Facing the Facts...

Earlier this week, through an indirect means of sharing, someone challenged me with the idea that we should still endeavor to be called "Christians". If I understand where they're coming from, they are essentially asserting the old idea, and a valid one, that we are not to be ashamed of the name of Christ. The comment was made that they still desire to be a "Little Christ".

Well, I do too. But....

Yeah, there's always a "but", it seems. Here's the thing though. I love Jesus. Yup, I do. No, I don't have a bumper sticker that says it and never will so help me God. No, I don't have a t-shirt that says that either. My problem is that the name, the label, the moniker we're used to referring to ourselves as, "Christian", has been hijacked. For someone to refer to themselves as a Christian now no longer holds the same meaning as it once has. It no longer means, "Little Christ".

Instead, the term "Christian" has been twisted. To other nationalities, the term "Christian" simply refers to Americans. Many Americans simply refer to themselves as "Christians", but in the same way that they refer to their own nationality. That's what they are, they'll say. The term "Christian" now carries with it the overtones of colonialism, captialism, Republicanism (a word I just created), materialism, immoralism, and, some might say, is bordering on carrying the banner of imperialism as well. This is not the label I want attached to me that I hold onto as a symbol of my faith.

Emergent poster child and author, speaker, and former pastor, Brian McLaren, writes in his book, A Generous Orthodoxy, in a chapter entitled, "Would Jesus Be A Christian?":

"...I'd like to indulge in some critical and mabe even cynical thinking expressed in statements like these:

1.) The more I study the Bible and reflect on the life and teachings of Jesus, the more I think most of Christianity as practiced today has very little to do with the real Jesus found there.

2.) Often I don't think Jesus would be caught dead as a Christian, were he physically here today.

3.) Generally, I don't think Christians would like Jesus if he showed up today as he did 2,000 years ago. In fact, I think we'd call him a heretic and plot to kill him too."

They are very harsh statements but they reflect something that I feel too, namely that we've lost sight of Jesus. As we've done so, we've allowed our own ideas, our own selfish idealogies to step in and formulate our ways of life, and in the process, invade our theologies. Rather than our careful study and exegesis of the Bible developing our theologies, we've instead read into the text what we hope to see. And in so doing, we've created an organization, a religion, that seems, in some ways, to profane the name of the One it claims to serve.

So, I propose that we come up with something new. A new friend has proposed that perhaps we can be simple and be "Christ-followers". Maybe we need something more articulate. I don't know what it should be. The one thing I do know is that we stand in critical need of change, of repentance, and of grace and mercy, myself fully included in that.