What is a "Christian?"

A friend recently reflected on what it means to be a Christian. This seemed to me to be a worthwhile exercise, so here are a few brief thoughts on the matter. First, and most obvious I think, is that a person saying she is a Christian does not make it so. In fact, as my friend David Dark points out, calling oneself a Christian seems a tad presumptuous, even tacky, to use one of the late, great Will Campbell's favorite words. Second, and equally obvious, is that regular attendance at a religious institution's services does not a Christian make. Consuming products that have been labelled "Christian" for marketing purposes, whether they be formal services, music, television, books, education, jewelry, or Jesus fish magnets, does not make a person a Christian. Products cannot be Christian. Third, a person is not a Christian simply because he believes in God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. Jesus made this clear when he stated that not everyone who called him Lord would participate in God's kingdom. James reiterates that belief, on its own, is of no use. Everybody believes something, including demons, according to James. Belief, like religious talk, is cheap. What makes a Christian, it seems to me, is doing God's will. What counts is not what we think about Jesus, but whether we actually do what he said. Jesus made this plain on several occasions. As noted above, he concluded his Sermon on the Mount with the admonition that what counts is what we do, not what we say. That in order to have a house built on a rock, we have to put Jesus' teachings into practice. He reiterates this point in Matthew 21 in his parable of the two sons. John records Jesus saying in chapter 14 that if we love him, we will keep his commandments. It's the doing that really matters. So what does this doing look like? Some of it is very challenging and counter-cultural, such as being committed to nonviolence, loving people who would do us harm, and not serving money or treasuring material things. In Matthew 25, Jesus made clear that he is particularly concerned with what we do for people who regarded as "the least." Do we care for the poor, the malnourished, the sick, the imprisoned? These are people that are seldom even on the radar of many self-professed "Christians" who can regularly be found warming up padded pews in church buildings and constantly have the name of Jesus on their lips. Jesus seems to indicate that his followers should be especially interested in caring for people who find themselves excluded from faith communities. Thus, as we seek to be Christians, we must ask ourselves how well are we loving and caring for people that some religious institutions would blasphemously claim are outside the reach of God's grace. Jesus boiled it all down by saying that we must do for others what we would like to be done for us, which sums up the law and the prophets, and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. So, am I loving others selflessly, or am I my own primary concern? How do I welcome others, even when it inconveniences me? Am I willing to sacrifice my own comfort, my own agenda, my own preferences in order to lovingly meet the needs of others? More personally for me, how do I treat people who disagree with me? My honest responses to questions such as these demonstrate how narrow is the road.

Fear Leads to Anger . . .

Over the past two days, I have witnessed two different people in unrelated social media discussions vehemently arguing about doctrinal issues. The first was arguing about the meaning of the Greek word for baptism in the New Testament and the implications for modern Christians. The second was arguing in favor of the Calvinist belief that all people totally depraved and incapable of any good whatsoever. The first person came across as mean-spirited and self-righteous during his argument. The second was not as mean-spirited, but certainly convinced of the rightness of his beliefs. Both seemed defensive, angry, and unwilling to consider the perspectives of people who disagreed with them. Both quoted Paul extensively but did not quote Jesus once. Jesus, it seems does not lend himself well to any doctrinal position whatsoever. Paul, on the other hand, serves as a fine foundation for elaborate doctrinal constructs. Honestly, I don't think Paul ever got over being a Pharisee. But I digress. Observing these two people as they militantly advanced their respective positions to the best of their ability, not entirely able to keep their anger in check over having someone disagree with them, started me thinking. Why do we have this tendency to argue in such a self-assured manner about religious doctrines? Why are we not okay when people disagree with us? Our Buddhist friends teach that such defensiveness is the product of suffering. I tend to think that religious folks who are constantly trying to convince others of the rightness of their doctrinal beliefs are suffering from a fear of being wrong. The church has placed so much emphasis on orthodoxy - right beliefs - that we have caused people to be terrified of getting something, anything, wrong. I was brought up thinking that being a Christian was a matter of believing the right things about God, Jesus, the church, baptism, etc. Salvation was predicated on these right beliefs. If I turned out to be wrong on just about any issue, my salvation was in jeopardy. When this much emphasis is placed on having all the right answers, and there is so much corresponding fear of being wrong, folks will fight tooth and nail to prove that they are right, even about matters to which no human possesses the definitive answer. The remedy, I contend, for the fear that causes so many religious people to be angrily and self-righteously defensive about their doctrines, is love, which casts out fear. We must internalize the truth that we are loved not based on the rightness of our doctrines, but because we are children of God. We, in turn, love others not based on whether they agree with us on every issue, but because they bear the image of the divine. Love frees us from the egotistical compulsion of having to be right and the perpetual fear of being wrong. I know this because I have been wrong. I was really, really wrong about a terribly important matter that had implications both for my faith and for my career. Although I was wrong, I was okay because I was loved in spite of my wrongness. I hope more people can know they are loved unconditionally so they will no longer feel the need to justify themselves through angry, self-assured defenses of their various doctrines.