What does “Christianity” mean in our own nation and in the cities and villages around the globe? As we communicate Christ to a world that interprets Christianity in a wide variety of ways, it’s important we uncloud our own understanding.
“The manner in which we understand and discuss our existence as believers indicates that there have developed a few degrees of separation between the living Jesus … and the way we frame our Christian life today. In my opinion, somewhat of a fog has settled in.”
It was early morning and I had checked out of the hotel to allow time for the four-hour drive to the Dallas airport, return the rental car, and catch my flight. The cruise control was set, and I was enjoying the sunrise on this rather desolate stretch of I-35 north of Waco when I noticed an unoccupied car (not a very new one) parked on the side of the road. As I sped by I could see that the “donut” (that pathetic substitution for a spare tire that comes with many cars today) was flat. The donut was flat. Someone is having a bad day, I thought. But there was no one near the car.
About a mile further down the road, two men were walking in the same direction I was headed. They were not hitchhiking, but I felt strongly compelled to pull over and offer them a ride. As they got into the car – quite grateful – one of them blurted out, “I’ll bet you go to church.” As we drove about eight or ten miles to the next town, I learned a little bit about their story. They were headed to Chicago, and one tire had blown out last night. Then the donut blew out this morning. Before dropping them off at a service station, I said something like, “Yes, I do go to church,” but then added that the real reason I had picked them up was because I was pretty sure that Jesus had prompted me to do so. Looking back at that experience, I realize I had felt the need to make a distinction for these strangers between my membership in a church and my membership in God’s Kingdom – which is granted me through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Kingdom membership or church membership?
We often announce Jesus’ lordship in our lives by telling others that we are church members. There’s nothing wrong with this, particularly since the life of faith does include life among the Body of Christ’s believers. John Wesley writes, “So for [the Apostle] Paul, there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. …It is impossible to conceive of a Christian who is not a member of the Church.” The writer of Hebrews reminds the Body not to forsake assembling together (Hebrews 10:25).
The problem comes when we understand our life as Christians more by the forms of Christianity (which probably includes the particularities of our church as an organization) than by Jesus’ teachings. And the manner in which we understand and discuss our existence as believers indicates that there have developed a few degrees of separation between the living Jesus, including His message as represented in the New Testament, and the way we frame our Christian life today. In my opinion, somewhat of a fog has settled in.
Take, for example, our use of the word “church.” The biblical use of the word is quite different from the organizational connotations it has since accumulated. After Peter’s momentous confession (Matthew 18:13-18) affirming Jesus as the Christ, Jesus referred to Peter’s words as the rock upon which He would build His church. “Church” here, and in the one other place in the New Testament where Jesus is recorded as using this word, is ecclesia, literally meaning “assembly,” not organization. There seems to be plenty of room in Jesus’ words to accommodate a variety of types of these assemblies. So, “church” in the biblical meaning is simply a gathering of believers, regardless of the organizational context in which that gathering occurs.
At any point in history over the past 2000 years one needn’t dig very deep to discover the unfortunate pattern of conflict among various Christian organizations. Of course, it is important for responsible dialogue to take place to settle essential issues of basic doctrine, etc. But it is evident that we believers tend to form our identities not around the resurrected Jesus, but rather with the organization to which we belong.
When one’s identity becomes centered on the organization, clarity about Jesus’ mission (and therefore ours) resultantly becomes clouded as well. When I was
in seminary I was taught about the “churched” and “unchurched.” But the Scriptures speak of “believers” and “nonbelievers.” Today when we talk about people in terms of their relationship with the organized church, we must remember that Jesus did not imply one’s membership in an organization. He taught about the importance of the Kingdom of God. He taught that people become members of the Kingdom through repentance (e.g. Matt. 3:2, 4:17), are called to seek God’s righteousness (Matt 6:33) and are challenged to have the heart of a servant (Matt 20:26-28). The difference may seem subtle, but it is crucial. It can boil down to whether our primary objective is the perpetuation of our religion, or the growth of the Kingdom.
Jesus told more than a dozen parables about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is like leaven; it is like hidden treasure hidden; it is like a king settling accounts; a merchant seeking beautiful pearls; it is like a big net cast into the sea. One must be like a child to enter the Kingdom. The perspective of the Kingdom, however, seems to stand in stark contrast to many practices of organized Christianity. For example, a Kingdom mentality strives to have persons experience new birth and be transformed, but Christianity’s common practice is to have them “confirmed” and join the church. Likewise, a Kingdom approach models Jesus’ example of radical servant leadership, but Christianity defines leadership capability according to academic degrees and levels of ordination. The contrast between Kingdom thinking and that of organized Christianity can even be seen in something as routine as my behavior in traffic: I am more aptly representing the Kingdom when I allow someone to merge into my lane than when I place a flyer under their windshield wiper advertising my church.
Clouded view
When those who are on the outside of the Christian world seek to satisfy that spiritual hunger that can only be filled by Jesus, often their view of Jesus is clouded by organizational accoutrements. Let’s say, for example, I go to a Muslim country intending to be a witness for Christ. If the root of my message is “become a Christian,” I may assume that this is the best way to represent the Gospel. But when my Muslim friends hear “become a Christian,” they are unlikely to receive the intended message because “Christian” to them does not necessarily mean one who knows Jesus. To them, “Christian” will probably mean something like this: someone who eats pork, watches R-rated movies, and lives in a permissive society where women are often scantily clad. Nothing in the invitation to “become a Christian” is inviting to our Muslim friend, nor does it convey the essential message of Christ’s compelling love. In the words of one believer who ministers to Muslims: “Satan has snatched away our Kingdom mentality and replaced it with this monolith called Christianity.”
In fact, one of the most unfortunate dynamics in today’s world is that spiritual
issues are largely understood in terms of competing religions. If I were the devil, I would try to limit Jesus’ message of the Kingdom to a diluted notion of adherence to a certain religion, rather than falling in love with the risen Messiah and allowing Him to bring transformation to my life. Perhaps this is what Larry Crabb is driving at when he wrote, “Religion is the invention of the devil. The world has taken out the patent. We humans have mortgaged our souls to buy the product, and we think we’ve gotten a good deal.” Or, in the words of Erwin McManus, “Our goal must not be to populate the Christian religion but to bring people into a genuine relationship with God. We must make a clear distinction between the religion of Christianity and the revolution that Jesus began 2000 years ago.”
Jesus’ message was not to “form a religion,” but to proclaim to all people within their cultural and religious contexts Kingdom of God. But it did not take long for His followers to lose sight of this. “By the time the creeds were written in the 3rd century,” asserts E. Stanley Jones, “what had happened to the conception of the Kingdom of God? The Nicene Creed mentions it once, but only in reference to our life beyond the borders of this life, in heaven: ‘Thy Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.’ The Apostle’s Creed and the Athanasian Creed don’t mention it at all. The three great historic creeds summing up Christian doctrine, mention once what Jesus mentioned a hundred times. Something had dropped out. A vital, vital thing had dropped out. A crippled Christianity went across Europe, leaving a crippled result…A vacuum was left in the soul of Western Civilization.”
No wonder there is confusion today. Much of the non-believing world assumes that Jesus came to establish a religion called Christianity. Jesus’ radical message of the Kingdom has been distilled to propagating our organizations in the name of Jesus. Indeed, a tragic degree of separation has occurred; a fog has settled in.
Differing interpretations
Another area in which a degree of separation between biblical origins and present day usage has occurred is in the use of the word “Christian.” At least 12 years after Pentecost (Acts 11) is the first time that believers are called “Christians.” Prior to the implementation of that word, the first disciples came to know Jesus in the context of their own Jewish religion. They were called “believers,” people of “the Way,” etc. Only when Gentiles came to faith in Christ, i.e. outside the context of the Jewish religion in places such as Antioch, did there arise a need to establish this identifying tag. Indeed, many Jews today who profess faith in Jesus do not identify themselves as “Christians,” but rather as “Messianic” or “completed” Jews, etc.
Today, there are persons within other non-Christian religions who are discovering Jesus as Lord and Savior yet are using other ways to identify themselves as followers of Jesus and are remaining within their own religious traditions. I will never forget a surreptitious meeting I had with some believers in a central Asian country. All of them were born again, but had decided to retain their Muslim identity to enable them to reach the rest of their families for Jesus and experience Him within the context of their culture. During the visit one of them asked, “Do you Christians see us as your brothers in Christ?” My heart broke, because I knew that they had experienced persecution, not because they profess faith in the “wrong savior,” but because they are in a different religious context.
Acts 4:12 states, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.” That name is Jesus, not “Christian.”
Cutting through the fog
Most of us who profess Christ now find ourselves identified as Christian, just as the Gentiles at Antioch. I am an ordained member of a Wesleyan denomination, but I recognize that my denomination, what we often call “church,” is merely a context through which we experience our life in Christ. When the organization becomes elevated beyond the role of a means to the Kingdom, we lose our way. Church in the organizational sense is not the end in itself.
When I mentioned “Jesus” to those two stranded gentlemen that morning in Texas, the more talkative one said, “Oh, I believe in Jesus.” Soon we were engaged in conversation about God’s faithfulness. When Jesus, rather than simply “church,” became the subject of our discussion, it was as if we had cut through all of the fog, and the Jesus of the Bible was in our midst. It was a Kingdom moment.
As members of the Kingdom and agents for the King, we are called to live Kingdom values and invite others into relationship with the King. In many parts of the world where Christianity is established, organized church is naturally the best context for that to happen. But as the Gospel message gains greater entre into places where there is confusion over Christianity – where the definition of Christianity is blurred by cultural baggage – the future may require us to give Jesus-followers the opportunity to not be known as “Christian.”
The Rev. Frank Decker is a vice president of The Mission Society, an elder in the Virginia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, and a former missionary to Ghana, West Africa.
