The Problem

That one can know what Christianity is without being a Christian is one thing.

But whether one can know what it is to be a Christian without being one is something else entirely.

And this is the problem of faith.

One can find no greater dubiousness than when, by the help of "Christianity," it is possible to find Christians who have not yet become Christians.

-Soren Kierkegaard

Lately in politics I have started to see the terms RINO or DINO to denigrate a person who fails to meet their standard of doctrinal purity.  It means Republican In Name Only or Democrat In Name Only.  It is usually said with a certain air of condescension and mockery and it can be brought on by a fairly minor disagreement.  The same sort of thing happens in almost any group of people who hold to some sort of standard that they consider Orthodoxy (right belief) or Orthopraxy (right action).  As a representative of the Church and as a member of clergy (meaning I am invested in the institution of the Church, flawed though it may be), I have to laugh at such quibbling.  My laughter is not intended to be mean spirited (well maybe just a little), it's sort of like watching children getting into an argument that, as an adult, you saw coming a mile away.  The church has been dealing with the phenomenon of nominal (name only) believers for a very, very long time.

The fact of the matter is that Jesus challenges human beings, at nearly every opportunity, to fly in the face of what their instincts tell them to do. Our basic urges seek security and comfort, we seek to get ahead and try to dodge really dangerous and difficult situations.  Jesus instructs his disciples to often do exactly the opposite of what their instincts would lead them to do.  It is summed up most succinctly in the line: "take up your cross and follow me" (Mt. 16: 24). This emphasis remains fairly consistent throughout Jesus' teaching and leads to all sorts of objections and attempts to weasel out of it.  Many other teachings and parables are simply attempts to shut the side doors that many people would like to slip out of to avoid the really difficult challenge of following Jesus.

From the first century, when the Apostle Paul wrote his letters to the various churches, to the Reformation, to the 19th Century when Kierkegaard was writing, to now in the era we have dubbed postmodern, it has always been difficult to actually follow Jesus. Thus we usually settle for knowing about Jesus or perhaps we even call it "believing in Jesus." But what Christ was really encouraging is following, discipleship specifically, belief that translates into action, and perhaps even beyond that, an actually shaping of one's life and thought processes into a Jesus-like mold.  The old theological word is sanctification.

G.K. Chesterton, in one of my favorite pithy lines says: "It is not that Christianity was tried and found lacking, it was found difficult and never tried."

There is an awful lot of talk about what the future of the church in the world might look like or whether there actually is much of a future.  Something of the old ways appears to be dying off to be sure, even in the staunchest of the old traditions (Roman Catholic and Orthodox), but the thing is we are all about resurrection aren't we?  If you hold the Gospel to be the truth then the darkness of the tomb should always be temporary.  We fret and fume a great deal about how people no longer seem compelled to attend church, or engage in what Kierkegaard, with some warranted condescension refers to as "Christianity." But perhaps that was the inevitable result of an institution that has admittedly focused too much on knowing about Christ and not enough on following him.

In churches of all varieties it is possible and indeed likely to find Christians who have not yet become Christians, people who practice the religion, but who have not begun to seriously (or even un-seriously) be really shaped and formed into the image of Christ.

Given the history, I imagine that whatever the next iteration of "Christianity" happens to be, there will eventually be people who once again subscribe to it merely as a collection of doctrines and rites, and we will have to go through all of this again.

Personally, I am glad God is patient.