viral video: Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

[TheLegendaryDreamer]

[original thread title: A very inspiring poem I just saw]

This is a very popular YouTube video which was just posted a couple of days ago... I thought all of you should see

 

[Aletheus]

First of all; religion is the reason people actually understand who this Jesus fellow is.

Secondly; well duh.

 

[JayArby]

I saw this, too. I'm *not* blown away by the "poetry", but setting that aside, I think he does make some good points. However, it really depends on your definition of religion. I think what he really is talking about is religious hypocrisy. That would be more clear, to say the least.

Jesus definitely did come to destroy religious hypocrisy, which was one of the results of the law of Moses had on a sinful race. But it's definitely going a bit far to say that Jesus came to destroy religion. One common definition of religion would be people meeting together regularly for the worship of a higher power. Well, Christians do that, and Jesus didn't come to stop it.

This is an article written by a Christian who really didn't like this video. I don't agree with all of the article, but anyway, here's a different perspective.

http://www.patrolmag.com/2012/01/12/jonathan-d-fitzgerald/lame-poetry-false-dichotomies-and-bad-theology/

 

[JayArby]

Oh yeah, and I also hate hearing about how "religion" has caused so many wars. I f we are talking about the crusades, there really wasn't much religion involved. It was all politics under the guise of religion.

 

[Rawshik]

I really really really ruhhh-huh-heeeallly did not want to watch this just for the fact that everyone was posting it. Including the religious people that this said video is talking about. Ironic? Or am I just being judgmental? You decide.

 

[labarum]

It was like a minute in that I realized he was rhyming. LOL.

I like that he crushes a lot of stuff that close-minded people tend to think about religion. "Religion/religious" is a word that a lot of people use to describe people who are of faith. And a lot of the time the two are very separate.

It just sucks that the term religion has come to have a somewhat infamous connotation. It gets blamed for wars and all kinds of terrible things...when it is always PEOPLE who do the bad things and either claim or blame religion as being the motive for their actions.

Its exactly like the gun slogan thingie " Guns don't kill people, people (with guns) kill people"

Replace guns with religion.

 

[Atreides]

A friend of mine posted this on his wall, after many of our friends had posted this video:

"We love the Jesus that hates religion.

The only problem is, he didn’t. Jesus was a Jew. He went to services at the synagogue. He observed Jewish holy days. He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). He founded the church (Matt. 16:18). He established church discipline (Matt. 18:15-20). He instituted a ritual meal (Matt. 26:26-28). He told his disciples to baptize people and to teach others to obey everything he commanded (Matt. 28:19-20). He insisted that people believe in him and believe certain things about him (John 3:16-18; 8:24). If religion is characterized by doctrine, commands, rituals, and structure, then Jesus is not your go-to guy for hating religion."

My comment essentially summed up my thoughts on this topic: Just like so many lame evangelical trends, like much of the "praise worship" movement and many "postmodern" versions of Christianity, it just feels like blatant "culture-parroting." They're doing pop music, so we should do it, too. They're doing these "postmodern" things, so we should, too. They're doing antireligionism, so we should, too.

Sorry, but I've never been convinced that there is any substance to this "Jesus > religion" idea. More often than not it just seems like a way for "cooler" Christians to put down other persons of devout faith in Christ of a different tradition.

 

[Ryan M.]

...I thought all of you should see

Haven't we already?

I see what he means but I don't agree with his saying that God hates it. What's next? "God hates doctrine?" or "God hates truth?"

Now I'm not trying to be mean or negative. It's just people often misunderstand religion.

As soon as I saw this video hit the net I cringed a bit. Not gonna lie!

Nothing against those who posted it cuz many of my friends did.

 

[SeaStorm]

I think what he really is talking about is religious hypocrisy. That would be more clear, to say the least.

Agreed. Because he decided religious hypocrisy = religion (it doesn't, or at least doesn't always), that was basically 4 minutes of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

So just because he was living his life as a religious hypocrite in his youth (and he clearly was from his description, and I give him props for coming to terms with that), that means that everyone who goes to church is also doing so? Lame.

Plus, there's a whole lot of claims in there that just aren't true and are the kind of shallow arguments typically leveled at Christianity from atheists, but I'm not gonna waste time listing/defending them.

 

[SeaStorm]

This is an article written by a Christian who really didn't like this video. I don't agree with all of the article, but anyway, here's a different perspective.

http://www.patrolmag.com/2012/01/12/jonathan-d-fitzgerald/lame-poetry-false-dichotomies-and-bad-theology/

I should have read the article you posted before commenting, and then not wasted time commenting. The article writer said it 100x better than I could. I'd have to say I agree with that article almost 100%.

Another thought I had: as I listened to the video a second time, I thought to myself: does what he's saying accurately reflect what my religion teaches and does? Nope. Does it accurately reflect many of the *people* in my religion? Yep.

The more I think about this video, the more I think it's lame and, like the article writer said, is "doing far more harm than good by playing into hurtful stereotypes about religion".

