Being Christian is less "light switch" and more "language"

For reasons that I cannot fully understand, for many people, being Christian is like a light switch. That is to say you either are a Christian or you are not. You are on or you are off. Others have noted the light switch metaphor is not helpful and suggest a "dimmer" switch to be better metaphor. That is we are rarely all the way on or all the way off. Being Christian is being in flux.

For years the dimmer switch metaphor has been helpful for me to talk about evangelism as well as my own understanding of the Christian life. The more I sit with it the more I settle into a different metaphor - being Christian is like learning a language.

1. It takes time. Humans may have a propensity for language but it still takes time to learn language. We make mistakes. We learn the nuances. We have difficulties making new sounds. Learning any language takes time, learning the language of God in Christ takes time. 
2. We build on the past. Language builds on the communities of people over time. For instance, English is indebted to at least the German and Anglo-Frisian communities. Being Christian requires that we take seriously the past and understands the debt we owe to the Sinners and Saints that came before us. 
3. We evolve. Language evolves. The word nice has evolved over time and what it meant to be nice today is different than years ago. Being Christian today might look a little different than it did years ago there is not ONE universal never changing way to be Christian. We are all learning how to be Christian together. 
4. Yelling louder to non-speakers does not help. You know that old joke where the English man is trying to communicate with the Frenchwoman by just speaking English louder? It does not help. Yelling Christian language louder to others who do not speak the language does not help. 
5. We do not have to fear mixing. In Texas there is another language called "Spanglish" which is mix of Spanish and English. Being Christian means that we are able to mix different ideas with Christianity without fear of "losing our religion". Instead we are helping to create a new generation of people who can speak Christian. Finding ways to mix the message of Christ with other faith traditions only makes each tradition more dynamic and accessible for new people.
6. We are not able to speak it perfectly. No one has perfect grasp of language and no one has perfect grasp on being Christian. We are all learning and trying the best we can. This is in part why grace is important in both communicating and being Christian. 
7. There are some universals. It seems there are universals in language. For instance shaking a head universally means "no". There is even suggestions that politeness in language is universal. Being Christian recognizes the universals between the message of Jesus and Shintoism to Sikhism. It is in the universals that we can communicate and build relationships.
8. It is the best we have. Language is great but even language falls short on being able to describe the mysteries of the world. How do you describe the color blue or the feeling of rage? Metaphor, story, parable and simile are the best we have. How do you describe the love of God or how to be in relationship with others? Christians know that Christianity is not perfect but it is the best that we know of. This does not mean it is supreme, just like one dialect is not supreme, it is the one that we have found that continues to be the best we personally have.
9.  It helps to learn about others. In order to better understand the world around us as well as build relationships it helps to learn about other languages. Likewise, it is helpful to learn about other religious traditions in order to better understand our neighbor. 
10. Some people just know more than we do. Shakespeare had a better understanding of how to use words than I do. It does not mean I am a fool, I understand that some people are gifted in language in a way that I want to learn from them and even mimic them. There are some people who know more about being faithful to God than I do, for instance Jesus. It does not mean I am a fool, I understand that there are some people who are gifted in the way that I want to learn from them and even (gasp!) mimic them.

How are you practicing being a Christian?

How our reluctance to fast from food exposes our addiction

Every Lent comes around and the conversation in Christian circles that observe Lent talk about fasting. Specifically about what we are "giving up for Lent". There there are others who talk about not giving up something for Lent but taking something additional on (such as a prayer practice). The thing I have noticed in the conversations about fasting that I have been involved in is the there is an overwhelming resistance to fast from food. 

“Concerning Abba Arsenios, Abba Daniel told us that ‘the Elder stayed with us for so many year, and we would give him only one basket of wheat for the entire year; we, too, ate from it when we went to his cell.’”

I am not saying that we all should fast from food like the desert fathers or that fasting from other things (such as Facebook or television) are not worthy disciplines. What I am saying is that perhaps our resistance to give up food for a period of time exposes for us that we are addicted to food. 

The life of the Christian is one that is disciplined. Yes, we (I) mess up and fail at fulfilling the discipline. But the disciplined life teaches us how to Love. Fasting is a critical discipline toward learning how to Love. Can you imagine a doctor learning how to heal people without a stethoscope? Or a judge learning how to administer justice without deliberation? Fasting, specifically fasting from food, breaks our addition to food and leads us to love more fully. 

Christians do things that Jesus did and commands us to do. We pray, we wash feet, we baptize, we teach, we love, we share, but for some reason we in the USA are not big on fasting from food - even though Jesus did this and expected it of his disciples. 

Perhaps the great irony is that today many American Christians have an abundance of food and yet we are still unable, unwilling or uninterested in fasting from food. Is it not a sign of addition that even if you have an abundance you still cannot get enough?

So may we all prayerfully consider the ancient practice of fasting from food for a period of time. Pray. Rejoice. Give thanks and may we learn to Love as Christ Loves.

Getting high and mountain top experiences

We all talk about mountain top experiences in the Church. Most of the mountain top experiences that I have heard people talk about are located in nature and there is a warm fuzzy feeling that wells up inside. It is a time of great happiness and joy. A time that, if it could be photographed, would hang over the mantle and recalled at each meal. A vacation. A retreat. A "once in a lifetime" experience. All have been told to me as mountain top experiences. 

And who am I, you may say, to be one to question these experiences. They may very well be high moments in peoples lives. But what is important for me to remember is that just getting high is not a mountain top experience. 

We can be high and feel exhilarated. We can be captured by the beauty of the world around us. We can even try to take a picture and capture that moment for our lifetime. But if our vision is not changed then we just got high. We did not have a "mountain top" experience. 

Throughout the Bible there are people who had mountain top experiences. March 2, 2014 marked the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, which is a story that is often cited as when the disciples had a mountain top experience. Maybe they did. I don't know. What I do know is that if their vision was not changed, they were just high. The still were just as dense as they were prior to their experience. They still "did not get it". They still were blind. They still did not see the Way. 

Moses and Elijah, who each make a cameo in the Transfiguration story, each had an experience on a mountain that changed their vision. I would say they had a "mountain top" experience. Moses' apathy toward or disengagement of the enslaved people of Egypt was changed and he became a leader toward freedom. Elijah who fled to the mountain out of fear of being killed, encountered God and then went down the mountain with a new vision of his situation. 

Having a mountain top experience means that our vision changes. Things seem paradoxically bigger and smaller at the same time. The world seems bigger on a physical mountain top. Rocks. Sky. Earth. The whole of creation seems massive. At the same time things seem smaller on a physical mountain. One human being. Situations. Problems are all put on a landscape that dwarfs these things. 

Popular expressions of Christianity seek out the high rather than the mountain top. Because lets face it, we all would rather just feel really good about our lives than to have to change them. So beware of the mountain top, it may feel great - but it also may change you.

And we all know what is said about how much we like change...