In the last post, I was talking about how we tend to put people into categories when people don’t easily fit categories. This applies particularly to understanding where we are in relationship to God or whether we even have a relationship with God.
I find very curious the whole debate over what some people call “once saved always saved” or “eternal security,” referring to the idea that you cannot fall from grace, as opposed to the idea that you can keep falling in and out of grace. What’s odd about all the arguments on each side of the debate is that they are asking entirely the wrong question. We don’t need to be asking can we or have we fallen from grace as much as we need to be asking where we are in our relationship with God right now.
A similar question is whether you can do such-and-such and still be saved. It is a silly question, to say the least. It would be like a man asking his wife, God forbid, “how far I can go in committing adultery and we still be happily married.” Duh! If you have to ask, you’re in the doghouse already.
The walk of faith is not a category, like a club membership or some such. Either I am moving toward God or I am not. And the walk of faith is always a process that exclusive emphases on crisis decision-making or on experientialism denies.
Such is the dilemma of using the term “Christian” as an adjective, as in a Christian businessman or a Christian nation or Christian music or a Christian school. When we label something we do two things.
First, we arbitrarily define it in ways that may not apply. For example, what makes a businessman or a nation or a selection of music or a school “Christian”? I am not even talking about defining the world “Christian.” I am talking about defining these other things.
Take music. Does the style make it Christian, as in “gospel” music? What about “Christian” hymns written to old drinking songs? Is it Christian only if it refers to God or Jesus? The book of Esther in the Bible does not refer to God, whereas some “secular” literature talks about God a lot. Does that make Esther non-Christian in this sense? What about whether it espouses Christian values? Then we have to make sure we agree on what those values are, how they are to be espoused and so on. Oft times national or cultural values are confused with “Christian” in the larger world. Gets downright confusing.
Is a song “Christian” only if it is sung by a Believer in Jesus Christ? Does that make a Christmas carol sung by a nonbeliever a non-Christian song? What about a “secular” song like, say, “America the Beautiful” sung by a Christian in church on July 4 Sunday? I once heard of people in an international church in Taipei “getting saved” through a Filipina singing “White Christmas”. Does that also make Bing Crosby a Christian just because he wrote that song?
Second, and more importantly, we run the highly likely risk (which makes it less of a risk if it is highly likely) that we will dilute the term “Christian,” thus profaning it. For example, some people call America a “Christian” nation. What then happens when that nation does some very unchristian things? In such a case, the name of Christ is taken in vain, meaning we have profaned the name of Jesus just as much as if we were the proverbially drunken sailor stumbling down the street crying out “Jesus Christ this” and “Jesus Christ that.”
There are all kinds of things labeled as Christian these days that have nothing to do with Jesus and there are all kinds of things not labeled as Christian that have everything to do with Jesus. I may call my school or my club or my newspaper or my song or even myself “Christian.” But if I do so, I better be sure I am not breaking the 3rd Commandment.
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