"Christian"
/ˈkrisCHən/
adjective: relating to or professing Christianity or its teachings.
noun: a person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ and his teachings.
Last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending Athens Church when visiting my sister in Athens, Georgia. This church is one of Andy Stanely’s satellite churches. It was an interesting experience because the worship was live, however the message was given through a broadcast and the sermon is streamed. So basically, you are watching the preacher on the screen even though he is not there physically. Very cool how modern technology has helped spread the gospel. But that wasn’t the coolest part about my experience.
The message that Sunday was about how many people have walked away from the faith or had religious doubts. Andy Stanely elaborated by saying that maybe the “god” people believed in did not exist in the first place. He means that, many people had believed false things about God by either not getting the right answers to questions they had or being fed wrong ideas about who God really is. He said that possibly the church had fed people information that pushed them away from Christ or did not aid in growing their faith walk. That got me thinking.
I discussed the sermon further with my mom on the way home that afternoon. I told her it was frustrating how people who “claim” to be Christians put a bad taste in people’s mouths about Christianity. She asked me, “Haley, what makes a person a Christian?” I thought a little bit*, then said, “If you believe that Jesus died and rose again for your sins...?” “Well, even demons believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead.” That shook me. I tried again. “If you love others?” “Well…. even people who aren’t Christians still love others” she replied in all her motherly wisdom. Ha, she got me again. Finally she said, “What does the word Christian mean?” Then I remembered. Did you know that the word “Christian” literally means “little Christ”? That means that as Christians, we are supposed to be “little Christ’s” walking around this earth, striving to live every day like he would.
As a person who claims to be a Christian, I am fully aware that people act differently around me. There’s usually what I refer to as a “golden bubble” around my head. Aka, people are especially careful about how they act and what they say around me because they feel like I am going to judge them for it. Sometimes I wonder why this is, but then I realize that it is because of the misconceptions people have about Christians. They think that Christians are out to judge them and “condemn them to hell” because of their past. But that is the TOTAL opposite of what Christianity is all about.
If you take a look in the bible, you will see that Jesus did not hang out with the type of people you would think he should be hanging out with. Jesus hung out with the outcasts; thieves, swindlers, adulterers, sinners. Well, I might not be a thieving adulterer, but I sure am a sinner, and Jesus said in John 8:7 ““Let the one who has never sinned, cast the first stone.” Welp. I ain’t throwing no stones today.**
As a little Christ, the number one thing I worry about is making sure that I set a good example for those around me and to not be the reason that someone walks away from the faith. But, the fact of the matter is that I’m a screw up, over thinking, crazy hypocrite, no matter how hard I try to be like Jesus. So the only thing I can do is pray and follow Mathew 11:37-40 that says, “’You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind’. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
So, to try to sum up this big collection of my thoughts, people who truly follow Christ do not and NEVER claim to be perfect, so they do not expect perfection from the people they do life with either. They just simply want to share they love and peace they have found in Jesus. Because lives change, bad things happen to good people, and the world never stops moving. But the only thing that is constant and never changing in this world is Jesus. And in my opinion, he’s the absolute coolest.
* I’m embarrassed to say that I had to think about this question…it’s sort of one of those things you always understand but are never really able to vocalize. But that answer was never accepted in school so why should it be accepted now? Has anyone ever been told: you never truly understand something until you are able to put it into your own words? Just shows that you can never learn enough about Christ… or yourself for that matter.
** For those of you who know me, my favorite thing to say is “NOT TODAY SATAN!” I have a t-shirt that says it. True story.
