There’s a small part of my heart that, if allowed, would be perfectly happy to join a country band, go on tour, and never look back. There’s something satisfying about lyrics of riverside bonfires, pretty girls, broken hearts and summer nights. Country music has received the brunt end of lots of jokes, but I love it. I blame Jesse, Krista and JRFM from our carpooling days to junior high, but growing up in an agricultural town and spending two summers in northern BC didn’t hurt either. Some of the lyrics in country music star Jason Aldean’s song Church Pew or Bar Stool perhaps aptly describe some of what I’ll talk about today.
A little over a year ago, I began a chapter in my life which has grown from a smaller to a much larger commitment. During my time in Chad I’ve had a lot of time to think. Since my work has been predominantly a partnership with the protestant churches in Chad, I’ve specifically thought a lot about what it means to be Christian.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that most of my blogs have been very different from this one. Usually I’m simply writing about my experiences in Chad, and fear not, those stories will return soon. But in the meantime, I’ve been thinking, and am tossing around the idea of taking this blog in a slightly different direction. We’ll see what your feedback is!
As a note, I occasionally use “quotations” around specific terms or phrases. This is not to point fun or belittle, but rather to bring attention to their specific use. I’m stressing here that a specific (yet somewhat unexplained and inconsistently-understood) cliché is being used.
So back to our topic at hand. What does it mean to be a Christian?
How you answer this question will depend on your background. Some will say you need to believe certain things. Some will say you need to understand certain “truths.” Some will include that you have a “Biblical” perspective on certain controversial issues. Some will recommend you attend a church service at Easter and Christmas, “but it’s not really necessary.” Some will say you should refrain from a certain list of activities and adhere to a certain list of other activities. Still other answers abound.
Part of the reason why I’ve wrestled with this question is I’m in a very different context than the one I grew up in. As such, before I talk too much about the religious context in Chad, I think it might be helpful at this point to talk a bit about my background. That you understand where I’m coming from and how my perspectives have changed throughout life.
As a child, being a Christian meant I went to church, Sunday school, and summer camp. My parents had met at Capernwray Bible School in England in the 1980s, and they were actively involved of our home church. Christianity was part of our lives.
As a teenager, I attended our church’s weekly youth group, I was involved in the worship teams at my church, and at one point Tony Campolo confused me and I stood up to “pray the prayer.” At this point in my life I already considered myself a Christian. I had “prayed the prayer” a few times at summer camp, knew most of the standard Bible stories that were repeated each year in the Sunday school curriculum, and felt confident that I “had Jesus in my heart.”
On the fateful wow-Tony-Campolo-is-a-great-speaker-night at MissionsFest… I didn’t make a big decision in my life. Nothing really changed for me. I signed a blue card and a 20-something guy prayed with me. To be honest, I just didn’t want to say “actually, I’m already a Christian. I just misheard him. I thought he was asking who was a Christian, not who wanted to become a Christian.”
In my mid and later teen years, I became more active in my faith. I started a prayer group that met weekly before classes to pray for the students and teachers. I was baptized as “a public declaration” of being a Christian. I wore a ball cap with a cross on it, and always had the latest T-shirt from youth retreats at our local camp. I spent two summers working at camp, and was a youth leader one year for the junior high kids.
After high-school I moved four hours away and began my studies at university. There, my suburban go-to-church-and-work-at-camp Christianity was challenged. I was studying engineering, and none of my coursework was all that challenging to my faith. On the contrary, it was the people I interacted with certainly that caused me to pause. They were decent people! Sure a few of them experimented too much with alcohol, but for the most part they studied hard, got good marks, had passions and hobbies, and were great people to do life with for a while.
That’s what challenged me. Suddenly my faith wasn’t questioned, but it no longer seemed to set me apart. I’d been told (not necessarily by my parents, but by my community) that being a Christian somehow made you “different” and yet here I didn’t seem to be doing life all that differently from others. They weren’t all abusing drugs. Few actually seemed to be experimenting with their sexuality. We were 19 and working hard in school. So what had happened to my uniqueness? Why didn’t my Christian identity make me standout anymore?
This began to gnaw on me, and after months of wondering, I was pushed one night to make a decision. I wanted to explore these questions further. I realized that I’d grown up going to church, but there were a lot of questions I didn’t really have answers for. For a long time I’d just held the Creation narrative in one hand and the theories of evolution I was taught in my highschool biology class in another. Church history was a completely other topic, and I was curious to learn more about the Protestant Reformation, where we got the Bible from, and what in the world I should expect having read Tim Lahaye’s Lost Behind series as a 13-year-old.
So I finished my year at UBC and started studies at Capernwray in New Zealand. During that year, my perspectives shifted and developed a lot. I found my footing, and gained a lot of foundational understanding of reading the Bible and applying it to real life situations. But then I also came across horrifying passages like 1 Timothy 2 which seemed to go contrary to all I’d ever been taught about equality. “This stuff is in the BIBLE?!” I wrestled with that for a few weeks, but eventually settled… it appeared, that if we wanted to be true to the Bible, Christians were to divide men from women.
My year at Capernwray came to a close and although I felt a little more equipped to study the Bible, I was only left with more questions. Some of my peers seemed content with their confusion, which only bewildered me further, and I insisted on continuing my theological education. My passion for music was also pulling at my heart, and I found myself applying for and accepted to the Worship Arts program at Columbia Bible College.
************************************************
Just in case anyone’s wondering… I am certainly my mother’s son. That’s already 1100 words (apparently some sort of golden number for bloggers whereupon their readers eyes glaze over and the stop reading), so come back soon for more!
Also, if it would help, I’ve begun a short emailing list so that people can keep track of my blogs when new ones are posted! For some friends, this is an easy reminder, rather than having to somehow keep track in the busy day-to-day living we all seem to quickly succumb to. If you’d like to be added to this list, please contact me directly by email at bass_boi149@hotmail.com or comment below!
Peace, Paix, Shalom, Salaam 