Pastorisms

I'm going to start using a new word - "Pastorism".  A Pastorism is a catchy phrase often used by pastors to communicate a spiritual truth, but does so in an imbalanced way.  This imbalance is because the catchy phrase will communicate something that is true, and also suggest something that is false.  An example would be "No creed but Christ".  Sounds nice right? Sounds so good lots of churches use it as their creed...uh, wait a minute... See the problem?  The truth in this phrase is that Christians follow Christ, but the phrase also suggests that we don't like statements of belief, which is exactly what this statement is.  Another pastorism would be "No book but the Bible".  I might ask if this phrase is found in the Bible or in other books. Another example is "Where the Bible speaks we speak, where the Bible doesn't speak, we don't speak." Which verse talks about stem cell research again?  I think you can see from these examples that pastorisms say something that has a very good overall message, like being Christ centered or Bible centered, but at the same time say something that is false.

This is basically how I see the video by a young Christian named Jefferson Bethke titled "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus".  The video went viral a week ago and I'm a week late, but so was my birth so whatever.  Check out the video on youtube if you haven't seen it.  It's really popular.  It reached 14 millioin views after only 8 days.  There's a lot of religious and non-religious people worked up about the video.  Some Christians say he's speaking the truth, others say he's preaching false doctrine.  It's actually pretty heated.  I think it's just an issue of pastorisms.  Have you ever heard the phrase "Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship"?  I've heard it about a thousand times, and it's probably the biggest pastorism out there.  What it's trying to communicate - that external rituals and traditions don't save you - is good.  But it's also saying something else - that rituals and traditions and everything else external (and internal) about religion is bad.  This is simply false.  Christianity is more then the external practice of religion yes, but it's not less.  

For instance Jesus hates hypocritical religion (Mt. 23) but James talks about "pure and undefiled religion" (James 1:27) and I have a hunch that he's referring to Christianity.  I remember one of my professors from LABTS saying "if calling Christianity a religion is good enough for James then it's good enough for me."  And I agree.  I really like Jefferson Bethke, I think he's sincerely trying to get the gospel out there.  He's just a victim of a common pastorism.  

If you're interested, watch the video and then check out Kevin DeYoung's blog where he critiques it. 

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/13/does-jesus-hate-religion-kinda-sorta-not-really/

Interestingly, Jeff Bethke actually responds to Deyoung and you can read some of their back and forth emails on the blog.  Bethke shows himself to be very humble and teachable.  AWESOME!

one more thing, Jeff Bethke says that religion calls you "slave" but Jesus calls you "friend".  Kevin DeYoung has no problem with this, but do you? Ever read a book called "Slave" by John MacArthur? I'm looking at you Zach!

p.s. I totally stole the word "pastorism" from Greg Koukl.  Props to him