Remember when we all first came to Christ?
Remember the urgency with which we shared our faith by assuring people that “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship!”? We were quick to describe our new faith as one of connection with God through Jesus, not a bunch of rules, and even the more legalistic among us went out of our way to remind others that we were just trying to please God when we turned down a beer or wouldn’t go see an R-rated movie, not earn out way into the Divine heart.
Do you wish you had a dollar for every time you said — probably too smugly — “I’m not religious. I just love the Lord!”? I do.
But something came to my heart this morning as I was praying, and that’s that it might be time, for all of us and for me especially, to rethink some things. Without ever considering denying Jesus, I and a lot of my brothers and sisters struggle with how we refer to ourselves in describing our faith. “Christian,” to me, always seemed vague, given the “I must be Christian, I’m an American and not Jewish or anything” culture of our nation. “Evangelical,” which correctly describes me when used in its historical socio-religious context, is a huge and unnecessary turn-off to people who’ve been sickened by TV evangelists and bullying pastors and politicians. “Jesus follower” doesn’t tend to make conversation flow real easily, and neither does “Disciple of Jesus.” And while I subscribe to the generally-considered seven historic, orthodox fundamentals of the Christian faith, I don’t think too many folks would use “Keely” and “Fundamentalist” in the same sentence.
I’ll let you pick yourself up from the floor before I continue . . .
But as I was praying this morning, I remembered a comment I heard on TV last night about the recently deceased Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield, whom the commentator described as “deeply religious.” That struck me, and it stayed with me through the night. Could it be that in our young-Christian attempts to distance true intimacy with Christ from the constraints of rote religious faith, we strayed from the legitimate value of practicing, deeply and with private and public discipline, our religion? Is it possible that between the hep and relevant extremes of “my best bud, Jesus” and cold, Spirit-quenching ritual there’s a place for the personal relationship with Christ the Gospel promises AND a profound devotion to the disciplines and practice of our faith?
And doesn’t that seem just too obvious?
Of course it does. But the most public Christians in America today seem to be utterly convinced that Jesus is on their side and much less concerned with whether or not they’re on His side. The rhetoric and posturing, the manipulation and lust for power, can hardly be seen as “religious” from a watching world unaware of our Evangelical discomfort with “seeming religious.” Yet it’s that kind of humble seeking of God’s will, individually and corporately, that attracts unbelievers. It seems that in ditching the piety of our forebears and forcing our “Jesus Politics” into the political and social arena, we’ve lost our way. Mark Hatfield demonstrated that Christ’s will for the public servant is manifest in the heart of a humble servant granted power by integrity and intelligence, not by disciples grabbing the microphone and screeching nasty things louder than the next one.
The difference between the two public approaches to “Christian Politics” seems to be not between Republicans and Democrats but between those who keep Jesus tenderly in their hearts and those who plaster Him on the flag and shove Him on stage. And if my life’s testimony is reminiscent of the former, I wouldn’t mind at all being described after I die as “deeply religious.”