A recent You Tube video by Jefferson Bethke has garnered an amazing 10 million plus hits in four days. It is a poem in verse in which the artist compares Jesus to manmade religion. Religion, he says, is man-made and hollow, binding us up as slaves, while Jesus he reasons is God’s Son who has come to set us free. You can see the video and get the lyrics below.
As you can imagine, there has been a lot of talk about the controversial video from all sides. Many theologians argue that there is nothing wrong in fact with the Christian religion, it is just the framework with which we worship the Son of God. Many say that Bethke is being inconsistent in the poem in this regard.
I’m not so interested in what theologians have to say as much as I am interested in the non religious among us. An interesting, if vile, counter-argument has been made on You Tube by a gentleman who calls himself the Amazing Atheist. (I use the term “gentleman” loosely here.) In a You Tube rant included below he breaks down the poem line by line. (Warning: strong language content including the F-bomb every third word or so.)
While I think it is true that Jesus did in fact establish a new religion rather than oppose all religion, I find the Amazing Atheist’s commentary so vulgar and hard to watch that he smashes his own argument to pieces. All told there is a reason why Bethke’s You Tube poem has over 11 million total views as of this writing and the Amazing Atheist’s rebuttal only has a little shy of half a million. Bethke’s amazing message is positive and that’s what people want to see. The Amazing Atheist is a potty- mouthed freak who is easy to disregard.
But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself. I went to The Atheist’s Facebook page to find out more about him, and found myself unable to click the like button. That’s one FB friend I really don’t need.
See the Amazing Atheist at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBo7Z_abiLE&feature=related
Jefferson Bethke’s poem is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY&feature=player_embedded
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