Aug 20 2008
One of the best things to happen to me in the past several years was getting the boot from our last church. Our views on creation and the age of the earth were too heretical for the fundamentalist church to which we had belonged for eight years. In the time since then, God has been doing some amazing, and often painful, things in my life. One of the biggest things is the understanding that the church building we go to on Sunday is not as important as the God we profess. We tend to get wrapped up in churchy things and pretend that churchiness equates to living a Christ-like life.
So I’ve been trying to understand just who I am as a believer and what that belief means.
Along comes Julie Burchill, a columnist for the UK Guardian. She describes herself as “a former teen atheist who is now a Christian tryer.” A turning point in her life came when both parents died within a year of each other. She recognized that both (presumably believers) were now in a better place and that she should be celebrating their lives, not mourning their death. Her excellent article takes atheists, muslims, catholics and other traditionalists to task for their hidebound adherence to form over substance. (Muslims, not surprisingly, have launched the expected bitter verbal attacks.)
As a recovering fundamentalist, I would caution that we shouldn’t out-of-hand discard anything simply because it’s come down to us through the years, but our focus absolutely must be outward. We need to meet people at their point of need, as Christ did, not where it’s comfortable for us. Churches tend to organize programs and write checks to handle the uncomfy business of broken lives, rather than getting involved. That’s a hard thing to learn, and harder to do.
Julie wraps up her article this way:
My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, “I am a Christian,” but rather “I’m trying to be a Christian”. Me too. Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I love it.
Saying, “I am a Christian,” is the same as saying, “I have arrived and am all I need to be.” Christ knows better. I hope I do, too. Meanwhile, I keep trying.
