Below are the notes for a talk given by the Rev. Canon John F. Fergueson as part of the “WHY?” series of Adult Education classes at Episcopal Church of the  Redeemer, Kenmore.

Why Be A Christian?

Introduction

As I set out to write what I want to say to you about why a person would be a Christian, my first inclination was to stitch together a quilt of quotes and ideas from renowned people who have written and spoken eloquently about their decision to persevere in following Jesus in a life of Christian faith.

While in the process of searching out these resources, a book title kept popping into my mind. That title was Apologia pro Vita Sua (A Defense of One’s Life), by John Henry Newman. This book is a deeply moving auto-biography about his life, and his decision to leave the Anglican Church to become a Roman Catholic.

I was discussing writing this talk, and my intrusive recollections, with my priest-colleagues in the Resurgent Church Project last Tuesday. One of them spoke up and said, “I think the point of these recollections is that you need to present why you’re a Christian.” The group agreed, so here goes!

What I’d like to share with you now are the reasons why I’ve persevered in following Jesus in a life of Christian faith.

Having said that, I believe that these are the reasons why anyone would choose to be a Christian. Hopefully, what I have to say will be helpful.

Love

Every religion, identifying itself with a Founder, has at its epicenter a revelation from that founder about the nature of God, human nature and the relationship between God and human beings.

The revelation from Jesus, gleaned from what Scripture tells us about what he did and taught is summed up in the Johannine statement “God is Love.”

To be more accurate, we should say “God is agape.” The earliest Christian writers chose a relatively obscure Greek word (agape) [meaning love] to present the revelation of Jesus, because they didn’t want those who heard them to confuse the love that God is with any familiar human forms of love.

Their understanding of Jesus’ revelation of this love that God is, was that this love is totally self-giving, unconditional, indissoluble and eternal. (By the Third Century [200’s] Christian theologians were describing the love that God is as the energy from and through which everything else comes into existence, is sustained, and has the potential to be re-created and transformed. It is this primordial energy that is the nature and essence of God.)

Moreover, Jesus promised that those who follow him would be given a new human existence in which this agape love would be the essence of life. Indeed, it would become the potential for a new reality, which Jesus names the Reign of God, into which all humanity and Creation could be gathered.

I don’t know about your life-experience, but in mine a sustaining love that is totally self-giving, unconditional, indissoluble and eternal is entirely preferable to the self-centered, highly conditional, withheld and acutely temporary love that I experienced as a child and young adult.

Fortunately, for reasons I cannot explain, even as a child I knew that this totally self-giving, unconditional, indissoluble and eternal love existed in God. Because of this “knowing,” even in the most painful of my experiences with flawed human love, I received spiritual experiences of the “other love” from God.

As I’ve persevered in seeking to be intimately related to this “other love” from God, I have discovered that it is not only observable in the movement of the events of my life, but also can be experienced directly and affectively in deep prayer and sacramental life.

When I was undergoing PTSD therapy with a psychiatrist (about a year into the therapy) he remarked that I was as functional as I was, despite glaring psychological reasons not to be, because “something is operative in your life that’s not you.” Although he didn’t want to pursue what he thought that “something” was, I knew it was the love of God, as revealed by Jesus, and offered by Jesus to those who follow him.

Thus, the first reason that I’m a Christian is to be loved with a totally self-giving, unconditional, indissoluble and eternal love.

Most of the emotional, psychological and relational ills and pains that human beings experience are the direct result of the failure of human love. The cure for those ills and pains is the perfect love of God made manifest in and through Jesus Christ.

I am a Christian because I have experienced that love, know it is real, and know that it is meant by God to be experienced by everyone

Suffering, Death, Evil & Sin

Suffering, death, evil and sin are ubiquitous human experiences. Despite all our efforts and illusions to the contrary, we will all experience these realities in our lives, and with the exception of death, will undoubtedly experience them more frequently than we would hope.

The truth is that, like all biologically emergent creatures, we have no real, lasting control over the experiences of suffering, death and evil that come our way. For the human species sinless life is not our common lot.

In a very real way, suffering, death, evil and sin mark out the limits of our human nature and experience. Although we desire to break the bonds of these limits, to transcend them and move beyond them to an existence free of them, we “have no power in ourselves to help ourselves” to accomplish that liberation.

The love that God is longs to liberate and redeem us from the pain, fear, anxiety, degradation and diminishment caused by suffering, death, evil and sin.

The ideal way for God to do this would be to provide an escape from our creatureliness. Unfortunately, the very real, God-given existence of our biologically-determined bodies prevents such an escape.

