In Name Only?

Today I received books in the mail...a sure way to make my day! These particular books were from Biola Univ. for the upcoming semester which starts in a couple of weeks. School is starting everywhere. My own son has one more week of summer freedom (if you don't count football practice!) before he heads back to halls lined with lockers and filled with friends. With so many of our kids about to be spending the better part of their day in an environment away from home, I started thinking about how we who claim to be Christians look out in the real world - away from our Christian safe zones like church and home.

It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that there are far too many nominal Christians - people who claim Christianity as their "religion" but who do little or nothing to actually understand what it means to live like a Christian...or if they do understand, they just flat can't be bothered with it. If you pay attention to polls at all, you will know that one of the biggest reasons unbelievers aren't drawn to Jesus and Christianity is because of the way Christians live. ("Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. Their lives don't look any different than mine!") Please don't read this as me saying true Christians are perfect - far from it - but becoming a Christian should carry with it a desire to do things, in every aspect of life, God's way, plain & simple, even if we don't always get it right.

Paul says this in Romans: "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires...You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ." (Romans 8:5&9) If you are truly a Christian, you want to please God, and the Spirit of Christ is what makes that possible.

I think there are two reasons why nominal Christianity is so prevalent in our country. (And I know nominal Christianity from experience...I'm sorry to say I was one.)

One, I think it has become a default religion where if you don't happen to identify with any other particular religion, say Judaism or Hinduism for example, you just default to Christianity because you guess you believe in God (in some way) and you live in America...so, sure, I'm a Christian. (I do think this reason is on the decline as more and more people become comfortable with rejecting God altogether or believing that they are somehow "spiritual" in and of themselves with no need for a god of any kind.)

Two, those who have come to faith in Jesus, whether as a young child or as an adult, have made the proclamation of faith but have never taken it to the next step. They have never found ways to grow and mature in their faith. For many with an "inherited faith" it is also because they have just followed the family's status quo without having put much thought at all into what they are claiming to believe. This can have the effect of rendering one's faith irrelevant when making decisions and choices in life outside the church walls. If you're not even sure why you believe what you believe, you're going to have a hard time understanding why it should matter in your day to day life.

So investigate what you say you believe.

Explore it.

Question it.

Study it.

Can you reasonably believe the claims of Christianity? Is there enough evidence to make it credible? (I believe the answer will be yes if you keep an open mind and be willing to go wherever the journey takes you.)

When you've examined your faith and decided it is something you can take to the bank, you will take it more seriously. You will find that when you've really thought about what God has done through Jesus, for us and for the world, and decided on your own that you believe in Jesus' death and resurrection, you will respond in gratefulness and a desire to please God with your life by honoring, obeying, and glorifying Him. We won't want to let Him down (though, sadly, we still will at times). Now the decisions and choices you make will come from a desire to please God instead of coming from trying to obey a list of do's and don'ts when you really have no idea why many of them should matter to you to begin with. You won't be open to any worldview that you happen to come into contact with because you haven't thought your faith through enough to even begin to know how a Christian worldview should differ from the others. Now your life will look different.

So back to school...Do you look any different than your unbelieving friends walking the halls with you? Do they see a difference in you? Christianity is practical; it requires something from us. So here's my challenge- to me and to you - make a conscious decision every day to show Jesus to someone simply by the way you live your life. Be different!