A Rumor about Christ

---this was my final essay for my Expository Writing class. i thought it was pretty good, so i'm putting it up. i don't usually proofread very much what i put up here, so this one should actually be grammatically correct and everything. i thought my penultimate paragraph was pretty good, but i felt a little egotistic in the last paragraph.---

I am a Christian. If I only had one chance to tell you something about myself, that would be it. One thing I wouldn’t tell you, however, is that you’re going to hell if I don’t approve of you. I wouldn’t say that I am any better than you or that you are wrong if we don’t agree. Christianity is so much more than trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. The term “Christian” seems to have been condensed to simple morals, loyalty to a church, and the jeering and pointing of fingers at political parties, homosexuals, and anyone else who fails to meet the church’s approval. Being a Christian is anything but these things. The real idea of a Christian is someone who has found life in God and is so fulfilled by God that nothing else matters.

This is my story: I grew up in the Christian church – I’ve never known anything else to do on a Sunday morning. When I was young, I would pray the exact same prayers every night before falling asleep. I believed I was a Christian because of this and my church attendance, and at the age of twelve, I was even baptized to publicly declare my faith. Once, I even played Jesus in the Easter skit. And the strangest thing was I wasn’t a Christian. I believed that I was automatically a Christian because of the things I did. But Christianity has nothing to do with works – a Christian is simply someone who believes, knows, and loves God.

As I grew older, I learned I didn’t really believe in God. I found my lifestyle was anything but Christian. I cared about my social popularity and grades more than I could have ever cared about God, and I was okay with that. I had huge fights with my family, and I secretly looked at porn. If you had asked me, I would have told you that I was a Christian, because I still went to church, prayed, and read my Bible. But honestly? I don’t know why I did any of those things – I didn’t believe any of it. And my life was anything but Christian.

I guess I believed in God. I believed all the right things, all the things they told us we had to believe in order to be considered Christian. I believed them like a student memorizes facts for a test without learning anything. I solely wanted to be accepted, so I committed to God and enjoyed the approval from the adults and my peers. Entering into high school, I secretly and subconsciously departed from Christianity. I was still doing everything I thought a Christian should do, but it was just something I did without thinking about, much like homework. If Christianity was just these things, it was useless.

I started to struggle with depression. My grades sucked, I couldn’t be myself around my friends, and I continually fought with my mom and sister. I had no reason to live. I wasn’t on the verge of suicide, but I was getting more and more frustrated with the idea that I was only living to get A’s in school and to be popular. I needed something that gave me purpose, something that wouldn’t be worthless after a week like a grade or date. After a while, I started going to a new church. I needed answers, and church seemed to provide them.

The youth pastor at my new church, Mike, had some very different ideas about God and what Christianity was like. They were different from anything I had ever heard. Mike literally believed in God. He talked about God like a real person, as though Christianity wasn’t just about doing things. He said God was still alive and He could actually help you out and talk to you and solve your problems if you approached Him and tried to listen to His voice, no matter who you were. My paradigm began to shift. No longer was the qualification of a Christian whether or not someone was a good person; it even says that in the Bible: “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ…by works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Galatians 2:16, NKJV). God seemed to reveal Himself to me, though I’m not sure how to explain it. I just felt like He was there and He was talking to me everywhere I went. He seemed to show me how great it was to talk to Him and what it meant to really let Him control my life and what the result would be if I stayed obedient to Him.

I had a reason to live again and was discovering something much more lasting and exciting than anything I had ever experienced in school. Besides the way it made me feel, it made sense. I have to admit that I think there are certain things we can’t understand about God; He’s not always logically sound. But if I let go of only investing myself in things that I can understand and rationalize, I think God makes sense. And I could certainly see the change in my life. I stopped fighting with my family and myself, and I didn’t have to pretend to be somebody else when I was with the people at youth group. And if God was really God and all He wanted from me was a relationship, then it didn’t matter how good my grades were or if I was popular. All that mattered was relationship with Him, and if I had it, then I had everything.

This contradicted my entire conception of what made someone a Christian. I had thought Christianity was all about reading the Bible and being a good person, but I didn’t realize that God could actually be real. I began to think that a Christian was someone who spent time with God, who knew God and believed in Him, and had gone as far as to commit and base his life on a relationship with Him.

I began to believe that someone wouldn’t get to heaven by doing all of the right things well enough, but by loving God. But I don’t think everybody thinks like this. It seems like no one really loves God anymore; everyone is just doing. Many people claim that they are Christians and say that they love God and that they are going to heaven because of it, but their lives don’t show that they love God. Ridiculous things have been done in the name of God, by people who call themselves Christians, and I think if they truly loved God, they would realize that some of the things they do are destructive and can hardly be considered Christ-like.

Because of what “Christians” have done in the past, many have responded by turning away from God completely and wanting nothing to do with Christians. Christians have made a reputation for themselves for being arrogant jerks and clueless idiots who don’t know how to love people. Too many times have we encountered Christians who stand on street corners, telling everybody that they will go to hell if they don’t believe and repent. Jesus never said things like this, and I don’t think He would approve of things like this being said. I believe that Jesus didn’t come to condemn man (John 3:17), but He came to provide life to the fullest. He actually loved people. And I think most Christians nowadays don’t.

