Christian Life

by Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral

What does it mean to follow Jesus? What was he like? What do his followers do and what are their distinguishing characteristics? It seems as if there are as many answers as there are Christians. There is a tendency to identify Christianity with a single set of authorized beliefs. Not only is there no such single set of beliefs, there is no absolute path to being Christ-like either. This is partly because the subject of 'Christian life' is the place where many of the historical, theological and psychological challenges of being a Christian come home to roost. Christian life has been played out in different ways throughout history and, over the centuries, Christians have argued about, for example, issues of grace and freewill, sexuality and social justice. There are also distinctive 'pieties' in the various traditions and sometimes the differences are radical, particularly around issues about who is included and who is excluded from the community of faith.

There are at least three challenges in examining Christian life. The first is the discrepancy between faith and practice. Mahatma Gandhi's statement, 'I love your Christ, but I hate your Christians; they are so unlike him,' expresses the disconnection between what Christians believe and what some of them do. The tension between 'Christian' and 'Christlike' is constant. The second challenge has to do with the varieties of Christian belief and practice throughout history. Christ has been made both Marxist and Fascist, both a liberator and a defender of the status quo, and his followers have modelled themselves on their particular and often distorted image. The third is focussed on the way the Christian faith and life is framed. Is the practice of Christianity something which answers questions or does it deepen them? Is it a matter of aspiration or prescription? For some, Christianity is all answers. For others it is a journey into deeper questions.

1. Faith and practice. The first challenge (the discrepancy between faith and practice) is not, of course, confined to Christianity. People of all faiths fail to live up to their stated beliefs. Religious practice is the way people live into what they believe. It takes time, and the person trying to follow the way of Jesus has always a long way to go. Hypocrisy is an ever-present possibility for any one who aspires to live a committed life. Human beings grow into the roles they eventually play in the world by acting as if they were already familiar with and proficient in them. The authentic life begins with acting 'as if' something were the case. Act 'as if' justice mattered even in the most corrupt situations and justice will then have a chance. Often what trips up both people of faith and those who criticize them is a crippling idealism. Because of the high idealism involved, all forms of piety and practice are easily caricatured and a sense of humour and irony is essential for the life of faith.

2. Varieties of belief. The second challenge is not as daunting as the first, since there are discernible common traits on which most Christians agree with regard to spiritual life and practice. Just because 'Christian life' means different things to different people, that doesn't mean that there aren't common threads to which most Christians cling. But we shouldn't assume a consensus. Imagine a conversation between Christians from different periods of history. Would Augustine, Florence Nightingale and the evangelist Jerry Falwell have very much in common? How far would they have a shared vision? In fact, how far can we assert that there are any Christians at all? W.H. Auden suggested that there are not even Christians in church, 'for Christianity is a way, not a state, and a Christian is never something one is, one something one can pray to become'. In one sense, Christianity has not happened yet.

3. Answers and questions. The third challenge has to do with emphasis on religion being a matter of either answers or questions. Each emphasis has its drawbacks - one tends to embrace rigidity and the other to exult in ambiguity. The metaphor of the theatre can be helpful in bringing the two together. The director Peter Brook writes that theatre is 'the meeting place between the great questions of humanity -- life, death -- and the craft-like dimension, which is very practical, as in pottery. In the great traditional societies, the potter is someone who tries to live with great eternal questions at the same time he is making his pot.' It means becoming part of a tradition. Thus 'Christian life' is a matter of both grace and practice, both gift and craft. In spite of differences, common patterns emerge. Christians, on the whole, are for peacemaking rather than war and for reconciliation rather than retaliation. The practical morality of giving a cup of cold water to someone in need is central. 'And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.' (Matthew 10.42). And, because self-righteousness and moralism are the traps into which believers fall, penitence is also essential: 'The sacrifice of God is troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise' (Psalm 51). We can also understand this third challenge by looking at the way in which the various traditions approach the mystical life (which is the way we express our longing for God). Protestantism has always been suspicious of mysticism because it suggests that we can live a godly life through the practice of certain disciplines. It implies that one can work at being a Christian. The classic Protestant would want to emphasize grace in contrast to works, what one is given rather than what one does. Of course these distinctions don't play out well in real life. Life is something one has to 'work' at, and at the same time it is a gift. The mark of Christian life is freedom, and yet the tendency is to hedge it around with laws. Those who claim that the Christian life is all a matter of faith often get themselves in a psychological bind because 'faith' then becomes an impossible and exacting 'work'.

Imitation and participation

Not all Christians agree as to what the rewards and responsibilities are in following Jesus. Nevertheless there are distinguishing marks, even if the tradition is fuzzy in some places and contradictory in others. There are two ways of understanding the way the Christian character is formed. Do we try to be like Jesus or do we somehow actually share in his life? The first way is by imitation. We read the stories in the New Testament and try to do what Jesus did. He is the pattern and the model for the Christian life. This finds a modern manifestation in the evangelical question one is to ask when one is in a moral dilemma. 'What would Jesus do?' The second way of understanding how people grow into being Christians is to think of their actually participating in the divine life. Christians are not only to 'imitate' Christ, they also share in his life by being members of his body. Those who favour the idea of participation would see their character begin to form by being committed to certain acts like prayer and sharing in the eucharist, which is also 'the body of Christ'. Being a Christian is not only acting in a certain way but also being part of a community. The Bible is the central source for discerning how a Christian is called to be in the world. It is, however, a poor handbook of morals. Much of it is more a collection of cautionary tales about how not to behave. In cultures where the Bible has been read over and over again Christians still behave badly, but they cannot do so with a good conscience. These texts follow the imitation/participation pattern. That is why the dominant metaphor for Christian life is that of a journey or pilgrimage. We are always on the move. Images from the Old Testament of the Exodus and the Exile become metaphors of the spiritual life used by such writers as John Bunyan, Dante and Augustine.

Obvious basic texts are the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament (Exodus 34) and the so-called Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes) in the New (Matthew 5).

Certain other key texts from the New Testament exhort the Christians to foster certain habits of behaviour and practice. The strand of the tradition which emphasizes imitation (giving a cup of water) celebrates human solidarity. The strand which favours participation celebrates the mystery of human identity. 'We are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him' (1 John 3.3). And, 'Let us love one another. Whoever does not love does not know God' (1 John 4.7-21). Another important text which brings together both ideas of imitation and participation is Philippians 2.6: 'Who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.' Yet another is 2 Corinthians 5.17: 'So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!' There are also the well-known 'Taking up the cross' texts in the Gospels, of which Matthew 10.38 , 'and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me', is an example.

From these texts, the tradition developed the view of a life patterned on the seven virtues -- made up of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, justice (taken from classical Greek philosophy and considered to be necessary to follow the good life for all people) and the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love. There are also the seven 'corporal' works of mercy: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, minister to prisoners, and bury the dead.

In sum, Christian life is centred on the mystery of death and resurrection (the Easter mystery), so to be a Christian is to take on a whole new kind of life and to 'die' to an old pattern of living. The Christian is 'buried with Christ' and raised with him in faith. 'For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God' (Colossians 3.3.) That is why the tradition speaks of Christian life as a process of mortification, not in order to be morbid but in order to discern where true life comes from.

What then is a human being from the point of view of Christian life? What kind of people are Christians? The mystical tradition defined a human being as made in the image of God (and, therefore, free). A human being is a capax Dei and Deo congruens - has a capacity for God and leads a 'God-shaped' Christian life, and therefore shares in the divine life - actually participating in it - as a way of transformation. In the Eastern Church the process is called theosis, deification: 'God became one of us that we might share in the divine life.' In fact one early writer could talk of the 'humanity of God'. Christian life is nothing less that sharing in God's life, primarily through contact with the community and by sharing in the sacraments.

Two characteristics of Christian life are therefore freedom and joy. Freedom requires that the question of being human remains open. Joy naturally flows from the experience of being truly free. The ancient formula to describe human purpose was 'The glory of God is a human being fully alive.' This suggests an open vision of human nature which finds its fulfilment in being orientated towards God. We are what we do with our attention. We are to 'attend' to God and to each other and this loving attention gives rise to the fully human community. The poet Dante's vision of heaven is a place of radical mutuality - complete unity in unimaginable diversity. How then are Christians to behave? Lady Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic, wrote 'God is kind in his being.' And Christians are to be 'kind' too - not simply in acts of benevolence but by being the sort of people who are loving and compassionate. Kindness also suggests family relationship as in 'kindred'. Christians are to be 'kind' in all three senses: benevolent; the sort of people who treat all people as their kin; in allegiance to the God who has made them into the sort of people who are kind to one another.

The way, then, that Christians participate in and/or imitate the life of God-in-Christ is through prayer, both private and corporate, and through participation in the sacraments (baptism and the eucharist). The three great images of Christianity - the Woman with her Baby, the Broken and Ruined Man, and the Communion of Persons (known by the theological terms incarnation, redemption and Trinity) - offer an understanding of prayer as pregnancy, suffering and communion. Christian life is much more than behaving in a certain way. It is becoming a certain kind of person through a process of allowing these images to work on one in a long process of transformation. In fact one image is that of our being pregnant with ourselves. We are midwives to each other in a process of formation. There is suffering too. Above all there is communion. The dominant image is that of a banquet to which everyone is invited. We don't live in isolation. The impulse toward society is in our nature. The principle is 'being is communion'. Participation in society is necessary for becoming fully human. Thomas Aquinas wrote 'God is not solitary'; nor are we. In fact, Christian life is a kind of love affair in which we seek to love and be loved in one communion. The mystics believed that Eros is natural to human beings. We long for God. That's the way we are built, and Christian life which tries to by-pass the passions is no life at all. We were made by love for love.

