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What does it mean to be Christian?

1:00am Tuesday, 6th July 2010

The first of World Vision’s six core values is “We are Christian”. And yet, I’ve heard a number of Christians and churches question this fact. I suspect this is because they’ve observed two indisputable truths.
Firstly, World Vision invites all Australians—many of whom (around half) don’t identify as Christian—to support our work. Secondly, though we work with local churches wherever possible, we never coerce or demand that people hear any religious message or convert to Christianity before, during or after receiving assistance. It’s ironic that this leads to the charge of “unchristian”, when in fact it is because we are Christian that we choose not to limit our work in this way. We respond to human need wherever and whenever we can. Digging a little deeper, I would suggest the underlying question or confusion here is around what it actually means to be Christian.
John’s Gospel begins with ‘In the beginning was the Word …’ The Word, or the Greek translation, logos, is a category that was known by the whole ancient world. Universally, people were attracted the idea of the logos - the Word - whether they were Jews, Christians, pagans, Hellenists (Greeks), orientalists or philosophers. Whatever their background, the idea of the logos was the central unifying, attractive category.
For the Greek philosophers like Heraclitus, the logos was “the omnipresent”, or wisdom through which all things in the world are steered. For the Stoics, another school of philosophy, the logos was the common law of nature—the fundamental ground of being. For other Greek philosophers, the logos was the agent of creation, the means by which creation comes into being. And for some, the logos is the way you mediate creation, the way people come to know God and how God is revealed.
In the beginning of John’s Gospel we have this statement which finishes with the staggering announcement that goes right to the heart of being Christian—we believe that the logos—the Word—has become flesh. So this universal category that is right out there and includes everyone, is now narrowed down to saying that in Jesus we see this logos, this Word.
I think that at the fundamental heart of saying we are Christian is this: anything we know about God, anything we want to say about God, anything we understand about God, we know and say and understand through Jesus. To put it another way, I cannot say anything about God, as a Christian, without speaking of Jesus, without saying I know who that God is because of Christ. That is the fundamental Christian affirmation. There is a lot of God I might see in nature, but it is mixed and arbitrary. Nature gives off equivocal messages about God: awe, wonder, beauty… and terror. In a World Vision context then, if we seek to be “Christian” in the way we go about our development, advocacy and emergency relief work, we should look to the example Jesus set in his ministry.
Many Christians say that everything we know about God we know through the Bible. I understand that position. But the Bible, as theologian John Stott said, is actually a pair of binoculars. It’s to look through, to see who God is. When Christians say it’s the Bible, and quote it all the time, Stott would say they make the mistake of actually bowing down and worshipping the binoculars, saying it’s the binoculars that are the source of revelation. No, binoculars are to give us a picture of Jesus. In the beginning wasn’t the Bible; in the beginning was the Word. We’ll talk more about this next month.