Are You a Christian?

I guess the majority, if not all, say yes. But what do you really mean when you call yourself Christian? Is your Christian identity a “status quo” (something acquired once for good)? Is it a “metanoia,” meaning something in perpetual progression? Where do you range your “Christianity”? This is a crucial question Jesus is asking his disciples in today’s Gospel.

For many, Christianity, religion, is something they inherited from their family at birth; something that became a family culture and tradition: go to church on Sundays; attend bible study; read the bible at home before bed, etc. Christianity is something many of us find in the family we were born into, something we took into the family we created. Something purely functional, a ritual without direct experience, worship without meaning beyond the gestures – Christian because I was born so or because I grew up in a Christian environment. My beliefs and practices are what I saw or heard around me – a religious life by reminiscence. The kind of religion Pharisees and scribes practiced.

It is exactly against such a religious life that Jesus is warning us today. Who are you and why do you believe the things you believe? “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees,” said Jesus, “you shall not enter the kingdom of God.” Exceeding the Pharisees, the doctors of the law! How can that be possible?

By becoming humbled and opened to God’s voice, which means to relate properly to God, to others, and to oneself. This involves recognizing one’s deep need for God, accepting God’s forgiveness, and being willing to follow the way of Christ. This is a “narrow way,” which leads to suffering and to “collisions” with the world. Being a Christian is not a matter of mere orthodoxy or church membership, but of relating to God through the passion of faith. Christianity is an existential journey—a quest. There is no graduation, nor retirement, in Christianity; you are always becoming a Christian. Your righteousness exceeds that of Pharisees when you understand your Christian faith as a passionate commitment and a perpetual journey toward goodness, a “metanoia.”