Does Jesus love religion?
A week or so ago, a spoken word video featuring a young man called Jefferson Bethke denouncing religion in the name of Jesus took the FaceTubes by storm, gathering over 15 million views in a matter of days. Here it is, for those remaining seven billion or so who may have missed it.
A mostly helpful analysis and response of the video by Kevin Deyoung can be found here (H/T Dominic). Deyoung says Bethke "perfectly captures the mood, and in my mind the confusion, of a lot of earnest, young Christians" who interpret the word religion to mean "self-righteousness, moral preening, and hypocrisy." Yet this is not what it means. Jesus did not come to abolish, but to fulfil. Deyoung's critique was read by Bethke, who subsequently contacted Deyoung and said "I agree 100%". The interaction is a good example of gracious constructive theological conversation.
And with a hat tip to Kyle, here is a very interesting Catholic response to the original video, also (I believe) done in a spirit of constructive dialogue.
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3 comments:
it's a good polemic if nothing else. interestingly, he says 'christianity' when he wants to talk about religion positively without using the word.
some Greek Christians i know are particularly keen on saying how much God hates religion. but i guess it's always a question of context.
which is why it was nice to hear him say he agrees 100%.
nice RC response also.
Sixty four billion reasons why many people obviously prefer to be "spiritual" rather than religious.
Kevin Deyoung, Kevin Deyoung, Kevin Deyoung ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Kevin DeYoung
There's an interesting and characteristically cheeky commentary on this by David Brooks, one of the resident conservatives at the New York Times, in his column today ... to the extent that to make a strong and lasting critique of a tradition, you need a tradition of your own to stand in.
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