2023-06-21 A Meditation on Incidentally I’m a Christian

“8 “ ‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” (Re 3:8 ESV)

To greet the day, a robust faith yet what needn’t be said much: that God is for us; that Faith in His intentions saves; that we go gladly to the battlefront because our lives are already vouchsafed and passed over unto Eternity. Therefore it inspires us to be that friend, incidentally Evangelical or Christian; to search for signs and deeds that showcase Christ’s sacrifice, is only second in importance to living truthfully in a domain of Grace rather than Law.

That is, we admire that high ideal: to think up “Christian” deeds, minus any shoving-down-each-other’s-throat so called “Evangelical truth claims”; minus “Evidence of submission”; minus “Godly talk”. Our Godly talk is of pragmatic demonstrations, details, not naming names, not insisting on a bullet in the soul called “Conversion”; rather convert-talk is rare and occasional, at times. What dominates is simple care and, we love to imagine, Christian presence.

Yet this is good works. Yet also we back down from this perch called “Good works”. For that is the perch that said, “Spend your energies thinking up Good Deeds that shall prove to your unbelieving friend you have something good going on!”. Wow. That deed, that intention, was inspired, it can seem. Yet the “Good deed” we adore is that of genuine ease amidst all circumstances. Genuine sincerity to be unbothered by accusations, guilt, name-calling, dislike, broken fellowship. We “get there” by faith that a prayer said earlier baptizes our own body and soul unto a shining flame. We are infinitely more alert, yet ballasted down by the mechanics of the whole matter. We easily form desires, wishes, intentions, “if only”s for our friend and neighbor, when “Friendship evangelism” hopes they will personally one day recall just that occasional reminder: it was Christ who done this. It was Jesus who created that at-ease. It was Lord on High who adopted and infused with shoulder-to-shoulder ventures. Not frightened by all our errors, but allowing Him to forgive us.

We are those scarred, smiting from the broken fellowship; yet our battle today is not to “fix things” but to “accept things”. Accept good gifts. Accept determined faith that we Belong, that we are Loved, that we have an interlocutor not freezing and putting the situation in a bottle or time capsule, but willing to take our errors onto each others’ own hearts, to try not once but a thousand times, to reach the one addicted to luscious get-ups or who knows what foibles.