“In a recent radio interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn’t do it, and moreover, that I didn’t want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian and I told him yes. ‘Then why don’t you defend Christianity?’ he asked, confused. I told him that I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them have had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won’t do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn’t like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God.”
– Donald Miller “Blue Like Jazz”
Good stuff. I find myself a bit perplexed with the term Christian when someone asks me what I am. It is almost like a mood killer. I can see it in their eyes that they want little to do with me once the cat is out of the bag. Oddly enough, I can talk forever about Jesus without the term Christian surfacing. I think the term has developed a definition such as:
“We are Grouchy Sunday church goers who must be right wing and tend to buy anything that has ‘as seen on TV’ attached to it. We are known as bigots and that is just fine because we are right. Do not cross us or else we will start to quote scripture at you. We are highly skeptical when it comes to Harry Potter but the Left Behind series is the greatest witness tool out there. Drinking adult beverages is out of the question because either I feel guilty or I may encourage my brothers in Christ to slide. Dancing – um…no but let’s meet at my church so that I may persuade you to join our group.”
posted by Tera @ 10:39 AM
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