Aug 20 2008
I’m Trying to Be a Christian
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.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
OK. I understand what you’re saying… And I do agree that, essentially, to be a Christian is to be Christ-like, and that no one should make the claim that they have arrived. There are few things worse than a pompous Christian.
OTOH, I think the enemy can mess with our minds when we get into the mode of trying, trying, trying, trying to be a “good” Christian, and leave us feeling deflated for never quite measuring up. And, a discouraged Christian is an entirely ineffective Christian.
I know that is/was true for me, anyways. I needed to gain some confidence that my Christianity wasn’t gained or lost by my own efforts, but by the grace of God, and the gift offered to me by the death and ressurection of Jesus.
I had this revelation, btw, upon reading Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life which I’d like to quote here, but I can’t find it. He said something early on in the book, comparing such efforts to earnestly praying to be in a room in which one already was.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:19 am
Karen,
I suppose if you take Christian to mean ‘a follower of Christ’, then I can buy it, but too often I see it taken in the ‘I have arrived’ sense. Trying to be a Christian, as in the Julie Burchill article, may or may not be a part of sanctification, and I’m still struggling with that whole concept. I understand it, but I want it to happen NOW.