“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.
