The viral video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” has over 15,000,000 hits on YouTube as I’m typing this blog post. Jefferson Bethke, 22, posted this video to YouTube, and a few of his ideas include:
- “Jesus came to abolish religion”
- “Voting Republican really wasn’t His mission”
- Religion “builds huge churches” but “fails to feed to the poor”
- It’s not a place of love or acceptance for single mothers that have divorced
- “Jesus hated religion”
- Jesus “was called a glutton, and a drunkard” so most churches won’t let him in
- “Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrum”
- Religion is a “man made invention”
- “one is the cure (Jesus), but the other’s the infection (religion)”
- “Religion puts you in bondage, while Jesus sets you free”
So many things to respond to here! Hopefully seeing the words written out instead of in rapped version make Bethke’s message clear: Jesus hates religion. Here’s the video if you want to see it for yourself.
Fortunately, a lot of people, people who are much smarter and more eloquent than me, have come up with some fabulous responses to this video. I’d like to share two of my favorites.
The first is a video response from phatmass.com. Fr. Claude (Dusty) Burns aka “Pontifex” says that “the purpose of the video is to do a response from a Catholic perspective, in a spirit of love, but also with a spirit of passion to defend our Mother the Church. The things that are said are not meant to offend, but we do have to be direct about what we believe and what we stand for.”
Go directly to the video and scroll down to read the words to the lyrics.
My other favorite video response is by Fr. Robert Barron, creator of the Catholicism series.
As usual, Fr. Barron’s message is very rich in content. Do yourself a favor and watch the last two minutes of Fr. Barron’s response for a solid Catholic response to “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.”
Next time “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” pops up in your Facebook newsfeed, I hope you’ll consider posting one of these videos in response.
