why i am a christian
Perhaps if I lived in another area of the country, when I said, “I am a Christian,” people would not be so disappointed by my statement. But perhaps if I lived in another area of the country, I would have a hard time finding anyone else who would use the term in a remotely similar way.
There are a few things that go on in people’s heads (and often, that come from their mouths), when I [announce or admit or something in between] that I am a Christian:
1. Oh God, another ignorant, unevolved, and uncultured mind.
2. (This one is more often the reaction of people who’ve been “exposed” to my words and behaviors.) What??? You seemed so normal. This one is confusion and a clash of “Joliene” with “Christian” in what both mean in their heads. I have a foul mouth, I rant about gay rights and abortion rights and feminism and how Muslims are misunderstood and I often go off on how much I hate Evangelism. I am open about my sexual nature, I have few Christian friends and have had fewer Christian boyfriends. For most people, the combination of this list with “Christian” is a math problem that can yield no answer—the computer does not understand this series of statements.
3. Damn, another intelligent mind lost to religion. Or: Damn, she seemed smart.
What’s often more surprising when I say “Christian” is that I don’t just mean that I wear a necklace and have some kind of vague belief in God and an affinity for some first century rabbi. I go to church. Not only do I show up every Sunday, I am involved in my church. I’m part of a committee (CFE), I sign up to help with coffee hour, I go to educational classes, I sign up to read scripture, I volunteer at our shelter, I’m an active participant in the 20s/30s group—I volunteer for everything I can. And to top it off, I plan on going to seminary. I want to be a minister.
I know, right?
So WHY? I don’t know if I believe in Heaven, I don’t believe that Jesus is my salvation in the sense that most Christians do, I don’t think it’s wrong to be other-than-Christian (this even includes atheists, Muslims, and Mormons!), I wasn’t raised religiously (so I am not honoring or dishonoring my family by becoming religious), I know about other religions… for the last 4 years, I’ve been working on a B.A. in Comparative Religion. I know what other religions have to offer and the flaws of my own.
Why am I a Christian? Why do I go to church every Sunday? Why do I want to be a minister?
Because I love it; it is beautiful.
The first time I read the gospels from the small print of the little orange KJV New Testament handed to me on a street corner by an Evangelist, I was in the 7th grade. I read it sitting on my bedroom floor, leaning against the wooden frame of my bed. These details are not what matters, but my memory of their introduction into my life shows its importance. The first time I read the gospels, I cried.
The message of Jesus, for me, is this: Live a Life of passion. Believe what you believe—don’t just offer lip service. Live it. Be it.
If you say there are too many people hungry, feed them. If you say there is too much value placed on material things, truly place your values on Love. If you say all people are created in God’s image, fight for human dignity and stand up for the lives of those whom society has deemed “immoral” or “guilty” or “inferior.”
Jesus didn’t die for our sins—he didn’t die so that we could sit on our couch and watch American Idol and still get into Heaven. Jesus died because he was unwilling to compromise his values.
Jesus led the kind of life that I “cannot.” He gave up a sense of normalcy; he gave up a home, the prospect of raising a family, the privilege of dying of old age. He did not give that up for our sin. He gave it up for those he saw starving, for those he saw sick, for those he saw hated.
I believe that Jesus knew God. I believe that Jesus saw what the process of this world needs to be—toward a world where we can all Love each other. There will be prostitutes and tax collectors. There will be those with whom we disagree, but this doesn’t prohibit love. This doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. This doesn’t mean we can’t share a meal—share communion—and find in each other the image of God. It doesn’t mean that we can’t, together, feed the hungry and give comfort to the sick soul.
And so what, right? I don’t need to be a Christian to feed the hungry.
Christian tradition speaks to me. The gospel stories speak to me. The way my church worships speaks to me.
What is church? Church is power in numbers. I cannot form a choir by myself or a march by myself. My church marches in the pride parade. My church has a choir that sings—because there is joy in what we do.
