Jesus, Jocks, and the Jukebox

The title of my blog is Jesus, Jocks, and the Jukebox. I remember how psyched I was when I thought of that name. I thought it was perfect. It was unique, it gave me seemingly endless possibilities for my blog posts, and did I ever love the alliteration.

Throughout the last few months I've loved posting on this blog, and I love that people actually read it. But once I realized that people were reading it, I began to have less of a desire to focus on the first "J" in my blogs clever name.

There's been a video circulating my social media feeds over the past couple of days called, "Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus". The title caught my eye, and I decided to see what it was all about, and I guess that's the reason for this post. And to really understand what I'm talking about here, it would be helpful to take a look at the video.



A lot of people have asked me in the past, "Are you religious?" For the sake of simplicity I usually go with "yes", and sometimes go on to say that I'm a Christian. To most people there isn't a difference between religion and loving Jesus, and unfortunately there are religious people who support that idea. But what about me? How does my life fit into the misconception?

In the video, the guy says, "Religion is like spraying perfume on a casket". That's quite powerful imagery for me.

I want to be able to post this video and say "Yes! THIS is my Christianity. This is what it's supposed to be like! I'm not religious, I just love Jesus."

But the truth is, I am religious.

I wish I could post this video to explain to people THIS is what my faith is about, and that THIS represents me. But that wouldn't be true.

Intellectually I couldn't agree more with this video, but my life would tell you otherwise.

But the good news is: in Jesus there is grace.

This video sparked a lot of emotion for me, but most of all it breathed humility into my life.

The title of my post is "The Neglected J". Unfortunately, my blog title is not the only area in my life where I seemed to have neglected the Jesus part.

So obviously there's an issue here. And the issue is that I'm religious.

The video says Jesus and religion are on opposite spectrums, and as hard as it is for me to admit, some days I find myself on the side opposite of Jesus. My hope is that I will no longer be part of the problem, but I will soon contribute to the solution. My hope is that I can cross the bridge made by grace to the other side of the spectrum. That way, I can truly say, "I'm not religious, I just love Jesus."