Christianity is like a set of Lego® bricks
The word “Christian” means pretty much whatever a person wants it to mean. As such, the label is given far too much significance and carries far too much influence.
Most Lego® sets are intended to make a particular thing. One set makes a playground, another makes an airport, and yet another makes a replica of an Atari 2600 game console (really.) In each case, there is a set of mostly clear instructions on how to build the intended thing. With Lego® bricks, though, you can deviate from the instructions any time you wish. You can even ignore the instructions entirely, and make whatever you feel like making, using those bricks alone or combining them with all the other Lego® bricks you may have accumulated over the years. There is no guarantee that what you end up with will resemble the picture on the box, but there’s also no requirement for it to do so.
In my observation and experience, most people who call themselves Christians treat Christianity much like a set of Lego® bricks. When I was part of the in-crowd of devout Catholics, people used to deride what they called “cafeteria Catholics” — those who called themselves Catholic but decided to ignore particular teachings they didn’t like. The truth is, however, that every person who goes by the name Christian practices “cafeteriaism,” as do the denominations to which they belong.
Part of this is due to the clarity of the instructions (the bible.) In each box of Lego® bricks, there is one set of instructions. If you follow the instructions, you get the promised result. In contrast, there are many different translations of the bible, and none of those translations are based on “original” texts. The earliest extant manuscripts are thought to have been created almost 10 centuries after the originals were written. It’s possible that each copy made in that interval was a perfect reproduction of the previous copy, but we’re talking about hand copies, not photocopies, and sometimes copying included translating from one language to another, so the chances are pretty good that some changes slipped in. As a result, one can only speculate on what the original bible may have said.
The murkiness of the bible allows for many different interpretations, even of a single passage. Deriving doctrinal statements from the bible is, as a result, a very creative process, which is why there are now hundreds of Christian denominations, each of which is “right” in their own eyes, and mistaken or misled in the eyes of all the other denominations. The upside for the cafeteriaists [Grammarly really doesn’t like this word] is that if you aren’t happy with a particular doctrine, you can usually find a passage to refute it or an “expert” who will provide the desired re-interpretation of the relevant bible passage(s.) The instructions can be modified to suit one’s individual preference.
At the brick level, I as an individual Lego® builder can choose which bricks I want to use and which bricks I don’t want to use. There may well be Lego® purists who would take exception to using a yellow brick in a place that clearly demanded a blue brick, but in fact, one can use whatever color one wants.
In my Lego® analogy, the bible is both the instructions and the bricks. With the possible exception of a few extreme fundamentalist groups, the vast majority of denominations do a similar thing. If particular biblical declarations can’t be made palatable by re-interpretation, they can choose to simply push them to the side. A popular example is the New Testament declaration that in church, women are not supposed to speak and must have their heads covered. While women still can’t be Catholic priests or Southern Baptist pastors, they are not prohibited from speaking in church, and even the Catholics gave up the head-covering rule long ago. If one goes back to the Old Testament, there are many more examples of passages and doctrines that Christians choose to ignore (Martin Sheen as the president in The West Wing does a beautiful job rattling off some of those in episode 3 of season 2, although he barely scratches the surface.)
Within a denomination that has already decided which parts of the bible to follow, individuals practice additional “cafeteriaism.” I knew a very devout Catholic woman who had been abused as a child. When I asked her how she could reconcile her experience with the basic Christian teaching that god is all-powerful and all-good, she said that she thought god wasn’t really omnipotent — there were some things god couldn’t do. In Lego terms, she replaced a red brick with a yellow brick. Her substitution was a serious, possibly even heretical, deviation from Christian doctrine, but it allowed her to continue to see herself as a devout Catholic and to hang on to whatever good things she experienced from that self-identification.
There is much in the bible that is indefensible, much that runs contrary to most notions of morality. There is also much in the bible that, if followed, would make life very difficult (and much less enjoyable) for the Christian in the pew. As a result, picking and choosing is the norm, not the exception. So what does it mean to be a Christian? Pretty clearly, it means whatever you want it to mean. Christianity is very much like a big box of Lego® bricks. Take what you want, make whatever you want, and leave what you don’t want. If something you made becomes inconvenient, change it. If something you made no longer pleases you, take it apart and start over again. Christian orthodoxy? Pretty much an oxymoron.
So what? Who cares if every Christian has a different opinion about which doctrines are non-negotiable, and which are more along the line of suggestions? One reason to care is that the term “Christian” still connotes all sorts of virtuous things to a distressingly large portion of the US population. Thus, some pretty horrible people can call themselves Christians (I bet you are thinking of Donald Trump right now, too) and gain support from other “Christians.” Simply saying you are a Christian (and perhaps showing up at church once in a while) is enough, even if your life actions tell a very different story.
Christians can justify all manner of bigotry and hatred based on their, or someone else’s, interpretation of specifically chosen biblical passages, even though there could be several equally plausible interpretations. For anyone who pays any attention to the world around them, the multiple examples of this fact in current events are almost impossible to miss.
If the definition or popular usage of any word or phrase has such a broad scope that it encompasses pretty much anything and everything, then in practical terms it means nothing. “Christian” is such a word. Perhaps it’s time to stop treating the word as if it has a precise meaning and stop pretending that Christians are a cohesive, like-minded group. If someone wants to call themselves a Christian, they have every right to do so. That declaration, however, should not be taken to say anything else about the person — evaluation of a person’s character should be based on actions, not nebulous labels.
Further, treating Christians as a single bloc, for example in polls, inflates their significance, and risks assigning too much power and leverage to those people in terms of defining our day-to-day lives, the laws of the land, and the structure of our government. Let them call themselves whatever they want. Let them build whatever they want, using whatever color, shape, or style of bricks they want. Let them proclaim how amazing what they built is, but let them, in fact insist that they keep it for themselves.