Why do I “do” church? Because I want to get together with people and advocate for the values we believe in: caring for the homeless and the hungry, being the diaphragm behind the voices of minorities, providing comfort and friendship, analyzing the ways we can be better at what we believe in, honoring the tradition of Jesus, and celebrating our love for one another, for God, and for this world we are endeavoring to make better.
Why do I want to be a minister? To ensure that churches become this when they are not and stay this when they are. Churches are means toward holism, toward spiritual and physical Peace—toward liberty and justice for all.
That is why I am a Christian. That is why I go to church… because we are becoming the light on a hill that our ancestors sought to be: a community of Love.
Just as how my love for my sister wouldn’t allow me to see her bullied, just as it would never allow me to abandon her or see her starve, it is a church’s job to speak for every member of the Human family, to provide a home, a meal, a community.
I do not only believe in justice on election days and Sundays. I believe in it now and tomorrow. I am a Christian because I am Human. I am a Christian because my hands are God’s hands and I believe in living up to that.
A couple of statements that you made really stuck out.
“I don’t believe that Jesus is my salvation?” What faith are you of?
“I don’t believe in heaven?”
“Jesus didn’t die for our sins?”
“I believe that Jesus knew God?” He was God manifested in the flesh.
It sounds like you have made a god to suit yourself. This is how I see God etc.
You have gotten off track somewhere along the way dear sister.
I pray that you will find truth and not be deceived.
Richard
What faith? I call it Christianity.
What does humanity need to be saved from? This is bankrupt language. I am not working from a framework that presupposes innate human corruption. Jesus is Hope and we will achieve salvation not by a death on the cross but by creating a world where all can live in love and peace, where there are no hungry or homeless because no one will let it be so. We will be saved by living in Jesus’ ministry, not his death.
Why do I need to believe in an afterlife? Do you believe in Hell? And do you know that there is no “Hell” as Westerners think of it in the Hebrew or Greek Bibles? It is in the English translation, though. Does King James has more authority than the orignal Biblical authors? This is why scholarship is important to religion… because if we truly are seeking to understand the word, it is not right to read it so superficially. If I claim the Bible as my sacred text, I owe it to God to study it as deeply as I can.
You claim that your version of Christianity is any more valid than my own on whose authority? What gives your interpretation more value than mine? I have studied religion extensively and will spend my life studying it deeper. When I was younger, my views were as conservative as yours. However, my understanding has progressed to an understanding of scripture as more complicated and layered. I refuse to cheapen my experience with scripture by simplifying it. The changes my studies have brought to my faith are beautiful and I would never abandon them in order to homogenize my faith with Evangelical Christianity.
I pray that you will find a more open love and try to understand the spiritual layers of Biblical texts by trying to learn from those who have spent lifetimes studying them in their original languages and studying the life of Jesus.
Somehow I doubt that either of our prayers will be answered, but that both of us will continue our ministries in our own directions. May God be with us both.
Hi relsdork,
After reading this, you seem more relativist/humanist than Christian. But I’m not judging you or condemning you at all, you actually seem really cool, just hear me out.
You are obviously smart. You have thought out your beliefs and have come up with your own world-view based on those beliefs. In other words: you think for yourself. I respect that. A lot.
Jesus does tell us in the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5) to love everyone. I fully agree that we should love and do good to gays and Muslims and the poor and oppressed everyone else.
I also agree that whatever we believe we should also live. If someone says one thing and does another it doesn’t matter what religion they claim — they’re lying to themselves and everyone else. There have been times when I have hesitated to call myself a Christian because I don’t want to be identified with the fake and hypocritical mass that the American church has largely become.
However, your “Christianity” breaks down very quickly once you say, “live what you believe” and then say you believe the Bible, because you are clearly not living the Bible.
You can explain it away by saying that you interpret scripture different than me, but then you are slipping into relativism, and that is the religion that nullifies itself. As soon as you say two contradicting things are both true, you are saying there is no truth.
If you believe what the Bible says then you believe that it is the Word of God. In my opinion God’s Word should be taken more seriously than saying that it’s a bunch of nice stories and poems with morals.