Life has a narrative structure

Christians live their lives as a story - a cycle of dying and rising. The central metaphor is that of Easter -- the Paschal mystery -- of death and resurrection. To be fully alive is to share in that baptismal cycle of dying to an old self and living into the new. This mystery is expressed the two great sacraments of baptism (the dying and the rising) and the eucharist (the anticipation of the full communion of all things).

Human life has a narrative structure and stories link us with issues of choice and the life of the will and of the imagination. Our distinctive spirituality or take on life is a matter of which story we choose to tell ourselves about ourselves. How do we arrange the bits and pieces of our experience and how do we glue them together to form a picture we can understand? Every narrative has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is a journey.

The late Joseph Campbell, expert on world mythology, wrote that a myth or story has a fourfold function to relate us to God, the world, others and our deepest selves. A fourfold structure of Christian life can be discerned through paying attention to these four relationships. Prayer, living fully and responsibly in the world, being just and loving, and being committed to self-knowledge, are the building blocks of spiritual rule of life.

The mystics saw Christian life in terms of rebirth/transformation (Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses) or as the consummation of a love affair ( John of the Cross). Others spoke of life as 'the school of love' and the models were Jesus, the disciples, Mary. The principle was that everything that happened to Jesus, by analogy happens to us. This is how Christians can interpret their experience in the cycle of his life, death and resurrection. In another way, they can interpret our lives as recapitulating the experience of the apostles. Just as the apostles were enthusiastic, cowardly and bewildered, so are the Christians who come after them. Yet another way is to see oneself like Mary - obedient to the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit - and become pregnant with new possibilities. Like Mary, every human being is 'the container of the uncontainable'.

Christian life is expressed in certain disciplines which reinforce the narrative structure of that life. Most Christians would agree that reading the Bible (in private prayer and study as well as in communal worship) is central, as is sharing in Holy Communion. Both practices build the Christian character by giving it shape and direction. The Bible provides the architecture of the way Christians think about themselves and the world.

The embodied life

In spite of the centrality of the body in the Christian understanding of the work of Christ, the church has a poor history with regard to its understanding of and teaching about sexuality and the body. The body, however, is of central importance for Christian life. It is a sacrament of God's presence among us. As obvious as it sounds, it is the way we relate to each other. As the tradition has it, the body is the place where God chooses to dwell. The basic goodness of sexuality and its enjoyment is affirmed, as is the use of food and drink and the disposition of wealth. The traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience express one way of living the embodied life, as does marriage and other committed relationships.

There is risk and hope in human connectedness and the Christian life is a connected life; it has been defined as 'the art of making connections'. These connections are manifested physically by water (baptism), bread and wine (eucharist), oil (healing), and sexual intercourse (marriage). There is a connection between receiving the bread and wine in the eucharist and action in the world (social justice).

The fully embodied life is a connected and integrated life of body, mind and spirit which requires attention to the narrative structure of human lives. They are going somewhere and will come to an end. That is why preparing for death is important and why practices of self-simplification are central. The three traditional disciplines of prayer, almsgiving and fasting (rather like Campbell's fourfold structure of myth) express three basic relationships: prayer in respect to God, almsgiving in respect to others, and fasting in respect to ourselves to ourselves.

The goal of the converted life is to find God in all things and is based on the conviction of the unity of reality. Everything is connected. Ignatius Loyola tells us that those advanced in the spiritual life constantly contemplate God in every creature. This life is based on trust, the immediate relationship we have with God, since a human being is, by definition, the place where God chooses to dwell. Human beings aren't meant to be solitary, and we find out who we are and what we are about in the company of others, through a constant process of conversion. The traditional Benedictine greeting is 'Please pray for my conversion, as I pray for yours.'

Gregory of Nyssa saw life as an unending progress of discovering how God is at work among humanity, and sin as refusal to keep on growing in this discovery. 'This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because we fear punishment, like slaves; not to do good because we expect repayment, as cashing in on the virtuous life by enforcing some business deal. On the contrary, disregarding all those good things which we hope for and which God has promised us, we regard falling from God's friendship as the only thing dreadful, and we consider becoming God's friend the only thing truly worthwhile.' And, finally, John of the Cross says it all, 'In the end we shall be examined in love.'

-- Alan Jones

Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, New York: Crossroad 1991; Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief, New York: Random House 2003; Timothy Radcliffe OP, I Call You Friends, London and New York: Continuum 2001; Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, New York: Doubleday, Image Books 1996