Catholics Look At the Why I Hate Religion , But Love Jesus Video

This video has hit the the net and gone viral in a big way. It is very well done. It is also from the Catholic viewpoint very right and very wrong.

Two excellent Catholic sites hit on the right and wrong of the You Tube Vid. See from Catholic Aggies Does Jesus Hate Religion? Should You? after that see from Bad Catholic Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus — The Smackdown. As that last link points out so well it appears he talking Catholics here in a few verses.

Let me add a few thoughts of my own that are not nearly as good as the ones above .. Part of the Poem/Song:

Religion might preach grace, but another thing they practiceTend to ridicule God's people, they did it to John The Baptist
They can't fix their problems, and so they just mask it
Not realizing religions like spraying perfume on a casket

See the problem with religion, is it never gets to the coreIt's just behavior modification, like a long list of chores
Like lets dress up the outside make look nice and neat
But it's funny that's what they use to do to mummies
While the corps rots underneath.

I think there is a danger just throwing that "they" around so lightly . When this young man goes through some more life, have some failures, he might be seeing more of himself in that "they". God I know I have.

The Church is a messy community full of Saints and lot more struggling sinners. One danger I see in the approach above is two fold beyond perhaps not having a very good theology ( is theology bad) of Church.

First , its quite easy to not to havehave personal compassion for that struggle that you like and discriminate against those in "Religion "AKA organized Christianity " . I am not sure it's quite right to throw out the hypocrite charge to one and not the other. When in fact they are reality doing the same things.

Second, I suspect he has some concept of Church. But I also suspect the visible Church he might envision is also one where one can washes one's hands of it when it gets a little bit too messy. I am not sure that is a good thing.

Last what is this "It's just behavior modification, like a long list of chores". ( See above link on his strange verse on Divorce). The I hate religion but love Jesus is not new in evangelical circles. Let's see where this has got us ( and needless to say Catholics have been affected too)


I thought about this recent post from THE CORNER by David French when this young man was talking about chores and rules etc.

I’m coming a bit late to this piece, but the October 2011 issue of Relevant magazine contains a must-read article for those who see the need for a rather profound cultural course correction. It turns out that 80 percent of unmarried evangelicals (18 to 29) are sexually active. Yes, 80 percent. For all unmarried young adults the total is 88 percent. Oh, and even as 80 percent of young unmarried evangelicals are sexually active, 76 percent of evangelicals still believe sex outside of marriage is wrong. Even worse, 65 percent of women who abort their children identify as Catholic or Protestant Christian — that’s 650,000 Christian abortions per year.

The article discusses the common causes. Of course our pop culture celebrates sex and porn is ubiquitous. Additionally, there’s the obligatory shot at the church being squeamish in talking about sex (literally every church I’R_8">vespan> ever attended talked frankly about sex while chiding Christians for being reluctant to talk about it). Most insightful, however, is the observation that even as the evangelical church has held theologically – though not morally — to biblical sexual standards, it has fallen in lockstep behind the larger cultural trend of delayed marriage. It’s one kind of challenge to wait until you’re 18. It’s another challenge entirely to wait until you’re 28.
This is of a piece with the larger American evangelical culture, which — despite the “Jesusland” stigma of the secular Left — is only slightly countercultural. Christians have long understood a basic truth that they are to be “in, but not of” the world, but what does it mean to remain “in” a world that lurches ever-further from core biblical standards? If the practical result is a church that forever remains only slightly countercultural, then the church’s standards will simply act as trailing-edge indicators of cultural change.

Once you travel outside the ranks of the hard-core activists (a tiny segment of the Christian public), you will find a community possessed with an overwhelming desire to be liked: people who are very, very tired of negative perceptions of Christians and eager to change minds. But there’s certainly ground between the grim defiance of the few and the puppy-dog eagerness of the many.

In a previous post I talked about reframing our marriage debate as a “marriage restoration” movement, but we can’t talk about marriage without linking it to the larger sexual/moral ethic of Christendom. Otherwise we will fast approach a point where the distinction between Christian and non-Christian conduct will be so vanishingly small that one could wonder if we maintained any distinct witness to our neighbors and our nation.

Now I doubt this young man is thrilled with the above or at least I will assume he is not. But the CHURCH even in scripture ( that religion thing) played a role in support and reproof. And yes it had rules ( when combined with Grace and done by Faith) did help in some behavior modification. Which was tied to the Gospel message. The dirty little secret for our all "rules" we have been lax about the enforcement of them or holding as a standard because so many are counter cultural. The Church has failed but I am not sure for the reason this young man is thinking of perhaps. Again as Pope Benedict says we are an Affirmative Church and as Archsbishop Dolan says we are much more a Church of no. But still I am not sure the answer is to jettison all the chores.

He makes a lot of good points. But in the end it is that tiresome "EITHER OR" dynamic I think.