Jesus = Religion

The following question is asked by the artist on the YouTube video “Why I hate religion but love Jesus”:

“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”

Hmmm…well, I guess I’d probably tut and then roll my eyes.

Next, I think I’d open my Bible to Matthew’s Gospel:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” – Matthew 5:16-18

I think I then might flip over to the Epistle of St. James:

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

The Good, The Bad and the Difference

This video does have some good ideas, really it does…it’s just unfortunate that it’s also got some real problems. The main issue is that this chap doesn’t seem to understand the difference between legalism, hypocrisy and religion.

You want to complain about people using religion for selfishness, greed, war, political gain etc? Fine, go get ’em! Want to shine a light on legalism, judgmentalism and hypocrisy? No complaints here! But if want to tell us that “religion” is a bad word and that Jesus came to abolish it? Sorry, no.

The Good, The Bad and the Silly

Over the course of the video he makes lots of other statements and asks lots of other questions. Some of them are good, some of them are bad and some of them are just downright silly.

For example, he asks the question “Why does [religion] build huge churches but fail to feed the poor?”. This is a perfect example of the problem with this video: a false comparison is presented. Religion has both built big churches and fed the poor – the Catholic Church has built some of the most beautiful Cathedrals in the world, but it also feeds more people daily than any other institution on the planet!

Further Reading

I had intended to critique this video in more detail, but other people have already written some great responses to it, so I’ll just invite you to read those instead:

Brock Talks |  Bad Catholic | Phat Catholic | Shameless Popery | Almost Not Catholic

Update 2020-03-31: