I just came across this title (like seven years too late) because our youth pastor wanted me to take a look at it. Jefferson Bethke, when 23 years old had produced with some friends a spoken word video that he had put up on YouTube: "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" which had gone viral and had seven million views within the first 48 hours, (an event that probably changed his life) and as of this blog entry, 33.1 million views. And then it dawned on me, the reason why I am reading this is because many of young people are reading it too. But I suspect that this is a young man evading a calling into a seminary education because so much of the angst that he describes, was for me, resolved by the rigors of a seminary education, precisely the thing that he sort of disregards as perhaps part of an odious machinery of the religious establishment. What I am wary of, is that while it is possible for a young person to go through such episodic disillusionments, when the public at large seems to approve of this type of trajectory, driven by conflagration and met with success- it makes it that much harder to change one's mind or position: Change, a necessary component in growth, and spiritual growth, (sanctification) the objective of discipleship within the religious organization such as the church (whichever denomination it may be). Bethke polemicizes prosperity gospel, works based salvation, judgmental legalism, and some other easy pickings, but in the end produces a religious book that may confuse readers as he himself is found making dogmatic assertions with an appeal against authority, putting himself in a very difficult "sinking sand" kind of a position. Bravo nevertheless! I can't write about what I was doing when I was twenty three. At least not now, and not here.Anyway, Friar Pontifex responded to Bethke within the week back in 2012. A spoken word piece deserving of at least equal attention, but with an infinitesimal fraction of the hits that Bethke received.
