“Why do you still call yourself a Christian?”
If I had a dime for every time someone asked me that question—I’d be writing this from my villa in Tuscany while U2 plays in my courtyard.
The query comes from disparate sources:
Sometimes it comes from well-meaning people who read my critiques of the Church, my frustrations with Evangelicals in bed with this President, or my increasingly Progressive stance on things like sexual orientation, the existence of Hell, and the Nationalism of American Christianity. They ask the question because they sense that I don’t fit into what they’ve come to accept as the Christian faith, and they wonder why I don’t simply abandon it.
The question sometimes comes from Humanists, Agnostics, and Atheists, who feel in me a trapped kindred spirit waiting to be released; a closeted non-believer who can’t seem to own his loss of faith and clings tightly to the last vestiges of a Christianity that now exists in name only. They ask the question, as one Atheist friend jokingly did three years ago—as an invitation to give up and “join the dark side.”
And it comes most often from self-righteous, Bible-Thumping, Trump-loving professed Christians, who ask the question rhetorically and with great sarcasm, as they’ve long decided (and publicly declared) that I’m neither fit nor deserving of the moniker Christian; my heresy having disqualified me from everything but condemnation to a very hot place for a very long time. They ask the question, but they’re already answered it.
But regardless of the source of the query, more and more I find myself looking at what has become of my faith tradition, seeing how toxic it has become, and sitting in the quiet of my own head wondering why I still call myself a Christian; why I still believe, why I still bother.
And in many ways I don’t have a good answer. Maybe it’s partly some addictive, intoxicating cocktail of religious muscle memory, guilt over what leaving would feel like, and fear that Hell may indeed be real and I am assured a room without A/C.
But I know it’s more than that. I like to think it’s Jesus.
On the days when those supposing to represent Christianity, those claiming to be speak for Jesus in the world, begin spouting their venomous bile against people because of their gender or orientation or skin color or faith tradition, an alarm goes off inside of me that screams, “This is not of Jesus and you need to remind people!”
I’m not claiming this voice in my head is Jesus, but it is a holy disturbance within me that over the course of my near half-century here, has experienced what Christianity is, what it can be, what it should be, and wants other people to have the chance to experience it too—instead of this snarling, gun-toting, flag-waving, gay-hating nonsense masquerading as Christlikeness. I want people to know that this isn’t Jesus.
I see people pouring from the Church every single day because they’re disgusted with its silent or vocal consent to racism, misogyny, and xenophobia; they see its greed and lust for power and its cruelty—and I want them to know that I don’t blame them a bit for leaving. I’m equally disgusted with it all. If I believed that was Christianity I’d leave along with them—but it isn’t and so I don’t.
I don’t believe Donald Trump or his spiritual advisors or the Republican party or the Bible Belt churches who endorse it all—are Christian in any way that remotely resembles Jesus anymore. I don’t believe First Century Jesus would find welcome in Trump’s America or in the churches who support him, because they are devoid of any of the markers of his life and ministry and have become hostile to their very presence.
This perverted religion that people are experiencing and seeing from the celerity preachers and the sanctified politicians is simply identity theft; using the name of Jesus as an excuse to be fearful and hateful and violent. Good, decent, compassionate people are right to leave. Jesus would.
And this bastardized religion is miles and miles from the footsteps of Jesus; the path:
of humility, generosity, sacrifice, and goodness,
of loving your neighbor as yourself,
of praying for your enemies,
of showing mercy to the imperiled,
and kindness to the forgotten,
of feeding the hungry,
healing the hurting,
welcoming the stranger,
of not worshipping money,
not hoarding wealth,
of turning your cheek,
and washing another’s feet,
of sacrificing greatly,
forgiving relentlessly,
loving counter intuitively.
And in my time here on the planet, I’ve spent brief moments in this path, a few precious steps when I felt I was seeing it clearly—and when I’ve been fortunate enough to be walking alongside others doing the same thing, I’ve found something worth staying for, worth fighting for, worth wrestling my own doubts and fatigue and anger for. I guess that’s why I stay; in the hopes that this wasn’t an aberration, but a tasting of what could actually be.
I suppose I still call myself a Christian because Jesus is where I still find life. I do it because of the hope that like-hearted people can excavate this Jesus from the thick debris of tradition and prejudice and power lusting charlatans—and that together we can build redemptive spiritual community that doesn’t harm, that is beautiful, that does alter the planet for good.
And so I keep seeking this Jesus and looking for people who are equally burdened to dig him out of the religion he’s trapped in.
That may not be a satisfactory answer for well-meaning readers, incredulous skeptics, or self-righteous Bible-Thumpers—but it’s my answer right now.
And right now, that’s enough for me.
