Why are you a Christian?

The Rector writes about how to respond to this challenge

When St Bridget’s Church is open inevitably there are visitors – the open door is a powerful symbol of welcome and there are many who find their way inside. Some come to pray, and there are many comments in the Visitors’ Book about having found “peace” and “space”, whilst others come simply to explore the building and its fittings. I am glad that, when so often church buildings seem locked from one Sunday to another, ours is open more or less daily and that many find their way inside.

In some of those who come to see the building questions begin to form. When St Bridget’s was open during the Ashton Park Fair at the beginning of May I found myself in conversation with a woman in her twenties or early thirties. It was evident that she had little cultural knowledge of what the Christian faith was about. (We have to recognise that there are many who have very little knowledge even of the basics of our belief. We cannot assume a common cultural inheritance about Christian things.) Yet she was spiritual rather than secularist, clearly concerned about living genuinely and authentically, and with a host of questions for me. Her impression of Christians and Church was thus far, I discovered, pretty negative

After answering innumerable questions from other visitors about the Hog Back Stone or the stained glass windows, her questions came to me as a relief and a refreshment. At one point she asked me directly, “Why are you a Christian ?”

What would you have said ? I could have spoken of experiencing forgiveness, of salvation, of being liberated from the need to “work my passage” to God because in Christ and his Cross he has done the work and reconciled me – these are the precious things which I know and celebrate, but I sensed that this language would not connect with her as yet. So, put on the spot and knowing that I needed something like a “soundbite”, what did I say ? I said quite simply that the way of Jesus was the best way of being human, the best way of being whole and fully alive. It was a way that bound me back to my Centre, to God himself .

Many years ago Paul’s words to the Ephesian church struck me quite profoundly. He talks (Ephesians 4:13) of the building up of believers “ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature humanity, the stature of the fullness or Christ.” In the same way Jesus speaks of his coming that we may have life “and have it abundantly” (John 10:10), and I warm to words of the 2^nd century Church Father Irenaeus who writes that “the glory of God is a man fully alive” . To be in Christ is surely to be on the way to authentic humanity, to be the way God intended us to be, it will satisfy the need for wholeness and fulfilment, and we present our faith and its practice as the way towards that.

There is much that will ring bells here for those in our culture who long for authenticity and wholeness and who turn to the “self-help” and “self-realisation” books that fill the “Mind, Body and Spirit” sections of our bookshops. To be sure, the way of Christ involves some uncomfortable paradoxes, of self-emptying in order to be filled, of losing in order to gain, of dying in order to live - these are good challenges to the “me” generation, but they do not negate that desire for wholeness and, we would say, for holiness.

We need to present our faith as something that enhances what it is to be human rather than apparently denies it. I shudder at some of the impressions that Christians must give sometimes, of dullness and dourness. When I was coming into faith the believers who most inspired me, and whom God used to speak with me were those whose expression of faith seemed to make them more not less human.

And when we must stand apart from and challenge the assumptions of “the world”, especially in areas of ethics, let it be because we believe that what we have to offer is the better way of being human, the better way of being gendered, embodied, sexual beings, a way that better uses the gifts we have been given. If we do not, then we should not be surprised if people refuse to hear what we have to say, or find an easy excuse to dismiss or reject it.

Forty years ago, the Christian writer Harry Williams preached a Sermon entitled “Life Abundant or Life Resistant ?” (it is included in his book “The True Wilderness” in the Church Library). That would be a good question to ask ourselves.

And what of my questioner ? Well, I do not know, but I hope and pray and trust that she found a different way of looking at the Christian faith, one that may, by God’s grace, and conversations with other believers lead her to the fullness of life which Jesus promises.

What would you have said ?

Roger Clarke

June 2008