What is a Christian

They pulled her from the frigid water sputtering and gasping for air. The curvaceous blonde was among a half-dozen would-be lifeguards who had to be rescued during a trial swim. She had noted on her application that while she couldn’t swim, she did watch “Baywatch” and looked good in a bikini.

When asked about the latest crop of potential lifeguards, Huntington Beach Lifeguard Captain Steve Seim said, “Every year we get people who try out and have no business trying out. People watch ‘Baywatch’ and say, ‘Oh, I want to be a lifeguard,’ and they have no idea what that means.

I know how Steve feels. In the same way that many Californians don’t really understand what it means to be a lifeguard, I’ve found that many of my neighbors don’t really understand what it means to be a Christian.

Do a few man-on-the-street interviews and ask, “What is a Christian?” and you’ll hear answers like:
A Christian is someone who doesn’t get to party or have fun, or . . .
A Christian is someone who lives like hell Monday through Saturday and then goes and sings about heaven on Sunday, or . . .
A Christian is a narrow-minded, right-winger, who thinks he knows more than anyone else and is therefore qualified to legislate how the rest of us should live.

Do a few person-in-the-pew interviews with regular churchgoers and you’ll get a different set of answers:
A Christian is someone who is saved and bound for heaven when they die, or . . .
A Christian is someone who calls Jesus “Lord,” or . . .
A Christian is someone who claims to be forgiven, not perfect.

Because you’ve decided to spend some time with this article, I’m assuming you’re interested in hearing my answer to the question: What is a Christian? (I know I’m very interested in hearing yours.)

My guess is that the definition I’m about to offer you will be different from any you’ve heard before. My hope is that the way I’m about to describe the Christian faith will not only make sense to your mind, but will also resonate in the depths of your heart. I know it does in mine.

Why? Because the answer I have to offer to your question is rooted in story. Nothing captivates me more than good stories. I love to read them, write them, tell them, and repeat them. I love to watch people respond to the phrase, “Once upon a time . . .” Say those magical words and children lean forward, old men wake up, and even dogs perk up their ears.

“Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a beautiful princess named . . .

. . .Buttercup.” And off we go.

There is just something about a good story. Every night millions of people turn on their TV’s to hear and watch a couple of stories unfold. The truth is, most of those stories aren’t even that good, but still we tune in. The love of story is a universal affection that transcends cultures. No matter where you go in the world, you’ll find people telling and listening to stories. Listen closely to the stories a culture tells and preserves and you’ll find imbedded in them the people’s most important beliefs, values, and aspirations.

It should be no surprise to us then that the Christian faith comes to us in the form of a story. When God wants to grab our attention and communicate what is most important to Him, He tells us a story. That is what the Bible is.

What is surprising however, and more than a little disappointing, is the way that over the past several hundred years, so many Christians have taken the story we’ve been given and reduced it to a list of indisputable facts to be believed, spiritual laws to be accepted, or steps of salvation to be followed

This also explains why so many descriptions of Christianity fail to quicken the pulse or inspire the imagination. When the Christian faith is reduced to dry facts and formulas we can’t help but describe a Christian as someone who has agreed with a list of assertions about God, Jesus, sin, heaven, and hell; prayed the right words, in the right order; been baptized at just the right time; and in doing so has been given an all-expense-paid trip to heaven.

While this way of describing and thinking about Christianity has been helpful for many, I believe there is a better way. Formulas can’t fully address the mystery of God or capture the complexity of our world. But stories can and in the Bible they do. That is why I find it so appropriate to describe what a Christian is and does in the language of story.

So here is my story-based description of a Christian, which I learned from George Lindbeck:

“Christians are people who have learned the stories of Israel, Jesus, and the Church well enough that they interpret their own lives and the world itself in terms of those stories.”

In other words, a Christian is someone who has heard the story told in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and has decided to make that story his or her story: to learn it, to become part of it, to see the world in light of it, to live as if it’s true. A Christian allows his or her life to be shaped and formed by the biblical story. A Christian has chosen to live under the authority of the story told in the Bible.

