Today's post comes after reading a sermon of the same title. I have recently been looking at sermons online through one specific church within my community. This one comes from 2006. I clicked on it because of the title. I often feel like a fraudulent Christian (not that I label myself a Christian very often). Or like I am living two different lives. (Maybe because I am) One where I am confident in my beliefs and the other where I constantly question and doubt everything. But I firmly believe that one could not exist without the other and for this I am thankful as it is the doubt and outright disagreement of certain things that makes me pursue and seek it more to find the real truth behind all the differences and interpretations.
The scripture for the sermon is John 15:1-8 and Acts 8:26-40.
It is the words of John that are particularly interesting here. “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."
Abiding. That is an interesting thought. I feel that the pastor of this sermon said it best. "To be authentically Christian means simply taking Christianity as our spiritual home and taking our fellow Christians as our family." It doesn't say that we must believe certain things or follow some sort of rules or laws. To be Christian means to participate in that relationship where it is okay to question and doubt just like you may not always love(or like) your family and you may have disputes within your home so do Christians with their faith. But as long as you "make your home in God" and live in your faith then you will produce fruit.
Being a Christian is not about checking off items on a to-do list or adhering to a specific belief; it is a relationship where you can grow in your faith and help others to grow in theirs.
A while ago I read a book by Donald Miller called "Searching for God Knows What." It was within that book that I saw the same principles of John 15:1-8. I feel that the whole point of the book was to make you see how important your own personal relationship is within Christianity and that it is not just some set of rules. I read the book in a 24 hour period. I loved the idea of a relationship instead of some list of beliefs because faith is so much more than a list, although lists can be helpful. Sometimes I think many people try to find their faith from other sources or from something outside themselves but really your faith has to come from within. What is the cornerstone of your faith? Is it the size of a mustard seed?
3 comments:
Man, I had a whole response written out and then with one odd key stroke it all disappeared, not to be recovered. I hate it when that happens. Anyway, interesting and thought-provoking post. I’m going to share what came to my mind when I read this although I may not have interpreted it the same way you wrote it, and these comments are therefore not against what you wrote; just my two cents
The two polar ends of the spectrum pertaining to faith cannot exist one without the other because they are part of the same walk; not living two separate lives but the life of a Christian in a broken world. I had something more to say about that, but I am not able to think of it right now.
In response to the quote about family, the idea of family may not include rules or laws, but definitely a set of standards that when met make the family stronger. I don’t think the pastor is saying we can approach the idea of family with the same way we often do, the way families have become viewed in our messed up world. God doesn’t give us the allowance of not always loving our family, especially if we are to love our neighbors. He wouldn’t have us doubt – he’d love us to understand his glory right away, but it is Satan who puts that doubt in our mind. And though that may make us feel like we are becoming stronger in our faith, and we are when we work through those doubts, it is not the way God intended our relationship with him to be. Love is to be unconditional. There are definitely guidelines for us to follow that God has set out, they may not determine our eternal fate, but they are to be followed.
You’re right, it isn’t about checking things off a list because then you start going through the motions. However, when people start looking at their relationship from this angle, they often disregard the guidelines set before us and create somewhat of their own faith. This isn’t good either. We need to be careful that the blind aren’t leading the blind. And there is one specific belief you have to adhere to in order to be a Christian….
Really it all comes down to this: although Christianity isn’t all about rules and lists, and we do have freedom in our faith, people really need to be careful how far they stretch their freedom. Guidelines help us along in our faith and cannot be disregarded completely.
Hope that wasn’t super choppy and actually made sense. That was my quick version of what I had written a few days ago.
I hate when that happens ... losing what you wrote. I think what you wrote does make sense even though most of it seems to be quite opposite.
I like what you said about the two polar ends of the same walk. That is exactly what I meant in the beginning. That the opposites are connected but that I “feel” the polarization of personally being on the two ends. Also, I have added the word "like" to where I had put the word love previously because that is actually what I meant there.
The point of my post for me was that I have tended to generalize all Christianity into “the moralist who focuses on sin.” I often have a picture in my mind of what a “real” Christian looks like and a lot of the time that picture is not a reflection of me. And what I loved about what the pastor said in the entirety of the sermon was that it was okay to have doubts or dislikes or questions as long as we “agree to make our home within the community of the Christian Church and live there with integrity.”
As to the quote about family, the rest of the paragraph may be helpful. “The language of home and family works well here. We don’t have to like everyone in our family. We all know that even the best of homes and families include squabbling, controversy, petty jealousies, and real dissent. We know there are days and weeks, sometimes even years, when we are not in love and charity with that which is home. But if we use the paradigm of abiding, then life in Christian faith becomes not a catalog of beliefs to which we lend our assent and then try to obey the rules, but a commitment to relationship where we allow the possibility both to create change and to be changed ourselves.”
I also liked the way the pastor ended the sermon.
"To be authentically Christian is not to pass a litmus test of belief, but to commit to an on-going vital relationship with our faith where we are open both to pushing and to being pushed, teaching and being taught, opening the eyes of others and discovering that we ourselves have been blind
about this piece or that. To be authentically Christian is to abide in Christ’s abode, to share life and faith with all of our Christian brothers and sisters and, God willing, to grow in faith and understanding throughout our lives. If we are here, if we intend to stay here and think and learn and act from here, then ours is a faith that is true."
I like the idea of questioning yourself if you ever feel like a fraudulent Christian. What exactly does a Christian look like? Belief should be more than a checking things off a list because then you have to ask, why are some things on the list? Why are other things not? Do you really have to accept certain things you may not like to be seen as a true Christian? I'd say that if God designed you, he also designed your brain and wanted you to use it. You know what's true for you and you should never compromise yourself or feel lesser-than for not fitting into some narrow ideas about being a believer. You don't have to fit the stereotype of what a true Christian is to feel true to yourself and to your belief.
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