Perhaps you have heard about the time religious rulers asked Jesus what the greatest of the commandments was and he answered, ” ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  Did you know that it wasn’t Jesus but another popular rabbi of the time, Rabbi Hillel who was responsible for popularizing the golden rule among first century Jews?  Jesus would almost certainly have been familiar with this man and his teachings.  (Rabbi Hillel was also well known for teaching against judging others and opening the study of the Torah to those who were interested but could not pay.)  In fact, Rabbi Hillel took it a bit farther than Jesus did; he listed “Love your neighbor as yourself” as “the main idea of the Torah”.  Jesus put it next to loving God. 

I tell you all of this to point out that new, revolutionary ideas do not arrive whole-cloth out of the ether.  They get built on protests and tweaks and half-steps and built-up experience.  And it is in this context that I think we need to understand the viral phenomena that is “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus“.  It’s a spoken word piece by Jefferson Bethke a 22 year old from Seattle which is the subject of David Brook’s (poorly written, poorly executed) column today in the NYT.    Continue reading “Brooks, Dreher, DeYoung et al vs “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus””