What do you call yourself?

I wonder what word you would use to describe yourself: would you say that you are a “Christian”, a “church-goer” or a “believer”?

There are pros and cons to using any of those words. For instance, many people don’t primarily think of “Christians” as followers of Jesus but as good people who do kind things; or perhaps they see them as religious folk who aren’t Muslims, Jews or Hindus! Calling oneself a “church-goer” may run the risk of being thought old-fashioned or even criticized for being hypocritical; in any case, it focusses attention more on the place of worship we frequent than on the faith we hold. Finally, to say that we are “believers” – a perfectly Biblical title – is to invite the question, “Believers in who or what?” For the word doesn’t automatically imply faith in Jesus Christ!

Of course there is at least one other word we could use to describe ourselves: we could say that that we are “disciples”. I have to say that this word immediately takes me back to Jesus walking beside the Sea of Galilee and calling people such as Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow him. In other words we tend to think of Jesus’ disciples as a specific group of first-century Jewish men (and, just possibly, women) – yet there is nothing to say that they can’t be found in twenty-first century Wales, although their language and clothing will obviously be very different!

I wonder, though, if we’re a bit frightened to call ourselves disciples because it sounds a bit “extreme”! After all, the fishermen were asked to drop their nets and Matthew had to get up from his tax-collector’s desk in order to follow Jesus. Those sound more like spur-of-the-moment responses rather than carefully considered decisions. More worryingly still, Jesus made it clear that people who wanted to be his disciples would have to leave their families, give up or sell their possessions, submit themselves to his teaching, and carry their crosses on a daily basis. To our ears this smacks of cultic religious fanaticism, and we don’t want to be accused of that!

But we mustn’t simply dismiss Jesus’ call. It is all too easy for us to let our faith degenerate into little more than occasional attendance at worship, or to mentally ticking a few boxes about belief. I honestly don’t think that is what Jesus was asking for twenty centuries ago, and I don’t think it’s what he’s looking for today. To me, discipleship must embrace all of our life and our attitudes to other people, our world, politics, finance, the way we use our time – I could go on! In a nutshell, Jesus asks for our values and life-style to be utterly revolutionised, a call which St. Paul later repeated in his letters when he talked about being “crucified with Christ” and “transformed by the renewing of our minds”.

Ultimately, we Christians can call ourselves whatever we like: it really doesn’t matter. But what does matter is our total commitment to Christ, his service and his worship.

With best wishes,
Andrew