Saturday, February 22, 2014

Christians are Like Africans


When I entered seminary many years ago, I knew nothing about Africa. I thought of Africa as a place of mystery where everyone was black and modernity had still not found its way into all the crooks and corners of the continent.  But mostly, I thought of Africa as one place, not the many different, diverse places that it is.  It was in the company of a dozen or so students from African nations that I began to revise my understanding of the word “African.”   Sometimes, while eating lunch in the refectory with someone from Uganda or Kenya or South Africa or Malawi, I would draw the basic shape of the continent—I did know that much—on a napkin and ask them to show me where their country was.  One time I was with a group of people, each from a different country, who laughed when I told them I had always thought of Africa as one place.  “Oh no,” someone said.  “We are very different.”  I still don’t know much about Africa, but I do know that once you have said the word “African,” there is still more to be said before anyone can tell whom you are speaking about.  And so it is with the word “Christian.”

I write today in response to an article in the Washington Post about a new film version of what the world will be like after the rapture.  The rapture, you may know, is the idea that some day, all the people who have chosen to align with Jesus will be carried off to heaven, leaving everyone else to suffer the terrible consequences of not having chosen that path.  The creator of the film says his purpose in making it was basically to scare people into becoming Christians.  My purpose today is not to tell you all the reasons why that doesn’t sound to me like Christianity.  I write to say that Christianity is more than one country and more than one culture.  The article in the Post today is just not about the part of Christianity where I live.  When you hear the word “Christian” especially in the news, it is worth asking just which part of the continent is actually being discussed.

Christianity covers such a great diversity of beliefs, passions, hopes, traditions, sensibilities, personality types……I could go on.  I don’t even know if I can draw the outline of the continent of Christianity very clearly, or clearly enough that all Christians would recognize it, but I will try.  Christians are people who have chosen to throw their lot in with Jesus.  That’s it.  Any more detail than that would just wave the flag for my particular nation and maybe lead to arguments.  Christians are people who have chosen to go with Jesus.  That’ll do.  

Some have chosen to hitch their wagons to Jesus, who will not only get them into heaven, but help them lead others there.  Some hope Jesus will challenge and empower them to live meaningful lives serving those in need.  Some hope Jesus will give them courage  and words as they challenge those in power to see themselves as God’s stewards.  Many of the people I know who call themselves Christians don’t even talk much about Jesus.  They just find that in the community that gathers around the stories of Jesus, growth seems possible.  Some Christians seek a deeper grounding for their lives and are drawn to the the idea of Jesus whose humanity seemed to be grounded deeply in God.  Some Christians talk a lot about God and Jesus, others are silent.  Most of us probably have some mix of these elements and more in our make up.  

When I read stories like the one in today’s Post, I don’t want to change the movie-maker’s ideas about Christianity.  I just don’t want people to imagine those ideas when they hear the word “Christian.”  I wish I could say I don’t want them to hear only those ideas, but the truth is, those ideas offend my sense of what Christianity is about, so I don’t want people to go there when they hear “Christian.”  I am only human.  And I know that folks in some of those other nations on the Christian continent have similar feelings about me.  

Once, at a workshop for clergy, I heard a pastor ask one of my favorite, theologically-liberal writers how, with his ideas about Jesus, he could call himself a Christian.  The writer said he kept using the term because he wanted people to know there were many kinds of Christians.  I have wondered sometimes over the years how I might answer that question.  I think of a young man, still in college, who had agreed—sort of—to be baptized at the request of his mother who was only months away from death. He and I had to do some haggling about what he could affirm in choosing to be baptized.  In the end, the family gathered and I asked him simply if he could say that Jesus would be his way.  In learning and growing and becoming what God created him to be, would he choose Jesus as the path.  To that, he was able to say “yes,” and was baptized.  Why do I call myself a Christian?  Like that young man, it is the path I have chosen.  My understanding of that path has changed many times.  I’m sure it will change again.  “Christianity,” the continent in which my little country lies, is huge.  And I am pretty sure that the contour of this vast place, simply drawn, is “I have thrown in my lot with Jesus.”

John Baker  


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