“What is a Christian?”
It’s a simple question with at least a thousand answers. For the most part, those answers center around an understanding of the Christian faith as a cultural system – a tribe. We view following Jesus as a framework – a group of people who have a common language, clothing style, set of approved and disapproved activities – even music and art.
This is not a phenomenon limited to categorizing the Church – in the West especially, we are an increasingly tribal society. We gravitate toward those who see, act, feel, think, and live like we do – or like we want to. We organize our activities, our work, our free time around our tribe.
So we apply our tribal view of the world to our understanding of faith. To follow Jesus, then, must mean to join the Jesus tribe, to assimilate the Jesus culture. Since the moment Jesus left the Eleven gazing  slack-jawed at the sky on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem, humanity has been trying to nail down just what these “little Christs” are all about. Consider the accounts from the book of Acts alone – everywhere the Disciples went, they we’re met with an attempt to label their lives and their message:
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s been almost a year since I’ve published here. Almost a year since my father passed away unexpectedly. It seemed better to be quiet, to process personally. And if you know me, that’s not how I work — so it’s been a very different season. Now I feel once again ready to publish. More on that some other day…
I read an article this year about the tectonic shift in they way we use a bedrock technology – the telephone. In our day of texting, instant messages, Facebook posts, and even good old-fashioned emails, a phone call seems unnecessarily intrusive. Imagine the nerve of picking up the phone and calling someone! A phone call requests immediate attention, but the rest of our methods of contact can be consumed and responded to at the recipient’s discretion.
The Information Age has changed the way we interact in a myriad of ways. A thread woven through all of them is a new ability we have been bequeathed. Formerly the domain of only the very rich or very powerful, its heady power has been bestowed upon the masses. It is the opportunity to broadcast.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?†It’s the go-to adult question for children – especially adults who aren’t very comfortable with children. Or are meeting a child for the first time. Implied in that simple, innocuous interrogative is the skeletal structure of a system of values. It assumes first that you are not anything now – merely a possibility, a hope, a beginning. It presumes you will grow into some thing – a career, a pursuit, maybe even a position of influence or authority. It infers that the meaning of every human life is inexorably linked to the things we do – especially the things we do for a living.
No one ever asks “Who do you want to be when you grow up?†In fact, we seldom ask ourselves who we are becoming.
To put this all in context, we’ve just come through the Christmas and New Year celebration seasons. Having four girls under the age of five makes Christmas a fun and magical time.
I’m a bit of a late bloomer in the realm of parenting, so this is my first set of urchins to awaken to the ever-increasing wonderama that is Christmas in America. The oldest (four year old twins) are now fully engaged with the “I am getting presents” thing. This year they realized for the first time that the cookies they were decorating were good eatin’, and the desire to consume copious amounts of sugar quickly overtook the urge to open gifts, to the point that cookies were the only topic of dinnertime conversation for three days leading up to the blessed event. Our goal of convincing them that Christmas is all about giving to others is lagging behind a bit, but we’re making progress, despite the inherent narcissism that marks the toddler to preschool years. They now at least acknowledge that the baby Jesus is somehow connected to the chaos, and will tolerate other people getting presents without protest.
And then there’s Santa. I have to confess here that I have always had a dualistic relationship with the hoary elf. On the one hand, I never recall thinking Santa was real. On the flip side, I distinctly remember my Dad, with a wry wink, advising us to listen for reindeer on the roof of our mobile home on Christmas Eve. When it came time to educate our spawn regarding the ubiquitous December icon, we took a somewhat similar approach, albeit attempting to infuse a sense of theological accuracy. We teach that Santa is a fun story – a parable of sorts that teaches us about giving to others and doing the right things for the right reasons (by illuminating all the wrong ones, like “be good to get stuffâ€). With this approach, we get to pretend and play the Santa game with no jeopardy attached. I think the twins get it. On Christmas Eve I told them they had to go to sleep or Santa wouldn’t come. The red-head said “Oh – you won’t come with the presents if we’re awake?” Perfect.
“What is a Christian?”
It’s a simple question with at least a thousand answers. For the most part, those answers center around an understanding of the Christian faith as a cultural system – a tribe. We view following Jesus as a framework – a group of people who have a common language, clothing style, set of approved and disapproved activities – even music and art.
This is not a phenomenon limited to categorizing the Church – in the West especially, we are an increasingly tribal society. We gravitate toward those who see, act, feel, think, and live like we do – or like we want to. We organize our activities, our work, our free time around our tribe.
So we apply our tribal view of the world to our understanding of faith. To follow Jesus, then, must mean to join the Jesus tribe, to assimilate the Jesus culture. Since the moment Jesus left the Eleven gazing  slack-jawed at the sky on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem, humanity has been trying to nail down just what these “little Christs” are all about. Consider the accounts from the book of Acts alone – everywhere the Disciples went, they we’re met with an attempt to label their lives and their message:
EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s been almost a year since I’ve published here. Almost a year since my father passed away unexpectedly. It seemed better to be quiet, to process personally. And if you know me, that’s not how I work — so it’s been a very different season. Now I feel once again ready to publish. More on that some other day…
I read an article this year about the tectonic shift in they way we use a bedrock technology – the telephone. In our day of texting, instant messages, Facebook posts, and even good old-fashioned emails, a phone call seems unnecessarily intrusive. Imagine the nerve of picking up the phone and calling someone! A phone call requests immediate attention, but the rest of our methods of contact can be consumed and responded to at the recipient’s discretion.
The Information Age has changed the way we interact in a myriad of ways. A thread woven through all of them is a new ability we have been bequeathed. Formerly the domain of only the very rich or very powerful, its heady power has been bestowed upon the masses. It is the opportunity to broadcast.
