On Being Christian

and embracing my increasing fogyism

I usually have my headphones in during my morning walk/jog, so this semester I decided to give public radio a chance. Before now, I equated public radio (and any radio that wasn’t essentially top 10 or top 40 radio) with fogyism–not as being dull, just as being old. Well, I’m learning to appreciate my own fogyism.

On Sundays, I usually catch On Being with Krista Tippett and eavesdrop on deep conversations with spiritual people, musicians, and scientists. Today, I listened to her conversation with Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman (yes, Uma’s dad), two of the individuals responsible for popularizing Buddhism in the United States, about love and suffering. During their conversation I began to reflect on what being Christian means to me.

I think that you can call yourself a Christian if you believe that

1. God created the universe;
2. God exists as the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit);
3. God, the Father, sent Jesus, the Son, to redeem humanity;
4. Jesus sacrificed his life for everyone’s sin, overcame death, and rose into eternal life;
5. God created you for a reason;
6. Your life is more than what your senses tell you; and
7. This world is only a part of the story.

In those moments, I realized how much I love being part of the group who call themselves Christians, and at the same time I noticed how similar we are to almost everyone else in the world. We struggle with the same -isms, phobias, and complexes; we enjoy the good things in life (food, music, clothes, stuff); and at our core, I believe, we all want to be good and happy. Where we differ is that we manage a tension between enjoying and being part of the world, and being apart from the world and seeing it as fleeting.

I see all the tensions when I look at myself. Just reading all of my tumbls and tweets and looking at the videos and pictures I’ve shared, it may appear that I’m a pretty confused person. I admit that sometimes I come across as too materialistic and in love with stuff. At the same time, I care about the well-being of other people and the world in general, and worry about the state of my soul.

I also think about the negative aspects of being Christian–that Christians seem to fall the hardest. The adage “the higher you climb, the harder you fall” is so true. As Christians, we aim to be Christlike, and by definition God-like (without all the divine power, I hope). At the same time, we are flawed people with our own personal struggles.

Yet, I am happy that I am a Christian. Even with our great variety of flavors: from the super laid back, “I can’t believe they are Christian, they’re so cool” types to the Bible-beating, always on edge folks (it’s work for me to accept them, but I will by God’s grace). I won’t change it, but I will stay open to learning from what life and other faith backgrounds teach.

Mr. Thurman compared Jesus’s admonition to love our enemies with a saying from Buddha. I can’t imagine that Jesus sat cross-legged somewhere and meditated, but reading Psalm 46:10, I can imagine a man pausing quietly when he hears “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Notes

This post also appears at one40plus.