Jesus and Religion

“It’s not a religion; it’s a relationship”: the most common come-back catchphrase among Christians today. This slogan is the premise explicitly stated in Jefferson Bethke’s recent spoken word video titled Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus.

No doubt, “religion” has become a taboo among Christians. But even more than a taboo topic, “religion” has become a controversial word. Michael Bauman, professor of Theology at Hillsdale College says, “Sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible.” So the question that follows: what is religion?

When conversing with a person who adopts the western American belief that tolerance is the “end all” of virtues, Christians are often shy away traditional terms such as “religion,” “church,” or even “sin.” But like Bauman implied, the use of language is essential to understanding ideas and their repercussions. Consequently, Christians change the meaning of these words to fit a politically correct method for evangelism. Instead of shaping our culture to conform to Christianity, we try to conform Christianity to the sentiments and standards of the culture. “Religion” suffers this abuse more than any other word associated with the Christian tradition; and as a result, we alter the definition of religion to “man searching for God,” but “Christianity is God searching for man.” While this definition accurately includes a standard of living based on a system of beliefs but unnecessarily includes this standard of living as a means to salvation. It is not necessary for something to be “religion” at an attempt to fix the human condition.

Hidden away in Bethke’s poem is the assumption that religion is always an attempt to achieve salvation. In the first chapter of James, the apostle never mentions religion for the purpose of making ourselves right before God. He 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 NIV).”

The amazing thing about James’ teaching on religion is not only that he promotes it, but also that God “accepts (it) as pure and faultless.” Of course, God would not accept a list of dos and don’ts in place of His Son and James goes on to say that “faith without works is dead,” so our definition (or placement) of “religion” must be skewed. This is nothing new. In an effort to reclaim the fundamentals of the Christian faith in the early twentieth century, J. Gresham Machen stated in Christianity and Liberalism that Legalism tells us to first realize our sin, do good works, and then be saved, but Christianity compels us to realize our sin, follow Jesus, and do good works. In the Lutheran Catechism, the Lutheran church states, “good works never precede faith, but are always and in every instance the result of faith in the Gospel.” We don’t do good works for salvation; we do good works because of salvation.

Back to our Christian conversing with the American kumbaya religious pluralist who has a chip on his shoulder for organized religion: it is tempting to say, “Jesus came to abolish religion,” as Bethke does. However, the only time Jesus ever talks about abolishing anything is what he doesn’t abolish: the law (Matt 5:17); and rather than abolish it, He fulfills it! It could be argued that this distinction is irrelevant here because both words imply that the law does not have the same authority it once did. However, when something is abolished, the abolisher hates what he abolished; when something is fulfilled, the fulfiller honors what he fulfilled. Jesus honored the law.

Bethke confuses between cultural religion and actual religion and bounces back and forth from a “religion” that is prevalent in our society which consists of rejecting the poor, starting wars, engaging in premarital sex, and reducing our Christianity to a Facebook status, and actual “religion” which is a standard of living based on a belief system. Again, respecting language is essential to precisely communicating an idea. In the cultural sense, Bethke offers a convicting commentary on the Church today; in the actual sense, Bethke loses the foundation of moral action that is not excluded from the Christian life, but is included intimately.

When Jesus took His disciples up to the mountain in Galilee, His last words weren’t “don’t be religious; have a personal relationship with me and just love people.” Instead, He told them to make disciples and baptize them; essentially, “go and do.” Jesus gave His people a responsibility to the world; He did not relieve them of it. He commissioned a task; He didn’t omit one.
Humans have the inherent compulsion to pervert a good thing. Bethke argues that we use religion for our own power struggles to put ourselves in the place of God. We take religion and use it for our own self-gratification: to “spray perfume on the rotting corpse,” as it were. Bethke provides an accurate description of a overwhelmingly popular abuse of religion today. However, what makes a good thing evil is its perversion. When a man drives down the interstate under the influence of drugs or alcohol and crashes killing innocent people, the court system does not say, “we hereby deem driving an immoral act.” Rather, the man abused a good thing. This does not make the good thing bad. The tools and materials used in ancient Israel to build the idols that the Israelites worshipped rather than the true God of Abraham were not bad. The idols themselves were not immoral; but the fact that that the people of God made them idols made the act immoral. We do the same with religion. Religion is an instrument meant to serve God and man, and like those tools and materials, religion serves a purpose; and like those tools and materials, we continue to use it to worship other gods: ourselves.

The statement that Jesus is greater than religion is essential to the Christian faith. To say otherwise is like pointing to a sign giving directions to a restaurant and saying it is better than the restaurant itself, or that a trailer for a film is better than the film itself. These lesser things are not to be treated as the real things but are signs meant to point in the right direction. Religion as described by James is like those signs or previews: they point us to what is to come but will no longer be needed when it is finally here.

However, the greater does not abolish the lesser. We cannot conclude that a religion’s secondary status compared to Christ’s primary status negates the importance of the former. Nineteenth century survival of the fittest mentality influences us to think when something is stronger, the weaker is unnecessary, abolished, and therefore with no value. This is not reconcilable with the teachings of Jesus.

The Lord of creation does not need religion to bring about his will, but we need religion to effectively live as Christians in this world; not an attempt to purify ourselves, but a standard of action to serve as agents to the world. Because of our broken nature, religion is part of God’s rescue plan; it is not the rescue plan itself. This does not mean that the church will not have a role in the new heaven and the new earth and I don’t mean to imply that religion is a result of sin, but the Church won’t be the same role that Jesus and James call us to in this life: to care for the suffering. Once restoration is fully realized and there is no more death, no more mourning, or crying, or pain, and no more widows, or orphans, or imprisoned, or impoverished, then there will no longer be a need for religion as C.S. Lewis says so eloquently in The Great Divorce, “we know of no religion (here in heaven), only Christ.”