So there's this video, you might've seen it, it got uploaded on Tuesday and has already been viewed more than six and half million times. Million. In three days. So yeah, kinda a big deal. The title of the video is "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus" and it was made by a very talented artist by the name of Jeff Bethke. The video, as its title suggests, is a creative reading of a poem Jeff wrote about his feelings on the topic of spirituality and religion. I appreciate his candor and his abilities as an artist and communicator. Unfortunately, I feel that Jeff is expressing a sentiment and point of view which has come into some popularity in the last decade or so and which I believe wholeheartedly to be misguided.
There have been some good responses to the video and some not so good. I was going to write a much longer post with my opinions on the topic but then I discovered that today's post by Kevin DeYoung on his blog was on the same topic.
Kevin knows so much more than I do, and I agree with him so often and usually fully, that there is only one other point on the video that I would like to make, and really, it's more so about the movement which spawned the video.
Being for Jesus and against religion is hip right now. I get that, in another life I might've been one of the guys who is all about that. See, I too was hurt by a church growing up. I won't go into specifics, but I was in a situation where everything I loved about the church was ripped away by people who were ignoring God's plan for what "the church" is and seeking their own best ends instead. So it would've been easy for me to be one of the folk who feel alienated by the church and grab ahold of the "No Religion, just Jesus" bandwagon.
But I think that would've been wrong, and I think it is wrong for those who cling to it today. And maybe it's a matter of definitions, because if I sat down with Jeff (the video's maker) I'm sure we would talk and likely agree about many of his points and I would just have to point out that his definition of Religion isn't in fact Religion, but rather false religion, hypocrisy, and lies.
And that's what I want to say here, I want to redefine the Church and Religion for those who want Jesus without those things. The Church isn't those people who hurt me and my family growing up. The Church isn't the teacher who made you feel small and helpless growing up. The Church isn't the group who made you feel guilty for not following their rules. Religion isn't that group in Florida masquerading as a church and telling you that God hates gays and soldiers. Religion isn't a list of rules that you follow to get to heaven. Religion isn't something man even invented.
See, Religion is just a system set up to help us live out and follow something in which we have faith. So Church and Religion aren't those things above.
Church is the body of Christ gathering to encourage each other, urge each other on to greater service of Christ, convict each other of short comings and then remind each other that they are washed in the blood of Christ, and most importantly to worship the God of the universe.
Religion is how we know that God that we're worshipping. It's why dozens of people over thousands of years wrote down his word in what we now know as the Bible. It's what unites us in knowing how and why we serve our God.
See, maybe you can seperate Jesus from Religion and the Church. But then you get you, alone. Because without Religion, you get no Bible. Without Church, you have no one to talk with about him. Without Religion, you have no diea how to worship him. Without the Church, you are just a toe, or liver, or shin, disconnected from the rest of Christ's body.
And even if you have the Bible, do you know who Christ ends up looking like when it's just you and him? I'll give you a hint, it's not him. Without other believers to hold us accountable in our thoughts and actions we almost inevitably end up with a Christ who looks oddly like us, cares about the stuff we do, is okay with our faults, and doesn't ever expect anything of us that's not easy to give.
God made Religion and the Church. Don't try to throw them away just because it's hip, or because we mess it up sometimes, or because it's hard. If you feel alienated from the church because of your past, come back and give it another chance. After all, if it's just Jesus you'll listen to, what did He say about those who don't forgive?
