I do love a well done video. Specifically, this one.
This video, creatively referred to as "Jesus > Religion," has been getting a lot of play, at least on my Facebook feed. In general, I'm excited about things such as this. I always love when someone who is eloquent and caring in their presentation proclaims their love for the Lord in an invitational way.
The message of this video, however, is nothing new. People have been asserting/reinforcing the Jesus v.s. Religion split for a long time now. Particularly, our generation finds this extremely attractive. We love the idea of embracing Jesus' freedom and denying the shackles which an organized church structure places upon us.
I agree 100% with the truth that Jesus came to free us from sin, not bind us to regulation. However, every time I see something with a message similar to that of "Jesus > Religion," the same question comes into my head. What do we do about it?
As I said, our generation is especially good at bashing the church. We are experts at identifying all of the things which previous generations did wrong, all of the mistakes which Christians who came before us have made. We defiantly cast off the errors of yesteryear, claiming that we can now fully and truly represent Jesus without all of the baggage that previous generations have tacked onto the gospel.
And to a certain extent, we're right to think this way. The church has done some horrible things over the course of the previous years. I did my senior thesis on the rise of the Religious Right, spending months digging through press statements and sermons that had me literally weeping at points. I'm no stranger to the atrocities which the church has committed. Though I can't say I've been personally wounded by the church, my heart breaks that even one person has a story of how Jesus was shown to them as someone condemning and hateful of people, for He is the exact opposite.
My heart breaks equally, though, that so often our generation stops at the "religion/the church is bad" step of this conversation. Adding the caveat "I love the church" doesn't change the fact that we often have plenty to say against religion, but rarely anything constructive. This primarily negative voice ignores the witness of scripture. A massive portion of the New Testament attempts to answer the question "How do we worship God well together?" In other words, "How do we make 'good religion?'" If the early church went through such intense efforts to create a community of worship that would honor God, are we honoring our legacy of faith by saying "Religion is bad, you should just love Jesus?"
It would be tragic to condemn the lack of constructive dialogue and then in turn provide no constructive feedback of my own. I think a healthy next step for us stems from the "What do we do about it?" question. I think it's wonderful that we point out flaws in organized religion. Now we must work to solve them. Let's each identify something harmful in our own community of faith that we can work to solve, a rift we can work to heal, a miscommunication of Jesus' character we can work to correct. Let's make the church what it was meant to be, a community of people honoring God in a way that is both invitational and reflective of the love of Jesus Christ.
1 Timothy claims that "the church" is "the pillar and foundation of the truth." Over the years, many things have been plastered onto this pillar that are not reflective of God's heart. We only make the issue worse, however, if we take a sledgehammer to that pillar, denying God's desire that His people would play a key role in bringing this world into a relationship with Him. We need to think more like doctors, and less like rioters. We need to diagnose, and then seek to heal, not diagnose and destroy.
With God's love and Grace,
Taylor
