Youthful perspectives on the Church
Earlier this year, a Mars
Hill Church (Seattle) member, Jeff Bethke, made a popular YouTube
video about the problem with today’s Christianity and its adherents:
Bethke is half-right and half-misguided. As Brian — a reader of the White Horse Inn blog —
noted:
The insidious nature of self-justification is
brought out well here. Although the “rapper” thinks he’s denouncing works
righteousness, he’s actually practicing it – and the worst possible way because
he thinks he understands grace.
‘J Fisk’, a young
Lutheran (LCMS) pastor (it seems), posted a response in a similar
style, noting Bethke’s correct observations about Christianity and correcting
his errors:
Back to the post at the White Horse Inn blog and the commentary there:
One of the really encouraging things today is seeing
people raised in “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” coming to understand and
embrace the gospel. At the same time, the antithesis between “religion” and
“grace” (or being “spiritual but not religious”) is still trapped in its own
kind of moralism. It fails to recognize that Christ came to fulfill rather than
abolish the Law and religion. If religion is a community with certain doctrines
and practices, then certainly Christianity is a religion. It’s bad religion
that Jesus abolishes, because he gives himself as the Life of the world in the
gospel through preaching and sacrament. Take away this religion and you are
just left once again with a religion of your own making.
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