Is Religion a Bad Thing?

One of the growing trends in the church has been an aversion to describing Christianity as a religion. Today, many Christians see the word religion as something harmful. The word is frowned upon as it’s believed it represents rituals, dogmas, and structures. In a recent article, Kevin DeYoung makes a case for keeping the word religion in our vocabulary and actually seeing it as something good. He reminds us that historically, looking down on the word is only a recent development. The word religion is used five times in the bible. The bible tells us that self-made religion that doesn’t yield life-change is bad. But religion is good when it cares for widows and orphans. The bible never uniformly refers to religion as only negative. Finally, if you hear your kids say that they want to be spiritual but not religious, DeYoung says that they risk getting the wrong impression about Jesus, while adopting an approach to faith rooted in their own feelings, rather than in the truths of the Gospel.