As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I came upon a group of people, respectable and upright people, who stand out in society. They tend to dress alike, especially when meeting together for worship: the men sombre-suited and the women modestly covered. Their worship is structured and leadership is patriarchal. At the same time, some of their beliefs tend towards the mystical. The distinction between those who belong to their group and those who don't is carefully maintained. Outside of worship, they associate as much as possible with their own people, and they are careful to protect their children from the influence of the outside world. Women stay at home. The group identity is maintained by oddities of vocabulary, and many rules and regulations incomprehensible to outsiders. Adherence to these rules is a fundamental matter to them.

 Which group?

Which group is this? Orthodox Jews or Moslems, or some more conservative branch of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church? Or is it nearer to home, amongst the Evangelical community? Perhaps some heavily-shepherded house church. Or is it some stricter Presbyterian group or the closed Brethren, or is it even a sideswipe at some of the more extreme Calvinistic Baptists churches? It could be any of the above. The point is not to ridicule or criticise any of these groups, but to draw attention to the striking behavioural similarities between religious groups who would differ fundamentally about what they believe. Certain religious instincts are fundamental to human nature and operate at a more basic level within the human psyche than what we actually believe. It is even possible to observe some of these same behavioural patterns in non-religious groups.

 This ought to be cautionary. It ought to put us on our guard against the purely religious dimension of human nature. This religious dimension will always surface more prominently among religious groups. And religious groups are often oblivious to the fact that their scruples, policies and principles sometimes stem from nothing more than the religious dimension of human nature. The religious mentality can be reduced to three 'c's: control, conformity and conservatism. The religious group acts in such as way as to control its members' behaviour in conformity to a time-honoured way of doing things. This is not necessarily or always a bad thing. We need order, clarity and structure. We need leadership in order to protect the disadvantaged and vulnerable within a group.  A church is neither an anarchist commune nor a drive-through spiritual experience. But we need to be on our guard against the religious.

 Rules and regulations

Jesus stingingly rebuked the Pharisees for burdening people with heavy loads of rules and regulations, for being scrupulous about ridiculously trivial matters to the neglect of fundamentals, and employing tortuous logic to circumnavigate basic demands of God’s law (Matthew 23). He also told his followers to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 16). Paul wrote to Colossian Christians to beware of religious rules and regulations (Colossians 2:20-23). James was careful not to burden Gentile believers with Jewish religious scruples (Acts 15:28) and Paul taught that there is room for sincere Christians to disagree on matters like diet and the observance of feast days (Romans 14; 1 Corinthians 8).

 There are equally contentious issues in the church today such as Bible versions, hymn books, style of music, forms of worship, doctrinal bases, baptism, open and closed communion.  Our basic (fallen) human desire to control, to enforce conformity and to preserve tradition must be recognised in addressing these questions. We need to be honest about why we hold the positions we do: to what extent it is because we are Christians and to what extent it is because we are just people?

David Green is Vice-Principal of the London Theological College and lecturer on Old Testament theology and exegesis, Hebrew and contemporary issues 

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