Jefferson Bethke has created quite a lot of controversy since uploading the spoken word poem “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” onto youtube. Although the video has only been up for two days, it has gotten over 2 million views. In the video Bethke asks questions such as, “What if I told you Jesus come to abolish religion?” and “If Jesus came to your church, would they even let him in?” He also critiques religion and ponders why Christians “build huge churches” but “fail to feed the poor.”
Some have applauded Bethke’s unique style while others both Christian and non-Christian alike have critiqued the poem. A comment by saxano327 read, “I agree with his sentiment, but the problem I have with this video is that he does not define his terms well. What does he mean by “religion?” What things that the church does can be counted as “Religion” and not truly “Christian?” If you don’t let us know, we’re forced to make assumptions and to many it will seem you are insulting them, or denying more about the church than you really are.” Other comments were less than conciliatory. “I believe in the flying spaghetti monster until his existance is proven wrong. how is this any different than your view?” wrote ArcheryWarlock.
Although he might have a few that disagree with him, Bethke’s reason for putting up the video seems strong:
[This is] A poem I wrote to highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion. In the scriptures Jesus received the most opposition from the most religious people of his day. At it’s core Jesus’ gospel and the good news of the Cross is in pure opposition to self-righteousness/self-justification. Religion is man centered, Jesus is God-centered. This poem highlights my journey to discover this truth. Religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride because you make a list and can do it and act better than everyone, or despair because you can’t do your own list of rules and feel “not good enough” for God. With Jesus though you have humble confident joy because He represents you, you don’t represent yourself and His sacrifice is perfect putting us in perfect standing with God!
17-year-old Justin Bieber recently got a tattoo of Jesus on
Interesting and refreshing. This young man choked me up with his bold confession.
Down with hypocrisy!!
In an age of “political correctness” and “Jesus the nice moral teacher” or ” Jesus the prophet” I commend this youth and I pray his courage will be infectious.
Speak up Christians. Speak with boldness and let those who are offended have their conscience
pricked!
@Marty:”This young man choked me up with his bold confession.”
What confession? He’s just shamelessly confessing that he doesn’t know what “religion” is. He doesn’t realize that what he thinks is courage is actually nothing more than cluelessness!
Wow! Semper reformenda. Maybe we, the Church, should just listen.
Thanks for update and reminder.
Padre Foz +
Part of the problem that elders have when our youth blather on incoherently about subjects they know little about is that we’re often talking about different views of the same thing. Much like the blind men trying to describe an elephant. We can never agree!
To some young people, “religion” is a corrupt force of hate-filled charlatans calling on the flying spaghetti monster to send gay sinners to eternal damnation. To others, “religion” is a disciplined method of learning, and churches are teaching facilities. Both groups are using the same terms, but both understand something totally different. This is just one example of the weakness of the English language. Another example, of course, is our constant need to redefine the word “love” with adjectives such as “agape” or “brotherly” or “romantic”.
For this constant thorn in our sides, I blame our church teachers. We, the common street-level evangelists, should not be burdened with such clumsy linguistic tools that only divide us from each other. It’s inevitable that we get stuck with angry youth blowing on and on about the evils of religion. Sometimes I feel like shouting,”Oh, to heck with it! You’re just being ignorant on purpose!” Then, after a while, I think,”No, they’re just deeply handicapped by a clumsy language. We need to pray for them just a little bit longer.”
If there is any contention with the video, it undoubtedly revolves around semantics. Based on his confessions, Jefferson obviously agrees with true religion as described by James (1:27) and Jesus Christ countless times. For me, the value of this video is in it’s opposition to flying the banner “Christian” over campaigns of corruption and heresy. Jefferson, and many others of his generation, are adopting the same hatred that Jesus had for hypocrisy. While its a fantastic movement within the Body, it also puts a lot of pressure to back up big words… I’m interested (and a bit hopeful) to see how he and others do.
So, I serve at a church as a youth pastor and am constantly caught in the snare of religiousness as much as I understand that Jesus stood against it. But with all of the lures that kids have these days It is so easy to watch as students make choices (both good and harmful) and almost judge some as the christian kids and others as the ones who need “saving”… granted there is some room for this as Jesus did point out that a healthy tree produces good fruit and the alternative, but at the same time I’m not in these kids heads hearing their potential prayers, thoughts and moments of personal worship and devotion… the kid acting like a punk with his headphones in during a sermon might not have anything playing as he actually listens and prays and worships all in the quiet of his heart… all I’m really saying is that this video challenged me to re-focus; behavior modification may be necessary to protect the kids we love but the main thing is still the main thing LOVING JESUS AND HELPING THE PEOPLE AROUND US TO SEE HIM AND LOVE HIM TOO. when Christianity becomes JESUSplus__________=saved it becomes religion, misinterpretation and something other than raw worship.
Thank you for the Video it was a blessing to me!
Johnny