Jesus hates religion?

There's a video that has been shared on facebook, twitter, blogs, and other social networking sites the past few days (I have personally seen it posted it 9 times on my facebook news feed by different people). It is titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus". It's gone viral and has almost 8 million views.

The video features a young guy (probably in his 20's) named Jefferson Bethke who lives in Tacoma, Washington. He speaks in rhyme for 4 minutes explaining why Jesus is better than religion. In the video, he makes statements like:

- "What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?"

- "...which is why Jesus hated religion..."

- "Now back to the point. One thing is vital to mention, how Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums."

- "And that's why religion and Jesus are two different clans."

- "So for religion? No, I hate it. In fact I literally resent it."



As I was watching it, I had a weird feeling. How do I describe it? I could tell this guy loved Jesus and had obviously spent a lot of time putting together this "spoken word" poetry.

But something wasn't right. His doctrine was off.

Where in the bible does Jesus say he hated religion?

A friend posted this in response to the video: "Jesus was a very religious Jew. He went to temple and he offered sacrifices. He participated in the feasts and holy days. He was baptized and he taught his followers to baptize. He knew the Torah and how the people of his day understood it. In fact, he modeled many of his actions around motifs found in the Torah, and his later followers interpreted his actions through this lens.

Like the Hebrew prophets before him, he challenged the abuse of religion. But he never rejected it.

Similarly, the early Christian authors understood Jesus through the very languages and practices of the Jewish religion. Jesus was remembered as a sacrificial lamb, a high priest, a prophet, a king, a new David, a new Moses, a new Adam, the Son of Man, and many other 'religious' images."

Maybe Jefferson didn't understand what "religion" is? Why didn't he say Jesus is better than legalism? Or Jesus was against false religion? Those statements are biblically sound.

I read an article that basically explained everything I felt (and would have blogged) about this video. You can read it here.

My favorite sentence in the article is "We should not retreat from vocabulary that has been defiled, we should redeem the terms."

I would love to hear your guys' feedback.