1. Christians who refuse to call themselves Christians and use instead the term "follower of Jesus". Fair enough. But you realize when you say that everyone else is thinking "oh. you mean you're a Christian".
2. Churches which refuse to call themselves churches and instead call themselves "a community of Jesus followers". Fair enough but you realize when you say that the rest of us are all thinking "oh. You mean you're a church".
3. My own goatee which conceals my tiny, elfin chin.
4. The color of my office walls.
5. Winter.
6. The apostle Paul.
7. Waiting on books to arrive from amazon.
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5 comments:
Agreed on the "follower of Jesus" thingy. When I would hear college students say this, I always thought, "Huh? I wonder what cult they are in?" The same applies for the "community of Jesus followers".
I always felt like they were a cup of kool-aid and a pair of Nikies away from a group suicide.
Muslim converts to Christianity in South East Asia don't identify themselves as Christians because the Eastern hemisphere generally thinks "Christian" means Brittany Spears, MTV, and drug-addiction. They call themselves Isahi Muslims, which means "devoted follower of God who follows Jesus".
I know you aren't talking about Muslim converts here (or I hope you're not), but I don't call myself a pastor in certain contexts for similar reasons, my real identity cannot be clarified by a word like "pastor" in certain contexts. I just say that I work at a church. So the question is, "Does your disdain come from the hiding behind other titles or that these people might not want to associate with popular thoughts about Christianity?"
Some of us wear titles so proudly only because we are ignorant or unconcerned that those titles have dug a cultural pit that works against us. Plus, I think people get their false humility fix by bucking an intentional approach to others and proudly branding themselves with a pretensious title. It's like those people who want to "take back the rainbow from the homosexual groups."
"I'm a CHRISTIAN and only a lover of Satan and the world would call themselves anything but." As I said before, in the largest Islamic nation (Indonesia), that would get you nothing but exile or death, maybe your spouse and kids too. By simply restating your identity in a way that provokes conversation, brothers are won to Christ. The Islamist is wrong when they say that martyrdom is a call and so are Christians who espouse the same a la social martyrdom. Martyrdom is a by-product of the call and those things are too often confused under the guise of false humility.
Go ahead and be offended at me when I chose a different description of our faith in different circumstances. I am just chosing to not let culture define the faith by throwing out culturally iconic words and phrases that don't mean what I mean when I say, "I am a Christian." I chose to exegete the faith rather than let a particular context eisogete it.
Peace out
Nevermind, I just say that you said "mildly disturb" not "offend". Put the proper govenor on the above diatribe.
Dru,
I just find it mildly disturbing, annoying, whatever, because that's who we are. I'm a Christian, you're a pastor, the people we worship with on Sunday are our church. In our context, to go out of our way to avoid those words seems a bit goofy. It's like churches that drop the denominational title from their church name in order to draw more unchurched people. As it turns out, churched people are the only ones who give a flip if a church is called First Presbyterian, First Baptist or First Community Fellowship.
As a guy who is "in the know" regarding evangelical and emergent sub currents of the Christian culture, when a person describes themselves to me as a "follower of Christ" rather than a "Christian", then I know where they're coming from: Ok, this guy is in some way trying to distance himself from the cultural perceptions the term "Christian" carries and probably attempting to re-establish biblical forms of faith and life. None of those are bad things. I'm for 'em. All I'm saying is if you tell someone who is not "in the know" that you;re a follower of Christ, they'll be like, "Oh, you mean you're a Christian". Like for instance telling someone you know that you work for a church. What do you tell them when they ask what you do and you say "I preach and teach and counsel and oversee people and things like that". They'll likely think. "Oh, he's a pastor".
Personally I'm more comfortable with the limitations of the vocabulary we've inherited than I am with trying to find ways from distancing myself from other pastors, churches and christians.
I can't speak to other cultural contexts, like Indonesia.
I agree that it begs the question sometimes. The problem is that titles actually interfere with reality many times. They are the most vague form of confession. And they are slippery at that. Like once when I used to be a silicone-compound-packaging-specialist while in the military (i.e. sandbagger).
Sometimes, I want to have a conversation about my identity which often doesn't happen because of a title. For instance, I have found that if I tell people I am a pastor, they never ask anything else unless they are "in the know". It's like asking a yes or no question. But if I say I work at a church, then there are some times when people ask, "What do you do?"
That is a conversation that goes beyond some vague id tag that may or may not represent who I am and what I do to that particular person; whether you're "in the know" or not. I think the motivation, at least some of the time, to stay away from culturally ascribed titles is because you want something deeper than a two sentence conversation.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a pastor."
"OK"
Just like I don't ever ask my son, "What did you do at school today?" I will always get a one word answer that never represents his day's activities.
Not that it is directly pertinant, but I'm pretty sure that "christian" is a culturally assigned term, even within scripture. It is used by others to describe believers (whathaveyou) and is rebutted by Paul with a fully definition (Acts 28:26). The three uses of "Christian" in scripture are from outsiders, except where Peter adopts up the term in 1 Peter 4.
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