"Religion" has become a bad word. In a society that puts a premium on authenticity, it has come to mean "pre-planned." In a culture that prizes reality, it has connotations of stiff formality.

"Religion" has become a bad brand. Barna's stats tell us that 2 million young people a year are fleeing the organized church.

I wonder who will be left.

Maybe you sniffed it out in college - this pre-fab spirituality. Somebody telling you how you were going to connect with God in a bulletin.

Call someone "religious" and you're really saying "you do stuff that I find strange." Maybe you're saying, "Your religion puts God in a box so small, I don't fit in the picture."

For all of you reading this who have a problem with religion, the good news is that Jesus had a problem with it too. He didn't like the ways that religion had been used to keep people from God and fought against it. Just as he fights to set people free from religion today.

Jesus didn't come to make us comfortable, but to make us dangerous. He wanted to move people from the activity of sin-maintenance and into relationship.

Sometimes those who make their living in some religious establishment will declare that Jesus no longer heals. They haven't seen him heal, so they organize their theology around their lack of experience. It was the same in Jesus' day. He didn't do many miracles around those with small, religious God boxes.*

It's not that he doesn't do miracles, it's just that he's left the building. Religion can cease to be about worship and become an effort to define and control God. It may resonate with the comfortable, but those not enmeshed in the system of rules know better.

Are you tired of religion? Are you free from religion? Today is a good day to get out of religion and into relationship.

* Mark 6