What is a Christian?
A reflection by Pastor Matt (originally written for his blog)
One of the most important challenges for anyone seeking to follow Jesus is to be able to know what it actually means to be a Christian.
It’s not quite as simple as you might think
This is not a new thing… throughout the history of the church, there have been debates as to what constituted true Christianity. Church councils hammered out documents like the Nicene and Apostles creeds in an attempt to answer that question.
So what is it?
Ultimately Christianity is a story. Some people will panic a little bit when they see those words because they fear I am somehow minimising its importance.
I’m not.
All of us live on the basis of some kind of story. Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen write:
“To be human means to embrace some such basic story through which we understand our world and chart our course through it. This does not mean that individuals are necessarily conscious of the story they are living out of or of the moulding effect that such a story has had on their thoughts and actions.”
Just stop for a moment and let yourself hear that: You live out of a story.
I live out of a story.
We all live from a story.
Reality is the acid test of the stories we live from. You might believe you can fly, but when you jump off the roof of a house and encounter the reality of gravity, you will discover your story is not true.
The more a story helps you live a healthy and whole life in harmony with others and the world, the more accurate it is likely to be.
Our personal stories are informed by bigger stories.
Throughout history we have seen those bigger stories as religions, however for the last few hundred years there has been another big story that makes claims about truth but would say it is not a religion. That story is labeled in different ways but for the purposes of this reflection I will call it “Secularism.”
Like our personal stories, I believe we should subject our bigger stories to a reality test. The truer they are the better we should be able to function in the complex reality of the world.
Ultimately I believe in Christianity because I believe it makes the most sense of the world I live in and also makes the most sense of my subjective experience of my own life. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
So what is the story?
There are some core truths at the heart of Christianity that are simply not in other big stories… and they are truths that I believe are indispensable in a functional worldview and also in a functional society.
Truth #1: Human beings are inherently valuable (created in the image of God) and are most alive when they are lovingly, truthfully, creatively and responsibly living in Harmony with others and the world.
Dehumanization is one of the biggest challenges our world faces at the moment. David Livingstone Smith wrote:
“Dehumanization isn’t a way of talking. It’s a way of thinking—a way of thinking that, sadly, comes all too easily to us. Dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under other circumstances, be unthinkable.”
Most other worldviews (with the exception of Judaism) don’t ascribe particular value to a human life.
This is one of the big challenges facing secularism. If you truly hold to a secular worldview then there is no solid rationale to value a human life apart from any benefit it can give you.
Islam, too, values good Muslims higher than other human beings but rejects the idea that there is any divine spark in humanity.
Even Capitalism sees Humans as “Resource” rather than as anything special in their own right.
Christians sometimes lose sight of this fundamental Christian teaching, but whenever we fail to value people as valuable in their own right we are ignoring one of the most important aspects of our faith.
All Christian theologians agree that the bible teaches the “Imago Dei”, that we are created in the image of God, and that understanding leads Jesus to command us to love both our neighbours and our enemies.
Christianity is one of the few worldviews that is incompatible with dehumanisation.
Truth #2. Human beings are sinful and broken and inclined to go our own way rather than towards any objective good.
While it is true that there is eternity in every human heart (as per Ecclesiastes 3:11), it is also true that we are all messy, broken and self focussed.
Islam suggests that we can overcome our sinfulness if we obey religion enough. Secularism suggests that there is no such thing as sin and that we need to be true to our own impulses. Buddism suggests we can transcend our limitations. One quick and honest look at either the world or your own soul will confirm what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an un-uprooted small corner of evil.
It is fascinating to watch the ongoing ripples of the Me-Too movement and the devastation it has wrought upon Hollywood and Politicians particularly from the left wing of politics. We are all hyper-sensitive to injustice, particularly injustice that affects us, but none of us are completely just, even by our own standards.
One of the assumptions behind much left-wing politics is that people are basically good. Time and time again we are presented with disconfirming evidence for this hypothesis and yet those with a Secular worldview can only respond to the reality of sin by creating laws because they don’t have a story that helps explain the worst consequences of sin because there is no grounding for a delineation of good and evil in that worldview.
Any worldview that says there is no such thing as sin is a worldview that cannot explain most human behaviour.
Truth #3. There is objective good and objective evil and while human beings will never be fully either, the world is built on moral foundations because it is built by the Good, and that Good is at work in the world.
This is where Secularism deviates from most other big stories. In secularism there is no real objective good or objective evil.
Christianity and most other big stories believe there is wrong and there is right. Christianity assumes that no human being will ever be fully right, and whenever we lose sight of that aspect of our faith we are in danger of becoming fascist in our ideology.
