“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?…”

With those bold words, so began Jefferson Bethke’s provocative spoken-word YouTube poem, ‘Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus’. After being uploaded in January 2012, it stunningly racked up 7 million views within 48 hours and 16 million within a few weeks. Bethke, an unsuspecting twentysomething student from Tacoma, had gone viral.

The essence of the poem sees Bethke contrast the Jesus he finds in the Scriptures with the ‘religion’ (as he calls it) that he observes around him stateside. Unsurprisingly some people loved it, and some were incensed. Evidently he’d put his finger on something that resonated, and now nearly 26 million have watched him online.

With those kind of numbers behind the guy, you don’t have to be much of a cynic to infer why Thomas Nelson Publishers thought there was a book in this. Now, nearly two years on from the video going online, Bethke’s first book is here, ‘Jesus > Religion – Why He is So Much Better than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough’. Interestingly the breadth of Bethke’s appeal can be seen with some surprising names amongst the book’s commendations: Republican Mike Huckabee, Real Madrid footballer Kaka, and even Russell Moore from Southern Baptist Convention. But before I share a review, why not watch the original video:

Essentially the book is a punchy expansion and elaboration on the theme of the video, but through the narrative lens of Bethke’s own life-story. His aim is to introduce readers to the “dangerous” Jesus of the Scriptures that changed his life, simultaneously exposing the shackles of ‘religion’. As he says, “I want to push you a little closer to Jesus”.

You might think from the title, or perhaps the video, that Bethke is gonna be proposing some sort of commitment-lite, doctrine-shy ‘spirituality’, but that’s far from his aim. As much as he hates self-righteousness dressed up in Christian clothes, so Bethke also has it in for any cheap-grace, Jeremiah-33:11-printed-on-your-T-shirt, ‘feel-good’ distortion of Christianity as well.

‘The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be, principally fixed upon the heart.’ 

With that bold statement so begins John Flavel’s ‘Keeping the Heart’, which Christian Focus have reprinted in time for it to be one of the exit-books at EMA 2012 last month. Flavel was an English Puritan in the seventeenth century, and this fairly short work, first published in 1668 as ‘A Saint Indeed’, is essentially an extended exposition of Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23, ‘keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life’.

You can pick up books on how a Christian should act in all kinds of matters, but Flavel argues that there is nothing more important than for a Christian to be aware of their own heart. By ‘heart’ Flavel simply means the inner person, who we really are, and he proceeds to dispense with great care and consideration a meticulous probing of what we’re about: our motivations, desires, affections. Unsurprisingly Flavel is crystal clear that we first need our hearts to be regenerated by God as we hear the gospel and respond in faith, i.e. we need to be converted. But as Christians with ‘new hearts’ we must seek to ‘keep them’, i.e. guard them, rooting out sinful thought and fixing them upon God, and this is the task to which Flavel urges us. So striking is his emphasis, that I found myself naturally comparing it with our culture, and feeling that in a lot of our modern Christianity we allow our hearts to roam pretty much unchecked. How often do I inspect my own motivations? How often do I examine that thought-process, or consider why I acted the way I did in that situation?

But not only does Flavel focus on the heart rather than externals, it also becomes evident that he is particularly perceptive in grasping the way our hearts work. The Puritans are often known as ‘doctors of the soul’, and as you read Flavel you can see why the nickname is deserved. The bulk of the book is the third section, ‘Special Seasons in the Life of a Christian which Require our Utmost Diligence in Keeping the Heart’. For me, this is where his understanding of our hearts really shines through. To give you a sample of these seasons, he picks out ‘the time of prosperity’, ‘the time of adversity’, and ‘the time of doubting and of spiritual darkness’, as well as eight others. With each season he flags up particular temptations to which our hearts may be especially vulnerable, and particular truths that our hearts need to keep especially close.

