Jon Meacham, editor-in-chief of Newsweek magazine, doesn’t realize what a perfect case study he makes for the bondage and deception that reigns in a religious life.

Starting late last year, Meacham, along with long-time Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn (who, incidentally, believes in ghosts, reads tarot cards and was once admiringly called a witch by her husband and former Post editor, Ben Bradlee!), became moderators for a new online religion-based panel discussion called “On Faith,” updated daily on the Post’s website.

In introducing himself for the newspaper feature’s launch in November, Meacham informed readers, “I grew up in the Episcopal Church, went to religious schools (including an Episcopal Montessori, which is rather redundant when you think about it) and consider myself a believing, middle-of-the-road American Protestant. I go to church every week, and I read the Daily Office (those ancient sets of prayers composed for morning and evening).”

A month later, in a subsequent posting, he clarified, “I am, I should note, a sacramental Christian, not an evangelical one. I do not have what many people I know and respect have: what is called ‘a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.’ ”

Meacham continued, “. . . I am also one of the more unemotional Christians you will come across. My mind wanders at mass, and I sometimes wonder whether the faith of which I am a part is in fact the product of some creative first-century religious fantasists who could write beautifully and compellingly. In other words, I doubt.”

Still, Meacham admitted enthusiastically to sending his two children, ages two and four, to the nursery at St. Thomas Episcopal Church Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where he is a communicant and serves on the Vestry of the 180-year-old parish.

He wrote, “I am currently and unabashedly trying to make my children creatures of religious habit. Like most children, ours love ritual, and they have begun joining us at the altar rail during Holy Communion.

“My son, the four-year-old, finds the whole enterprise engaging, and I can tell he is at least intrigued by the drama and the costumes of a high-church Episcopal mass. (Liturgy is itself a drama, performed to convince an audience of the reality of things they cannot see.)

“If they can, as I did, absorb the rhythms and rituals of the faith—and the powerful language of the Book of Common Prayer—then they will, I think, emerge from childhood seeing religion as part of the tapestry of life, something inseparable from, say, taking walks or going to the movies, all of which we also do together.

“This is why the distinction between sacraments and emotions—between going to church and saying your prayers rather than waiting to be ‘born again’—is critical. Sacraments do not depend on how one feels; they are, rather, the product of millennia of human experience and rigorous thought.”

Several paragraphs later, Meacham reasoned in a summary-like statement, “What better gift can we give our children that the ability to see clearly? They may choose to reject what their eyes behold, or avert their gaze, and make their own through the darkness, putting aside the faith of their fathers, and, as a committed believer in religious freedom, I would ferociously defend their right to discard their old man’s superstitions if they choose to do so.”

My, what a series of contradictions! He’s clearly been conditioned from childhood to have pride and devotion for his church but obviously doubts any of it is really real. In the end, it’s a mixture of willing ignorance and vanity that makes him want to perpetuate this religion of his on his unsuspecting, impressionable children.

*****

In the book of Galatians, The Apostle Paul admonishes the Believers at Galatia for being lured back into their elaborate pagan religious system that consisted of performing rituals and engaging in ceremonial rites and observances. In their case, they were incorporating elements from Israel’s law program into their worship of Jesus Christ.

Specifically, Paul argues in Gal. 4:8-11, “Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
[9] But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
[10] Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.
[11] I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”

Jordan explains, “If there’s a family down the street and we say that family has suffered some problems and are destitute, what do we mean? They’re poor. They’re beggarly. So Galatians 4 describes religion as lacking any strength—it’s weak, feeble, destitute.

“Paul says, ‘That’s what you’re trying to go back to?!’ and notice he says, ‘whereunto ye desire . . .’ This is a will problem! You give your flesh something to glory in and you know what your flesh will want to do? You know why people are so enticed by religion and enticed by the law; enticed by performance, ceremonies and that kind of stuff? Look at what they’re enticed by—‘Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.’

“Somebody once called that ‘coloring-book religion.’ You go back to Leviticus 23 and you see the Passover; the days involved in that and those festivals. In Numbers 10, you’ll see where they observed different month rituals. There were fast seasons. There were special years—the Year of Jubilee and all that kind of business. Israel had all these specific things they were to observe. The new moons, the Sabbath, all that. Exact, strict attention to the ritual. Paul says, ‘That’s what you want to be in bondage to?! You desire that?!’

“We read just this morning in Colossians 2:23 about those things which have a ‘shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body.’ They look wise. In Galatians 6:12, you’ll see that again—that show: ‘As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh.’

“It’s not because (the religious systems) want something righteous in your life. Verse 13 says ‘they glory in your flesh.’ They desire that outward operation. Why? So they can glory in your performance that they talked you into doing. And it has a show of wisdom. It looks wise.

“You’re doing something good and you feel good about doing it. It gratifies the flesh. It doesn’t produce any help. That’s why people get enticed by the law. Paul says, ‘I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.’ Paul travailed in getting them saved and now he’s afraid it’s all just going to be wasted!

“When he says, ‘Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am,’ who’s the pattern they’re to follow? Paul is. He’s their pattern. What did Paul do? He surrendered his Jewish identity so that he could become the Apostle to the Gentiles. He’s telling them, ‘Don’t run back over there to that place where I used to be in Judaism that didn’t work!’

“You see, Paul preached the gospel to them and they got saved, but then some people came along and said, ‘Well if you really want to go on in your Christian life, what you need to do is go back under the law—now that you’re part of the people of God, here are the people of God in the Bible.’ It’s putting them back under Israel’s law system.

“Notice how Paul starts verse 9 (of Gal. 4) by saying, ‘But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God’? Paul qualifies it. They are saved—the Lord knows them that are His—but they really don’t know the Lord in any kind of an in-depth way or they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.

“It’s not a question of them being saved; he’s saying you just don’t know much about Him or you’d never ‘turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage.’

“ ‘The legalism of going back to the law system of Moses was no better than the legalism of paganism.’ That’s a bold statement for Paul to make and the only way that can be true is for the Mosaic system not to be in operation today. It isn’t what God’s doing—God’s suspended it, interrupted it, set it aside—and if God has set it aside, then who has it in operation? The Adversary.

“It’s fascinating if you study through your Bible; when Satan wants to do something he’ll get it as close to what God’s is as he can, and when God laid the Kingdom program aside and introduced a new program with Paul, Satan came along and picked up the program God laid down and made it equal to another paganism.

“It’s that real and dangerous and serious! This is not simply a matter of arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin!