Today is a birthday of sorts for me! I have committed this day, January 24th, 2010 to memory. (1-2-4 ought to prove easy to remember!)
What's the occasion? It's this: I realized today for the first time that I am neither Catholic nor Protestant. I belong to Christ. The freedom that comes with that realization is nothing short of exhilaration.
Labels bring baggage. Several years ago I realized that I was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Neither label sat well with me anymore, and letting go of all political associations was greatly freeing. I no longer had to defend the rogues in either party.
Shedding religious labels (save my identification with Christ and his global church) likewise releases me from an awful lot of baggage. Barges of it. I want to be free of labels and baggage alike. Thanks be to God, shedding labels (most of them, anyway) is a God-sanctioned activity.
Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, Republican nor Democratic, Catholic nor Protestant for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
I have, of course, taken a few liberties with the words of St. Paul. The more modern labels are insertions of my own. But seriously, could those additions do anything to make the verse more radical than it was to begin with? Keeping in mind the world Paul lived in, I'd say the answer to that is an emphatic No!
Leaving aside the books that could be written about the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, and between slave and master, would anyone care to assert that their allegiance to a particular political party or wing of Christendom is stronger than their own sexual identity? Strong as the distinctions between male and female are today, they were even sharper 2000 years ago.
So.... why today? Why is today truly the first day of my post-Protestant life? The answer is this: in church today we had a guest speaker for Sunday School who discussed interactions between Protestants and Catholics. Suffice it to say that by the time this visiting speaker had finished his talk about the differences between Catholics and Protestants, I was in the grips of a new realization that I am neither one.
I belong to Christ. And neither Protestants nor Catholics have a lock on what that looks like.
OK ... so you are neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, Republican nor Democratic, Catholic nor Protestant ... but you are still male, right? ;-)
ReplyDeleteI don't have anything insightful to say about how much of your (or my) own identity lies in our maleness, but I struggle to separate my identity from my masculinity. Maybe that's a sign of immaturity on my part. Were it that I could simply think of myself as a child of God. I suppose in some sense I do ... I got into trouble a while back because I was odds with some in church leadership at a church I previously attended over the issue of women in leadership. I think I may have even referred to Galatians 3:38 to substantiate my views. But somewhere along the line, having grown up in Christian traditions where women weren't permitted to be pastors, I came to the recognition that I didn't believe that Paul's words on the matter were intended to by binding for all time and in all cultures. So does that make me a liberate man who is still a man?
Congratulations on no longer being a Protestant who is also not a Catholic. Our generation tends to hate labels anyways! So what about the label "Evangelical?" There's so much baggage associated with that label that part of me wants to sluff it off too. Although ironically about a year ago I found myself acknowledging my "evangelicalness" when someone left the church I pastor because they felt I was too Evangelical!
I once was invited by a Catholic priest to have communion with him and some Catholic students. He spent time explaining communion to me, their use of candles and images, and went to great lengths to make feel welcome and comfortable with their celebration of the Eucharist. The funny thing was that I was already comfortable with everything he said and did even before he had explained it to me. I was a little worried that he was risking being defrocked for serving me communion, but what a joy it was to fellowship with him and my Catholic brothers and sisters around the Lord's table that night.
So I too don't feel particularly protestant or catholic. And I certainly don't identify myself as a Fundamentalist or necessarily even as a big-E "Evangelical" ... I'd like to be known as someone who is doing his best to faithfully follow in the footsteps of Christ. As someone, as Rob Bell reminds us, "is covered in the dust of his Rabbi's feet."
Yeah, the evangelical label didn't last long. I mean, once you bail on being a Protestant, you've already taken the big leap.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you ask, because I wrote a blog on that very topic... but never published it.
Since you asked, I went back looking for it and see it, a bit forlorn, sitting in my drafts. I guess I should push it out tomorrow.
I am no longer an "Evangelical" either, though of course I hold many shared views with others of this persuasion.
If you haven't read it yet, you should read Brian McLaren's book titled (and no, I'm not kidding), "A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN" I really appreciated his book (but then I've liked most of what he's written -- not that I agree with every iota of it, but it certainly has forced me to do some rethinking and wrestling with my own faith. Reviewers on Amazon give it only 3 stars. But of the the 157 reviews to date, 77 give hit 4-5 stars while 61 give it 1-2 stars. But that's par for the course, people either love his stuff or they hate it!
ReplyDeleteAfter printing the cover of that book, they probably came up short on ink for the pages inbetween!
ReplyDeleteI've heard of that book before, and I have to say that the title resonates a whole lot more now than it did when I first heard of it.