The non-traditional Christian – me!

     I was in the Niantic Women’s Prison chapel (visiting with my women’s leadership class), when the Christian Minister rose to deliver his sermon.  He said, “All everybody talks about is God this and God that. God, God, God.  What they really should be talking about is Jesus Christ!”  I was horrified.  I was a Christian yes, but personally I had always believed that Jesus’ main purpose was to bring people closer to God – not to deify him in place of God.  Was I a bad Christian for praying to God, rather than Jesus Christ?  I hadn’t thought so, but here was an ordained Christian minister saying that Jesus should be our sole focus.  And, why was he saying it? Why do so many Christians feel that since Christ has redeemed them, he should be our sole focus?   I was deeply troubled.

            I was grateful then to read Wesley Ariarajah’s book “People of Other Faiths”.  His views on Jesus had a profound impact on me, and helped reaffirm what I had always believed.  That is that Jesus Christ was focused on teaching about God – not on replacing him.  Ariarajah writes, “The most striking fact in the Synoptics is Jesus’ own God-centered life.  He never calls himself the Son of God, but the Son of man.  Even more important, Jesus sees his primary function as the initiator of the Kingdom of God.  It is God who offers life to all who enter the kingdom.  Jesus’ own life is entirely God-centered, God dependent, and God-ward.  In the Synoptic environment, it would be strange if Jesus were to say, ‘I and the Father are one’, or ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’  There seems to be no claim to divinity or to oneness with God; what we have is the challenge to live lives that are totally turned toward God.”   If only I had Ariarajah’s book that day with me in Niantic!   Seeing in print what I had always believed – that Jesus was God-centered and not “Jesus-centered” was an enormous comfort.

            There was still the question though, of why so many Christians focus solely on Christ, almost to the point – as the minister was doing – of setting aside God?  I believe this question was answered both in a classroom discussions with Professor Agosto, as well as in the Time magazine article on alternative gospels.  It’s because the Gospel of John directed that only through Jesus could a person reach God – or more to the point – be saved!    One line in one Gospel seems to have shaped the focus of Christianity (and in so doing, led many Christians to disregard people of other faiths).

            In a Time Magazine article, Elaine Pagels discusses “traditional Christianity’s emphasis that salvation depends upon, among other things, accepting Christ’s divinity and his exclusive claim expressed in the Gospel of John that ‘no one comes to the Father except through me.’”  Among the four canonized Gospels, and the myriad of others that were written, only John seems to have made this assertion. This was a revelation to me. And yet, as I read Pagels comments, and digested other references to John over many weeks, I could not help but feel that Christians are so focused on the “except through me”, that they are forgetting the main focus – which is coming to the Father.  I liken it to trying to enter a house with a locked front door – a beautiful, perfect, flawless door.  If one focuses on the door itself – finding the key, or picking the lock or even just holding the knob and taking in the beauty and perfection of the door, one forgets that the real objective is the house itself.  In the process, one also ends up disregarding the windows and doors and other ways of entering, and might just end up outside for good!  This is in no way a means to compare the awesome beauty of Christ with a door, but hopefully the metaphor speaks for itself.

            I will admit that I am not the traditional Christian.  I love Jesus Christ. I know that he died because of what he taught, and that he was loving, just and righteous.  I know that without his teachings, a great deal of the world would not know how we should live our lives as children of God.  But, I have also always prayed directly to God.  I am someone who believes that there are many paths to God – not just Christianity.  And I have believed for most of my life that Jesus himself would say that Muslims, Jews, and any other person that worships God has a place in the kingdom of heaven.  Living my life among mainly traditional Christians, I have often felt “wrong” – even blasphemous – for having those beliefs.   Ariarajah, Pagels, and the class discussions themselves have helped me see that being a non-traditional Christian does not make me a bad Christian.  On the contrary, I think that by loving God with all my heart and soul, I am doing precisely what Jesus taught me to do.  Isn’t THAT what makes a good Christian?