Most of us know that there are things that are simply wrong, and there are things that are definitely right and true. Most of us know that dehumanisation is wrong and the actions that stem from it (murder, abuse, theft etc.) are simply wrong.
The Old Testament is the story of people who kept glimpsing the right but choosing the wrong. It is the story of the standard human experience.
Truth #4. Jesus was the ultimate good.
In Australia one of the highest compliments you can pay someone is that they are a good bloke.
In our country’s history, there are just a few people who almost everyone admires. One of them was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, or as most Aussies know him, “Simpson and his Donkey.”
He was only 22, yet in four weeks on the Gallipoli battlefield, he became one of Australia’s best-known and loved heroes despite never firing a shot. What he did do was forgo personal security and safety and, over the course of those four weeks, return time and again to the deadly battlefield to rescue the fallen, ferrying them back to the medical centre on his donkey. The Australian War Memorial says, “Simpson’s actions are regarded as the highest expression of mateship, and he remains one of Australia’s best-known historical figures.”
Human beings know what a good person looks like. A good person is someone who is willing to lay down their life for the sake of other people.
While people might argue about whether he was God or not, very few people would argue with the idea that Jesus was one of the greatest good blokes in all of history. As Ghandi said:
“I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ”.
Christianity asserts that Jesus is the one reliably good human being the world has ever seen. It asserts that rather than an ideology, God sent a person and said “There, be like him because he cares about what I care about.”
Truth #5 Christianity promises grace.
Truth #4 asserts that a good person is an agent of grace, giving up their own life for the sake of others. Christianity says that the ultimate good person was the ultimate expression of grace. The force of love and logic in the world expressed itself as a a newborn baby who would claim to be God and then show what happens when Justice meets Mercy on a Roman cross.
As Bono says:
I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
As far as I can tell the kind of grace at the heart of Christianity is unique, and yet almost all of us realise our need of it and that the truly great people embody it.
Grace is one of the strongest reasons I am a Christian.
Again, Bono:
I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled.
Truth #6: Jesus rose from the dead and that changes everything
In his extensive argument for the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Historian and bible scholar N.T. Wright demonstrates that the resurrection is the only historically likely explanation for the movement that exploded in the months after Jesus’s death. Most Scholars agree that 1 Corinthians 15 contains the oldest part of the New Testament, which dates to within months of what Jesus followers claimed was his resurrection:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.1 Corinthians 15:3-8
As the Apostle Paul points out:
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.1 Corinthians 15:13-14
In rising from the dead, Jesus showed that there is a future beyond the grave, which reframes the whole way we do life now.
Truth #7: There is a task in front of Christians: to live like Christ in the ordinary everyday mess of life.
While Christians believe (and depend) on grace, there is an assumption in our faith that we are to be ready to live on the basis of that grace, or as he put it “As the father has sent me, I am sending you.”(John 20:22)
This is the beating heart of Christianity.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
“Lord” in the New Testament “combines the two elements of power and authority.” Confessing “Jesus is Lord” means acknowledging that He has power and authority over the whole world including you.
Recognizing Jesus as Lord means making His priorities our priorities. It means making His Kingdom our central concern.
Jesus himself said that everyone who puts into practise his way of life is like someone who builds on a solid foundation.(Matthew 7:24)
People outside the church might be surprised to learn that Jesus doesn’t talk much about hell but when he does it is not so much about whether you have believed the right things but rather whether you are living out the grace at the heart of the faith. In Matthew 25, Jesus names six groups of people as those who should be the recipients of grace from his followers: – The Hungry – The Thirsty – The Lonely and Different – The Sick – The Prisoners (those who cannot make their own choices). It seems that God has favourites. God seems to care about the least powerful people in the world and assumes that his followers will care about them in the same way he does.
Seeing your life through the lens of Jesus and his priorities gives a solid grounding that no other worldview can come close to matching.
At the heart of Christianity is an assumption that Christ followers will not be able to follow on their own, so someone called the ‘Holy Spirit’ is said to be at work in and through the church, although the bible also makes it clear that the church can ignore and even grieve the Holy Spirit.
Truth #8 We are not going to heaven, heaven is coming to earth.
Christianity believes that ultimately there Hope. There will be a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21-22) and all of a sudden things are going to make sense.
Christians have argued about who will be “in” and who will be “out” but they all agree that God can be trusted, and that as Jesus himself makes clear, there will be plenty of people who are surprised at the outcome.
What is clear though, is that what we do on earth matters for eternity in a Christian worldview.
While there is much more to Christianity than simply these eight things, these eight things are core truths that make up the heart of my faith and are why I believe the big story of Christianity is the one that makes the most sense.
That doesn’t mean that Christianity is the easiest story to live from. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
Whenever people have taken the big story of Christianity seriously the world has changed for the better… lets hope and pray more and more people do.