I Am Not Good Enough To Be Anything Else

There are a lot of reasons to be Christian, but there is only one reason that I have heard from another person that I deeply resonate with. She said, “I am Christian because I am not good enough to be anything else.”

I am too emotional to be a stoic. I am not very disciplined in my logic to be a philosopher. I am too jittery to be a Zen Buddhist. I am too theistic to be an atheist. I am too angry at injustice to be a hippy. I am too ignorant to be a social justice warrior. I am too privigleged to be voice from the margins but not famous enough to be a leading voice from the center. I am too unsure of myself to be a life coach and too hesitate to be a leader. I suffer from imposter syndrome most days and on the other days my head is larger than a balloon in a parade. I am too clean to be a shepherd and too dirty to be a priest. I am too happy to be a pessimist but not Pollyanna enough for optimism. I like to be a realist but find that I am not practical enough but still not intellectual enough to be thought leader. I don’t spell well and have all sorts of bouts and fits with grammar.

I have learned about many different religions and am just not good enough to make the grade.

I am not good enough to be anything else and so I give thanks for Jesus Christ who gives mercy and grace in more abundant ways than I could imagine. Christianity is the last best hope that I have to belong with others, discover God and receive Good News.

Maybe this is where Christian preachers fail. We have been preaching a gospel of striving, achieving and success and few people are good enough for that news. The Good News is that Christianity is full of sinners, losers, failures. Or as I like to call them, people like me.

If you are good enough to be something else, good on you. If you are not, then you might be the best Christian.

Christianity: A Bounded Centered Set

Maybe you have heard that there are a ways to categorize people and things. Two common ways to think about categorization is either as a bounded set or a centered set. Do not let the language trip you up, they are very intuitive once you know.

A bounded set is defined by its boundaries. If it metal and has wings, it is a plane. If you have blue eyes you don’t have brown eyes. We can group things into “sets” based upon the boundaries we draw. This is so common of a practice, that I bet you had no idea it had a name!

The other type of categorization is what is called a centered set, which is a group that is not defied by it’s boundaries but by the center. If a bounded set is concerned with who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’, a centered set is concerned with the direction a person is moving. Are they moving toward or away from the center.

Image from: https://thehappypastor.wordpress.com/tag/bounded-set/

It might be easy to break this into a conservative/orthodoxy/bounded set verses a liberal/orthopraxy/centered set debate. However the reality is that Christianity is not a bounded OR a centered set.

Christianity is both.

Christianity is a way of living in that world that puts Christ at the center of our lives. Thus it is a centered set. It is a faith that understands that Christ and Paul and the early church worked did so much to break the idea of religion as a bounded set. When Jesus ate with prostitutes and Paul welcomed gentiles, when Jesus called a tax collector and Peter was told to not deem anything unclean which God declared clean, it is clear to me that one of the Christian projects is to dismantle bounded set categorization of people.

And yet, you may see, that to be a people who are centered on Christ who calls us to reject bounded set thinking, Christianity paradoxically becomes a bounded set.

To put it another way: Christianity is bounded set centered on the one who calls for the dismantling of bounded thinking.

This is a paradox, a mystery of the faith. Be mindful of those who might say that Christianity is only one or the other. To remove one set from our call is to cheapen and soften the challenging call of Christ.

Christianity marked by not in how we agree

Reverend Ryan Kiblinger is a doctoral candidate for a PhD in the area of Christian catechism. He and I have known one another for a while now and we have come to engage in a handful of intellectual spats over the years. It is clear that am very much out of my intellectual league when I am in his presence. It is also clear that he and I do not agree on a number of what many might consider to be "critical aspects of what it means to be Christian". And, to be clear, every time I see him, I rejoice in our interactions and friendship. 

After a heated bit of conversation at a meeting of laity and clergy around the area I live (this meeting is called "Annual Conference"), Ryan gave me a hug.

He and I spoke with one another and I thanked him for his kind words of support. Then Ryan said what I am not smart enough to come up with on my own and was the best part of my whole three day experience. To paraphrase Ryan:

Christianity marked by not in how we agree but how we disagree.

The best part of my annual conference experience was being affirmed by someone who I disagree with and being reminded once again that they will know we are Christians by our love.

Thank you Ryan.