I Love Tim Keller But I Don’t Hate Religion
Religion gets a bad press these days, and not just from secular people. Everywhere you turn, there seem to be Christians lining up to denounce religious people, and to explain why Christianity isn't a religion at all. Jesus wasn't religious, we're told. The problem with the Pharisees was that they were too religious. A couple of weeks ago, a YouTube video went viral which began with the words, "what if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?" In many circles, the word "religion" is increasingly being used interchangeably with "legalism", and assumed to be referring to something that is "dead". And so on.
Well, the push back is on. Kevin DeYoung, at the Gospel Coalition, wrote a very insightful response to Jeff Bethke (the young guy who made the video), and then Jeff replied in a wonderfully humble way, admitting that aspects of his poem were not well-expressed, giving a tremendous example of how to handle correction, and living out the exact ethics his video was designed to encourage. The essence of Kevin’s critique was that Jesus was not really anti-religion - he went to synagogue, observed Jewish festivals, founded the church, inaugurated sacraments, preached a message and summoned people to follow him, urged the discipleship, teaching and baptism of his followers, and so on - and that religion is a neutral word in Scripture, which can have positive or negative connotations depending on the context. It’s easy to see why people might want Jesus to hate religion (it puts clear blue water between him and something our culture finds tedious or judgmental, and it paints Jesus as the ever-fashionable anti-establishment radical), but unless we are going to distort the meaning of the word altogether, so that it basically means “self-righteousness” or “justification by works”, then it’s hard to argue from Scripture that he did.
The puzzle for me, then - given how much I respect him as a preacher, writer and thinker - is why Tim Keller says this sort of thing so much. I was reading a chapter of King’s Cross this morning, and in just a handful of pages encountered the following statements:
Jesus declares not that he has come to reform religion but that he’s here to end religion and replace it with himself.
[The Jewish leaders] are tribal, judgmental, and self-obsessed instead of caring about the man. Why? Religion.
One paradigm is religion, which - as we observed before - is fundamentally advice.
In religion the purpose of obeying the law is to assure you that you’re all right with God.
[Christianity is] no kind of religion at all.
That’s just a few examples; there are many more. In comparison with Tim Keller, to be honest, Jeff Bethke has been low-balling it.
I say this is a puzzle for two reasons. Firstly, it seems to get Jesus wrong, as I noted just now. Jesus engaged in Jewish religious observances, initiated Christian ones, and his brother spoke highly of practices common to both; “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). For James, and Jesus, it is not religion that causes tribalism, judgmentalism and self-obsession, but the far more basic sin of pride. Keller knows all this, of course, but this leads me to wonder why he uses this word, “religion”, when it isn’t really what he means (he could have replaced it with the words “self-righteousness” or “legalism” in the above quotations and it would have expressed his meaning far better). In fact, given that Keller is likely to be far more influential amongst pastors and leaders than Jeff Bethke, you might expect more reviews of Keller’s book, and his (generally outstanding) preaching ministry, to have pointed this out.
Secondly, it also seems to get Judaism wrong. You don’t have to be a signed up member of the New Perspective to have concerns about the statement, “in religion the purpose of obeying the law is to assure you that you’re all right with God.” Again, unless religion is defined as “self-righteousness” - which is not how either the Bible or the Dictionary defines it - this is simply not true. For Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and many others, the purpose of obeying the law and keeping other religious observances was not to assure themselves that they were right with God (and they certainly didn’t see the law as “fundamentally advice”), but to live faithfully in response to the covenant that God himself had made with them, by grace. When the Psalmist says, “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97), he is not trying to assure himself that he is in the right before God; he is delighting in knowing God’s will, and living according to it out of gratitude and joy. So unless we are to define religion in such a way as to exclude both ancient Judaism and Christianity, which would seem both counterintuitive and rather bizarre, there are significant difficulties with Keller’s description of “religion” as the problem, borne out of introspective self-righteousness and leading to parochialism, pride and navel-gazing. At best, this Jesus vs Religion approach reinforces a common distortion of Judaism of the type Moore and Sanders rightly critiqued; at worst, it can (and, in my experience, frequently does) lead to a new sort of Pharisaism, whereby individuals and churches thank God that they are not like those religious people over there, not to mention a disdain for works in general, and a muddled message to unbelievers (“this lot gather weekly, worship, catechise, use sacraments, and call themselves a church, but they say Christianity’s not a religion? It sure looks like one.”)
I am a big fan of Tim Keller. I’ve read his books, been to his church, downloaded his sermons, blogged and done seminars on his way of doing apologetics, and I’m writing this post while my Leadership Training students study his church growth paper all around me. As a man and as a minister, I give him a huge thumbs up. But I think that an uncritical acceptance of what he says about Jesus, the law and religion risks causing people to misunderstand all three. As Jeff Bethke might otherwise have said, I love Tim Keller, but I don’t hate religion.
———————————————————————————————
Andrew’s next book, If God Then What? Wondering Aloud about Truth, Origins and Redemption, will be released in April, published by IVP.
Comments
By Stephen Harding on 06/02/2012 at 13:29
Another wadge escaped Wilson. Well played, sir. Well played.