How does this happen? What’s the process? How are Christians made? How does a person come to live under the authority of the biblical story?

It begins when we hear the story of salvation told in scripture. We may hear it from our parents, our friends, from the preacher at church, in a small group Bible study, from reading the Bible, or watching a movie.

The Bible is big book, but its story line is pretty simple. It can be divided into six chapters.

Chapter 1-The Creation.

In the beginning, God creates a world that is very good. The first humans, Adam and Eve, are created in the image of God and live in harmony with Him, one another, and the rest of creation.

Chapter 2-The Fall.

Part of the goodness of creation was the freedom God gave to Adam and Eve. They made full use of their freedom and rebelled against their creator. Their effort to live independently of God and become like Him ends in disaster. A curse falls on God’s creation. What was once very good, is now very broken. The humans are cast out of God’s presence, unable to relate to Him as they once did.

They’re also no longer able to relate with each other. As a prelude to the violence that will one day fill the earth, one brother kills another out of jealousy. In time, the world is populated by people whose hearts are focused on destroying each other and setting themselves up in the place where only God belongs. What began as a beautiful story has now turned ugly. Sin and death are daily realities.

It’s in this chapter, that we meet God’s enemy, Satan. His initial appearance is as a serpent, but he’ll reappear throughout the story in various forms, seeking to lead humanity further down the path to destruction, and he’ll do an excellent job of it.

Chapter 3-Israel

God chooses a man named Abraham to father a family that will become a nation called Israel. Through Israel, God plans to reverse the curse of the fall. Evil, which by now is wreaking cataclysmic havoc on God’s once pristine creation, will one day be defeated.

In this chapter, God reveals Himself as promise maker. He promises to pour out His blessings on Abraham, his family, and ultimately, the rest of his creation.

Israel, however, doesn’t respond well to God’s gracious overture. A pattern emerges in which God gives Israel His love and Israel responds with unfaithfulness.

God promises to take care of Abraham and then Abraham lies to his neighbors to take care of himself.

God saves Israel from slavery in Egypt and they respond by worshipping a golden calf.

God gives Israel a law and makes a covenant (binding agreement) with them that is meant to be a blessing, but their disobedience turns it into a curse.

God gives Israel land they didn’t work for and vineyards they didn’t plant, and in the “Promised Land” they pursue the false gods of their neighbors.

God raises up kings in Israel who are supposed to be shepherds of the flock, but most of these kings lead the people (or let the people lead them) further and further away from God.

God gives Israel prophets who beg Israel to be faithful to the covenant and obedient to God’s law, but most of these prophets are ignored, and some are killed.

So as chapter 3 comes to a close, the story has only gotten darker. God’s desire is to bless the world he has created and repair what was broken in the fall, but His chosen people refuse to cooperate.

Along the way, God continues to make promises. The most important being about a future king who will emerge from the lineage of David (Israel’s greatest king) to rule the world and make good on all of God’s previous promises. This promise sets the stage for chapter 4, which is the turning point of the story. There we see Jesus arrive on the scene.

Chapter Four-Jesus

In the person of Jesus, God enters the story as a human, a descendant of David, and takes the brunt of the curse on Himself in order to heal His broken creation. Jesus does what Israel won’t or can’t do. He remains faithful to God the Father, embodies the law, and lives it out in all its fullness.

But God’s people have grown accustomed to the darkness. The light Jesus brings hurts their eyes. He’s not the kind of king they were expecting. In the ultimate rejection of God’s love and grace, they label Jesus a criminal, nail him to a cross, and cheer as he dies.

Because of his faithfulness, his obedience to the Father, his willingness to be cursed and die for sins he didn’t commit; God raises Jesus from the dead. His resurrection is a sign that finally the forces of evil, lead by the Satan, have been defeated and the process of repairing and restoring what was broken in the fall has begun.
The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus is the hinge upon which all of history swings. God the promise maker shows us through Jesus, that He is also a promise keeper. Through Jesus, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David, the curse is reversed and God begins to heal His creation.

