This article is another installment of our Questionable Quotes (?Q) series, where we aim to take popular, commonly used quotes about the church, God, and the Bible and put them under the microscope to see if they really hold up to the truth.
“Why I hate religion but love Jesus”
This questionable quote is the title of a wildly popular YouTube video by Jefferson Bethke in which he recites a spoken word poem about his problems with religion. As of this writing, the video is nearing 28 million views and has launched a successful career for Bethke as a speaker and author of the book “Jesus > Religion.”
Though Bethke has backed off of some of the harsh judgments in his poem by claiming his critics took his words the wrong way, that hasn’t stopped people from sharing it or making some form of this quote their motto when asked about their relationship with God. The content of the poem itself actually said a number of accurate and biblical things, but the title and opening lines were all the ammo some folks needed to say things like, “Jesus didn’t want us to join a religion.” “Jesus came to destroy religion.” “Religion is bad, but God is good.”
What we have here is a failure to define terms. What Bethke meant by religion is an attempt to justify ourselves by doing works of merit, where people use God’s name to either do what they want or do what they think makes them look good. And, to be fair, the Bible is directly opposed to these practices, specifically throughout the book of Romans and in Isaiah 64:6 in particular. There Isaiah says the good deeds of those who don’t have God are like filthy rags.
The problem is that Bethke and his followers use that definition to put Jesus against religion. Jesus was always against self-righteousness (see His dealings with the Pharisees) but not against religion. The whole point of Jesus having 12 apostles was so that He could establish His church through their work (Matthew 16:16-18, Acts 2). James 1:27 gives a definition of religion to which no one could be opposed: “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” Jesus commanded much the same in Matthew 25:31-46. 
Unfortunately, this misconception of what religion is supposed to be has given a whole lot of people the excuse they are looking for. They want to feel religious, they want God’s presence in their lives, and they want the hope of heaven, but they aren’t really interested in the church. “Religion is just full of hypocrisy,” they’ll say. “I don’t think Jesus wanted us to be dogmatic about religion or joining a church, He just wanted us to be like Him.” This interpretation of the Bible is enough to put one’s soul in danger, and with the increasing popularity of such rhetoric, Christians need to know how to answer these claims.
The key is in knowing how to address their concerns by defining the terms the right way. Religion is only good or bad depending on who practices it and what they do. The religion of the Pharisees was bad. The religion James alluded to is obviously good. Where does that leave the church? Since Jesus established the church, died for it, and is the head of it (Ephesians 5:23-27), the church is the kind of religion God wants. We need to help people realize that hypocrisy is not synonymous with religion. Just as God wanted the nation of Israel to practice the religion God set before them in Leviticus, God wants us to practice religion today.
On the other hand, those who criticize the church as being hypocritical are most certainly right in some cases, and we should listen to them and root that out. But that doesn’t give a person an excuse to run from God out of some trendy aversion to religion. The church shouldn’t be hateful or overly critical. The church should be biblical. We can only be what God wants us to be and what He wants is for us to show the world Jesus through the religion He established – Christianity.
By Jack Wilkie