By Martin Clay on 06/02/2012 at 14:20
Thanks Andrew.
I have always been a bit puzzled by our fear of the word religion. Religion I understand it means a binding to something which I hold as sacred. in which case as a Christian I bind myself to accepting the Bible as God’s word over me defining truth, behaviour, and my outlook on everything. It is the revelation of God to me. If that is the case then religion is not the opposite of faith or the opposite of grace, but religion is the opposite of superstition, which because it is not bound to any superior revelation is a collection of irrational fears with no coherence.
By Sam on 06/02/2012 at 15:05
What about Driscoll?
Mark Driscoll has been doing the whole “ditch religion, come to Jesus” stuff for years. So Keller isn’t the only one.
But yes Andrew, I agree wholeheartedly with all of the above! Great post.
By Scot McKnight on 06/02/2012 at 15:09
Andrew,
I have observed the same with Keller’s comments about religion. For him, religion refers to performance and what Jesus came to give was himself, to be received by faith through grace.
So, this leads to a question: How do you define “religion”? I sense you are using the term for external institutional dimensions of a faith, the YouTube viral captured that religion=institution meme, and so you may be passing ships in the night.
In my years in reading Keller I sense he’s using the common pejorative term (religion) because it resonates and he’s shifting where the real problem is (not externals but heart) and then showing Jesus has a better way.
I agree with you: Keller’s view of Judaism is unhistorical too often. He equates it with Protestants bogeyman. (But brother your statements sound very much like Sanders, covenant nomism, and the new perspective on Judaism.)
By Andrew Wilson on 06/02/2012 at 15:43
@Sam: fair enough.
@Scot: does that mean I’ve been “outed”? :o) Spooky that you posted so similarly today ...
By Zak Lacey on 06/02/2012 at 16:33
Surely the reason, Driscoll, Bethke et al use the term “religion” as they do is because of what the term “religion” conjures up in the mind of unbelievers they’re trying to reach?
Obviously when the term “religion” is defined correctly Christianity is a religion. However, in the minds of almost everybody outside of the church, surely “religion” means something quite different from the gospel. In the minds of those outside the church “religion” almost exclusively links performance with gaining good standing with God. Therefore when it comes to reaching unbelievers we have to meet them where they are and if that means distancing ourselves from the term religion in order to preach the gospel of grace then so be it. We can re educate people as to what the term religion actually means after they’ve met Jesus…..
By Mark Amos on 06/02/2012 at 17:33
When I first watched Jeff Bethke’s video I have to admit I liked it. I think that this is because my thinking has been shaped by theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who talk about religion as something very particular: not a form of legalism, but rather an institutional power over people’s lives (and here the context of the Nazi state is fundamentally important). In this context Bonhoeffer’s ‘Religionless Christianity’ seems to be of infinite worth. This potentially fits quite well with New Perspectives on Paul which see continuity on the one hand Jesus affirming some aspects of Judaism and on the other a certain subversion of those forms of Second Temple Judaism that were somewhat institutionalised.
By Andy Johnston on 06/02/2012 at 21:12
Chambers Dictionary defines religion as “devoted fidelity” and religionism as “religiosity” or “bigotry”. Problem solved!
By Ben Atkins on 06/02/2012 at 23:08
I wonder if we have to bear in mind where Keller’s coming from with his usage of the term ‘religion’; his culture, his ministry, his surroundings. What he wants to communicate by ‘religion’ may be significantly different to what we perceive by it in our own culture, ministry and surroundings.
In the evangelistic & apologetic context of ‘The Reason for God’ in the post-Christian, 21st century, New York; it is clear and appropriate, I’d say.
By John Crosby on 07/02/2012 at 01:02
@ Zak - That’s not what I have found any non-christians I know to think of the word religion. What has been particularly amusing to me about the recent(ish) christian war on ‘religion’ is that I have never heard a non-christian describe religion as anything like ‘gaining a good standing with God through performance’.
Across the board my non-christian friends have always seemed to think of ‘religion’ as pretty much how the dictionary defines it (almost as though dictionaries were produced according to common understandings of words). I I would be genuinely fascinated if anyone has actually researched these apparent perceptions surrounding the word?
The word ‘church’ however. Well now I hear that’s got some pretty negative connotations. Perhaps we could win some non-christians over if we all hated that?
By Rory Allen on 07/02/2012 at 01:13
@Ben. Absolutely spot on. Whenever I look at religion in England it seems much harder to apply Keller’s thoughts here than it does in the US; where religion leads far more commonly towards extremism. The same could even be said of Northern Ireland!...
By Zak Lacey on 07/02/2012 at 10:06
@ John - I’m genuinely fascinated that our experience seems to be so different. As I said almost all unbelievers I talk to have the notion that “religion” and therefore Christianity is meritocratic in nature.
As for your remark about church, I never said we should hate religion, just that it is (in my opinion), acceptable to distance ourselves from an erroneous definition of the term in order to preach the true gospel.