I’ve found it a very helpful wake-up call to the importance of watching the motivations and desires of my own heart. It is amazing, when you stop to think about it, that we could ever envisage ‘religion’ to consist simply of external actions and performance or, worse still, that these could be a means by which God’s favour rests upon us! Such a stance completely bypasses our hearts, and thus conveniently evades the question of whether there is anything in our affections and desires that just might suggest otherwise! We need to get real, and desire for God to transform even the most inner part of us.

Because of its pastoral and personal nature, I imagine this book is the kind from which real benefit comes as I dip back into it time and time again, particularly as I’m now alert to the reality that each season of my life will bring with it different ‘heart-challenges’. But ultimately Flavel has shown me afresh the magnitude of my hearts affect upon all else that I do. He is arguing for us to be people who are in ‘frequent observation of the frame of the heart’, and that means I need to make changes, from the way I approach my daily ‘quiet time’, to being more self-aware in particular conversations, to how I review each day.

I recommend it as good medicine for the soul. The text is actually available online for free here, but you can also get the new paper copy from 10ofthose here.

Tonight marks the first night of a new Christianity Explored course at my church in Cheltenham (although wonderfully there’s also at least two courses currently running in local homes and workplaces led by church members). If you want to find out more about our course, then do get in touch, or just turn up at Costa Coffee, on the corner of the Prom in Cheltenham at 7.45pm tonight (17th April, and any subsequent Tuesday) – anyone’s welcome, and of course it’s free. Alternatively find a course near you here. It got me thinking about why I think Christianity Explored is so great. Here’s 10 reasons…

1. It ‘lets the gospel tell the gospel’ and its all about Jesus. This is the great mantra of C.E., and it’s brilliant! Attractively and unashamedly C.E. is focused on the person of Jesus and knowing Him, and the format focuses on Jesus walking off the pages of Mark’s gospel. Its not about Christianity as a set of rules, or simply an experience, or merely a philosophical position. Chiefly Christianity is about Jesus – a person – and so C.E. seeks to help people realise that, breaking down wrong stereotypes and presenting ‘the good news of Jesus the Christ’, as Mark 1:1 puts it.

2. It is loving and faithful on sin and sin’s consequences, and thus magnifies Jesus’ cross and God’s grace. That is, the material does not shy away from the fact that each of us have rejected God, and so deserve judgment. Big and often uncomfortable truths. And my heart naturally recoils from clarity in this area, but I know they are true (and true about me), and so I know that to be truly loving I need to be clear on these matters. The writers of C.E. know that same temptation and so have produced a course that is sincere, winsome, but also unashamed about sin, and hell. As Rico Tice, who presents and co-writes the material, has said ‘Christianity Explored as an experience often stands or falls on whether an individual has grasped grace. However, to really understand grace we have first to see the horrors of our sin. We must see that sin leads to judgment, where we will experience God’s wrath and ultimately find ourselves in hell, unless we have trusted in the rescue of the Lord Jesus (1 Thessalonians 1.10).’

With everything we run as a church, we need to ask are we being faithful to the biblical gospel, but surely particularly so with our evangelistic events and courses; does this, yes attractively and winsomely, but also faithfully and clearly present what has been entrusted to us? Sin and wrath are the great pressure-points, and even when we use the term ‘sin’, the temptation is to redefine it and disconnect it from an offence against God, so that it just becomes personal problems, or relational conflict. And if the material we’re using does that then as leaders we will be also, and so the people we’re teaching will be unclear too. C.E. helps us steer clear of that error and so, I think, be both more loving friends and also more faithful stewards of the glorious gospel.

3. It teaches people to read the Bible for themselves. In my experience lots of people have the impression the Bible is ‘unreadable’. This isn’t helped by teaching, evangelistic or not, that comes across as if the Bible is some magic book that can’t be read normally and requires heaps of ‘special knowledge’. I love how C.E. takes people through Mark’s gospel, bit-by-bit, and shows people that they too can read the Bible for themselves, and encounter Christ in his word. This is much better than either proof-texting, or a presentation of “the gospel” that doesn’t seem to be based in any biblical truth. Its shows an encouraging level of confidence that God’s word, through the Spirit’s power, really is powerful.