“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:
“Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” (Acts 2:7 NASB)
Theirs is a regional tribe.
“…we have heard him say that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down to us.” (Acts 6:14 NASB)
They belong to a racial tribe.
“These men who have upset the world have come here also…they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” (Acts 17:6, 7 NASB)
They are political activists.
For we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. (Acts 24:5 NASB)
They are a religious sect.
Growing up, I learned a very specific version of what it meant to be part of the Christian tribe. There was a clear, unequivocal list of requirements – rules for conduct. Things you did, and things you didn’t do. Christians, I learned, had their own…well…everything. There were Christian television and movies, a political party Christians voted for, Christian fiction and non-fiction books, Christian magazines, and Christian music of all genres – jazz, classical, adult contemporary, pop, rock n roll, even Christian heavy metal and hip hop. There were Christian bumper stickers, t-shirts, mints with Christian messages on the wrapper, and checks printed with Scriptures. There was Christian art – mostly pastoral paintings of old farm buildings or flowing water or majestic mountains with a verse from the Psalms in the corner. At school I started a Christian extracurricular club. We were in the yearbook. Whatever you fancied, there was a sterilized, slightly askew Christian variation of it. And just in case you think that all ended in the 80’s…http://now.msn.com/first-christian-tablet-debuts-sadly-not-called-ipray.
The negative was as important as the positive; you could tell a Christian as much by what they didn’t do as by the verses woven into their knockoff Nike “Just Do It” shirt. Christians didn’t cuss, drink, or smoke. They don’t see movies in the theater. They don’t wear certain clothes. They don’t read certain books or magazines. They don’t go to bingo night.
The need to examine, catalog, and categorize followers of Jesus extends into our culture at large. References to Christianity in pop culture often reduce the entire faith into simple, easy to digest nuggets of stereotype and supposition. To be a Christian is to be narrow, ignorant, backward, judgemental, and hypocritical.
Our insistence on creating an isolated Christian culture has led those outside the faith to an inescapable conclusion: An invitation to receive or even explore the message of Jesus is an invitation to join a very specific tribe. And for many, that’s an insurmountable obstacle.
I think it’s incredibly important that the message of Jesus is spoken and heard clearly, with as few filters as possible. And I see in the life and ministry of Jesus a desire to open doors of dialog with leading questions, puzzling statements, and colorful stories. But I don’t see Jesus setting up road blocks of culture or tribe. He steered away from attempts to oversimplify and categorize His message, opting instead to approach people exactly as they were, and simply ask them to join Him – not in a tribe or an organization, but on a journey: “Follow me.”
This was a maddening thing to the demagogues and religious leaders alike. A political question like “Should we submit to the Roman occupation by paying taxes?” is met with the cryptic response: “Give to Caeser what is Caeser’s and to God what is God’s.” The religious worship style question: “should we worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem?” “Neither.” Jesus applies adept verbal judo to every attempt to contain His message within the bounds of a tribe, culture, race, or worldview.
Spend some time with those who have rejected or not even looked into the message of Jesus in America and you will often find that the first barrier to the cross is not rationalism, atheism, or naturalism, but a strong disdain for Christian culture. Christians have been reduced in popular culture to a unflattering caricature that ranges from ignorant to hate-filled. The beginning point of a conversation about Jesus has to be a deconstruction of that stereotype.
Let’s be honest: It’s a lot easier to be a stereotype than a Jesus-type. It’s simpler to allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable mold – partly of our own making, partly our culture’s – and be able to answer the question “what is a Christian?” by pointing to our subculture. But in so doing, we may be adding bricks to an already mountainous wall keeping others out.
So I’m thinking a lot lately about what I say and do. What is essential, vital Christ-follower behavior? What is cultural? What is unnecessary? The culture at large will make of us what they will, but in that moment that they look beyond the stereotype and examine my life and practice, what will they see?
For Jesus, the starting point of following Him was painfully simple:
28-30″Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11, MSG).
May our Christian culture never become the heavy, ill-fitting burden that keeps people from the Cross. If it has, I pray we can shed enough of it that the world can still hear that astounding invitation echoing across the millennia: “Follow me.”
