I Love the Church and the True Religion that Forms It

With all the word floating around the Internet about the video "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus," I thought I would repost an article I wrote a while ago expressing why I love the Church. Now, do not get me wrong, as I said in the post previous to this one, there is a lot to like about Mr. Bethke's video. I also do not want to beat this subject to death, but those of you who know me know that I am a master of that (it is one of my many sins). When we start to emphasize the things we dislike about contradiction in the Church (one of the main reasons people say, "I hate religion"), we miss out on what the Church is, the true religion that formed it, and the many things to love about it. Below is why I love the Church reposted (and slightly updated):

Every Sunday, right before we take communion at my church, we repeat the words of the Apostle’s Creed. I must confess, sometimes I drone through them without really considering what they mean. However, many times lately the words "I believe in… the holy catholic Church…" have stuck in my mind. Believing that the catholic Church (i.e. the invisible, universal Church) is holy is tough, especially when those in the Church hurt me, hurt those I love, or embarrass me; but they are Jesus’ bride and my people, the "holy catholic Church".

Ronald Rolheiser, in his book The Holy Longing, wrote that "to be connected to the church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murderers, adulterers, and hypocrites of every description. It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic soul within every time, country, race, and gender…because the church always looks exactly as it looked at the original crucifixion, God hung among thieves." Most days I am one of those thieves and no one in their right mind would want to confess me as one of their own. There are other days, only by the grace of God, where I show a glimpse of the "heroic soul" that Mr. Rolheiser wrote about and someone might dare to claim me. Jesus, however, claims me and loves me on all those days, which means I need to do the same for the rest of His Church, His bride.

Loving the Church is hard sometimes. All of us know what it is like to be embarrassed or ticked off by someone in our family but they are our family and we love them. Well, the Church is my spiritual family (whom I will spend eternity with) and there are a lot more of them than in a normal family. There are millions, which means many more opportunities to be embarrassed or ticked off. I heard about a Christian congressman in Florida who wanted to make some law that would force all the science books to be rewritten to say that the earth is the center of the solar system. He claimed that the heliocentric model was all a sham and he tried to prove it from a gross misuse of the Bible. That really burns me up, but Jesus claims him as part of His bride so I cannot disown him. Every time I look at Joel Osteen I want to smack that stupid smile off his face and staple his lips shut, but (this may sound radical but I think it is true) he belongs to Jesus so he belongs to me. John Wesley used to really get under my skin (even though he has been dead for more than 200 years) until I started to read his journals and found things like, "Everybody who belongs to Jesus belongs to everybody who belongs to Jesus." He is right.

Being connected to the millions of the Church also means many more opportunities to be pleased and encouraged by "heroic souls." I could mention the hundreds of Christian organizations that fight hunger, sex trafficking, and all other sorts of injustice but that would be too obvious. I would rather write about my professor's fourteen-year-old daughters who love to sit and talk with the elderly at their church because his daughters "like to hear them talk about Jesus." That makes me proud. I would rather talk about how my church loves on the marginalized in our city—the men on the street, the addicts, and transgendered, to name a few. That makes me proud. I would rather talk about my hero, Steve Brown, who runs two ministries that could easily take up all his time and yet he still takes the time to mentor young seminarians like me. He gets a lot of flak from many Christians (some in my denomination) because of his radical teaching on grace but he does not retaliate (no matter how much he may want to) and practices what he preaches by giving them grace. He makes me proud. I have several missionary friends preaching the gospel in countries where there is civil unrest or it is a capital crime. They make me proud. At our PCA General Assembly last year I met a Palestinian Reformed Christian and a Messianic Jew who were working together to spread the gospel in Palestine. In a group meeting one of them said this when asked how the gospel makes Jews and Arabs relate differently:

I believe that in Christ we have a common ground so Jews and Arabs, yes, but the common ground is the gospel and is our Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ. Me as a Palestinian I have to choose day after day, if not moment by moment that I want to reconcile with my brothers, my Jewish brothers, because the challenge is an instant challenge, endless challenge. It is in my home. It is affecting me day after day. Therefore, I say that we have to be committed to each other. So it’s not just an emotional reaction. It’s not just that I love and pray for my brother, but I am committed through Christ who brings us into a new creation to be together, to be supportive to each other, to love each other, and to embrace each other…. So as a sum up for all this, I believe from all my heart, that we, Palestinian Christians, together with Messianic believers have a message that politicians have never delivered. It’s Christ, the Prince of Peace that makes us peace-makers and through that we can love and live a life that is worthy, a Kingdom life.

That makes me really proud and I feel honored to have known these men, men of whom the world is not worthy.

Entering into a covenant relationship with Jesus means being a part of His bride, the "holy catholic Church." He is a lot more accepting than I would be if I were Him, but that is why He is God and I am not. I may not always like her but the Church is His bride, so I must love her. She is an ugly bride, no doubt, but she is loved dearly by Him and will one day be fully conformed to His likeness. Until then, she is still my people and I can never forget that.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Love, Hate, Jesus, and Religion

There is a video that has gone viral all over the Internet called, "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus." It is worth watching because there is a lot good about it. The guy who made the video, Jeff Bethke, brings up some good points (all of which are not new) and does so in a very artful, compelling way. It is also obvious that Mr. Bethke loves Jesus and stands on grace alone. That is great. Grace is all I can stand on too. When people say, "You don't want cheap grace." I say, "Yes I do; it is all I can afford." So, I really like the majority of what he has to say. One of my favorite lines is, "The Church is not a museum for good people, it is a hospital for the broken." That is true and I am glad it is because if it was not, I would not belong in the Church. So, again, it is worth watching. Click on the link above and go watch it. Go ahead, I will wait........

