Like golf, only sweatier

It was a throwaway line in an email.

A business contact said he'd be in the area this weekend. I shot back to look for "lycra clad" cyclists buzzing through the town he was visiting. That led to a phone call where we learned that we were both cyclists. Long story short, we agreed to meet Saturday morning for a couple hours of riding. The weather was glorious, the route was spectacular, and that's a lot of time to hang with someone. It was like a round of golf only a little sweatier.

This guy makes me laugh--a lot--and that's just on the phone. We'd never met but have worked on a large project for the past 9 months so we had a lot of business in common. The first 5 miles was talking about riding and our jobs---what he does, what I do---that sort of thing.

We were probably 15 miles into the ride when I gave the story of how I came to faith. I'd used the phrase "after I became a Christian" and he followed up to ask what I'd been before that. Nothing really. Raised going to church, I'd fallen away at 15 and spent 25 years on a very rough road.

That conversation took up the next 10 miles. At the 35th mile, he dropped the 'R' word on me--'Religious'. That word is a personal sore spot and I was pretty happy with my response--one I want to share as I think it's important.

To me, religion isn't a great thing. Religion is the transactional if-I-do-this then God-will-give-me-that thinking that traps people into believing we need to perform the right kind of moves and say the right kind of things to have God show favor to us. We can't do ourselves into a relationship with God. Jesus did the doing. Our job is to realize that, reflect that, and rejoice in that.

I know being religious is supposed to be a compliment. My aversion stems from all the religious people I've seen over the years who have been totally empty fakes, bags of wind who would say one thing and live another. My nearly tragic mistake was seeing these jokers as the face of faith and connecting God to that. BMW's are amazing automobiles, but if the guy selling them is a total sleazeball as well as the next 5 dealerships you go to, you tend to rethink your stance on that car.

Hearing 'religious' used to make me bristle and I'd usually blow it trying to combat that word. Instead, it now opens up a great line of dialogue that allows me to explain my interpretation of religious vs. faith---and why faith is better. Yes, you need a corporate structure like church to assemble as a body, but the old saying is true, "sitting in a church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car."

I think I made the point with him even though things he shared led me to believe he was definitely in the COEXIST bumper sticker crowd. Maybe I planted a seed---if anything, I pray that I showed him a believer doesn't need to be a whacked out finger pointing pious nutjob.

Just a regular bike riding nutjob.