So what is this Jesus stuff, anyway?

I've been thinking a lot lately about Christianity. I have a lot of confusion about Christianity--not so much what it is, but more with how it has been jaded. And I think Christianity (and therefore Christ?) has become incredibly distorted, especially in modern American culture. (As an aside, Don Miller's books, especially Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What, but also Through Painted Deserts are the catalyst for much of my thought on this subject, and if anyone is having the same thoughts, I seriously recommend those books. Check out www.donaldmillerwords.com for excerpts.) I'm 21, I've spent practically my whole life inside a church, in Bible studies and Sunday School rooms, youth groups and Christian retreats, and yet only recently have I had the realization that Christianity is so fundamentally relational that it is impossible to understand the things Jesus taught if you don't have a friendship with him. I don't know what that means for anyone else, but it scares the mess out of me. Friends with Jesus? How do you get to be friends with Jesus?

I think one of the first things I was taught in Sunday School was how to witness to people. I remember that in my 5th grade class, our teachers, a young married couple that owned a big house in the nice part of town and had a 3 year old daughter and a schnauzer, spent about a month or so walking us through all the key verses that would make people Christians. We even had to present an oral delivery of the stuff, showing off how well we'd memorized things, and even then, the whole idea of witnessing made me scared. Over the next 7 or 8 years, the 5th grade project got prettied up a bit, but essentially, all the teachers in the department were teaching us as middle and high schoolers how to memorize a few key statements and present them in a nice package and then pray and those people would be Christians because we'd done so well and all. I'm not saying that my Sunday School teachers didn't have wonderful intentions, I'm sure they were just reiterating the message their corporately published guidebooks urged them to, but does it seem strange to anyone else that Christians of any age should be encouraged to offer people a regiment of salvation. It frightens me a bit that the first thing I remember in my experience of Christianity was not hearing about how much Jesus loves people, but a flowchart pointing to heaven. I don't have the exact quote, but I'm referencing Don Miller when I say that it seems to me, that if the premises of Christianity were as simple as marking 10 verses in the New Testament and being able to recite them, Jesus would have mentioned something about that somewhere.

I don't think you can get to heaven in 3 steps, or 5, or even 17. I don't think heaven is even the true goal. Am I pushing things too far to say that I don't even think Christianity can be explained?

I'm not claiming to understand Jesus, in fact, I understand so little I feel hypocritical by writing these kinds of things, but from what I have read about Jesus in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (did we just throw those in reverse alphabetical order?)) it looks as though that everything Christ taught, and he taught a lot, originates in relationship with him. Things most associated with Christianity, like having upright morals and tithing and service to other people and being compassionate towards humanity, all came later, after he'd said how much he wanted to be loved by us. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think that all those things are largely impossible without first loving Christ. I think people do those things (purely, without selfish motivation) because they do love Christ, and want to show their love for him. I don't think you can have a true sense of morality without first understanding that pure actions glorify Christ; I don't think you can give an honest tithe without understanding how much power God has to use any kind of offering,; I don't think you can offer your gifts to anyone until you know that it was God who gave you the ability to serve to begin with and that service to humility glorifies the Saviour; and I don't think that people have any power to love other people at all unless we have some sort of deep, ingrained memory of what it was like to love God before things went bad in the Garden of Eden.

I think all of the good things about Christianity--morality, offering, service, love--stem from a Christian's desire to glorify the God that made them. This is an awkward and poorly drawn parallel, but This is an awkward and poorly drawn parallel, but think about the first time you kiss someone. You're excited and nervous about it, and you can't wait for it, because you are so ready and willing to express your affection for him in a deeper way. So when he finally does kiss you, you are excited and happy because you know that he understood, through physical action, that you think of him in that way, and that the way you care for him is different than the way you care for you neighbor, an acquaintance, or your best friend. Just like a lot of people kiss for the wrong reasons, people can do things for reasons not entirely justifiable to Jesus Christ. People have morals because they think they will save them, or give them glory in church. People give service and offerings and charity donations because they want to see their names on sponsor sheets, or because they feel guilty about not going to church enough. People pretend to love other people because they might know someone who is going to be doing some hiring soon, or because the person is cooler than someone else or drives a nicer car or has a Submariner or a Lexus key fob. But just becuase people screw up doesn't mean that those things aren't good things, and it doesn't mean that Jesus is any less legitimate.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't think any good thing is fully realized until you have a relationship with Christ. Until you are a Christian. I hesitate to use the word "Christian" because for so long, I have been taught that people are Christians if they have followed the steps to ask Jesus into their hearts and forgive them of their sins and let them into heaven if they promise to stop swearing or drinking or driving too fast. I know that there are a lot of tracts and Bible studies and Sunday School teachers out there swearing up and down that getting to heaven is as easy as 1-2-3 (literally), but I don't agree.

Think about your home. In it, you've got photos of your family, memories of them, stories that you tell to your guests. You don't have a list of things taped to the fridge that will help your neighbors love your brother. When your neighbor asks, you simply talk about him. You share what he's doing in school, how you think his girlfriend is going to dump him, you talk about that time you threw sticks at each other and he ran over you with his bike; you talk about how he's a good 8 inches taller than you, but he still flinches when you pretend to take a swing at him. And after hearing all these stories, and seeing how much you love your brother, your neighbor might want to meet him, and come to love him too. The next time your neighbor sees you in the market picking over the bumpy tomatoes, she might ask you how your brother is doing, and then mention how she might want to meet him if he's ever in town for the weekend. And you're glad to agree, because you love your brother, and want everyone else to love him too. I hardly think it's much different with Christ.

God didn't create people to be simpletons. He created us to love each other, to love him, and essentially, humans are relational and thrive when in relationship. People glow when they're in love, giggle when with their best friend, light up when their child dances into a room. The Bible says we are made in God's image, but I don't think that stops with having 2 legs and toes and a bit of nose hair. I think that means that the essences of our personalities, our being, echoes God's personality, and the relationship we were meant to have with him before the Fall. If God didn't give us the capability to describe how we fell in love with our husbands in 3 easy steps, I doubt very seriously that understanding Christ would be any different. In fact, I think the potential to fall in love with God would be the most difficult, exhausting, mysterious and beautiful thing we as humans can do.