Religion or spirituality? These days, many people who admire others whom they perceive as deeply “spiritual” might also give so-called “religious” people the side-eye. There are different reasons for this. One is the persistent American tendency to be suspicious of institutional authority; we don’t like other people telling us what to believe or how to behave. “Spirituality” becomes the user-friendly alternative. We get to decide for ourselves how we want to think of the divine and relate to the transcendent. It’s the constitutional right to freedom of worship as seen through the lenses of individualism.

But there’s another reason people are suspicious of received religion, and unfortunately, it’s reinforced regularly by our news feeds. Self-professed religious people of all stripes seem to be responsible for so much of the hatred and violence in this world; unholy things are done in the name of religion.

Yes, I know, some of that impression is created by a preexisting ideological bias in the news media. But that’s not the whole story. You don’t have to go much further than many local congregations to find selfishness and a need to control others bubbling just below the religious surface. That’s why people want to keep the two terms distinct: it’s possible for a person to be “religious” in the sense of going through the motions — sometimes quite diligently! — but also be lacking in spiritual maturity, in a deep and transformative relationship with God.

There’s nothing new about this. It was a central theme in the preaching of the prophets: in contemporary terms, we might say that God’s own people were good at the cultic practices of religion but bad at being transformed spiritually. They claimed to worship a God of justice and righteousness, but behaved just as wickedly as anyone else. Could Micah say anything to get them to shape up?

Previously, we’ve seen how God brought a covenant lawsuit against his people. God had been consistently faithful to them, but they had not been loyal in return. Through Micah, God asked them to remember the ways he had kept up his end of the relationship throughout the generations. How would the people respond?

Perhaps not surprisingly, the response is to lean even harder into religious observance:

With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Mic 6:6-7, NIV)

There are different ways to read these words. They seem to be one part religious earnestness, one part sarcastic exaggeration, and all irony. Micah seems to give voice to what his hearers are thinking, and takes it to extremes to make a point.

It was not unusual to ask who could come before a holy God. Psalm 15, for example, opens with the question, “LORD, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?” (Ps 15:1); similarly, Psalm 24 asks, “Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?” (Ps 24:3).

In both of those psalms, the answers are all about spirituality and character, not religious ritual. Psalm 24 declares that we must come before the LORD with “clean hands and a pure heart” (vs. 4). And Psalm 15 describes in detail how a person should be living in relationship with others. Who can come before God? Here’s the psalmist’s answer:

The one whose walk is blameless,
    who does what is righteous,
    who speaks the truth from their heart;
whose tongue utters no slander,
    who does no wrong to a neighbor,
    and casts no slur on others;
who despises a vile person
    but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
    and does not change their mind;
who lends money to the poor without interest;
    who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. (Ps 15:2-5)

Contrast that with the passage in Micah, where the response to God’s lawsuit is framed entirely in cultic terms, as if to say, “What else do you want us to do to show our faithfulness? How big of a sacrifice do you want us to bring? Just tell us, and we’ll do it.”

The response begins with burnt offerings and year-old calves. These are costly but normal offerings. But the rhetoric quickly becomes exaggerated to the point of parody. What do you want from me, God? What would it take to make you happy? Not just a ram, obviously, but how about thousands of rams? Will a whole river of olive oil do? No? How about thousands of rivers?

Micah portrays the person even offering to sacrifice a firstborn child, perhaps the most painful personal sacrifice imaginable. Sadly, however, this just shows how far the people of Judah had fallen into idolatry. Child sacrifice was detestable to God — but even Ahaz, one of the kings of Judah who reigned during Micah’s time, was guilty of this horrible sin (2 Kings 16:3). These words form an ironic crescendo to the religious remedies proposed: how could anyone who knew anything about what God wanted from his people offer to sacrifice a child to him? How could anyone with even a modicum of true devotion suggest such a thing?

God brings a lawsuit, and Micah prosecutes. The people offer their own defense — and are damned by their own testimony. They don’t truly know God, and they don’t even know that they don’t know.

So what does God want from his people? The psalmist could tell them, if they would only pay attention. The whole witness of their Scriptures could tell them, if they would only listen. But Micah will tell them again, and he’ll keep it short and sweet.