At the University of Oklahoma, it seems that everyone on campus is a Christian. But it also seems that no one really loves each other. They only care about “saving” people. And truly, when I am having a bad day, I don’t need someone to throw a religion at me and tell me I should believe or else I will go to hell. It is not that these things are necessarily untrue (if anything, they are gray areas and it is up to God to judge who goes to heaven or hell), but I think the approach misses the point of Christianity. Not only does this method of evangelism seem condemning and rude, but Christianity is not supposed to be about the afterlife; it is supposed to be about loving God no matter what. I don’t want to hear someone tell me God will crush me if I’m not good enough; I need someone who can tell me that God’s love is unconditional and things are going to be okay if I continue to trust that He will help me. The point of the church is not to make others like them or to judge them; the purpose of the church is to show others that Christ loves them.
I have not exactly found a church that I feel like I belong to since moving to Norman. I just don’t feel like I fit in with any of the churches in Norman or campus ministries at OU that I have attended. It is not that I don’t feel welcome; it is more like I have not found people with whom I am comfortable being myself. Sometimes it is a disagreement of doctrine, and at other times, I honestly just don’t like the people. It’s not hatred; we just seem to be from different backgrounds and have different interests and personalities.

I don’t mean to be critical, but some churches also seem to be filled with pretenders, people who appear very religious or spiritual and yet know nothing about God. They know all about the Bible, but they haven’t applied it to their lives. They know all about God, but they don’t have real relationship with Him. They don’t sit down and talk to Him because they enjoy it or because they know that God enjoys it. They do everything out of impulse, if they do it at all. I should add that I am not so different; at times, I am just like these Christians who have forgotten about God. I’m also wrong to judge, but this is what some churches feel like to me, and I think that the fake holiness that abides in the church is what non-Christians find so unappealing.

My roommate isn’t a Christian because he is fed up with all of the pretending that goes on in the church. He realizes that the church is filled with hypocrites who use God to reap the benefits, people who say one thing and do another. The last thing my roommate needs is someone to tell him he’s going to hell. I don’t try to save him; I try to love him. And I realize that I still fall short. I could never fully communicate the love that God has for him. I call myself a real Christian because I believe in God and interact with Him, but I am still only human. I struggle with the same thoughts, doubts, fears, and sins as anybody else. I try to be pleasing to God and to base my life on a relationship with Him, but it’s hard. I struggle with judging people and I show favoritism and still look at porn, and these are not things that belong in the life of someone who calls himself a Christian. I also know that my theology isn’t perfect, and I’m not trying to say that I’m right or that I know what’s going on. But I still believe in a God that is real and active, and I believe that I need someone like this God in my life.

I think that this is what really matters to God – a true desire for Him. God could really care less whether we went to church every Sunday of our lives, and He even says in the Bible, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you” (Isaiah 1:13, 15, TNIV). There is nothing wrong with good works, but if they are not done out of a love for God, they are missing the point. Reading the Bible isn’t bad, but it is wrong to read the Bible for the sole purpose of making yourself look better.

Jesus chose to eat with the criminals and prostitutes instead of the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders at the time, because the Pharisees had taken God out of Christianity. They did the works, the “meaningless offerings,” not to be seen by God, but by men. If they could convince others that they were strong Christians, they could manipulate power in their favor. So they would stand on street corners and pray aloud and they would fast and disfigure their faces so it looked like they had given so much to God, but really, they did all of this so they could be seen by men. They didn’t want God; they wanted their own glory and power.

It seems that many Christians have become like the Pharisees, people who do certain acts only to be seen by men. I would argue that these people have taken Christ out of Christianity and made it about works instead. And when Christianity is no longer centered on God and interaction with Him, it stops being so appealing. Most of the reason of why I am a Christian is because I have gained so much from learning about God and what He has said and done. The excitement doesn’t come from going to church or reading my Bible; the excitement comes from interaction with God Himself.

I was talking to one of my friends who said he used to believe in God; he said he would read his Bible and pray, but eventually, he got to the end of it. If Christianity is just reading stories and morals out of a “sacred” book and praying to an impersonal God, then it is pointless. It wouldn’t really do that much good. But if Christianity could be about God, then it would actually mean something. It would mean that people could start putting their trust in God out of a belief that He actually exists. We wouldn’t have to be consumed by school and getting high paying jobs, because they wouldn’t matter; we wouldn’t have to worry about who we are going to marry, because we would know that God has already planned the perfect spouse for us. It would mean social hierarchies would break and everyone could be accepted. It would weaken poverty, because people would actually care about others and give away the things they don’t need. The ramifications of what Christ-centered Christians could do are endless.

It is because of these ramifications that I am a Christian – because I desire something bigger than this world and something greater than money and fame. I think God provides this. I am a Christian because my life seems rather empty without God and only a relationship with Him has filled that void. I don’t love God because I want to go to heaven. I don’t love God because I want to be able to say I am a better person than everybody else. I love God because I think that is my purpose in life, and I love Him because He is worthy to be loved.