Imagine

In June of this year, I began a year-long residency as a Chaplain at a regional hospital. My peer group of fellow residents, chaplain interns, as well as my supervisors, is composed of “Christians”…specifically “Baptist” Christians. In some ways, I am the “token Buddhist”…I have experienced so far that I can be both a novel curiosity and a threat to my peers. And in an effort to respond to a recent Facebook note I posted about my confusion about what it means to be “Baptist”, I hope, as one of my learning objectives, to figure that out. “What is a Baptist”? But that is another blog post for another day…

But today’s question is a little broader:  What is a CHRISTIAN?

Well…I don’t really know. I know I’ve been told what a Christian is, what a Christian does. And I’ve mostly been told that being a Christian means that I’ve accepted a set of “beliefs” about God, about this Jesus fella. And I know that a lot, if not most of that meaning of Christianity has been handed to us for centuries by the “church” and its authorities…as part of our “tradition”. I also know that most of that tradition is founded on the writings of Paul and the narratives of the gospel writers…our “scripture”. But my experience is that what we have inherited, as both tradition and scripture, is just that… “narratives” – narratives of other people in a specific historical geo-political context, narratives with specific political and theological agendas to advance, narratives to be understood by those people in those times. But why do those narratives have to be MY narrative(s)? 

It’s clear that belief in the Resurrection was important to Paul; but does it have to be just as important to me? It’s clear in the first chapter of Matthew that establishing Jesus’ Davidic lineage was important to the author(s) of that gospel…he(?) was writing a persuasive story to a mostly Jewish audience. But does Jesus’ Davidic lineage have to be important to me? The author of Mark emphasizes Jesus’ role as prophet as a fulfillment and continuation of Jewish Midrashic narratives. John seeks to establish Jesus’ divinity. But these are the narratives of and for a specific community authored by specific individuals with their own specific personal narratives. Why do they have to be MY narratives? Can I not have the freedom to experience my own narrative?  I hope you get my point. 

What worries me is that “belief” in these narratives (or adoption of these narratives as one’s own), has reduced Christianity to a meaningless, lifeless, rote repetition of creeds and doctrines. I feel that people who have chosen to live out a Christianity based solely on “beliefs” have abdicated their courage and responsibly to live authentic spiritual lives in exchange for the leisureliness of going to church on Sunday, going through some liturgical motions, and leaving it at that. I am ashamed that the simple recitation of a “belief” in Jesus has supplanted the PRACTICE of Christianity as the valid definition of what it means to be a Christian. To me, such a reduction is offensive; it is weak, fraudulent, cowardly, vapid and lifeless. Reducing Christianity to nothing more than a formulary of doctrinal “beliefs” renders it impotent. Such a lifeless Christianity is a slap in the face to what I feel Jesus was trying to teach and do. Bishop John Shelby Spong has written: “Why Christianity Must Change or Die”. Let me be the first (although I doubt that I am), to pronounce that Christianity is, in deed, dead. That is, so long as it requires nothing more than a simple profession of “faith” and belief in a bunch of other people’s narratives.

What I want to ask is this: Is it possible to re-define Christianity as a PRACTICE, rather than a “faith”? Is there such a thing as a “faithless” Christian? (The German theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer has invited us to share his idea of a “religion-less Christianity”; maybe this is like that). Can I still call myself a Christian if I’ve let go of the narratives that seem to define it for other people? 

Well, it better be possible, ‘cause that’s what I am determined to do.
 

What inspired this blog (wandering diatribe), is this little poem that was shared by a fellow chaplain in our morning group/devotional: 
 

“What does your Master teach”? asked a visitor.
“Nothing”, said the disciple.
“Then why does he give discourses”?
“He only points the way, he teaches nothing”.
The visitor couldn’t make sense of this, so the disciple made it clearer…
“If the Master were to teach, we would make beliefs out of his teachings. The Master is not concerned with what we believe, only with what we see.” 
 

So what I want others to stop and consider is this…What if we took this little dialogue/exchange and applied it to Christianity? What would happen if we stopped “believing” everything the bible says, or the church says, or the tradition says, and just tried to practice what this dude Jesus asked us to practice: “Love God; Love your Neighbor as yourself”. Isn’t that the essence of what He was trying to teach in the first place...That despite what the Pharisees and the Temple/Church authorities try to tell us to do or do "to us",  or no matter what they tell us to "believe", that it’s more important to love and serve than to follow the script or believe the “right” thing?  Isn't LOVE and the PRACTICE of LOVE the most important thing?  Isn't LOVE and the PRACTICE of LOVE more important than "orthodoxy"?

I want to try and see what happens!

Now let’s hold hands and sing a song… 
 

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

 

John Lennon