Have You Had Religion "Shoved Down Your Throat"?

10/21/19     Ryan

Have you had religion "shoved down your throat"?

The man fishing on the lakeshore looked so intent on what he was doing, I hesitated to bother him with a question about his beliefs about eternity and, hopefully, a conversation about the Gospel. I wondered if he would be at all interested, and I wondered if Jesus felt the same way when he encountered future disciples Peter and Andrew, and James and John while they, too, were intent on fishing.

But I also knew that if I didn’t initiate the conversation, it simply wouldn’t happen. So I did and I soon found out that he – Ryan – was very open to talking about spiritual things but that when he was growing up he had felt like religion was being “shoved down his throat” and that he had decided to figure things out for himself.

That phrase – referring to religion as being “shoved down your throat”, is pretty common these days. I wonder if Jesus was ever accused of shoving religion down anyone’s throat?

I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I don’t think that Peter or the others would have said “This rabbi guy walked up to us and started forcing his religion down our throats.”

Instead, it was an invitation to a relationship with God, to get to know and follow Jesus, and to join a family of believers as children of God as described in John 1 – “Yet to all who did receive him (Jesus), to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Religion might say we become God’s people by heritage (“family descent”), religious rituals or good deeds (“human decision”) or by family pressure (“a husband’s will”), but Jesus said it is a spiritual transformation (“born of God”).

It’s something only God can initiate, just like Jesus did on that lonely seashore so many years ago.

Thanks for the conversation, Ryan! It can be viewed at https://youtu.be/sjSu-aG-oqo on my YouTube channel.