This question has been with me for some time now. Not from a place of self-righteous judgment: "I deem you Christian and you un-Christian." But rather from a place of doubt and confusion: What does it mean to be a Christian? What really constitutes Christian faith? Is Christian faith substantive or simply a delusion? If one is a Christian what do they do and what do they believe? And are their actions and beliefs prescribed by Christian faith, implying that in there absence Christian faith is null and void?
Is there anything that I can point to in my life (my actions, my beliefs, my community, my relationships) that gives me assurance of my Christian faith? Is there something I can hold up and say here this is my Christianity?
There have often been two responses to this crisis of identity: dogmatic sectarianism or uncritical assimilation. In the former identity is held up over relevance, and in the latter relevance does away with a distinct identity.
Myself and others who "grew up Evangelical" find ourselves today in this crisis. As we venture into uncharted territory attempting to move beyond our inherited "us vs. them" tradition, we go through a loss of identity. At our low points we despise our tradition and rebel against it, constructing an identity that is simply anti. On the other hand we move out and assimilate and identify with the "other", but we find that we do not quite fit in "out there" either. We also try and formulate new doctrines, or new ethical imperatives, some more successful then others. But at the end of the day we often continue to struggle for any assurance of identity or relevance to the outside world.
So how do we build an identity and develop relevance? This blog is long enough, so I will simply offer this quote by Jurgen Moltmann from his book The Crucified God. Here he is attempting to develop Christian identity from the viewpoint of the cross and the God who was crucified upon it.
Is there anything that I can point to in my life (my actions, my beliefs, my community, my relationships) that gives me assurance of my Christian faith? Is there something I can hold up and say here this is my Christianity?
There have often been two responses to this crisis of identity: dogmatic sectarianism or uncritical assimilation. In the former identity is held up over relevance, and in the latter relevance does away with a distinct identity.
Myself and others who "grew up Evangelical" find ourselves today in this crisis. As we venture into uncharted territory attempting to move beyond our inherited "us vs. them" tradition, we go through a loss of identity. At our low points we despise our tradition and rebel against it, constructing an identity that is simply anti. On the other hand we move out and assimilate and identify with the "other", but we find that we do not quite fit in "out there" either. We also try and formulate new doctrines, or new ethical imperatives, some more successful then others. But at the end of the day we often continue to struggle for any assurance of identity or relevance to the outside world.
So how do we build an identity and develop relevance? This blog is long enough, so I will simply offer this quote by Jurgen Moltmann from his book The Crucified God. Here he is attempting to develop Christian identity from the viewpoint of the cross and the God who was crucified upon it.
"Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself" (19).
2 comments:
Great thoughts, I especially appreciate the Moltmann quote. Do you think that the struggle for identity is for our own self-understanding, or is more outwardly focused? Do we seek to know our theological identity so that we might know ourselves, or so that we might separate ourselves from those with whom we disagree?
I think at some level we probably all do reactionary theological thinking. I think theological investigation as a means to know ourselves (my paraphrase of you) seems like a good idea. God is the author of our lives, and maybe in God (and hopefully a somewhat accurate knowledge of God) we might find ourselves.
And yet we cannot weed the pure essence of God out of our own personal histories, nor our community traditions, rather God is in the midst of our story and those stories. So we must find God there in the messiness of it all.
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