The more time I spend around people who aren’t Christian, and even those who are, the more I feel like some people don’t really understand what being a Christian means. An explanation of the spiritual side, and my thoughts on the practical side lurk below.
Spiritually, it’s pretty simple.
All Christians believe in baptism as the gateway to the Christian life. Theoretically, it can happen at any time as long as there’s water around, for the general Christian community.
Catholics include two other rites of passage to consider a person a Christian adult. These three sacraments of initiation, then, are Baptism, First Eucharist (Communion), and Confirmation. In Baptism, the spiritual slate is wiped clean, and for Catholics, a person is anointed as priest, prophet and sovereign. In Eucharist, the person is welcomed into communion, into oneness, with all Christians. In Confirmation, a person swears to serve Jesus, follow His commands, spread the Gospel and accept the Holy Spirit. For children, this tends to happen at infancy, young childhood and adolescence, respectively; for adults entering the Church, it occurs all at one time, at Mass the night before Easter.
However, in practice it’s not quite that simple.
“Not all who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus warns in the Gospel of Matthew. Here’s what becoming a Christian does NOT do:
Make a person perfect. Free will being what it is, and human nature being what it is, just because a person is baptized does not mean that everything they do afterward gets a free pass. For Catholics, this is what the Sacrament of Reconciliation is for; unload your burdens, accept that you are already forgiven, and cement your contrition with an act of penance that often is intended to make amends with the wronged or provide closure. We are all sinners here.
Make a person “better” than anyone else. This can come as a real shock to some. “I go to church and say my prayers! That guy says he follows Muhammad (or Buddha, or Baha’ullah, or Krishna, or the Goddess, or his own conscience…), so I’m good and he’s evil!”
Nope.
Read the letters of St. Paul. According to Paul, who was instrumental in defining Christianity as a religion, all human beings are God’s creation. All people are sons and daughters of God. Whether or not they believe what you do and in whom you do, they have an intrinsic worth and are by nature of existing, your neighbor, your sibling. One of my favorite priests calls it “divine DNA.” Everyone got it. Everyone is loved equally by our mutual parent God. The rest is sibling rivalry. (So no, God does not hate “fags” or anyone else.)
Give a person the right to be a dick. “If I say I’m sorry to God (or my priest), then it’s okay, I’ll go to heaven anyway.” Also no. While yes, sins can be forgiven, going into an act of dickery believing that you can dick now and ask forgiveness later is missing the point, and just like any false apology, renders contrition invalid. By the same logic (for the Protestant crowd who believe heaven is earned), one dickish act does a lot more damage than a bunch of random acts of kindness can heal. Good works are nice, but if the motivation is screwy, what good will it do in the long run? Try not being a dick instead. It’s harder in the short run, but it’s worth it.
Here’s what becoming a Christian does do:
Make you a servant of all. The word “Christian” literally means “one who is of/like the Anointed One.” The example Jesus sets isn’t an easy one; he spurned the attention of the rich and powerful to hang out with the bottom of the totem pole. Those considered literally untouchable by any sane Jew, he stopped to talk with and to heal. He shared water with a woman from Samaria, which John tells us was scandalous since no Jew uses anything a Samaritan has used. He doesn’t bother mentioning that no Jewish man would speak to an unmarried woman, much less an adulteress, as we learn that she is. To be a Christian is to set aside the culture that places people in categories and serve all alike: to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, bury the dead, help the sinner, educate the ignorant, advise the confused, comfort the suffering, have patience, forgive those who have hurt you and pray for all.
Give you a second chance. In Baptism, a person claims their birthright; Heaven and peace are theirs, and death has no permanent hold. That cannot be taken away. No matter what you’ve done, spiritually the slate is wiped clean. (Legally, no, but spiritually, yes.) We are returned to the state of purity the first humans had; childlike and without shame, possessed of intrinsic dignity. In Catholic Baptism, the infant or catechumen is exhorted, “May you take that dignity unstained into the Light of Christ.” Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) that “God never tires of forgiving us.” So you always get a second chance. You just have to claim it, sincerely, and stick to it.
Make you a rebel. In the world today, humanity is defined first and foremost by our categories and divisions. While labels, self-applied, aid in defining a person’s identity, most categories are imposed. Christianity says no. “In Christ,” writes Paul, “there is no Jew or Gentile, there is no slave or free person, there is no woman or man.” The divisions in Christianity over arguments of theology and practice are, at heart, minute bickering; the divisions between all people are cultural, not innate. Anything that divides one from another and places one above another is invalid, says the Christian, and I reject the culture that tells me otherwise.
Put you in danger of ridicule, heartbreak, even death. Serving people, with special attention to the untouchables? Uncompromising love, mercy and charity? Believing that death is not the end and that the universe is not going to Hell in a handbasket, but is innately good along with everything in it? It’s nuts. It’s hippie-talk. But it’s Christ. And mind, Christians in the Western world are lucky. We don’t live pre-Constantine, in a world where the slightest intimation of Christian belief would get us tossed into an arena. We still have a large amount of the power of culture on our side. But there are other ways to be a martyr for Christianity than flying off to North Korea, Iraq or Central Africa. Being a Christian means being vulnerable. It means loving all, serving all, exposing hatred and hypocrisy to the light whether or not it’s safe or convenient. It means disobeying authority, sometimes. It means giving people the benefit of the doubt, and forgiving them when they take advantage. If it sounds a little crazy, well, people thought Jesus was nuts too.
Make you aware of being eternally, unconditionally loved. The God Christians believe in is not a God of heartless vengeance or cold apathy, but the loving being Jesus called “Abba,” “Daddy.” In the story of Creation, God looked on the universe and all that was in it, brought to life by a divine breath of air, and said “It is good.” Nothing we can do is going to change that.
It’s a hell of a mission statement. “Love all, serve all, have faith in the goodness of the world and everything in it, expose hypocrisy and hatred, know that you are loved… And don’t be a dick about it.”
TL;DR?
Read the above paragraph.
Late Nite Philosophy 