It's cold in my part of the world; instead of jogging through my neighborhood, I head out each morning to my local fitness center and grab a treadmill.  I distract myself by watching a tv screen attached to the torture machine I run on.  One day I watched a program on a religious broadcasting station.  I came in toward the end of his message, but as best I can tell, he promised me that God would make me rich if I would just believe it and send his church a nice donation to prove my belief to God.  He was followed by a woman bible study teacher who told her audience that the reason they were not experiencing God's blessings was because of their sin.  If they would believe God and confess their sin, God would either forgive them or smite them.  But they shouldn't feel bad if God chooses to judge rather than forgive, because God is God and can do anything he wants.  It's by grace anyone is saved, so if he doesn't pick you, you should accept your fate.  You are born to sin, and you may die that way too.  After all that talk about religion, I flipped over to the channel that shows movies only women like to watch.  I saw the conclusion of one of those cheesy chick flicks, where it so happens that an evil small town preacher was thwarted in his attempts to seduce the village youngsters into bad behaving by a woman in the community who knew better than to attend church, but was deeply spiritual.  Through her use of, shall we say, spiritually alternative means, she was able to expose this God following imposter and restore order to her community.  Looking at mere mortals as a way to understand God is risky business.  I understand why "religion" gets a bad rap.  But according to Paul, we are not being asked to drink the "Kool-aide" and adopt a particular religion.  He's asking us to become friends with God.  He's inviting us to join him in the work of getting out his message of hope to hurting people. 

Since I didn't have a clue what this writer meant by religion, I'm afraid I didn't have much of a response.  But I did offer up the idea that for me, I need more than my own thoughts to help me figure out my next right step.   I told the writer about my own struggles with guilt and shame, and how I was learning to live by grace, with God as my protector against my own personal vulnerabilities to sin and shame.  I told her I thought my biggest problem was me, but that my spiritual journey was helping me move beyond myself and find a purpose for living.  I didn't hear back from her.