What makes a Christian? Part I

Ask most Christians what makes them a Christian, and they will say how they have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. This is all rather vague, but is usually taken to mean belief in Christ removing one’s sin from you through believing that he died in your place and rose again; and as a result to make him Lord of your life, dictating everything that you do.

I have profound difficulties with this understanding, not least that when asked for ‘biblical’ arguments for this understanding (‘biblical’ being the rhetorical arbiter for many of these Christians) they flounder hopelessly. It seems that a searching engagement with biblical material is stunted, rather than enhanced, by the teaching of some in the Church, for whom the precise definition of what makes a Christian is accepted so implicitly, without the same sort of critical acumen that they may (or often, may not) apply to other scriptural texts and ideas.

As a result of this, I have had profound problems with this understanding of Christianity, probably because I don’t think that Christianity can be summarised or defined in a single line, to which one can respond with acceptance or rejection. I wonder if the richness of the scriptural witness to God might permit a broader and less monopolising understanding of what a Christian is.

A preliminary concern regards the nature of some elements of Christianity, which seek to divide the wheat from the chaff through clearly defined boundaries, which encourage those caught on the wrong side of the boundary to cross over to the right side. I have deep difficulties with the drawing of clear boundaries also, not least because it excludes people whose insight and experience may speak profoundly of the reality of God, but also (in theological speak) because the kingdom of God is not the same as the Church, because God is active in the world outside of (or perhaps, despite) the Church, and that each person, made in the image of God, ought not be excluded from God’s family.

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Coming back to Lingo’s suggestion about James and John (Mt 20:20-23), I wonder if there is an understanding of what a Christian is, that relates to some broader concerns of Paul in particular. Here is the text:

‘Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’

I wonder if Christ asks all of us whether we are able to drink the cup that he drank: the cup of suffering, of self-giving, of challenging that which is dehumanising and all the rest. To drink the cup of Christ is to participate in his sufferings, in which Gal 2:19-20 comes out again:

‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.’

Not much substitutionary escape from suffering there, and lots of participation in the Being of Christ.

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I wonder if this understanding of Christianity as being crucified with Christ and drinking from Christ’s cup marks an interesting and suggestive understanding of the nature of Christianity – sharing in the suffering and weakness of Christ, rather than escaping from that.

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PS. I find it rather ironic that the ‘bible-believing’ Christians who frequently come out with the tag line that formed the introduction to this post find it so difficult to isolate particular biblical passages that lend support to it. Such a vague and pithy sentence, though, could mean almost anything to anyone. // Wooly, fence-sitting liberals (‘liberal’ to many Christians simply meaning ‘someone who is wrong’, usually because they don’t take the bible seriously enough) like myself, on the other hand, seek to actually read some of the bible and unpack what it might mean. I don’t claim this to be the only way of understanding what a Christian might be, but it can be a single voice within a chorus – and to deny its place within the choir altogether misses the richness of the biblical witness in favour of a dull, lifeless, static and inaccurate picture that just comes more simply.