Table of Contents | 4. What is the Christian life?
The life of faith for followers of Jesus is more like "a sacred journey" than anything settled and predictable. Early in my life there was a clear aand compelling reason to be a follower of Jesus, namely, to avoid going to hell and to go to heaven. There was no more powerful and persuasive motivation than that. The ultimate destination was all that mattered. It used to be determined by acceptable behavior and right belief and prim moralisms. This would guarantee you a spot in heaven, at least in the bleachers! This "right belief" consisted of holding a certain set of doctrines or biblical teachings or dogma. Affirming this list meant that faith was cerebral or "an affair of the head" rather than relational or "an affair of the heart." Two books by Marcus Borg on this page are helpful. The historical development of this perspective of faith as intellectual affirmation is relatively modern, in spite of the fact that many, if not most, of its adherents construe this "affair of the head" to be primitive biblical and apostolic teaching. The truth is that faith, understood in this fashion, is rooted in both the Protestant Reformation and the birth of modern science. In the period of the seventeenth century known as the Enlightenment or the modern period, faith took on rational dimensions. Prior to these developments believing generated a relational understanding. The influence of the Protestant Reformation was derived from the determination of denominations to establish their distinctive doctrines. One should believe their doctrines because they were right. The influence of science was the perspective that truth or belief was factual and, therefore, could be verified. Right belief meant a reserved room in heaven at the end of one's days! But faith isn't eschatological at all for me anymore. It is a vision that is rooted in a specific understanding of discipleship. A disciple is a follower and journeying with Jesus is the essence of what I perceive as discipleship. In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time Marcus Borg asserts that such a perspective "means to be an itinerant, a sojourner; to have nowhere to lay one's head, no permanent resting place. To journey with Jesus," he says, "means listening to his teaching -- sometimes understanding it, sometimes not quite getting it." It means "eating at his table and experiencing his banquet. That banquet is an inclusive banquet, including not just me and not just us, but those we tend to exclude." Borg says that it is "a journey in a company of disciples....It involves becoming compassionate....It is a vision of the Christian life as a journey of transformation....It leads from life under the lordship of culture to the life of companionship with God." Now I see my life of faith as "sacred journey," no longer destination. And, pausing for nourishment from the rigors of the trek, you sit down aat the banquet table of grace and find that some of the very people others can't accept are right there at your elbow and across the table and laughing and singing because God set a place for them and invited all of them to the table. Maybe I won't ever arrive in "Beulah land" but who cares when the journey is so exciting and fulfilling! "Playing a harp" and "treading streets of gold" and "singing with the angel's choir" aren't for me anyway. I'd rather argue with Paul concerning what he said about women and homosexuality, if we both get to the same place! He may be Saint Paul but even a proud sinner like me knows better than what he wrote. A derivative variation on this insightful perspective is found the The Heart of Christianity. Borg writes, "Being Christian is not about meeting requirements for a future reward in an afterlife and not very much about believing. Rather, the Christian life is rooted in trust and is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present." From my perspective, this view parallels that of the life of faith as "sacred journey." Robert W. Funk prefers other language and asserts, in his book A Credible Jesus: Fragments of a Vision, "trust is the door to the alternative reality that is God's domain...." But that's pilgrimage too. He observes that "God's domain is a mythic destination, like the promised land." That's life at its best for me. |