 

[SeaStorm]

Digging into this a little more, I'm even more disappointed. Apparently he also agrees with the distinction most of us are making. He claims that "he loves the church and the Bible but he wants to expose the hypocrisy and legalism apparent in many houses of worship." Too bad he never bothers to point that out in his video [edit: my bad, he says it once, kinda buried], which is the only thing that 99% of people will see (I had to go hunting for news articles about him to get these quotes).

Bethke clarifies that he loves the church and the Bible but he wants to expose the hypocrisy and legalism apparent in many houses of worship.

He wrote on his Facebook on Friday, "If you are using my video to bash 'the church' be careful. I was in no way intending to do that."

"The Church is Jesus' bride so be careful how you speak of His wife," he stated. "If a normal dude has right to get pissed when you bash His wife, it makes me tremble to think how great the weight is when we do it to Jesus' wife. The church is His vehicle to reach a lost word. A hospital for sinners. Saying you love Jesus but hate the Church, is like a fiancé saying he loves his future bride, but hates her kids. We are all under grace. Look to Him."

Too bad his video is bashing the Church, or at least sure sounds like it to anyone watching to it without reading his explanatory statements.

 

[bear38]

I think what he means is that the term 'religion' means human effort in trying to find God and pleasing Him, following a set of rules to be accepted by God without knowing Him personally. Other religions (including old covenant) generally shows this kind of characteristics while Christianity is actually a different thing, which is a relationship between God and us, not about doing something/rituals to gain favor from God (i.e. to avoid hell?), and God revealing Himself to us instead of us trying to find Him. If you live in southeast Asia you will understand this better because everyday you see people working very hard (e.g. the 5 times prayer in Islam) for their god without knowing the truth, without certainty of the afterlife.

 

[Arkatox]

". . . Christianity seems to have high-jacked [Christ's] teaching and turned him into something for their own gain, using his name to attain a rigorous standard by which they controlled ordinary people. Not all promoted this Christ of religion, of course, but in general and throughout [Earth's] history, Christianity represented the very kind of religion that Christ fought against."
-The Blood Book of Thomas Hunter

A semi-relevant quote about religion...

 

[knight777]

If you care about the subject and want to hear a post-evangelical perspective that isn't "anti-Church", the late Internet Monk Michael Spencer's book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Churchianity-Finding-Jesus-Shaped-Spirituality/dp/0307459179"]Mere Churchianity[/ame] is a good next step.

Like the video, Michael was speaking to those of us who feel dispossessed from the church, especially western Christianity. Unlike the video, its digs into the meat of that dispossession and offers us a path toward a Church community that starts & ends with Jesus.

 

[FleshAndBloodTheocracy]

SOOOO many evangelicals like to ignore the law. But the one time Jesus played an evangelical, here's how the conversation went:

Young man: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus: Why do you call me 'good'? Do you not know that only God is good?
*here, Jesus first directs the man to seek after the Holy God - not the young man's impression of God*
Jesus: You know the commandments.....
*here, Jesus directs him to the LAW first. As Paul says, the Law is necessary, not to achieve righteousness, but so that sin may appear utterly sinful. That is, it is the light that reveals the dirt - not the mop used to clean the dirt*
Young man: I have kept all these since I was a boy
Jesus: One thing you lack, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, then follow me.
*here, Jesus is not saying that we must sell everything to get into heaven. Rather, the young man was guilty of greed, so Jesus demanded that first he repent (sell everything; give to the poor), then obey (follow me). Both are necessary components of faith*
(Mark 10)

So, modern evangelicals love to leave out the need for the Law, Repentance, and Obediance, but they are wrong to do this. Yes, doctrine is daunting, but it is supposed to be - we aren't meant to live up to it, it's meant to show us our shortcomings.

 

[Elecguitardude27]

^ Great post! The Bible is the only place we can go when people start getting in the way of the truth

 

[Ryan M.]

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
(Matthew 5:17 ESV)

 

[JayArby]

SOOOO many evangelicals like to ignore the law. But the one time Jesus played an evangelical, here's how the conversation went:

Young man: Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?...

Hmm...not disagreeing with you, and I guess I'm going on a bit of a tangent, but I kind of understood this passage in a different way. The young man asks, "What must I do?" Jesus says, "Obey all the commandments." But the young man couldn't do that, and neither can you or I. I understood the message to mean that there is nothing the young man could do to inherit eternal life. It only comes as a free gift to God's chosen people.

Of course my understanding might be wrong.

 

[FleshAndBloodTheocracy]

That's exactly what I said....but in a more long-winded fashion. The law exists so that we may realize our shortcomings.

The law is what enables us to recognize the need to recieve the gift of salvation, not the means by which we recieve it. If that makes sense.

 

[JayArby]

So I thought some of you might be interested in this. It's another article someone wrote critiquing the video, and then actually corresponded with what's-his-name by email. I think it's a very good article, and it doesn't have the stuck-up tone that the other one did.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/13/does-jesus-hate-religion-kinda-sorta-not-really/