Chapter 5-The Church

After Jesus ascends into the heavens, and takes his place with the Father, God uses Jesus’ followers to tell the rest of the world about the Good News of King Jesus and the healing available through him.

The church, like Israel before her, struggles to remain faithful to her calling. At times she loses sight of the larger story, yet God continues to advance the plot by raising up people who proclaim the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as the turning point of the story.

This is the chapter of the story in which we find ourselves. Two thousand years after the fact, Jesus’ followers are still telling the story and announcing his good news to the world, in anticipation of that great day when God finally brings His story to an end.

Chapter 6-The End.

Scripture looks forward to a time when the goodness of God’s creation will be restored fully.

The dead will be raised.
Evildoers will be punished.
Evil, which has already been defeated, will be destroyed.
The presence of God, which now we know only in part, will be experienced in full.
Every tear will be wiped away, and all of God’s people will join Him at His table and share in an eternal feast.

That’s the story.

For those of us who are Christians-it’s our story. We are characters within it.

If you are not yet a Christian, this is the story into which you are being invited to participate.

Once we’ve been exposed to the salvation story told in scripture and invited to participate in it, we’re brought to a place where we must decide whether or not to put our faith in the story we’ve been told.

By “putting our faith in the story” I mean we acknowledge that the biblical story is true and worthy of our belief. By true, I don’t just mean historically accurate, but also authentic to our experience. I believe most of the stories told in the Bible actually happened, but I believe all of them are true.

The story told in the Bible helps us make sense of God, ourselves, and the things going on around us–both good and bad–in a way that no other story does. That’s because it’s the truest story that’s ever been told.

Another way we put our faith in the biblical story is by affirming that Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, reveals to us a God who is worthy of our trust and our obedience. This leads us to confess that Jesus is Lord and worthy of imitation. This means the goal of our lives is to live like Jesus would live if he were walking in our shoes, while encouraging others to do the same.

At the same time we declare God and His story to be worthy of our faith and allegiance, we also renounce all the false stories that we have allowed to shape our broken and distorted lives.

There is no end to the false stories in our world masquerading as true ones.

One story claims that there is no God and that everything in our universe is an accident and there’s no point or meaning to life whatsoever.

Another story says that our lives are to be measured by what we own. The goal of life is to acquire as much as we can before we die, because this is the key to happiness.

Another story says that we shouldn’t rely on anyone but ourselves, and that we have the power within us to make our lives whatever we want them to be.

Another story says that the only way to get God or people to love us is to do a bunch of good things: make good grades, win a bunch of awards, ascend to the top of our profession, make a lot of money, go to church all the time, say a bunch of prayers-that’s how you earn the love of God and of people.

All these stories are false.

One thing God’s story does when we hear it and let it get a grip on our hearts and minds is compel us to label all those stories “false” and to turn away from them. This is what the Bible calls repentance.

Repentance is not just a one-time event; it’s a continual process. The deeper we go into the story of the Bible, the more we realize how many false stories we’ve bought into. Each time we realize a false story has been shaping our lives, we renounce it.

Once we come to the point where we believe God’s story is true and are ready to renounce all the false stories in our lives, then we actually enter the story of salvation through the portal of baptism, which allows us to reenact, if not mystically participate in, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

When we are baptized, we are immersed into God’s story.

In baptism, we experience the death of Christ on the cross and our own death to sin.
In baptism, we experience the burial of Christ in the tomb.
In baptism, we experience the resurrection of Christ on Easter and our own resurrection into a new way of life now, and get a preview of our resurrection at the end of the story.
In other words, in baptism, God’s story-becomes our story.

When you in this way claim God’s story as your own, you are a Christian.

As a part of His story, you can expect God to pour blessings on you so strong and rich, even in the midst of great struggling and suffering, that it almost sounds like a fairy tale.

But it’s not.

This story is true.

Are you a part of it?

If you’re not, would you like to be?

If you want to know more, send an email wadehodgesATgmailDOTcom.