:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Last week I watched my friends and colleagues share a video by a young man who claimed to love Jesus and hate religion. Some identified with his passion for Jesus and his desire to leave hypocrisy behind. Others weren’t so sure he could slam the religious practices that can be so central to following Jesus with sincerity, let alone the religious tradition that has been passed on to us.

Those who had their doubts about this young man suggested that religion isn’t just bad stuff. Religion can be anything from regular Bible reading to reading liturgy to fasting. We can do all of these things with either sincere or hypocritical hearts. In response to that, the supporters of the young man said, “You’re not defining religion in the same way as him.” To that I say: EXACTLY!

If anything, this young man has succeeded in proving that we need theology today, and for that, I thank him. Any time we see well-meaning holy fervor expressed with a jumble of confusing ideas, we see a need for theology. We can’t “just love” Jesus because no one has been able to do that—ideas always creep in no matter what. There is no pure way to love Jesus that can transcend the beliefs and practices that have been passed on to us. We always attach something “religious” to our worship, and if we try to break free from the past, we’ll just make up new religious things to pass on to others.

Theology helps us because it defines what we’re talking about. Theology constructs a common playing field where we can sort out what religion actually is and all that it means. Theology saves us from turning religion into this huge, enormous, awful embodiment of everything we hate.

This isn’t to say that theology wants to “save” religion. Rather, theology helps us see what it is and what it isn’t. In fact, every theologian I know approached his video from a similar perspective—trying to grapple with the ways this young man defined religion. If we fail to define religion, its advantages, and its disadvantages accurately, we’ll cut ourselves off from traditions, beliefs, and practices that have been instrumental in guiding Christians for centuries. We may also expose ourselves to reinventing Jesus into our own image without the stabilizing influence of tradition.

The downside of theology is that it can be quite dull. In fact, the problem with most theology texts is they begin by defining their terms at length and describing the current book’s position in an ongoing discussion. This is rather dull, thankless work that is hard to present to the average reader.

I struggled to present the basics of theology in an accessible format in Coffeehouse Theology only for one reviewer to say it was too simplistic to be of any use and another reviewer to say that I’d lost touch with how to communicate with normal human beings.

When we want to make sweeping statements about religion and our beliefs, we’re crossing into complex, daunting territory. I don’t slam this young man for his sincerity or desire to share his love for Jesus. I don’t think anyone is interested in that. Rather, this is a word of caution to make sure we know what we’re talking about when we speak of such large things as “religion.”

This Jesus vs. religion thing has been around for years. There were plenty of books and blog posts about it before YouTube was a sketch in a computer engineer’s notebook. As long as we have had this discussion, we have struggled to define what religion means. For most of us, religion has come to mean “anything we didn’t find life-giving in Christianity.”

Theologians can help us sort out religion, Jesus, and what it means to follow Jesus without tossing the good things that have been passed down to us. And even if we can’t figure out what they’re talking about in their thick books with tiny text, we should at least know that the number one rule for any theology discussion is this: define your terms.