You may have seen this video in the last few days:
Perhaps you also saw The Amazing Atheist’s response (contains bad language):
I sent the guy the following message; perhaps others might find it interesting too.
Hi,
I think you’re right that Bethke isn’t very clear about the difference between Jesus and religion.
I think you’d probably already made your mind up that it was a load of rubbish before you watched it, but in case you’re actually an honest enquirer, I’d like to have a go at explaining a bit more clearly what I think Bethke was trying to get across.
You summed up Christianity as follows: “the only way to redeem yourself is… you gotta go to church, and there’s this book called the Bible, it’s full of a lot of neat stuff, you gotta believe all that, and then you can go to heaven”.
Bethke was trying to say that actually, going to heaven does not depend on how often you go to church, or how much time you spend reading the Bible. The key line is “religion says do; Jesus says done.”
God doesn’t want you to do anything. He wants to demonstrate His immense love by the things He does for you.
You rightly point out that Jesus isn’t just a pal to play Xbox with. He does want us to love Him more than our mother and father. If He was just a random guy who lived in the desert 2000 years ago, it would be an outrageous demand. C.S. Lewis would be pleased that you haven’t fallen into the common mistake of calling Jesus a good teacher, but nothing more. If Jesus wasn’t the Son of God, he was either evil or crazy (or both).
However, if you could, try to imagine for a moment that God does actually exist, and that He gave you everything you enjoy in this world. Perhaps you could imagine Him like a father who gives his children loads of great gifts. Let’s say a man gave his son an iPad for Christmas (not as valuable as the loving family God’s given you, but still a fairly decent present). If the kid loved the iPad more than the dad who gave it to him, to the point where the dad asks the kid to put the iPad down and spend some time with his old man and the kid’s response is to tell his dad to go f*** himself, I think you’d agree the dad would be justified in being a bit annoyed.
So, if that’s your response to God, do you think it’s unfair that He might eventually say enough is enough and cut you off? (Note: I think the traditional picture of hell is a bit distorted from what the Bible teaches; no one will be punished more than they deserve, but justice does dictate that there is a price to pay for our rebellion against our creator.)
The difference between religion and Jesus is that religion says we have to try to earn forgiveness from God, but Jesus says no, I want to show off the amount of love I have for you, I will take the cost of forgiving you. I just ask that you will accept it as a free gift.
Hope this helps.
