Loving Jesus, Loving others, being comfortable with 'Religion,' and keeping a healthy skepticism

I have been thinking about the video below for the past few days, and thinking about how to respond to it.

(Video Transcript)

My response varied between two poles.  Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick's blog post had theological astuteness in critiquing the video line-by-line, and points out that there is a false dichotomy between religion vs. relationship, and religion vs. being merely Christian.  But Damick's tone is coming from a place of dispute, and he's a bit too quick to go to a place of disdain as he cuts through the video's rhetoric and internal inconsistencies.  Nadia Bolz-Weber comes closer to my own tone, precisely because she is willing to own the dark spots of the Christian faith's actions toward others.  I recommended reading both.  But both left me wanting, so I am attempting my own response.  

First, an observation.  In watching who was posting the video on facebook, I think I've come to understand the variety of responses to the video, and reasons for sharing it.  A friend of mine posted it noting that she had cried watching it, and was moved to share it.  To me, this says that the video contains something in it that was incredibly healing to hear.  The pain that can come from religious institutions is real;  Religious institutions (and relationships) can leave people with the spiritual equivalent of wounds--gashes and amputations of the soul.  These take time to heal, if they ever do.  If this video aided healing in some way, there is value in it.  Something of the Gospel came through.

Another friend posted it, and in that case it came from a place of continuing to distinguish between 'religion vs. relationship.'  It is a continuation of an Evangelical maneuver to distance themselves from the evils of religion in the minds of others, and to seat spiritual authority in one's personal relationship with Jesus.  There is value here too.  The real experience of the triune God is important.  For if one wants to live into the Gospel of Christ, one must know the experience of Reality (The way God would see the world, mediated through Christ, and sustained by the Spirit) in order to relate it others.  Without this experience of Reality, the love of God is hearsay and a proposition, and nothing more. 

Still, parts of this video are problematic. I say this because I consider myself to be religious, even as I grant the need--no, the imperative--to keep ever before me a skeptical approach to the institutional Church, which can, has, and will be in error.  But I also say so because--as someone who spent time outside of the Church, and outside of Faith in Christ because my Southern Baptist upbringing wounded me--the video does not convince that Jeffrey Bethke (the man in the video) is actually outside of 'religion;' but that he is in denial, mistaken of what religion means in the common and scriptural sense, and inconsistent in thought.

The big, big problem I have is that the definition of religion Bethke uses cannot be pinned down.  'Religion' seems to mean everything bad one experiences in his or her spiritual life; also anything that allows for hypocrisy.  Wounding spiritual experiences, judgmentalism, a blind eye toward the hurting of others, and hypocrisy are problems.  They are real.  They represent a dark side of religion and the Christian faith.  But they do not represent the whole of religion.  I can tell you that every person at Yale Divinity School learning to be a pastor/minister/preacher/priest finds what is being described as religion in the video to be a problem.  We don't want congregations going through the motions.  We want Christians involved, mind, body and spirit, in their faith and in the Church.  No denomination finds what Bethke is calling religion to be acceptable.  If they did, it would indeed be a problem.

There is such a thing as 'true' religion vs. 'false' religion.  In terms of etymology, Religion derives from the Latin “religio,” which means “to bind” or "to reconnect." If you are living a form of life that is based your understanding of something that transcends your own being, you are religious. You believe that you have a personal relationship with the author of all life on earth.  Such a relationship changes the way you see the world and the people therein. You are bound to that life. It is a religious way of being.  

In Christian theology, we experience God's desire for us, and we respond positively by desiring to love God.  That desire to Love God meets God's infinite Love, which boils over into a love of others.  The religious person trusts God to be found within themselves, to experience the turn toward God, and then find within others.  But religious belief that inculcates hate instead of love, judgment instead of mercy, callousness instead of compassion, fear instead of hope, blinded sentimentality and facade instead of a true picture of a hurting world and hurting people, the delusion of righteousness instead of the need to forgive and be forgiven, is false religion.  

This dichotomy between religion, true and false, is why James, Jesus' brother, warns that "Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless (James 1:26)."  Yet, "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)."  If scripture is an arbiter of these debates, then James would have to be proven wrong when he claims that there is such a thing as a "pure and faultless religion."  Or, from 1st Timothy: "But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God (1 Timothy 5:4)."  Religion is not simply about our relationship to God, but our right relationship to others characterized by love and mercy.

The point is this:  Christianity is not about religion vs. relationship, but religion and relationship.  Jesus and religion are not on opposite ends of the spectrum, but God does offer the Holy Spirit to correct the errors and failings in the life of faith (religion, meaning our response to God), be they when we will fail in loving God or loving others.

Okay, I'm about done.  But I want to pull two lines of the video, because I think they show an inconsistency at best, and a very dangerous theological position at worst.  Bethke says in the piece:

"Now I ain’t judging…,"  but... "I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it."

 Does this really make sense?  Can you really hate something without somehow holding it in judgment?  

You see, there is a difference between judging and critiquing. 

“"Judge not" is…not an injunction to spineless acceptance but a caution against peremptory legalisms that leave no space for acts of compassion and witness.”-Jean Bethke Elshtain

We need to be able to discern between the good and the bad, but judgment contains a finality; it does not allow that there is a chance of redemption.  Judgment then allows for hatred, because one thinks that what they hate is beyond redemption.  This is why Jesus warns against human beings sitting in judgment.  And if your faith, or religion, is built on the concept of hope and redemption, what does it mean when it still allows you to hate something and to believe something is beyond God's grace?  I worry that Jeffrey Bethke is in the very territory he condemns.  I wish he would clarify when he thinks hate is okay.