Why I'm probably still a Christian . . .

So, my friend Richard is too good for posting comments. Instead, he chose to write an email to get me to clarify things. There are two points I figure I should throw out for everyone:

1. Am I still a Christian?

I was recently reading a theologian I respect a lot who was pointing out the extent to which we all rely on other people to understand ourselves. In a way, it can be said that the only way to really know ourselves is to know other people. There's always this level of uncertainty in each person's self-understanding, and we all rely on other humans to tell us what kind of human we are. That's kind of what I was getting at with the title of this blog . . . essentially people will define you however they see fit, but if you're expecting me to stick a label on myself you might be waiting for a long time.

One thing I read this last year that really messed me up was a quote from Gandhi saying, "Ask the poor, they will tell you who the Christians are." I started thinking about Acts where the title came into being at Antioch. The early Christians didn't label themselves as such, the word was given to them. Probably in a pejorative sense at first, and maybe over time others adopted the term with a different tone of voice. Whatever the case, I basically feel that the word "Christian" is better employed as a compliment than as a self-imposed title. If we are being Christians, then the world will let us know, and we should pay careful attention to the tone used with the term since it carries all the significance.

But, I digress. All my ideals aside, my straight forward answer would be: maybe, by who's definition? If I am allowed to delineate the meaning of the word, then definitely. But, according to the way most people define the word . . . I would definitely distance myself, and possibly respond with a 'no'. Regrettably.

2. In light of my views on the atonement . . . what do I make of the relationship between Jesus and God?

I don't think I could ever say this enough: the first disciples to meet Jesus, met a man, not a god. I think we need to do the same. I think in our context we often work in reverse: we start with the divine Christ and try to reconcile the earthly Jesus to him. But it took his closest friends and followers months if not years to believe in him as a messiah. They initially encountered a rabbi, a miracle-man, a prophet. This is what the knew him as first. With time those labels seemed inadequate, so the began attributing other, loftier titles to him.

It was only 50 years after his death, after transferring the gospel into a polytheistic Greek culture where divine incarnations were commonplace that any Christian community dared attribute divinity to Jesus. It was controversial at that point and took the course of 200 years before it was generally accepted.

My personal stance is that to work backwards from God down to Jesus is to make much too big a claim of understanding God. We begin speaking in grand metaphysical mythic terms, that assume we know the mind of God. To me this is blasphemy; it makes a joke of the God whose ways are forever above our own and whose thoughts are never capable of being brought down to our level. Rather the Christian belief is in a man who reveals the heart of this mysterious God. Not because he IS God, but because God reveals himself through him.

In this way, I can understand how Jesus becomes inseparable from God, but to me that does not make them the same. It makes sense to me that on taking the gospel on to Greek soil, it became beneficial to identify Jesus with God. But, in our modern world, Greek thought has ceased to reign supreme. In our humanistic setting, I find the human Jesus to be the necessary starting point for all theology and spirituality.