Thought provoking article from David Brooks of NYT

David Brooks is an inconsistent writer. He jumps from one school of thought to another. He's a classic liberal, though he's branded as a conservative thinker. (There's a difference between today's political liberalism and "classical liberalism"... we won't get into that right now!)

Anyway, here are some tidbits from a recent Brooks article that I found interesting.

"How to Fight the Man" by David Brooks

A few weeks ago, a 22-year-old man named Jefferson Bethke produced a video called “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus.” The video shows Bethke standing in a courtyard rhyming about the purity of the teachings of Jesus and the hypocrisy of the church. Jesus preaches healing, surrender and love, he argues, but religion is rigid, phony and stale. “Jesus came to abolish religion,” Bethke insists. “Religion puts you in bondage, but Jesus sets you free.”

[...]

Right away, many older theologians began critiquing Bethke’s statements. A blogger named Kevin DeYoung pointed out, for example, that it is biblically inaccurate to say that Jesus hated religion. In fact, Jesus preached a religious doctrine, prescribed rituals and worshiped in a temple.

Bethke responded in a way that was humble, earnest and gracious, and that generally spoke well of his character. He also basically folded.

[...]

Bethke’s passionate polemic and subsequent retreat are symptomatic of a lot of the protest cries we hear these days. This seems to be a moment when many people — in religion, economics and politics — are disgusted by current institutions, but then they are vague about what sorts of institutions should replace them.

This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual.

[...]

But rebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm.

Read the thoughtful conclusion here.

UPDATE: A Solid Rebuttle to the YouTube phenom: "Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus"

This new video was produced by a priest in response to "Why I Love Jesus, and Hate Religion". Not bad!


You may have heard of this YouTube video "Why I hate Religion, but love Jesus" making the rounds, dear students.

The video raises some interesting questions and gets a number of important issues right,

but many of the statements are highly problematic (e.g. the main premise that religion is contrary to Jesus) by way of shallow rhetoric. The theology and Scriptural references are easy enough to parse.

I would suggest that this fellow's view of religion is not simply one we can ignore; this is because there are many, many Christians (even Catholics) who share his view in America and the modern west. We cannot afford simply to mock it - it needs to be engaged and thoroughly rebutted. This is one of the aims of our Capstone Seminar: to give you the tools to articulate truth in the face of skepticism, shallow fads, ideology and hatred in an unbiased manner. Likewise, if you cannot admit that some of the things he (and other people who are 1/2 correct) says are spot-on, we've failed too.

Also, the young man is obviously coming from a shallow, non-denominational protestant perspective, so many of the statements he makes (that are obviously wrong to Catholics) are simply the logical consequence of the failed teachings and pragmatism of main-line protestant religion. We as Catholics can learn from these mistakes.

With that, I offer you a solid rebuttal from "Bad Catholic".

It’s worth beginning with this: I agree with this guy on a lot of points. He reminds us Catholics of a striking truth; that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, religion is a joke. He speaks the truth that Christ died for our sins, once and for all. I can’t help but think, in the midst of all this, that this hating-religion-loving-Jesus thing is the logical consequence of Protestantism. For a 21st-century Protestant looking at a thousand-something churches, I imagine there is an immense temptation to say “It’s all a wash. I will follow Christ, not a religion,” and be done with it. I empathize with him, knowing that if I were a Protestant I would be in full agreement: There is either one, true religion or there is no religion at all.

But nevertheless, there are two main problems with this video. 1. Jesus Christ would strongly disagree with it. That is to say, the creator of this video is very, very wrong. 2. He’s very, very wrong with some great video editing, good background music, a strong emotional appeal, catchy rhyme, and all in relatively well-timed YouTube moment. He’s wrong in style. When a man gains immense popularity by making blanket statements stylistically, how likely is it that his followers will read a rebuttal making specific statements prosaically? I don’t know, but rebut I must, for it is the duty of the Catholic to resist fashion and fads, no matter how unfashionable he looks doing it.

Read "Bad Catholic's" entire roast here.

Another related post by "Bad Catholic" here. Whoever the author of "Bad Catholic" is, he's pretty dang clever! Enjoy.