Why Jesus Loves Relationships AND Religion Too

Parody Photo of Hate Religion Love Jesus

As I write this, the viral youtube video by Jefferson Bethke, “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus,” also titled as “Jesus > Religion,” has garnered over 12 million views since it was uploaded six days ago. It has set the internet world buzzing with many disagreeing with Bethke and many others defending him. I was alerted to this video by one of my student leaders who posted it on my York student club’s facebook group. We discussed this video in my weekly Theology over Pizza gathering and my students’ main reaction can be summarized as, “We like the video but hate its false dichotomies.” My students can see the validity of many of Bethke’s critiques of religion and religiosity. But they also noticed that Bethke painted religion with a very broad brush, creating a false either-or between Jesus and Religion. Many other bloggers have pointed out the video’s false dichotomy (see, for example, this one, or this one, or the interesting conversation here).

Atheists are naturally confused by Bethke’s sloppy categorizations as seen in the above parody photo that paraphrases his argument as, “Hates Fruits but Love Apples.” For many, Jesus cannot be divorced from the Christian religion. Yet, many Evangelicals have made this distinction between the gospel as a personal relationship with Jesus and not as a religion. And this gets to the heart of the issue at stake in the video – Evangelical Christianity’s popular distinction between religion and relationship. Is this distinction true? Does it make sense? Is true Christianity really only a personal relationship with Jesus and not a religion?

Improvising Within Biblical Authority

Anne Shirley with my oldest daughter

On my family vacation last summer, we visited Avonlea Village of Green of Gables in Prince Edward Island. My girls loved Anne of Green Gables, and so we knew that we had to insert it into our trip to the Canadian East Coast. It was a fun day at Avonlea. What fascinated me was how the actors stayed in character throughout. When we got there first thing in the morning, we met Anne Shirley waiting at the “train station” for Matthew Cuthbert to pick her up. And my second daughter was very soon getting teased by Charlie Sloane, the village brat. The Charlie Sloane actor probably worked the hardest in keeping character all day long – teasing tourists, menacing the other characters, as this video shows. Although there were times in the day where they played out famous scenes from the novel, the actors improvised in their interactions with the visitors. They had to be creative but consistent with their characters and the plot of the novel. I find this to be a good analogy to how Christians need to live out of the Bible’s authority.

Scripture and Life: Monologue, Silence or Dialogue?

I ended my last post by making the point that Scripture is not authoritative on everything but only on matters of salvation and church beliefs and practices. This might give the impression that I am suggesting that Scripture is irrelevant to everyday life and to learning. That is not the case. Just because the Bible is not an authority or a textbook on science, history or other matters, does not mean that it cannot speak or inform those areas at all. An old article by Sidney Greidanus, “The Use of the Bible in Christian Scholarship” (Christian Scholar’s Review 1982, Vol. XI. No. 2) provides some helpful guidelines. In adapting Greidanus’ points, I will use three metaphors to help us see the three visions for how Scripture relates to life.

Scripture Alone?

(This blog is based on a sermon delivered at Rehoboth Fellowship Christian Reformed Church, Toronto on Oct. 30, 2011.)

One of the major themes from the Reformation is “Scripture Alone” or, in its Latin form, sola scriptura. Although this is a popular theme among Protestant Evangelicals especially, I think many have actually misunderstood its meaning, and hence, misapplied it. So, in the spirit of the Reformers, I want to reform – to form again – what I believe are distortions about sola scriptura. My main scholarly source here is Alister McGrath’s Reformation Thought (Blackwell 1993).

BEYOND Evolution vs. Creation

On November 18, 2011, the York University student club in which I’m Chaplain and Director – Leadership, Culture and Christianity (LCC) – sponsored a special public lecture by Dr. Denis Lamoureux titled: Beyond Evolution vs. Creation. Lamoureux has earned PhDs in BOTH Evolutionary Biology and Christian Theology. He currently teaches at St. Joseph’s College in the University of Alberta, Edmonton and has the distinction of holding Canada’s first tenured track position in Science and Religion. Lamoureux is a self-proclaimed Evangelical Christian and an Evolutionist. He calls his position, Evolutionary Creation. You can also read York’s student newspaper The Excalibur‘s coverage of the lecture. In this blog post, I want to give some of the major points in Lamoureux’s lecture and also a link to his complete lecture with audio and slides.

