What Gives You the Right to Be a Christian? Better Yet, Who Gives You the Right?

What are you willing to die for? That tells you what you really believe. John Henry Newman wrote in “Secular Knowledge Not a Principle of Action,”

The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.

People die for dogmas and ideologies, like Marxism, National Socialism, and Democracy. They will die for charismatic leaders who embody those ideologies. They will also die for lovers. Most compelling for the would-be martyrs are those embodied dogmas who are their lovers, or the loves of their lives.

Some two thousand years ago, a revolutionary leader calling for change in society made an outrageous, inflammatory claim to the masses following him: as the bread descended from heaven, people needed to eat his body and drink his blood to live. Many of them turned away and no longer followed him (See John 6). No doubt, they went away in search of a political figure who would promise them a chicken in every pot and two cars in each garage come Election Day.

For the few remaining followers standing by, this revolutionary leader—Jesus of Nazareth—asked them if they would leave him, too. One of his devotees, Simon Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69). We are told in Matthew 16 that Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, was not the result of natural means or genius, but revelation from his Heavenly Father (Matthew 16:17). So, too, here. Peter did not choose Jesus, but rather, Jesus chose him and the rest of the twelve (John 6:70). It was like Jesus was reading Bonhoeffer, or was it the other way round? In any event, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Discipleship is not an offer man makes to Christ. It is only the call which creates the situation” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship {New York: Touchstone, 1995}, page 63). Jesus’ call creates the situation, not our political and rational calculations, but his presence and beckoning. As Newman claimed, “Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.”

Jesus said to Peter and the others: “‘Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.’ He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him” (John 6:70-71 ESV). No doubt, Judas connived and postured and sought to make an offer to Jesus that he could not refuse. We often do so today, when we flatter Jesus with claims that we believe in him, that we have propositioned ourselves to the point that we can declare that he finally makes sense, and that he should consider himself lucky that we have made him our very own personal Savior based on various calculations, dictating to him the conditions that must be met on our terms (Regarding conditions, see Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, page 61). No doubt, this is one reason Jesus makes such unreasonable, irrational, unrefined, even grotesque, cannibalistic-sounding claims that cause most of his followers to abandon him. There is nothing calculating about his claims other than that he means to throw us off the trail of seeking to control him.

At the beginning and end of the day, the ultimate question is not “What gives you the right to be a Christian?” but “Who gives you the right to be one?” Jesus does. It’s that simple.

Some more refined types might retort, “I’m not a Christian, but a Christ-follower;” so, the questions I pose about “the right to be a Christian” do not relate to them. They don’t want to be associated with those Christian types who always give Jesus a bad name. While I can appreciate their angst about the negative associations with the word “Christian,” we must all be on guard against hubris, which often results in “Christians” and “Christ-followers” alike doing bad things in Jesus’ good name. Ultimately, we don’t follow him, but he calls and beckons us: “Come, follow me.”

In response to my first post titled “What Gives You the Right to Be a Christian?” Christopher Erik wrote at Facebook,

The reason [Karl] Barth, D.B. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer] and Paul of Tarsus all say, “who” and not “what”, is because they understand that this Person cannot be made to be subject to the rational categories and presuppositions of man. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, “This person, Jesus Christ, is presupposition and therefore, not subject to proof. Whenever we make this living Logos, Jesus Christ, the subject of proof instead of letting him be the presupposition of our thought, this is no more than the immanence of reason, coming to grips with itself.” The answer to the question, “(Who) gives me the right to be Christian?” is Jesus Christ.

Jesus ever remains the presupposition of our thought and faith, not the subject of proof. The reason we can believe in him is because he makes himself known to us. How shall we respond to his invitation? Make him wait until we feel ready, until we get all our ducks in a row, bury our fathers and mothers, and get our 401K’s in order? Jesus will tell us the same thing he told that prior would-be follower: “‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead’” (Matthew 8:21-22; ESV).

In a moralistic, therapeutic deistic world of our own making in which we demand in times of need that God make us happy again on our timetables because we are basically good people, we find Jesus rather unimpressed and unimpressionable. However, if we come to him on bended knee, begging him to have mercy on us and take us to himself, even though we be Gentile dogs, we will find him far more amenable. No doubt, the Gentile woman who came to Jesus, begging him to heal her daughter, had heard the reports about him. What she knew of him beckoned her to come and kneel before him and ask for mercy. Yes, he said her faith was great. But it was really Jesus who created her faith through his prior miraculous deeds, which she received second-hand. But now in his presence, hearing his words directed to her, she was taken to a whole new level of longing for mercy in her desperate state. Matthew 15:21-28 records the encounter:

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

We must leave off with our rationalism and moralism and even our inflamed piety when dealing with Jesus. We should take our cue from this Canaanite woman—after all, she is us. Jesus does not exist to do our bidding based on our various intellectual merits and virtues. We don’t give him the right to do anything for us—even to make us believe in him. He alone gives us the right. It’s up to him to give it. Like the Canaanite, bend the knee.