Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word
Great spoken word poem.
The Blind Beggar
exploring the missional paradigm
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I think that there are a number of layers here that need to be examined. The first layer is this: Are there people out there that would come to Jesus and follow him and submit to his Lordship and advance his Kingdom but have been turned off by “religion?” Have they become “exiles” (to use David Kinemann’s term) because their experience with organized churches has turned them off? Yes, of course. Should we seek to bring the Exiles back into the fold? Of course. But what fold? If we don’t have a fellowship of people working together in community to advance God’s Kingdom as Christ-followers (the definition of true religion), then what do we have to offer them? The next layer is this: Why did Bethke write this poem? Why does he lump all Christian religion in a sphere that is wholly other from Jesus? Why is he saying that all Christian church experience and tradition for the past 2,000 years is bogus? What has caused this total antipathy against organized religion? There seems to be personal issues that he has not dealt with and he is putting them out there for all to hear, but not everyone has had this negative experience. The next layer is this: There are people who have reacted negatively to this video in almost a knee-jerk fashion. They get too rankled by new expressions of faith that threaten the way they’ve always traditionally done things. They need to lighten up… the reformational slogan was “Always Reforming!”, and if we think that the our religious expression and theology does not need any more reforming, then shame on us. Bethke seems to want a reformation - to see Christians living authentic lives directly connected with Jesus and throwing off all the religious baggage that might get in the way of that. I applaud him for that. However, for many people (even people in his generation), the “religious baggage” (the tried and true traditions and rituals of the worshiping church) are means to that end. His stating that “Jesus and religion are on opposite ends of the spectrum” is simply not always true. So the last layer is this: We see here a false dichotomy between Jesus and religion. “Religion” is not anti-Christ, it is FALSE religion that is anti-Christ. James says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27).
Bob, I can’t speak for Bethke, nor address his motivation. Still, I think he expresses something many feel — rightly or wrongly — about much of today’s American Christian religion, i.e., it doesn’t meet the spirit of James 1:27.
Since exponential tweeted this blog I thought it deserved a little push back because I find it misrepresents them. To separate Jesus from religion was irresponsible on Bethke’s part because he (Jesus) practiced the Jewish religion. He was a rabbi for heaven’s sake. Now, Jesus did push back against the dogmatism and hypocrisy of his day, but he did not reject religion. It is a misrepresentation of what he stood for and it confuses his followers even more.
It is not healthy to make ill-informed distinctions based off of just pure emotions. That is what Bethke accomplished. Does he really not know what religion means? I don’t take him for a fool. He was playing to people’s biases against the church and it worked.
Instead of continuing to blog in favor of such messages just because that is what people feel, we should point our audience in a direction of healthier conversation about what actually ails the church. It is not religion. It is the people who mistreat religion.
Peter, thank you very much for dropping in and commenting.
Your comments also deserved a little push back.
A key to interpreting any written word is to understand the literary style being used. In this case it is a poem, not a legal brief. It’s all about how a person feels, about emotions. As Wordsworth once wrote, poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” (Have you not read the Psalms?) Good poetry evokes intense emotion which causes one to identify with the feelings and ideas being expressed. Bethke does a masterful job of this.
One should point an audience in a direction of healthier conversation that allow us to hear other voices, even in a literary style that express feelings some may be uncomfortable with.
I understand where Bethke is coming from. I was once told (and believed) that we should forget about religion and just follow Jesus. Well, guess what? You can’t do that without joining the world religion that is called Christianity. Call it good poetry, but is also misleading.
People have been feeding off this “creative license” to define religion however they want for a long time. What Bethke did has been done many times before. It wasn’t the good prose that caused astir, but the platitudes of one scorned by the regrettable misrepresentation of what religion looks like. Bethke’s video leads to an ignorance of everything good that has been done in the name of the Christian religion. For him it’s as if all the bad is in the name of religion and all the good is in Jesus. Sorry, but those two things are inexorably intertwined and I can find more good than bad done in the name of religion.
I know that the discussion has been very good; cathartic for some I am sure. However, just because it sounds good and it is an outpouring of emotions does not make it right. (Have you not read the Psalms? Try 137.9) The fallacies in Bethke’s poem are glaring and it does a disservice to the church as whole, yet there are plenty of people who eat up his words at face value and curse it. I do not find that healthy for the sake of a literary style.
This CBS interview with Jefferson Bethke will be of interest to those who want some perspective and insight.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396087n
I did the research on Bethke, but really, how many people will do this?
I don’t care about the poetry. The false dichotomy is too powerful and too misleading. This is part of a post from one of the better responses to the video. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/xwAL9b.
7. When we create a dichotomy between Jesus and religion we simaltaneously create an unnecessary and dangerous antagonism towards the church and the people that participate in it.
Bethke says “If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?” I’ll give the guy a pass for the first half of this statement. I assume he’s a product of our American educational system and if so, it explains his understanding of history or lack thereof.
It’s popular, if not cliche, to say that religions are the cause of all the world’s wars. Have they been that cause from time to time? Sure. But if do a little more digging (beyond what you see on the History Channel or in this case what Richard Dawkins tells you) you will discover that the vast majority of battles that have been fought were not started for religious reasons. And even those that supposedly were, often simply used the guise of religion in order to gain more territory or wealth for the king who went to battle. Obviously, we have the Crusades and the Protestant/Catholics battles in Britain, but beyond that the pickings get slim at least as it pertains to battles or wars that you’ve heard of. For example, did the conquest of the Roman empire (that’s several centuries of warfare) have anything to do with religion? Nope. Revolutionary War? Nope. Civil War? Nope. World War I? Nope. World War II? Nope. Korea? Vietnam? The Gulf War? Nope. Nope. Nope Sure you could make a case that the current battles in the Middle East have religious connotations, but it’s murky water there and that’s the point. Religion isn’t the great starter of war we’ve been told it is.
As for the second accusation that church fails to feed the poor. I don’t know how to label this charge anything but absolute ignorance. Even the biggest mega-churches that get so often get ridiculed for any number of reasons, almost always have ongoing outreach ministries. There are very few outreach organizations in this country or any other that are not faith-based or at least affiliated with a religious organization.
I think what Bethke was trying to do is to state in his hip contemporary way the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone. His use of the word “religion” is unfortunate — he’s giving it a specialized definition you won’t find in the dictionary. Your comments about the church are very perceptive. Probably most pastors of most churches sincerely desire to reach out to their communities any way they can, and should be given credit for that. Unfortunately the internal politics of the church can get pretty ugly, and that reflects a genuine problem, the spiritual immaturity of so many professing Christians. So me a church that doesn’t pray and I’ll show you a church that is hypocritical.