I never tell anyone I’m Christian. Because I know it only means that I’ll get immediately placed into a box I don’t even almost fit into. Worse, that box will likely be constructed of everything that I hate about what Christianity has become.
It’s just all gotten so, so crazy. How out of touch with the very spirit of Christ do you have to be, for instance, to think that Christian nationalism is anything but toxic?
I think it’s safe to say that if God’s will were done on earth as it is in heaven, we’d have no nations at all. Just people, who live their lives more interested in what’s good for others than what’s good for them.
Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than this.
There. That’s Jesus (from Mark 12:28-31). Everything else is extra.
If I tell someone from the right I’m a Christian, they will immediately assume I believe all kinds of shit I don’t, like that hell is a real place where everybody who’s not Christian spends eternity having the living flesh seared off their bones, or that God thinks women should “submit” to their husbands, or that abortion is murder, or that LGBTQ people are only misguided straight people. That God is a man.
And if I tell someone from the left that I’m Christian—then holy cow. I might as well say I’m a misogynistic homophobic Nazi simpleton whose favorite pastime is tossing live puppies to alligators.
So when it comes to my personal understanding of the whole ongoing relationship between God and people, I say nothing—much less that I’m Christian. (These days I say nothing. But see My Five Years Being the Most Read Writer in America.)
And I wouldn’t put it that way anyway. What I would say, if push came to shove, is that I very much believe in the value of the story of God manifesting himself on earth as Jesus Christ—which, to my understanding, he did by way of trying his best to prove to all of humanity, once and for all and forever, that everything is fine, that we’re all okay, and that he’s right there if we ever need him.
So . . . yeah. Close enough.
If whomever I was talking to then wanted to get any more into it, the first thing I’d probably shoehorn right into the beginning of our conversation would be, “One thing that drives me insane is how infernally stupid it is that if you’re talking about God—in English, anyway—then right away you’re flat-out forced to ascribe to God a gender-specific pronoun. Because we don’t have anything else! Our three big choices are he, she, and they. They is the best one, by far—and it still sucks, because it’s still all about gender. Ugh. Total language fail.”
If the person I was talking to didn’t then say, “Okay, well, I really have to get back to work now,” or, “Um, so, did you want that to go?” then we just might move on to exploring some ideas about what Christianity actually is. We could talk about, say, hell, which I believe is nothing more than just a 2,000-year-old marketing campaign designed to make people so afraid of going there that they’ll pay endless money to assure they won’t have to.
We could talk about how the whole idea of sin is grossly misunderstood. We could talk whether or not Christ was actually God, and what that means either way. We could talk about the mind-breaking Holy Trinity; the Atonement; the nature of evil; free will; prayer; why it’s important that the crackers used for Holy Communion be as bland as humanly possible. We could talk about why Jesus, an extremely literate person teaching and preaching in an extremely literate culture, never wrote down a single word himself.
We could talk about my favorite Christian thing, which is that smoking little ball the priests swing around on a chain like they’re trying to brain a few parishioners.
Anyway, I think all that stuff’s pretty gottang interesting.
And maybe, in due course, we’ll talk about some of it, right here in this here Substack.
But what I really want to do in this space is so much simpler than that. It’s something that I’ve been moving toward since, one year ago, I nearly died (My Wife Chose My Death) and Hurricane Helene laid to waste so much of my hometown of Asheville, NC (From Asheville, With Love [And Some Fear]).
Not to mention, you know, the nightmare of what’s been happening to our whole country.
I mean, Jesus Christ.
Anyway, I’ve finally found a way to possibly be of some help to anyone who reads this newsletter. I can at least share what helps me. I just first needed to lay the groundwork for doing that. That’s what my last couple of posts have been.
And now that’s done.
So with my next post, I’ll start sharing with you the only real thing that I have to offer that I think is worth anything at all.
(And please believe that I’m not being coy here. I hate that teasing/coy bullshit writers do. It’s just that it’s 6:30 a.m., and I have got to start getting ready for work.)
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back at you soon. Your friend, John
This piece captures my feelings exactly. I found myself reluctant to identify myself as "Christian" because Im not the Republican type, nor am I the type many Democrats associate with the label.
For the last several years, I identify myself as a follower of Christ, or a follower of the teachings of Jesus. Thank you for giving voice to us.
Like you, John, I have stopped describing myself as Christian. I hold the idea that people can know by my actions and words that I'm not a Christian nationalist or any of the other hateful practices/beliefs that have "Christian" tacked on as part of their identification.
If, for some reason, it becomes necessary to actually describe my spiritual path, I usually say I'm a follower of Jesus. then we can get into a more interesting discussion of Jesus, his teachings, his surrounding culture, etc.etc.etc.
Your column expresses my feelings exactly. Thanks for giving voice to what many of us feel.