I’m sure by now many people have seen this little piece of mind (if not, the link is at the bottom of the page). In this video, the author basically is trying to say how religion is bad, but goes on to say believing in Jesus is not a religion. Afterwards, he even clarifies saying how he “believes in the Church, the Bible, and Sin”. I found the whole ordeal a bit ignorant and very holier-than thou. This idea is exemplified when the author says “religion is a man-made invention, and Jesus is the work of God”. I think someone needs to look up the word “religion” in the dictionary. Merriam-Webster defines religion as follows: 1.“A cause, principle, or system of beliefs held with faith and strong feeling.”; 2. A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices". That is exactly what Christianity is! :smack: The whole premise of the video’s title seems to fall apart because his idea about Jesus is perfectly defined by the word “religion”. I personally found the video stomach-churning in the way the man tries to make his own set of beliefs look like it is more viable than the many thousands of other religions that have come and gone throughout world history. The suggestion that he is only bashing organized religion is moot, because of the way he says he loves the church and its tenets, PLUS the fact that religion is defined as EITHER institutionalized or personal. I wanted to hear feedback on this video from some rational people, thus, I have come to the Straight Dope. Please do tell your thoughts and opinions. :dubious:
Or a lot of other jerks regardless of their religious persuasion. A lot of people take this kind of approach to faith: they say Jesus’ teachings are great but that a lot of the trappings and institutional aspects of Christianity suck. I agree about the parts that suck, so I agree the religion looks more palatable if you strip out those things and focus on principles that mostly have to do with being kind to other people. But those people aren’t irreligious. The guy the OP is talking about doesn’t even really go as far as those people do since he also says he loves the Church and since he’s trying to redefine religion to make his point. It sounds like he has a slogan and nothing else.
I have only seen a summary and analysis of Bruxy Cavey’s book, “The End of Religion,” so, I may not have all the details straight…
Religion as generally practiced seems to be about what you have to do to make yourself right with God. And the distinction between that and Jesus went something like this.
Religion says you have to go to the right place, the temple. (The place where God interacts with the world, according to religions.)
Jesus says, “I am the temple.”
Religion says you have to approach the right person, (the intermediary, the one with the knowledge of what you need to do,) the priest.
Jesus says, “I am the High Priest.”
Religion says you have to do the right things, (including bringing a sacrifice.)
Jesus says, “I am the sacrifice.”
Religion says then you can approach God and be accepted.
Jesus says, “Oh, I’m also God. And I came to you to reconcile you to me. I want to forgive you and accept you, and you don’t have to do all of that other stuff that keeps men in power.”
It’s a relationship rather than a set of codified beliefs or actions. It’s a religion in the same way that your relationship with your mother is a religion. She’s going to love you no matter what. Even when you screw up, she wants to forgive you. And even if you’re doing drugs and stealing from her, she is likely to love you, weep for you, try to help you out of your bad situation… even when she can’t let you in her home because you’re disasterously disruptive and dangerous to the rest of her children.
Sure, there are things we’re expected to do. But those come up in any relationship. Say I’m friends with Bob. We love each other, respect each other. The relationship isn’t likely to last if he finds out I’m an unrepentant serial murderer. Would you call my relationship with Bob, or with my mother, a religion because there are some things I need to do to maintain the relationship? It’s going to suffer if I don’t talk to either of them for months on end. etc.
King David was a murderer, an adulterer, a bad father, (repentant… and a man after God’s own heart.)
Religion is about doing the right things to be accepted. Jesus is about having the right attitude to be forgiven.
There’s the difference between religion and relationship.
However, “Christianity,” as practiced by the vast majority of “believers,” is a religion. And I think they are likely to be surprised at who is accepted.
The notion that one can have a “relationship” with someone who has been dead for 2000 years is a religious belief. In fact all of the notions of what you get from this “relationship” (forgiveness, the kingdom of heaven, etc.) are religious beliefs.
I can’t watch the video while I’m at work, but based on your description it sounds similar to things I’ve heard from many other sources. I entirely agree that the concept of loving God or Jesus while rejecting religion is silly. Most obviously, none of the great Christians throughout history would have had any hesitation to own the word “religion”. If you trace the word to its Latin roots, “religion” literally means “relinking”. Each human being has been cut off from God and from his or her fellow human beings. Jesus came to help us re-establish the links that have been cut.
It is true that there are some people who are “spiritual but not religious”, i.e. they seek the connection with God and higher orders of being without participating in an organized group of people who do so, similar to how a person can be well-read without being formally educated. But Jesus clearly came to earth to create a group, or we might even say a family, known as the Church.
