To Self-Identify as a Christian

To Self-Identify as a Christian July 24, 2016

American Christians, just like every other kind of person, are casting about to identify themselves not only in this political melee but also just day to day. How should one self identify? What should be a Christian’s defining characteristics? What word, if any, best describes a person’s theological and moral priorities? For some it’s quite easy. I’m an Anglican, they might say, or a Presbyterian, or Baptist, or Charismatic. Others, desiring to be less confined by the strictures of denominational flavoring, are trying out Christ-Follower, or Bible Believing. Every name is meant to signal something about the believer–their theology and perhaps their politics. And as the church drifts ever more alarmingly towards heresy, it’s easy to be confused and bemused by what to call oneself.

But the problem of what to be called isn’t particular to our narrow slice of history. The church early on didn’t have an official name. Early believers called each other Brother and Sister, and thought of themselves as Disciples. They were attached, intimately, to Jesus. It’s who they were. So in Acts we read, “…For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” As the church grew, outsiders looked in and finally gave the name. And it was apt, clever even. It took the center point of this new faith–Christ–and applied it to all of its followers.

This might seem off topic, but I think it must have been awfully discouraging for David when Samuel died. Samuel–anointing David to be king in a quiet way, and then receding once more into the background–even though they never met, it must have been comforting for David to know he knew. David takes up his promised title and his life and runs for it. Saul, his enemy, lets the kingly promise to David drive him mad. Besides Samuel, and Saul, and his handful of warrior-followers and his parents, David is not exactly overburdened with outside acknowledgment of his status as future king.

In our modern times David would have had all kinds of angst about how to self identify. There’s his family, his nationality, and then the hope that he hangs onto. He’s been promised something pretty grand, something that no one around him has any aspirations to. But then, for years and years, the hope, from the outside, appears more and more foolish, bleak even. There he is, skulking around in caves and with the Philistines. King forsooth.

It’s very similar to the disciples in Jerusalem, in the days and months after Pentecost. Jesus rises from the dead and it’s so great, and then he just takes off. Honestly, it would have been helpful if he’d given them a name as the clouds swallowed him up. But instead he gives a job–go. And so the disciples shuffle disconsolately back into the city to wait. And after that, all pepped up with the Holy Spirit, there is still the skulking in back alleys, always being in trouble and on the run, sometimes being killed. The incredible hope of glory that drives the believer forward, from the outside looks foolish.

And then, perhaps in a mocking way, like Buzzfeed’s Progressive Puppets, the name is given–Christian. And since then we’ve lugged it around, and tried sometimes to soften it, and always to clarify and better it. Evangelical has served pretty well. It has the Go written into it. But it is all burdened up with political baggage and confusion, and is beginning to be passė, like bearing the name of one’s denomination.

The attempt to define the kind and the flavor of one’s Christianity, while useful in theological signaling, might be kind of useless as we go forward. The peculiarities of doctrine and division don’t really matter to the outsider. Polity, credal orthodoxy, liturgics, in the world or of the world–the fact is, if you’re marked by the name of Christ, the shame and the hope are there whether you like it or not. You might be wearing them in discomfort. You might be serving them badly. You might be skulking around the back ally of your church, wishing you didn’t have to go in. But the shame of the cross, and the hope of glory, however you feel about it, point to the Christ, whose name is above all others, and who will not turn away from you, if you don’t turn away from him.


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