Frameworks of Love and Symbols of Fear

The recent controversy at Calvin College over the issue of human origins in the publications of two of its professors causes me and a friend to think about how Christians disagree with one another. In a connected blog, Jason Postma, Youth Pastor at Bethel CRC in Newmarket, Ontario, explores how at the root of these debates is how “we use (and abuse) history and tradition in the formation of our identity” as Christians of a particular denomination, in this case, the Christian Reformed Church, to which, Calvin College is affiliated. Postma suggests that we remember the dynamic nature of tradition – that tradition is a living thing that requires “continual negotiation between imagination and preservation” – and the Scripture’s call to work towards Christian unity in our disagreements over interpretations and uses of Creeds and Confessions. He implores that we “always extend a hermeneutics of charity to those with whom we are in disagreement rather than point accusatory fingers and call each other heretics.” It is this “hermeneutics of charity” that I wish to explore further in this blog post.

A Mariner’s Psalm 23

This past summer vacation, we visited the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. On the second floor of the museum is the Fishermen’s Memorial Room. A whole wall in that room is dedicated to remembering the names of men and vessels lost to the sea. On another wall is a mural painted by Joseph Purcell (seen here) of Jesus calming the storm. And, though I’m not sure if it’s a constant part of the memorial room, on a table in the center of the room were printed copies of a Mariner’s Version of Psalm 23, as below:

Shaken Foundations: Reflections on 9/11

Image by Bruce Kratofil via Flickr

I wrote this piece back in 2001 and submitted it as a letter to the editor to the Excalibur, York University’s student newspaper. Unfortunately, it was apparently too long to be published, which they informed me about two weeks later. So, on the 10^th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, I think it is appropriate for me to post this now as a reflective memory of that day.

In a speech on the night of the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush told us that though the foundations of a building can be shaken, the foundations of a nation cannot. In many ways, this is true. America will survive as a nation. Its commerce will continue to thrive. Its political and military apparatuses will march on. Yet, in other ways, the foundations are shaken.

Bible as Map Part 2

Image via Wikipedia

In my previous post, I suggested that instead of treating the Bible as an ethical or moral GPS that gives us specific directions to our contemporary ethical questions – either corporate or personal questions – we need to treat the Bible more a map. A map that paints for us the moral landscape, giving us a big picture view of where our ethical true north should be, where some ethical boundaries are, where the moral pitfalls are that we should avoid, the dead end streets that does not help us. And we still need to exercise our own discernment and thinking to figure out our moral navigation given our specific contemporary situations and questions. In this post, I want to follow up by considering the Ten Commandments.

The Bible: GPS or Map?

Image via Wikipedia

I had been truant with my blogging these last two months due mainly to unforeseen family circumstances and the summer family vacation. But I will try to make up for it this month with a number of blogs inspired by my recent vacation to the Canadian Maritimes.

It was our first ever trip to the East Coast, and since we failed to get any good maps of the Maritime provinces I decided to buy a GPS to help us navigate our driving. I was pretty impressed by my GPS. It was accurate most of the time and it also could point out points of interest – like closest attractions, closest gas stations – which proved immensely useful on our trip. My experience with the GPS, however, reinforced an analogy that I had used in the past with my university students. Is the Bible more like a moral GPS or map? Do we read the Bible for specific step-by-step directions to our moral questions to which we only have to obey, or should we read it as providing us a big picture map – contours of the moral landscape – with which we have to make our own navigational choices as to which step to take? Let me explain. (I am, in this post, leaving aside doctrinal questions and focusing on the ethical and moral questions that people often seek answers for from the Bible.)