Why Christian?

In my first day of teaching in a new school, a student once asked me “Are you a Christian?"   She had googled my name and found it referenced a few times with various church-related organizations. At that time I answered, “It depends on what YOU think a Christian is. I may be, I may not.”

I don’t know that there is another single word that carries so much baggage in our culture today. And more baggage keeps getting piled on lately. The media and pop culture have taken the lead in defining how Christianity is perceived.

As Professor Hall points out in his book Why Christian?, it is important to distinguish between causes and reasons when answering this question. The “cause” of my Christianity, like Professor Hall’s, is that I was born into a Christian home, a predominantly Christian society, and was raised in a Christian church.

As a teenager I became aware that the Christianity being practiced in my environment was nothing more than a simple moralistic. I saw the disconnect between what people professed and what they did. If that was Christianity, it was pretty shallow. And white, Protestant, middle class, and preferably Scandinavian.

So I stopped going to church. The place was filled with hypocrites anyway. But what I could not stop was the spiritual hunger. I had to feed my spirit and the language of Christianity was all I knew. So I read and took classes, and read some more and actively started cultivating friends who were of different [or had no] faith traditions.

And found that there were many who shared the same frustrations as I had.

When I finally returned to church, it was less about causes than reasons. One reason was that I connected the dots and realized that the people who were simple moralists to my teenage eyes, were actually people struggling on their own journey with some of the same questions I was. Some succeeding and some failing. Just as I was. I could continue to struggle and learn on my own or I could struggle and learn together in a community.

I am a Christian for many reasons, reasons that are probably not foolproof nor are they above debate, but those reasons carry and comfort me, help me make sense of my life and my relationships, and nourish my spirit.  I am flawed and struggling, but my eyes and heart are open. I try to live what I profess.

Now I would answer my student’s question this way – “Yes, I am a Christian and hopefully you will see what a Christian is by what I do.”  Now I can help define what a Christian is to those around me. And I ask God to help me.

Amen.

Paul S.