Am I a Person of Faith?

In America, Baseball and Football are two sports that most of us are familiar with. Though there are several similarities between them, these sports are, in a fundamental way, vastly different.

For example, both sports have teams made up of several players; both have a ball that is thrown and caught; and both, when on offense try to score, and when on defense try to stop the other team from scoring. Now imagine for a moment that some baseball players wander into the middle of a football game and start playing baseball…, it would be a disaster for both the baseball players and the football game.

I consider myself a person of faith, shaped primarily by study of the Bible, which is also at the center of the religion of Christianity. Like most other religions, Christianity has regular meetings to attend, sacred rituals to practice regularly, and in some cases the practice of separating from, even demonizing others who do not share the same beliefs.

While being a religious person and being a person of faith have some similarities, like baseball and football they are, in a fundamental way vastly different…,in ways to think and how to live. In other words, being a person of faith is not just about regularly practicing rituals or attending regular meetings, it is about how you live in the world and the impact you have on people, when you are not doing those things. To better understand what a person of faith is you can go to the Bible for its definition of the word Church.

The word translated as church in the Bible is Ecclesia, a Greek word for gathering or assembly summoned to participation. So, in the biblical context it means people invited to come out of the crowd into life of faith (or trust) in the love of God. That life of trust is demonstrated in large part by Koinonia, which means sharing life and learning with others. So, in the Bible the definition of church is a group of people who have accepted an invitation into a life of trust in God; to share life; to learn together how to love and care for each other and those who are also invited into that a life of trust in God. This is far from what most people believe church is today. Most think of church as an event in a building that we go to on Sunday mornings, that requires vocational pastors, skilled musicians, and buildings that need lots of money to maintain; thus the emphasis on getting more and more people to attend that Sunday morning event.

Almost twenty-years ago, Jim Henderson (an evangelical Christian) and Matt Casper (an Atheist) set out on a journey to visit a variety of Christian churches around the country. Along the way  as they visited mega churches that had thousands of people who attended Sunday services, to smaller less formal organic or house churches, they had an open and honest dialogue about what they saw and what Matt thought about the churches that he visited. In an interview, Matt made a comment that stuck with me…he said “Wow…they really have gone in a different direction than what I read in the Bible…”

While I am not asserting that going to church on Sunday morning or the regular practicing of religious rituals are inherently wrong or bad, I am asserting that theses practices and the personal (and financial) investment in them, complicates our perception of God and creates artificial barriers to experiencing something that is intended to be accessible to every person on the planet… the invitation to connect with a community of people to be loved and cared for; to learn how to love and care for others; and to learn that God invites all people to experience that love, regardless of their race, religion, cultural, gender, sexual orientation, poverty or wealth.