{"id":9061,"date":"2012-01-13T16:35:16","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T23:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=9061"},"modified":"2020-03-30T12:05:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:05:49","slug":"religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2012\/01\/13\/religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus = Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"facebook\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/hate_religion_love_jesus-300x181.png\" alt=\"Hate Religion Love Jesus\" width=\"240\" height=\"145\">The following question is asked by the artist on the YouTube video&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?&amp;v=1IAhDGYlpqY\">&#8220;Why I hate religion but love Jesus&#8221;<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hmmm&#8230;well, I guess I&#8217;d probably tut and then roll my eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Next, I think I&#8217;d open my Bible to Matthew&#8217;s Gospel:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em><span style=\"color: #993300\">&#8220;Do not think that I have come to <\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><span style=\"color: #993300\"><strong>abolish<\/strong><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #993300\"> the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them&#8221; <\/span><\/em><span style=\"color: #993300\">&#8211; Matthew 5:16-18<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I think I then might flip over to the Epistle of St. James:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\"><em><span style=\"color: #993300\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Religion<\/strong><\/span> 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 <\/span><\/em><span style=\"color: #993300\">&#8211; James 1:27<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1IAhDGYlpqY?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><em><br>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>The Good, The Bad and the Difference<\/h2>\n<p>This video <em>does<\/em>&nbsp;have some good ideas, really it does&#8230;it&#8217;s just unfortunate that it&#8217;s also got&nbsp;some real problems. The main issue is that this chap doesn&#8217;t seem to understand the difference between legalism, hypocrisy and religion.<\/p>\n<p>You want to complain about people using religion for selfishness, greed, war, political gain etc?&nbsp;Fine, go get &#8217;em!&nbsp;Want to shine a light on legalism, judgmentalism and hypocrisy?&nbsp;No complaints here! But if want to tell us that &#8220;religion&#8221; is a bad word and that Jesus came to abolish it?&nbsp;Sorry, no.<\/p>\n<h2>The Good, The Bad and the Silly<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>For example, he asks the question <span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>&#8220;Why does [religion] build huge churches but fail to feed the poor?&#8221;<\/em><\/span>. This is a perfect example of the problem with this video: a false comparison is presented. Religion has <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">both<\/span> built big churches <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">and<\/span>&nbsp;fed the poor &#8211; 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!<\/p>\n<h2>Further Reading<\/h2>\n<p>I had intended to critique this video in more detail, but other people have already written some great responses to it, so I&#8217;ll just invite you to read those instead:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/talkbrock.blogspot.com\/2012\/01\/can-you-hate-religion-and-love-jesus.html\">Brock Talks<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2012\/01\/why-i-hate-religion-but-love-jesus-the-smackdow.html\">Bad Catholic<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/phatcatholic.blogspot.com\/2012\/01\/response-to-why-i-hate-religion-but.html\">Phat Catholic<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/catholicdefense.blogspot.com\/2012\/01\/jesus-v-religion.html\">Shameless Popery<\/a>&nbsp;| <a href=\"http:\/\/www.almostnotcatholic.com\/2012\/01\/religion-vs-relationship.html\">Almost Not Catholic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Update 2020-03-31:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"720\" height=\"715\" src=\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-75758\" srcset=\"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative.jpg 720w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative-300x298.jpg 300w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative-90x90.jpg 90w, https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Tenative-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following question is asked by the artist on the YouTube video&nbsp;&#8220;Why I hate religion but love Jesus&#8221;: &#8220;What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?&#8221; Hmmm&#8230;well, I guess I&#8217;d probably tut and then roll my eyes. Next, I think I&#8217;d open my Bible to Matthew&#8217;s Gospel: &#8220;Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[349,754,2969,84,2616,409,127,145,436],"class_list":["post-9061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-charity","tag-christ","tag-featured","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-or-religion","tag-poverty","tag-religion","tag-st-james","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9061"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75759,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9061\/revisions\/75759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}