Yes! But not the garden variety!
Just a wildflower blooming in the desert.
But what is a Christian?
Someone who:
majors on legal marriage? No.
majors on "right to life"? No.
condemns homosexuality? No.
believes God told someone to start a war? No!
says he's a Christian? No.
requires the Five Fundamentals? No.
requires the Nicene Creed? No.
loves God (utterly) and neighbor as self? Yes.
What does it mean to love God? What about goodness?
What about the essential beneficence of the universe?
Is that enough? Yes.
(The word 'God' is undefined; it's meanings are various.
It may be my ultimate concern,
what means most to me.
My daughter may be my God; or my motorcycle,
or whatever I care about,
whatever comes first in my life.
But of course that isn't the kind of God Jesus was talking about.)
Neighbor? That includes all humankind. But can I do it? Depends on how I love myself.
I can only do either of the others to the extent that I love myself.
Who is Jesus?
Is he divine? Maybe.
Was he born of a virgin? Maybe.
Died for our sins? Maybe.
What about living to save us?
(Could I live and/or die for someone else? I can try!)
He is the one who told us God is Our Loving Heavenly Father (he would also have been cool with Mother, if you're a woman's libber.)
Is he Buddha's brother? Yes.
Is he your brother? Yes.
("Beloved even now are you sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be.")
(Note that 'sons' is a generic term!)
Conclusion: Christianity does not belong only to the stiff necked crowd who look down their nose at us because we're not like them.
Are they Christians? or just tribalists.
We can love them, and maybe God will heal them.
What is love? The subject for another post!
1 comment:
I can't help but wonder why you wrote: My daughter might be my God, perhaps merely to be hypothetical?
I think that portion of your post was very interesting because as I was reading it, I could only think that you were speaking of idols, though you didn't say it. I just noticed it, I didn't judge it. I do recall in my Bible study the discussion that anything can become an idol -- money, our children, the church, ourselves. It seems easy to identify the idols of others (or what we assume are their idols, we may be very wrong) but harder to see our own idols.
I like the open-minded way you discuss being a Christian, it seems many keep trying to narrow the definition.
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