Requirements to be a Christian
What makes someone a Christian?
A Connections reader wrote me some time ago, “not all people who are in church are Christians.” That may well be true, but what does identify a person as a Christian, if it’s not merely being in the church?
For about the first forty years of my life, I assumed being a Christian mainly meant being in a church. Of course, it also meant being “nice” and “sweet” and polite, I thought, and obeying all laws and authorities and following all rules. It essentially meant doing what most people I knew did.
In more recent years, however, my understanding has changed. I now see that at times being a Christian can actually require breaking rules and customs and disobeying institutional authorities. It can mean not doing what friends and fellow church members are doing. It might even require not being in the institutional church.
Many opinions about what’s required
At various times I have talked to other people and asked them what they saw as the requirements for being a Christian. They came up with a wide assortment of opinions. Some views contradicted others. Yet the advocates of nearly everyone cited scripture that they felt justified their views. Claiming scriptural justification, of course, sometimes required taking verses out of context and ignoring other equally numerous scriptures. It also required seeing some as direct quotes from Jesus when they actually expressed views developed long after his death.
As you read these peoples’ varied opinions about what being a Christian requires, I hope you’ll think about what your own views are, and where they’ve come from.
Belief
The reader who wrote me that some people in church aren’t Christians claimed that in order to be a Christian one must believe in the resurrection of Jesus’s physical body and must believe that Jesus is literally the Son of God, among other things. She is far from alone. Like her and many other Christians, several others said such beliefs are requirements for being a Christian. To support this view, people cited scriptures.
For these Christians, belief means accepting certain Bible verses or interpretations literally as facts. These Christians see literal belief in the Virgin Birth, the theory of Substitutionary Atonement, and the Trinity as essential. Yet these ways of describing the meaning of Jesus arose long after he died. Besides, scholars tell us that in the culture in which such doctrines arose, they were not understood in the way they are understood by most Christians today.
The Christians who see certain beliefs as requirements for being Christian usually seem to feel also that publicly stating them in particular words is required. I’ve even known Christians who claim that the physical ability to say the words “Jesus is Lord” is a test of whether one is a Christian. Someone influenced by demons, these Christians say, would be physically unable to speak that particular phrase. I find that a gross misinterpretation of scripture.
For many Christians, as important as believing certain statements about Jesus is having a one-time “conversion experience,” an experience of being “born again.” It’s experiencing God’s presence in a dramatic, life-changing way. Yet other Christians see conversion as gradual spiritual growth.
Baptism and the church
In one group that listed what they saw as requirements for being a Christian, the list got quite long before anyone mentioned the one that is often seen as the main requirement—baptism. Baptism is typically accompanied by making an explicit public commitment of belief in Jesus and loyalty to him. Sometimes the commitment is followed by baptism later when the necessary physical facilities are available.
When infants are baptized, parents make this commitment on their behalf. The baptized person is expected to confirm the commitment when he or she is older.
Most Christians who see baptism as what makes someone a Christian also see church participation as essential. It usually includes observing the sacrament of the Eucharist. For some, it also includes other religious rites that their churches officially consider sacraments, means of experiencing God’s presence.
Behavior
In a fascinating book by Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation, she says that the main insights of the earliest major world religions are very similar. All arose during what philosophers call the Axial Age, from about 900 to 200 B.C.E. For the originators of these religions, Armstrong finds, what mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Many Christians also consider that the main thing that matters. Some say it’s the only thing.
The Axial sages put morality at the heart of the spiritual life, says Armstrong, and to them, morality meant compassion. To them, religion meant respect for all beings. Behaving kindly and generously was the route to the divine and to saving the world.
Many Christians see this kind of morality at the heart of being a Christian. Many others strongly disagree, insisting that Christianity depends on other features, especially the death and resurrection of Jesus and his unique role in saving people from sin. Yet there seems to be plenty of evidence in the Bible that compassion is what counts.
What about people who practice compassion and promote social justice but aren’t doing it because Jesus commanded it? Can we legitimately call them Christians? More important, if they act compassionately, does it matter whether they’re Christians or not?
If we look honestly at the full implications of those questions, others even more crucial arise. Does God care? Does it matter to God whether someone makes an explicit and exclusive commitment to Jesus, rather than simply treating all people with justice and compassion in the way that Jesus modeled and taught?
Asking these questions, however, leads to asking what we believe God is like. Is God like a human being, with the kinds of feelings and opinions that humans have? Or is God our name for the order in the universe, the principles by which the universe operates? Is God a mystery that we can never fully know, that is totally unlike human beings? In attributing human qualities to God, have we merely made a god in our image? Do we assume that God has human characteristics merely because seeing God that way comforts us?
Claiming to be Christian
Sometimes when people call themselves Christians, they’re merely putting themselves in one cultural category instead of another. In a poll or census, when they’re asked what their religious preference is, they check Christian. Yet they may consider themselves Christian only because they grew up in a church, were baptized as babies, and have never joined any other religion. Maybe they celebrate Christmas and even go to a church on Easter. Maybe they more or less see the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule as having value. Yet they don’t seem to deliberately try to follow anything else of what most Christians consider essential. Are they Christians?
Several people I’ve spoken to came to the conclusion that we simply can’t say for sure whether someone’s a Christian. We have to take their word for whether they are or aren’t. We have to accept that whoever says he or she is a Christian, is, in fact, a Christian, and leave the real decision to God.
If we pursue this line of thinking, however, we get back to the question of whether God cares, and to the deeper but also unanswerable question of what God is like.
Trying is what counts?
If consistently just and compassionate behavior is required for qualifying as a Christian, then no one qualifies. Maybe that’s part of the attraction of thinking that making conventional belief statements is all that’s necessary. It’s certainly the easiest thing to measure as well as to do. But I doubt that it’s enough. In fact, it may not matter at all. More importantly, I suspect, is opposing the kind of behavior Jesus opposed and promoting the kind he demonstrated.
If that’s what matters, then all any of us can do is merely try to be Christian. Maybe doing that is what’s required for calling ourselves Christians. And maybe each of us is the only person who really knows whether we’re doing it.
Leave a comment below on what you believe the requirements to be a Christian are.