"What will you give up?"
I kind of dread that question. The one that sneaks up on me as Mardi Gras comes to a close and what I'm contemplating is whether I should go savory or sweet with my pancakes.
"What will you let go?"
My relationship with "being Christian" is tenuous at best. Most years I do Christmas. It's easier socially that way. This year I didn't, best Christmas to date. I'm a huge fan of Easter---after all, who doesn't love rabbits and an excuse to eat chocolate all day? I light candles in Catholic churches for people who've asked for prayers. I go to mass in Latin or Spanish when I just need to breathe. I've read multiple translations of the bible cover to cover, and massive academic tomes about the founding of the faith, who was Judas really? Why were the gnostics hunted and killed?
Although I'm sometimes a little too shy to say so out loud, I spent a year of my life living in Guatemala as a Young Adult Volunteer with the Presbyterian Church USA. Driven there by a crises of not only faith, but morality. And that year forever changed me. I am in no way who I might have been. Because of faith.
But when I'm asked "are you Christian?" I have to pause.
What do you mean by "Christian?" I want to ask. Do you mean I believe in a white bearded Caucasian God sitting in a throne in the sky, ticking boxes next to my name that will add up to either eternal life or damnation? Do you mean I rely on 4,000 year old texts to tell me what is right and wrong? Feeling justified in my harsh judgements of others because a book called Leviticus told me so? When you ask if I am "Christian" are you asking if I believe in a fundamental difference between men and women, and if I adhere to that standard of behavior? Do you mean to ask if I attend church every Sunday, or if I have accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour into my heart mind and soul?
Are you asking if I believe Mahatma Gandhi will burn in hell because he didn't? Are you asking if I've arbitrarily decided that one faith, because it says so in a book, is the only path to "salvation" and if I believe salvation means eternal life as an individual holding a harp, sitting on a cloud in the sky?
Are you asking if the cornerstone of my life is a secure knowledge that I am "right" and others are "wrong" and that they will be punished if they don't come around to my way of thinking?
Because if that's the case, the answer is no.
Or are you asking if I am Christian because the idea of a faith comforts me in the cold dark middle of the night? If I believe in holding onto my cultural heritage, and that heritage includes Christmas and Advent and Lent? Are you asking if the values a man from Galilee espoused 2,000 years ago are values I want to live with? Values such as sacrifice, forgiveness and love? Am I Christian because I believe that we ought to be a little more socialist and a lot less greedy with what we have, and because that faith demands I examine my economic position in the world and be accountable to the damage it causes? Do you ask if I am Christian because you too seek path guided by compassion both for yourself and for others, one where you know in your heart of hearts that judgement is not yours to cast, that the man who ostensibly founded your faith taught acceptance, love and kindness above all? That the people he lived with and taught were the same kind of people that "Christians" today spew vitriol towards? That to follow that faith isn't "easy." It's not screaming at people for loving their partners, or leading lives you can't understand; it's living in poverty because you dedicate your life to social justice and spending your afternoons comforting people who make you uncomfortable?
If so, my answer is not yet. Not because I don't believe in that kind of faith, but because it's a goal I'm working towards, and one I have not yet come anywhere near.
And for Lent I'm not giving anything up, because I don't think that was the point of Lent. For Lent I'm remembering every day what it is I have to be grateful for, and reminding myself that whether I believe in a "God" or not, Christianity is about far more than just "accepting Jesus." Christianity can be about changing the very fabric of the world---if only Christians are courageous enough to see that sometimes faith is not about how afraid you are to die, and assuaging that fear with a belief that casts you in a good light compared to others based on random moral principles, but it's about how you live---and what you do to help those around you. It's about who you visit in jail, whether you walk by someone who is hungry, if you support or encourage social institutions that leave children and their families destitute. If being "Christian" is really about justice--and not fire and brimstone you're gonna burn because I don't like the way you look/act/sound justice--but lets create a world where no one starves kinda justice, then yeah. I wanna be that kind of Christian.
Happy Lent.
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