Tough Love
It isn’t easy being Christian.
Georrgia, Imereti region, Chiatura city, Mgvimevi Monastery church
I’m constantly confronted with the idea that being Christian is easy. To believe in God is simple. So simple, in fact, that the belief in God doesn’t need substantiating with theology or philosophy. To be Christian is to live a life without question, without struggle, without pain. Too often am I confronted with this type of Christianity from people that have either left the faith or are fundamentalist in their beliefs. Too often do I hear that all my troubles will be taken care of if I just believe in God. But this is a oversimplification of faith and false representation of Christianity.
It’s hard being a Christian.
Now, I’m not hitching my theology to the bandwagon of right-wing fundamentalist propaganda that says Christians are under attack by the secular culture. Indeed they are not, for they are still sitting in their seats of privilege, power, and authority.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that if you believe in God, everything in your life will be taken care of. (That is a result of the modern theological movement rooted in capitalism and prosperity gospel.) Nowhere in the Bible does it say that believing in God is easy. In fact, it says the exact opposite.
From Genesis to Revelation the Bible presents to us a faith of a struggling people. Eve and Adam struggle with their relationship with God and God’s one rule. Jacob literally wrestles with God and walks away with a limp. Moses struggles with the ginormous task of being called to lead God’s people out of slavery and into the promised land—but they spent forty years roaming around the desert because of him and the Israelite’s struggle with God’s commandments. The stories about the Judges, Prophets, and Kings of Israel reveal that one’s relationship with God is tumultuous and difficult to maneuver.
The Christian Testament is no better and also continues this tradition of wrestling with God. However, Jesus brings a new message to the human experience:
God suffers too.
God suffers with us.
The Christian message reveals to us that in our human nature God suffers along with our suffering. Our God, Jesus as Christ, suffers on the cross and through this symbol we are to understand that faith is a struggle not a solution.
Rather, what I am saying is that it’s hard being a Christian because of what it calls its believers to do.
Christianity is a way of life that helps us understand how we can sit in our suffering; how we can be present in the world filled with suffering. Christ calls us to see God in the suffering of every individual and community. Further, Christ calls us to be present in this suffering as a representative of God. Not to have answers to/for the suffering, but to sit in the midst of it and give Love.
Christianity is not an answer to the big questions of life. Rather, Christianity is the question of how we respond to those questions. If we blow them off by saying that Christ/God will take care of everything and we mustn’t worry, then the faith we represent is shallow and hollow. But if we sit in the questions, struggling with them, and understand that God is struggling with us in this journey: that is faith. That is the message of Christianity.
And it’s hard.