By Jonny Mellor on 07/02/2012 at 11:41
I am amazed at how a small youtube video has caused such a furore! Jeff Bethke was probably intending to make a simple gospel presentation that evangelicals would all nod along to and it seems he’s started a war! I find it all rather bizarre for a couple of reasons:
1) This seems like an argument about language more than about theology. The fact that most critics of Bethke (and in this case Keller) don’t seem to have grasped (in my opinion) is that words can mean different things at different times. A word can have different connotations even when used several times in the same speech or piece of writing. A good example would be Paul’s use of the term ‘the law’ in his letters. At times, he seems to be referring to the 10 Commandments, at times to the entire Old Testament law and at other times to a process of achieving righteousness through works. I don’t think that Bethke or Keller should have to apologise for using a word in a way that other people might misunderstand, especially when they both define what they mean by that term in their poetry/writing. This is especially true of Bethke when you consider that he is a poet and if poets aren’t allowed to play around with words and provoke reactions using ambiguity then we might as well ban poetry and force everyone with any theological comment to make to limit it to systematic theologies.
2) Surely they have a biblical permit to use the term ‘religion’ in this way. Yes, some uses of the word ‘religion’ in scripture are referring to a set of disciplines and even rituals that we should embrace and love. However, at other times, the connotation is very different. Although it is a different word, I think that we can take Paul’s use of ‘the law’ as a helpful example. Paul can hold ‘the law’ in great esteem at one moment, for example, spending most of Romans 7 defending the law from the claim that it itself was sin (Romans 7:7). But at other points, he asserts that the law is finished: ‘Christ is the end of the law so there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.’ (Rom 10:4) If Paul can use these forceful statements about the law (which is ‘holy, righteous and good’ (Rom 7:12)), surely Keller and Bethke are allowed to make similar statements about religion.
After all Paul is using the term ‘the law’ in Romans 10:12 in exactly the same way as Keller and Bethke are using ‘religion’ to refer to justification through works.
Phew! Glad to get that off my chest. Thanks for the article though Andrew. Most interesting.
By Ian Jukes on 07/02/2012 at 12:18
I agree with Zak Lacey (above). I’m pretty sure in the minds of Keller and Driscoll it’s because the word “religion” in our day has become synonymous with self-righteousness and hypocricy.
That is how all my friends, Christian and otherwise, understand the word.
Keller and Driscoll are communicators of the gospel. They are using the word with it’s cultural understanding to communicate truth about the gospel to people who understand it differently from the biblical definition. That’s not puzzling to me.
By David on 07/02/2012 at 19:27
Compare: (1) “Christianity isn’t a religion”. (2) “Newfrontiers isn’t a denomination”.
:p
By Colin Perkins on 07/02/2012 at 20:59
Hi Andrew; I’m not replying to this post but to your paper you wrote in 2008 about the essential gospel - can I just say how incredibly helpful I’ve found it, it distills a lot of where I’m at in my thinking and what I’ve been trying to think through in the last few years. I’ve come from a reformed evangelical (NFI) background but have recently been drawn to the writings of people like Yoder, Hauerwas, Volf and Girard, and in reading their works I’ve found myself thinking that the Gospel is clearly much wider and deeper than I’d previously thought. Equally, that the cross is far deeper and wider. I am really encouraged by this paper and think that it’s a perspective that is worth repeating over and over. Ever thought of turning that paper into a book? Thanks for all you’ve written on this site, even when I don’t agree I always find your work very interesting, well-presented, and extremely gracious. Keep up the good work!
By Nathan Lambert on 08/02/2012 at 10:53
I agree 100 % with Jonny Mellor. Particularly on point 1.
What’s more, all of this talk of Jesus instituting things has maybe got Jesus really wrong. Was it for institution’s sake that Jesus created the church, discipline, sacrements etc ? Surely that just doesn’t square with what God has to say about rituals (even the ones he instituted in the OT), and the way Jesus went about his life. Jesus was all about relationships. Cleanliness or the Sabbath were ditched when people’s salvation or wellness was at stake. I can’t see him putting things in place for the sake of the institution, but rather to create a space where community relationships with God were favored. The Church isn’t an institution but a gathering of people. He never said to meet on Sundays. It was natural for the early Church to meet every day. What else would they do ? They were a collective of people forver changed ! He said to remember him whenever we eat bread and drink wine. It’s a symbol, but we turned it into a ritual (and I should know having spent 11 years in the CofE). Discipline is there for the common good of believers, including for the good of the person being disciplined. I don’t call that religion. Then again, my definition is influenced by what I’ve seen, been and heard. It’s a word who’s meaning is evolving…
By Will John on 21/03/2012 at 20:25
I’ve always found the whole ‘we don’t do religion, we just follow Jesus’ angle a bit weird. I realise that we’re trying to avoid the connotations that the word ‘religion’ has for some people but it’s like saying swede isn’t a vegetable just because the person we are talking to might have been forced to eat it as a child. If we want to distinguish it from other vegetables we just have to be precise in our description of it’s sweet, buttery nature in contrast to the mushy, bitter, farty character of brussel sprouts, thus avoiding the ‘v’ word altogether isn’t necessary. I suppose it is true that although all vegetables contribute to a healthy diet (some may cause indigestion), we believe that not all religions lead to God so in this sense Christianity is in a category of its own.