You are totally right looking for more than couch-potato-Christianity. We should act on what we believe. But most of the time the Bible says exactly what it means, even in the Hebrew and Greek. Once you reject that, you could pretty much make it say whatever you wanted. And if it just says whatever you want, then why read it? Because it’s pretty? Milton is pretty. Because it makes you feel good? Drugs make you feel good.
Seriously, either the Bible is the Word of God, or it’s not worth reading. And if it is the Word of God, then you are not living what you claim to believe.
Sorry for the ridiculously long reply…
-J
Josiah–
I would say that I am living the Bible, but I am living it differently than you are. You seem to be creating a false dichotomy between biblical literalism and humanism. I do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God in the sense that it is dictated either directly or indirectly to individuals from God. I do believe that the Bible is the Word of God in that it describes a history of people seeking God and describing their experience with God. I claim a profound connection with the Bible and find it to be the paramount scripture by which I can relate to God. However, it doesn’t mean that I think it inerrant or beyond critical inquiry. I don’t believe that God zipped God’s lip the day that the past book of the Bible was penned or that the Bible is homogeneous enough to somehow gain a definitive vision of God from. It is because of the relative views of God presented by different authors in different books of the Bible that I don’t believe we can quote scripture in ways that many do or derive seemingly “If A + B then C” ideas from scripture… the Bible is too diverse to not be seen as a whole.
I also believe that the Jesus was more closely aligned with the Will of God than any other being who’s existed and therefore seek to understand his life and ministry as best I can, since I believe his vision of God to be paramount to all others in the way that it compells me to live.
While I am slipping into a somewhat relativistic position by making these statements, I would suggest that all biblically derived beliefs are necessarily relativistic to some degree just by the very nature of the Bible, which is by no means is completely uniform in its descriptions of God. Since I am not going to tell you that I am doing things right and that you are doign things wrong (thereby assuming that my interpretation is more in line with God’s will than your own), but I do have faith that that is so. I have faith that I am endeavoring to live out the Bible as best I can and that I share a connection with God and am working God’s will in the world. I also understand that you believe this as well, but that we clearly are getting different things when we read the Bible.
I most certainly take it more seriously than saying it’s a nice story and poems with morals– but obviously my approach to how I can best take the text seriously is different than yours. My attempt is to learn the languages these texts were originally written in, learn about the historical backgrounds of the people described in the text, and seek to understand the many layers of meaning that are available through experiencing the Bible. In that sense, I am not at all trying to make the Bible say what I want it to, but am trying to best understand what it meant to those who wrote it down and why it made sense to them, given their context. A lot of people don’t like to involve academics with their scripture, but I strongly believe in doing so. It is my belief that the Bible should be studied from every angle possible.
It is precisely my study of the Bible and my experience of God through study and worship that has brought me to the way that I live out my faith.
interesting.
the bible is the Word of God and like St Augustine said Jesus was either liar, lunatic or Lord. we all cannot be right especially when it concerns absolutes and among those of us who are right we all cannot be right to the same degree. I could carry on like this but the whole point is simple: rationality is a vague word. anybody can argue any position but ultimately there is right and wrong as well as good and evil. there are absolutes and like the bible says, God is not the author of confusion.
I admire you. I think that you and I have a LOT in common and I think more people need to be open-minded. It’s obvious that your beliefs differ from the mainline teachings of Christianity, and mine do too, and yours differ from mine and vis-versa. Thank you for posting this faith statement, and taking the risk of being told that you are wrong, not living a Christian life, etc. Once again, I admire you. Your outlook on faith, life, and human behavior, and your writing style =) Please don’t ever be discouraged from continuing to learn and explore and write it all down.
In God’s grace,
Shay
ps. would you mind if i quoted you in a sermon I am working on?
you’re welcome to quote me. would you mind showing me a copy of your sermon after you are finished?
What an incredible blog post and comments! Everyone believes something. God loves us all. One day, the truth will be known. We all hope we are the ones that figured it out right. Jesus is Lord.
I did a Google search on Bishop Yvette Flunder and discovered your blog. I have found a kindred spirit! I am a Christian for the same reasons you are. Thank you for expressing so well what I feel.
i have read all through this and i’m enjoy it and i promise to make use of it