Hating Religion, It’s The Cool Thing…

A little over a week ago, I shared a video on Facebook entitled ‘Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus – Spoken Word’ by Jefferson Bethke. When I shared this video it had just over 2.2 million views, as of this draft on my blog (01/16/2012) post it has 12,587,663 views (now it has 13,564,045 views – 01/17/12). It now seems that the bandwagon thing to do is bash Bethke for making the video. There has been some intense articles (that I won’t link) as well as some vulgar video replies. His overall message is a good one but it is so cloudy it’s hard to see anything through it.

The video comes right out of the gate with a bold statement, ‘Jesus came to Abolish Religion’. I agree to that but I disagree with that as well. The issue is the millions of people who will watch this video and say, oh cool I don’t have to be part of a religion to love Jesus. If Religion is defined as ‘outwardly practicing religious rituals for the sake of appearing to be self righteous’ (Col 2:23) then Bethke is right. Jesus came to abolish false, self-centered, religion. Jesus called out the Pharisees and Sadducees for this throughout Scripture but Jesus did not come to abolish religion in the sense of a set number of specific beliefs and practices. In fact, Jesus came establish religion in that form. Jesus came to establish His Church (Matt 16:18). Jesus created ritualistic events like meals (Matt 26:26-28) and gatherings (Acts 2:42). Jesus may have rewritten religion but He didn’t come abolish it. Jesus was a Jew. He went to services held at the synagogues (today we call our local church). My fear is that the 13 million and counting views that this video has gotten will leave you with the thought that you can love Jesus but hate religion and you can’t.

Screenshot of the Old Header for My Blog

My own conviction falls into this here cause I have a slogan for my blog for I don’t know how long that says “Ignoring Religion for The Sake of A Relationship”. My fear is that this expresses the same thing that Bethke tried to convey in his poem. For me, his poem rang true in many ways. It was a great way to articulate what I have felt in the past and what I thought I felt today but, again, I think that it puts out there too cloudy of a message for people to completely understand. Let me explain it another way.

Being Religious
I am religious about many things. In fact, instead of calling in religious, people may call obsessive compulsive but let’s use the terms synomously in this case. My wife and I got married in 2007. What if I had left it there. What if I didn’t practice any “religious rituals” since our wedding. For instance, I am religious about saying ‘I love you’ before we get off the phone on every conversation. I am religious about hugging her when I walk in the door when I get home and kissing her before I leave. I am religious about eating dinner at our dinner table with our boys and all the screens off. I am religious about a lot of things when it comes to our marriage. Can I say that I love my wife but I hate the religious acts of marriage? How ignorant does that sound? Further than that, what happens if I say “these religious acts are stupid and I don’t need to waste my time with them” then just stop doing them. How much further does our relationship last? I have to ask the same question about Jesus. When you stop doing the religious acts with Jesus, like going to church (Hebrews 10:25), reading your bible, praying, or being joyful, what happens to your relationship with Christ? I have to think that the same thing that would happen in my marriage as my relationship with Christ. It would begin to deteriorate. It would rot away anything of significance that I had. If I love my wife as much as I say that I do then the religious acts become second nature because of my love for her. It shouldn’t take a nuclear chemist to figure out that the same applies in any relationship even when it comes to God. We can’t constantly bash religion and say we aren’t religious but we love Jesus. If we truly love Jesus, we are religious. Religion is our way to connect to God through our daily, weekly, and second nature acts just as my religious mannerisms towards my wife shows her how much I truly love her. To conclude, I will no longer shout from the rooftops that I am ignoring religion but I will declare that I am embracing religion for the sake of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
¹² Brothers and sisters, we ask you to have respect for the godly leaders who work hard among you. They have authority over you. They correct you. ¹³Have a lot of respect for them. Love them because of what they do. Live in peace with each other.

¹⁴ Brothers and sisters, we are asking you to warn those who don’t want to work. Cheer up those who are shy. Help those who are weak. Put up with everyone. ¹⁵ Make sure that nobody pays back one wrong act with another. Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

¹⁶ Always be joyful. ¹⁷ Never stop praying. ¹⁸ Give thanks no matter what happens. God wants you to thank him because you believe in Christ Jesus.

¹⁹ Don’t put out the Holy Spirit’s fire. ²⁰ Don’t treat prophecies as if they amount to nothing. ²¹ Put everything to the test. Hold on to what is good. ²² Stay away from every kind of evil.

²³ God is the God who gives peace. May he make you holy through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept free from blame. May you be without blame from now until our Lord Jesus Christ comes. ²⁴ The One who has chosen you is faithful. He will do all these things.

²⁵ Brothers and sisters, pray for us. ²⁶ Greet all the believers with a holy kiss. ²⁷ While the Lord is watching, here is what I command you. Have this letter read to all the believers.

²⁸ May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

***Updated*** 01/18/2012 @ 10:42am
One of the blog post that I was referring to that I thought was a good post but very intense was the one that was written by Kevin DeYoung that can be read HERE: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/13/does-jesus-hate-religion-kinda-sorta-not-really/

Thanks to a friend of mine Joe, he informed me that there has been a follow up post by DeYoung that is fairly amazing! I would suggest you reading it here as well: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/14/following-up-on-the-jesusreligion-video/