If you clicked on this article because of the title, you might already be feeling a little defensive. Perhaps you’re preparing to argue that religion has done more good than harm. Perhaps you’re among those who see religion as a source of division, oppression, and toxicity. Or perhaps you’re simply hearing the 1973 hit “Feel Like Makin’ Love” playing in your head.

The phrase bad religion can sound like an attack on faith itself. It isn’t.

While I think some modern criticisms of religion are overstated, critics often identify real problems that deserve careful consideration. C.S. Lewis once observed that “badness is only spoiled goodness.” Evil is rarely something entirely separate from the good; more often it is a good thing twisted, distorted, or turned inward upon itself.

Religion is no exception.

My purpose is not to persuade anyone to abandon religion, nor to defend every religious institution. Rather, I want to explore how something intended to draw people toward God, neighbor, and love can become disconnected from its purpose. When that happens, religion becomes what Lewis might call “goodness spoiled.”

Rather than beginning with my own opinions, I want to begin with Jesus.

This may come as a surprise, but Jesus spoke frequently about bad religion. In fact, some of his sharpest words were directed not toward the irreligious, but toward the deeply religious. He criticized religious leaders who loved status more than service, purity more than compassion, certainty more than humility, and rules more than people.

Jesus was not anti-religion. He attended synagogue, observed holy days, quoted scripture, and participated in the religious life of his people. Yet he relentlessly confronted forms of religion that obscured rather than revealed the heart of God.

His critiques were not aimed merely at the Pharisees of the first century. They are mirrors held up to every generation—including our own.

The question is not whether religion is good or bad.

The question is whether our religion is accomplishing what God intended it to accomplish.

Matthew 6 — When Religion becomes a performance

That question becomes especially clear when Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly in Matthew 6.

Here Jesus repeatedly warns:

“When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets.”

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites.”

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do.”

At first glance, these instructions can sound like a critique of hypocrisy as double living—saying one thing and doing another. And that is certainly part of it. Jesus is opposed to duplicity. But his concern runs deeper than moral inconsistency.

The Greek word translated as hypocrite originally referred to an actor on a stage—someone performing a role before an audience.

The problem Jesus confronts is not merely that a person is pretending to be righteous when they are not. It is that religion itself can become a performance.

And that is the key image Jesus is working with throughout Matthew 6.

Notice what he is criticizing. Giving, praying, and fasting are not the problem. In fact, Jesus assumes his disciples will continue practicing all of them. The issue is what these practices become when an audience is introduced.

They become performance.

Religious activity subtly becomes a way of constructing a story about ourselves. We pray so we can feel spiritual. We serve so we can feel righteous. We sacrifice so we can reassure ourselves that we are among the faithful.

Religion becomes an exercise in self-justification.

This is why Jesus repeatedly directs his followers toward secrecy: pray in secret, give in secret, fast in secret. Not because hiddenness is inherently superior, but because secrecy removes the audience. And when the audience is removed, something uncomfortable happens—we are forced to confront why we are doing these things at all.

Jesus is not attacking religion. He is attempting to rescue it.

Religious practices are meant to shape us, nourish us, and orient us toward God. They are medicine, not merit badges.

Bad religion begins when the practice becomes the point—when prayer becomes proof rather than communion, worship becomes signaling rather than gratitude, and obedience becomes evidence rather than transformation.

The deepest danger is not unbelief. It is the quiet temptation to use God in service of ourselves.

When Religion Becomes an Ego Story

Once that pattern becomes visible, it raises a deeper question: why does religion so easily become a performance in the first place?

Perhaps the answer is not only found in individual pride, but in the way the story is framed from the beginning.

Many religious traditions begin with a narrative centered on human deficiency. Humanity has disobeyed. We have become separated from God. The world becomes a place of testing and purification, where we must demonstrate readiness to return to divine presence.

Whether explicit or implicit, the message often becomes: you are not presently fit for God. Religion exists to make you acceptable again.

Once this becomes the controlling narrative, the ego project is almost perfectly assembled.

The question shifts from, “How do I participate in the life of God?” to, “How do I become worthy of God?”

One begins with belonging. The other begins with deficiency.

And if our deepest problem is defined as unworthiness, then nearly every religious practice becomes vulnerable to distortion. Prayer becomes evidence. Obedience becomes evidence. Belief becomes evidence. Worship becomes evidence. Service becomes evidence.

The purpose of religion is no longer transformation but certification.

We become actors again—performing not only before others, but before God and even ourselves—trying to secure a verdict that we are acceptable after all.

Jesus, however, consistently moves in the opposite direction: not toward performance, but toward relationship; not toward qualification, but toward participation in the life of God.

And perhaps the deepest irony is this: the very attempt to become worthy of God often becomes what prevents us from recognizing that worthiness was never the starting question in the first place.

If God has to be convinced of our worth, then we may already be worshiping the wrong version of God.