A very real human condition--not a glossed over, superficial, Hollywood version of our psyches and existences. And he names all the little warped and twisted things we do to wriggle out of our condition, only to dig ourselves deeper. But he does this with compassion, and ultimately joy, because he has been gripped and freed by the bigger answer.

My latest read is his sermon entitled 'The Yoke of Religion'. He explores the above passage from Matthew. Here is an excerpt:

The burden [Christ] wants to take from us is the burden of religion...the law of religion is the great attempt of man to overcome his anxiety and restlessness and despair, to close the gap within himself, and to reach immortality, spirituality and perfection. So he labors and toils under the religious law in thought and act.

The religious law demands that he accept ideas and dogmas, that he believe doctrines and traditions, the acceptance of which is his salvation from anxiety, despair and death. So he tries to accept them although they may have become strange or doubtful to him. He labors and toils under the religious demand to believe things he cannot believe. Finally he tries to escape the law of religion. He tries to cast away the heavy yoke of the doctrinal law imposed on him by Church authorities, orthodox teachers, pious parents and fixed traditions...He casts away the yoke but none can live in the emptiness of mere skepticism, and so he returns to the old yoke in a kind of self-torturing fanaticism and tries to impose it on other people, on his children or pupils. He is driven by an unconscious desire for revenge, because of the burden he has taken on himself.

Others find new yokes outside the Church, new doctrinal laws under which they begin to labor: political ideologies which they propagate with religious fanaticism, scientific theories which they defend with religious dogmatism, and utopian expectations they pronounce as the condition of salvation for the world, forcing whole nations under the yoke of their creeds which are religions, even while they pretend to destroy religion. We are all laboring under the yoke of religion....

He then goes on to talk about what Jesus truly meant in saying that His yoke was light. And he brings the reader to a depth of understanding about the New Being formed in the person of the Christ which surpasses almost anything else I have ever read on this subject. His ability to put words to the experience of living the Truth is so beautiful I dare not try to transcribe it here. I can not recommend highly enough reading this sermon for yourself, but in case you can not get a hold of it, I give you an excerpt from the conclusion....

...He does not impose religion and law, burden and yokes, upon men. We would turn down His call with hatred if He called us to the Christian religion or to the Christian doctrine or to the Christian morals. We would not accept His claim to be meek and humble and to give rest to our souls, if He gave us new commands for thinking and acting. Jesus is not the creator of another religion, but the victor over religion; He is not the maker of another law, but the conqueror of law. We, the ministers and teachers of Christianity, do not call you to Christianity but rather to the New Being to which Christianity should be a witness and nothing else, not confusing itself with that New Being. Forget all Christian doctrines; forget your own certainties and your own doubts, when you hear the call of Jesus. Forget all Christian morals, your achievements, and your failures, when you come to Him. Nothing is demanded of you--no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your being religious, not your being Christian, not your being wise, and not your being moral. But what is demanded is only your being open and willing to accept what is given to you, the New Being, the being of love and justice and truth, as it is manifest in Him Whose yoke is easy and Whose burden is light.

The foundations are shaking indeed. For those who are interested in owning a copy of this marvelous book, you can find inexpensive and used copies on Amazon, look for the 1948 version by Scribner.