What exactly is religion?

Her little eyes looked up at me in such expectant fashion.

The subject came up Saturday at a ballpark with my youngest granddaughter. We were talking about who knows what when somehow the word religion came up. She, who attends church each week, has given communion on numerous occasions, knows the Bible stories pretty darn well for a soon-to-be six-year-old said, "What's religion?"

I stumbled around for a bit before answering it's talking about God, which actually is theology, but who was complaining at that point.

I began to think about that for a day, then saw the story last night.

Perhaps you've seen the figures. The rise in number of Americans who say they are unaffiliated with any religion is up to 22.8 percent. Nearly 1/4 of all Americans says they are unaffiliated with any religion. Any. That's up six percent in the past eight years.

Church folks, it ain't getting better. The General Social Survey of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (and they should research getting a shorter name), has tracked drops in religious affiliation and church attendance for more than 40 years. Last year's figures, 22 percent, are up from eight percent in 1990 and five percent in 1972.

In other words, in the years since I've graduated from high school, nearly 1/5 of all my fellow countrymen decided they wanted nothing to do with religion.

But let's get this right, right now. No where does it say they have such a disdain for Jesus. In fact, 7 of 10 Americans identify with a Christian Faith. It's not Christ they are having a problem with, I think. It's us.

They came, they witnessed us witness and they went out the back door, rocking till it was their time to roll.

Oh, younger people are more likely to be unaffiliated than older people and single people are far less likely to identify with a religion that married people. But that's always been the case.

But here's a fact we can't ignore. Only 56 percent of so-called Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) identify with a religion. Some think they are turned off by the visibility of conservative spokesmen in American politics.

The fact is, they have come, they have witnessed us witness and they chose to leave.The study showed that nearly one in five U.S. adults were raised in a religious faith and now identify with no religion. Nearly one in five were brought up in a religious home and decided to leave that religion.

That's chilling.

Conversely, only 4.3 percent of adults went from non-belief to belief.

That means we aren't converting them, either.

So, back to the question of little Emma. What is religion? It is the thing that is choking the Jesus out of folks, just as the Pharisees did 2,000 years ago. It is forgetting out core values, forgetting that showing love is paramount, far more important than being right, far more important than imposing a set of rules that won't save us in the first place. It is all the things that are wrong with the church and none of the millions of things that are right.

Religion is not worship. Religion is not caring. Religion is not sharing love. Religion is none of the things that we've made it to be.

And it most certainly is not Jesus, who wanted us to care so much for others he showed us how by dying to self, dying to anything that was not from the Father and eventually died because we couldn't do the first two things.

Emma, I pray you never find a religion. Just be affiliated with Jesus and everything will work out fine.