Now that you have watched the video, there are some things that still need to be said. Some people have said some unfair things about the video and others have taken it hook, line, and sinker without thinking about the video critically. A couple of guys, however, have said some very balanced, respectful things that need to be said about this video that I would also recommend you reading/listening to. (If you want to skip my statements and go to theirs, and I would not blame you if you did, then just scroll down a little.) The main problem with the video is that it starts out saying, "What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?" Well, if you told me that I would say, "You are wrong" because Jesus did not come to abolish religion. He came to fulfill and establish true religion. You can maybe make that statement if you redefine the word "religion" but then you confuse the issue. It is catchy today to say, "I am not religious; I love Jesus." But, I am sorry, that means you are religious. There is more that can be said on this and both the guys I mention below say it better than I can, so I will let them say it. Here are a couple of links you should read to get you thinking about what might not be so good about this video and saying "I hate religion":

• Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason talked about it on his radio program a few days ago and you can listen to that here. I highly recommend you listen to it. 
• If you want to go a little further and deeper, Kevin DeYoung of The Gospel Coalition has more to say, but again, I think it is respectful and charitable to Mr. Bethke.

By His Grace,

Taylor

The Differences Do Matter

This post is going to be a reversed from my normal format. I will talk briefly and then share a longer-than-normal quote.

I am sure most of the people reading this have seen the popular "Coexist" bumper stickers. According to the providers of the bumper stickers the intent is to promote people finding a way "to live together in peace and harmony". Unfortunately ideologies such as this have been twisted into a false form of "tolerance" that wants people to believe there are no critical differences between religions and that we should accept them as equal. When it goes that far it is, at best, wishful thinking.

Dr. Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, recently released a book called God is Not One where he shows why the differences in religions do matter. Below is a rather long excerpt taken from the Wall Street Journal. I do not agree with everything he says in it but his overall assessment of the situation is accurate:

This is a seductive sentiment in a world in which religious violence can seem as present and potent as God. But it is dangerous, disrespectful and untrue....
Of course, one purpose of the "all religions are one" meme is to stop this fighting and this killing. But this meme, however well intentioned, is neither accurate nor ethically responsible. God may be one according to the Abrahamic religions, but when it comes to the mathematics of divinity, one is not the only number. Many Buddhists believe in no god, and many Hindus believe in 330,000. Moreover, the characters of these divinities differ wildly. Is God a warrior like Hinduism's Kali or a mild-mannered pacifist like the Quakers' Jesus?
I do not believe we are witnessing a clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam. But it is a fantasy to imagine that the world's two largest religions are in any meaningful sense the same, or that interfaith dialogue will magically bridge the gap between them. Each of the great religions offers its own diagnosis of the human predicament and its own prescription for a cure. Each offers its own techniques for reaching its religious goal, and its own exemplars for emulation. Muslims say pride is the problem; Christians say salvation is the solution; education is a key Confucian technique; and Buddhism's exemplars include the lama and the bodhisattva. If practitioners of the world's religions are mountain climbers then they are ascending very different peaks and using very different tools.
You would think that champions of multiculturalism would warm to this fact, glorying in the diversity inside and across religious traditions. But even among multiculturalists, the tendency is to pretend that the differences between, say, Christianity and Islam are more apparent than real, and that the differences inside religious traditions just don't warrant the fuss practitioners make over them....
This wishful thinking is motivated in part by a principled rejection of the traditional theological view that only you and your kind will make it to heaven or paradise. For most of world history, human beings have seen religious rivals as inferior to themselves—practitioners of empty rituals, perpetrators of bogus miracles, purveyors of fanciful myths. The Age of Enlightenment popularized the ideal of religious tolerance, and we are doubtless better for it. But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naive theological groupthink—call it Godthink—has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us world-wide.
Faith in the unity of religions is just that—faith, and perhaps even a kind of fundamentalism. And it does not just infect the perennialists. While popular religion writers such as Mr. Smith see in all religions the same truth and the same virtue, new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins see in all religions the same idiocy and the same poison. In both cases, Godthink is ideological rather than analytical. It gestates in the dense clouds of desire rather than with a clear-eyed vision of how things are in the ground. In the case of the new atheists, it springs from the understandable desire to denounce the evil in religion. In the case of the perennialists, it begins with the equally understandable desire to praise the good in religion.
Neither of these desires serves our understanding of a world in which our religious traditions are at least as diverse as our political and economic arrangements....
I too hope for a world in which human beings can get along with their religious rivals. I am convinced, however, that we must pursue this goal through more realistic means. Rather than beginning with the sort of Godthink that lumps all religions together into one trash can or treasure chest, we must start with a clear-eyed understanding of the fundamental differences between Judaism and Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, Daoism and Confucianism.
Some people are convinced that the only foundation on which inter-religious civility can be constructed is the dogma that all religions are one. I am not one of them. In our most intimate human relationships, who is so naive as to imagine that partners or spouses must be essentially the same? What is required in any healthy relationship is knowing who the other person really is. Denying differences is a recipe for disaster. What works is understanding the differences and then coming to accept and, when appropriate, to respect them. After all, it is not possible to agree to disagree until you see just what the disagreements might be. And tolerance is an empty virtue until we actually understand whatever it is we are supposed to be tolerating.

By His Grace,
Taylor