It seems Tebow’s run may be coming to an end, but not before Focus on the Family took his playoff opportunity to share the gospel message.

Though not mentioned, according to Focus’ president and CEO, Jim Daly, has noted that Tebow is “the cultural phenomenon that inspired it”. He goes on to note:

We will hear about shoving religion down people’s throats, but if it’s OK to shove Doritos down people’s throats, and cars and everything else, we have the right to advertise, too.

And, of course, it’s already begun. On one message board, “dzerres” refers to the commercial as brainwashing child abuse:

Just think how much better this world would be if kids couldn’t be brainwashed with all of this religious nonsense. There would be no girls in burka’s, no silly turbans, no nonsensical felt stove pipe hats, no bans on dancing or music, no horse buggies, no polygamy, no condemnation, intolerance or the morality police. Ah, I can dream. This commercial shows you exactly what child abuse looks like.

No matter how you slice it, what a bummer when the promise of everlasting life – not to mention the many other insensitive allusions to religious life – is interpreted this way.

Indeed, there are two sides to every story. Or, in this case, YouTube video.

Chances are you’re one of the 9,487,981 (and counting) who’s seen the spoken word video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” by Jefferson Bethke (aka bball1989).

His YouTube Channel features videos of Mark Driscoll and Acts 29 buddy Matt Chandler as well as a video response to Rob Bell’s Love Wins promo (wherein he steals most of Bell’s material but inserts his own theological perspective here and there, ultimately making his response less than coherent).

I first saw “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” on Wednesday, I think, when a number of my friends and coworkers shared it on The Facebook, praising it for it’s deconstruction of institutional Christianity, that, as bball1989 states, would rather build churches than feed the hungry. From this perspective, I can agree. And I’m convinced that John Caputo would be proud. Really.

So, yes, in Bethke’s formulation:

Jesus > Religion

Jesus is better than institutional faith. Or, as I recall it from elementary school math, the alligator mouth likes Jesus more than religion, which is a little weird now that I write it down. But you know what I mean, right?

On the other hand, however, Bethke ends up undermining his anti-religion project by arguing for a life lived wholeheartedly after Jesus. To offer an oversimplified response: That is religion. It’s how life is lived. This is why there was no word for religion until the 13th century, when life began to be fragmented between different spheres and a word had to be created to refer to one’s beliefs and pattern of life.

In this sense (which Bethke seems to misunderstand):

Jesus > Religion

“Wait,” you’re thinking, “that’s the same as above.” Yes, but this time, the greater than symbol is not only that, it’s an arrow. Jesus points to a better religion. Recall Jesus’ response to the religious scholars of his day, when asked about the greatest commandment:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22.37-40 NIV)

Yes, the religious scholars of Jesus’ day had some things wrong. But that doesn’t make Jesus’ response anti-religious. Quite the opposite.

Tony Jones hits the nail on the head (albeit in a rather snarky manner – but hey, I guess he’s earned it with a PhD from Princeton):

Religion is simply the social and psychological framework by which human beings organize their experience of the Divine…

It’s naïve to think that billions of people will experience the Divine, but they won’t try to organize and categorize that experience. We do, and we find that our experience overlaps with the experience of others. We join with those others, and we find patterns of speech, symbols, and behavior that help us articulate our experiences.

And it’s not bad that we do this. It is, Mr. Bethke, inevitable.

I’ve been thinking about it in light of Slavoj Žižek’s thoughts in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, where he posits that what’s needed in our world is not less violence, but more. By “violence” though, he does not mean physical brutality. On the contrary, Žižek states that we must do violence to our inherited ideologies in order to engage the underlying systemic causes of physical brutality.

Is this not the “violence” needed when high ranking military and governmental officials are shocked that Marines would urinate on the dead bodies of their enemies (or are they shocked that someone videotaped it!) but have no problem with the reality of the dead bodies themselves?

To be clear: It is terrible that United States Marines urinated on the bodies of others. Isn’t it worse, however, that they’d just killed these men?

Jefferson’s summation puts it into perspective:

More American troops now kill themselves than die in combat, and female soldiers are more likely to be sexually assaulted by a colleague than to be killed by the enemy. In short, the kids aren’t all right, and it’s time for everyone to stop being shocked when they behave in abnormal, terrifying ways. War is an awful thing that irrevocably changes and destroys people, and it yields horrific, destructive behavior. If you’d like to live in a world in which soldiers don’t pee on their dead enemies, then it’s your duty to fight for a world in which soldiers aren’t killing people in the first place.

Thankfully, even such a terrible atrocity hasn’t disrupted the ongoing peace talks.

For whatever reason, however, I’m feeling a bit different this year.

Maybe it’s having become a father and all the ways I could be better at it. Maybe it’s a new season of ministry at the church. Maybe it’s a renewed focus on some research I’ve been doing.

For whatever reason, I’m feeling like this New Year is a gift.

I can’t help but think of Daniel Pinchbeck’s mind bending book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, in which he describes the Mayan winged-snake being as a unity of heaven and earth. Though I got a little lost in some of his examinations of alien life forms and hallucinogenic drugs, I couldn’t help but appreciate the connection between the ancient Mayans’ hopes for this heavenly/earthly creature and my own understanding of Jesus’ incarnation.

This Quetzalcoatl, it was believed, wouldn’t herald the end of the world as much a new beginning. My own religious commitment causes me to pray and weep for the same:

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21.5, NASB)

So, I’ll be posting on a few resolutions in the coming days, if only to help myself work out why I’m drawn to them. Until then, Woody Guthrie’s rather commendable resolutions for 1942 (via nevermindthebricolage):

And, of course, Death Cab for Cutie: