It's no secret that Christians have a vocabulary of their own. Hang around Christians long enough, and you will pick up on some of the interesting (and perhaps peculiar) jargon Christians often use. We have a host of sayings/cliches we often employ in every day conversation that may make perfect sense to us but may not make much sense to others. As demonstrated in Rebecca Pippert's story, while we may mean well, we can take for granted the meaning behind the jargon we so casually employ:
"When I worked with college students, I gave many evangelistic dorm talks. I remember one in which a skeptical but seeking student asked me, "What does it mean to be a Christian?" A Christian student who really desired the other student to understand replied, "It means you have to be washed in the blood of the lamb." The first student paled and looked confused. The Christian continued, "That way you will be sanctified and redeemed." Another student, seeking to help his Christian brother said, "And the fellowship is so neat. Praise the Lord! You really get into the Word and get such a blessing." By the end of the evening, it was clear from the skeptic student's face that he felt Christians came from another planet." (Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World)
I can't say I blame him. I often wander if we even know what half the stuff we say means. Redeemed. Sanctified. Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Try explaining the gospel to someone without using Christianese and in plain language - it's harder than you think. I am in no way saying Christian jargon is bad; jargon is normal to any tight-knit group of people, much like inside jokes. Nor am I saying we should pessimistically question everything out of some sense of hyper-skepticism. It's easy to focus on everything the church has done/is doing wrong and bitterly stew over it's many flaws - I've been there and it only serves to encourage a my own sense of self-righteousness. But what would happen if we stepped back and examined the meaning behind some of the things we say?
In thinking about all this, one phrase in particular has come to my attention recently: this idea we have of what it means to be a "strong" Christian. Christians, myself included, use this phrase all the time in conversation. We often use it to describe certain individuals or leaders (past and present) who inspire a sense of awe and respect because of their strong faith or deep devotion to God, saying things like"he/she is a really strong Christian." The implication being that "strong" Christians are the ideal, the standard, we aspire to become or wish we were more like. We analyze them and compare ourselves with them, trying to figure out what it is that makes them better Christians. We hang around them in hopes that those characteristics that we wish we had will rub off onto us. But as I sat on all this, the thought occurred to me: Is there really such a thing as a strong Christian?
Trek with me here. As Christians, do we ever reach a point in our Christian walk where we really have it all together? Where we outgrow our need for God? And we outgrow a need for grace? The idea of a strong Christian is misleading because it implies that strength or a strong faith is something we need to muster up, when in reality, both come from God. Or to put it simply, aren't all Christians actually weak? That may stun or even offend you. But isn't it true? Isn't that the point behind the gospel? That we aren't strong. That we are broken. And no one has their act together - we are all a mess. It seems to me that we think receiving God's grace was some kind of one-time event. But grace is something we receive continually for the rest of our lives because we sin on a continual basis. Maybe my desire to be looked up to as a "strong" Christian is really some deep-seated desire in me to be worshiped and placed on a pedestal, where people will look up at me and be filled with awe and reverence.
The unintended result of all this is a spiritual competition of sorts in the Christian community. The result: spiritual elitism. And we all want to get into the club. We want to be the ones everybody else looks up to and aspires to become. The other unintended result is that we feel compelled to put on a facade and masks our weaknesses. Otherwise, people won't think we are a strong Christian; rather, they may look down on us and judge us because we are in some way inferior to them in our faith. But when we give in to these fears the power of our testimony is hindered: rather than telling others how God has met us in our weaknesses, we try to be an example of what it means to have your life together. Yet look at the Apostle Paul, he did not boast in his strong faith or how "together" he was. Rather he boasted about his weaknesses: "I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses" and "And [God] said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me" (2 Cor 12:5, 2 Cor 12:9). Maybe we're afraid others won't look up to us anymore, that they will be disillusioned by who we really are. But the reality is, people will feel they can relate more because we are human, just like them. And maybe, just maybe, they will see God's power in our lives.
