Our world is a very religious place
Our world is full of religions. I’ve got to say, I’m not much a fan. Of any of them.
That probably sounds like a huge contradiction coming from from someone who claims to be a “Jesus Freak” and uprooted his family to move across the country to attend a Bible College too.
But it’s not.
Jesus Treated People Differently
When we think of Jesus, we usually think of a soft spoken kumbayah guy who never got excited and was overwhelmingly nice to everyone. However, when you actually read through the Biblical accounts of Jesus you see a bit of a different picture.
Jesus behaved very differently towards different types of people. On the one hand he was incredibly compassionate towards the outcasts of society. Whenever people came to him acknowledging their own shortcomings he lifted them up, healed their sicknesses and diseases.
To the woman caught in adultery – which the law said was punishable by death – Jesus simply says, “Go and sin no more.”
He offered healing and restoration to anyone who came to him and believed he could give it to them. Plain and simple.
Jesus Trashed the Religious
But when it came to the religious people of his day… Oh. My. Gosh.
There was nothing nice about what he said. He called them vipers and whitewashed tombs full of dead man’s bones. He told his disciples they were like yeast – a little bit of their religious ways would corrupt the whole loaf.
In fact, one time Jesus got invited to a fancy dinner by a bunch of the leading religious people of his day, and a pretty amazing thing happens. (You can read about it in Luke 11:37-54.)
I mean think about this for a moment. Jesus is one of the most significant figures in religion in the history of mankind, right? And here is is at dinner with a bunch of the most influential religious people of his day. It might be a good time to suck up a little and get on their good side, right?
Well Jesus doesn’t do that.
The first thing these guys notice is that Jesus doesn’t wash his hands before he eats. Now there‘s a scandal, right? “Ooh… Dirty hands!”
How does Jesus respond? What he has to say is not very “nice” at all.
He lights into them for being hypocrites! Says they’re fixated on appearances and ignore the truth.
He points out that all their religion and their rules don’t do anything to make people’s lives better. All religion does is weigh people down with burdens they can never cary.
Jesus even goes so far as to imply that they are murderers and because he says they approve of the killing of God’s prophets.
That’s not a good way to get invited back to dinner. (I’m just saying.)
Jesus had very little nice to say about religion.
Video Worth Watching
Jefferson Bethke made a video where he recorded a poem he wrote about this very thing. I’m not into poetry but this is an excellent video and well worth the 4 minutes to watch.
It’s very possible you may have seen it already because as I write this well over 9 million people world wide have watched it. And that’s pretty amazing considering he only posted the video 4 days ago. Yes it is pretty powerful.
Take a look:
Reactions
Jefferson is spot on, I think.
What I find interesting is how many of the 100,000+ commenters on this video don’t understand how Jesus ≠ Religion. I think that’s a subject worthy of it’s own separate article. I’ll post that another time.
What do you think of the video? It is on track or off base?
Map image from Wikipedia
About Chris Cree
Absolutely on track.
I once heard someone say that strictly speaking, Christianity is not a religion since religion is defined as man seeking God. Christianity is based on God seeking man….. through Jesus and his work on our behalf on the cross. I think many people have trouble believing that “finding God” is as simple as accepting a free gift of salvation through Jesus. There are people who walk on their knees for great distances to places they see as sacred…..pilgrimages to earn their way to God and thought up by man……..then there were the religious leaders who dreamt up thousands of rules for people to follow to find God, yet they were unwilling to give up control of their lives to God. Being spiritual control freaks earned them the tongue-thrashing Jesus gave them since they ignored God’s direction to give Him their hearts but “compensated” by following petty rules that made them look good on the outside only. Religions think up their own way to God, but ignore God’s way. Which is why scripture records the words of warning in Proverbs 14:12. Man can dream up all sorts of great-sounding and good-looking and clever “ways to God”, but God’s way to God is the only way. It does require some faith in God and handing over control to him but the result is life instead of death.
Thanks to Jefferson Bethke for having the courage to record the beautiful truth.
Thanks to you, Chris, for highlighting this truth, and thanks for your on-going thoughtful articles.
I think his video was cool and had some good points, but Jesus said in Matthew 5:17 that he specifically came NOT to abolish religion…so some of what Jefferson Bethke says here isn’t exactly spot-on.
Heya Hanna! That’s not what Jesus actually said. He said he came to fulfill the law. Look at how the NIV phrases it:
You can see some other translations of that verse here.
Because he was sinless, Jesus was able to fulfill the law perfectly – something we are incapable of doing. Jesus made it clear that perfection is the standard that God requires (see Matthew 5:48). Because he fulfilled the requirements of the law and we believers are now in Christ we don’t have to keep the law (i.e. perform religious acts) anymore to be acceptable to God.
It’s no longer about what we do. It’s now an issue of what we believe.
Hi Chris. Yes, I think this fellow is on the right path. Self-righteousness is so anti-Jesus as I understand it, but yet so many Christians do an awful lot of judging of others.
I think church is good as a way to help keep on track on a weekly basis, but I think that we need to be free to be on our own path to salvation. (Isn’t that why God gave us free-will?)
It’s not for me to judge another – and I try not to. I’m certainly not perfect, but I do try to focus on compassion for others.
Jesus instructing us to love our enemies is the ultimate challenge.
I think that’s what it’s all about, finding a way to live this life loving others, being kind to others, amidst all the chaos, crankiness, and difficulties of life.
And the only one whose judgement matters is God’s.
I’ve realized that my path to God/Jesus is directly with him. No one else can bring me there. I have to take the steps.
I look forward to reading more!
Heya Kristin! You’re so right about “self-righteousness is so anti-Jesus.”
That’s the biggest problem with religion and religious systems. They’re all about “getting right with God” somehow by making ourselves better. It doesn’t work.