And maybe more to the point, everything we know about Jesus’ teachings comes through the Christian religion. If you say you love Jesus and what he taught, you’re talking about such significant parts of Christianity that saying you’re not interested in the religion is a little absurd.
I’ve encountered this argument quite a lit in evangelical Christianity. What it is, is a combined special case argument and witnessing tool.
If someone tells you they’re religious, thats easy to wave off. If they tell you they’re not religious, but they love Jesus, they’ve claimed to be different from all the other belief systems (and so they can ostensibly agree with you that religion is claptrap), but they have also engaged you in a discussion wherein they get to tell you what they believe (and why you should too, most likely)
I was raised in a church that taught very much this sort of perspective, but it never really made sense to me because as much I liked a lot of that take, there was still a lot of rites and all associated with it, so it just seemed like an attempt to paint Christianity as something other than what it is. I mean, most who aren’t just nominally Christian still attend church, listen to sermons, and participate in all the various rituals and such just as one would if part of any other religion.
That all said, I do think Christianity can be observed in a way much closer to a relationship as suggested by that line of reason than other religions, particularly the other Abrahamic faiths. For instance, in my own observations, I haven’t attended a church or partaken in any rituals in some time, but I still do have times of study, prayer and reflection akin to communicating and spending time with people in any other relationship. I feel very much like having other people telling me so much about God rather than doing so much through directly interacting with him is not unlike having someone else acting as an intermediary in other relationships.
So while I don’t really like the label of religion because of the connotations it carries about such rigid beliefs and ritual and all, even if one takes a more relationship approach to Christianity, it’s still a religion because it’s still fits the any reasonable definition of religion. I think saying it’s not isn’t particularly meaningful. It’s like telling me that, generally not liking seafood, that I might like a particular dish because it doesn’t have a fishy taste… it may not have a particular aspect that is common to a vast majority of seafood, so it may be appealing to people who tend not to like seafood, but it’s still seafood.
I question this, except maybe for the “kingdom of heaven” part. Those people who feel as though they have relationships with, say, an author they never met and is long since dead who still has a lot of influence over them, or with a dead relative who continues to have an influence on their lives, are not necessarily believing in that relationship religiously. If any person has that much significance for someone else then their relationship is never going to end, whether there is religion involved or not. I don’t know about the guy in this video, but I think it’s possible to have a relationship with Jesus as a person, or a philosopher, or a leader. I am not at all a religious person, but I feel like I have some sort of relationship with him, if only from observing his impact on people around me. And, more to the point raised by the video, I think it’s possible to believe in Jesus in that way and not make a religion out of him. After all, the key to salvation is accepting Jesus as your personal savior, right? This doesn’t appear to be what the guy in the video is doing, but I think it’s possible to esteem him very highly and even live by the stuff he says without crossing the line into religion. But then again, I may just be naive. If that’s true then be gentle with me.
This has been floating around since I was a wee evangelical tyke. Fritz Ridenour’s How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious has been through multiple editions over decades. Sounds very probably like antinomian bullhockey to me, but I dunno. I think books like this exist to keep young churchy kids that want to rebel against something in the church. Their kids presumably just leave.
As a former Christian I eventually came to the conclusion that Christianity has a lot of incorrect teachings about Jesus and what he actually taught. I think that’s a fairly common occurance among organized religion as tradition becomes just as essential as the principle.
That said I think organized religion is a perfectly valid path that works well for some people but not for all. I’m sure in congregations all over, not all members believe exactly the same thing.
My biggest objection is people who claim to value and even worship the truth, disregrading the truth inorder to cling to traditional beliefs and teachings, and the fact that much of what is stressed is superficial rather than than the personal transformation the journey can be, and that Jesus referred to. When it becomes mroe important to praise Jesus and give Jesus credit for everything, and make sure we mention Jesus and God in public and on the money , rather than actually seek understand and live those teachings , organized religion is little more than a sicial club with slogans and rules.
punch line loser, what you say has validity, but you’re merely slapping a relationship label on it. A relationship is a two-way thing. If the person you have a relationship with is dead, or is alive but doesn’t know you from a hole in the ground … that’s not a relationship.
If I believe that I have some sort of connection with John Lennon because my ex-wife was just like Sexy Sadie, it doesn’t mean I have one. It’s just that something about the man struck me as personal.
That doesn’t make it a relationship; it makes it a belief.
I’d argue that it does go two ways, because I as myself still feel the influence that emanates from the person and what they have done or said, regardless of when they actually did or say it. But I do see your point, and what you’re saying does get to heart of the issue with the video in the first place, so I’ll agree to disagree.
If you meet Jesus in person and talk to him regularly then it is separated, and must be, unless you want to consider one’s relationship with their still living parents also a religion, as if you meet Jesus in person, He has to be alive.