However, two realities could take place that would redeem and liberate us from the pain, fear, anxiety, degradation and diminishment caused by suffering, death, evil and sin.

The first would be, that although we are destined to experience suffering, death, evil and sin, the power of these realities would not be capable of destroying the essential core of our individual essence and existence.

The second reality would be, that instead of being the end limit of our individual essence and existence (beyond which there is only non-existence and nothingness), our experiences of suffering, death, evil and sin could be transformed into entry points to a new existence characterized by full inclusion into agape love as the essence of our being.

I share the foundational Christian belief that both of these redemptive, liberating realities have taken place in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As we read and hear the primitive kerygma (preaching) of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles, it is repeatedly stated that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, dead and buried, was raised by God from the dead. He was experienced by the Apostles and other witnesses to be alive, and is now known by them to be the source of healing, life and salvation.

Clearly, the redeeming, liberating Death and Resurrection of Jesus is the quintessential faith of the primitive Church. The Apostles and other witnesses knew him to be dead and buried. After three days they experienced him to be alive again. Parse it out and explain it however it makes sense to you, but as Bp. Wright says, “something clearly happened to them. There is no reason to refute their assertion that they believed Him to be risen from the dead.”

Jesus’ Death and Resurrection does demonstrate that the agape love of God is more powerful than suffering, death, evil and sin. Those realities were unleashed upon him in his passion. Yet, God’s agape love was more powerful than they were, because Jesus rose from the dead to life.

(Second Century Christian theologians were fond of saying that this agape love was the energy God used to raise Jesus from the dead)

Thus God’s love is more powerful than suffering, death, evil and sin, because even after those realities have manifested all their power, God still gives life and existence. Therefore, the power of suffering, death, evil and sin are not capable of destroying the essential core of our individual essence and existence.

Additionally, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ reveals that suffering, death, evil and sin are not the end limit of our individual essence and existence (beyond which there is only non-existence and nothingness). Instead,

our experiences of suffering, death, evil and sin are entry points to a new existence capable of new and fuller life characterized by full inclusion into agape love. This is a new existence which the Apostles “saw with their eyes and touched with their hands” in encountering the Risen Christ.

Moreover, Jesus of Nazareth truly experienced human suffering, death, evil and sin. He also experienced Resurrection. Thus, he not only reveals to us the truth about these things, but he is with us as brother, companion and guide in our own life experience.

I am a Christian, because I am convinced that God (as is revealed in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus) liberates and redeem us from the pain, fear, anxiety, degradation and diminishment caused by suffering, death, evil and sin, and brings us through them into a new existence of new and fuller life characterized by full inclusion into agape love.

During the last forty years, I have had the powerful experience of being with people suffering, dying, being beset by evil, and paralyzed by sin more times than I can count.

I know from my spiritual experience of standing before God, presiding at the Eucharist, that not only are these people very close to the presence God, but also that the transforming power of God’s love is being unleashed and manifest to them in such a powerful way that suffering, death, evil and sin become irrelevant.

I also know, from my spiritual experience of having people who have died making their presence know at their requiems and other occasions, that this agape love filled existence into which Christ leads people after suffering, death, evil and sin is a reality.

Transcendence

One would think that being offered and experiencing a love from God that is totally self-giving, unconditional, indissoluble and eternal, along with the revelation of Jesus Christ that God’s love is more powerful than suffering, death, evil and sin, and that God has transformed our experience of those realities into portals opening onto a new and fuller life, would be enough reason to chose to be a Christian, but there is more.

One of the things that I have learned over the last four decades of pastoral experience, particularly with combat veterans, is that in time of crisis, when existence appears to be crumbling before our eyes, and we feel ourselves to be becoming more and more helpless and hopeless, most people reach out for something that is greater than themselves for security and assistance.

I’ve also learned that most people feel more at peace, hopeful and alive when they experience themselves connected in some significant way to an ultimate reality.
Both of those learnings speak to me about the real human need to be related to something that is greater than ourselves, lying beyond our normal, everyday experience. Another way of saying this is that human beings need to feel connected to something transcendent, something that inspires awe and wonder.

It is as if we humans seem to know, despite our intellectual pretensions, and illusional self-images that we are not the ultimate reality of the universe.

Put simply, we need and seek to experience ourselves connected to that which is capable of eliciting awe and wonder in us. That is we seek something to worship.
What Jesus presents and offers to us (particularly in the Johannine exposition of Jesus’ teaching) is an intimate, deeply personal relationship with God, who is the origin and sustainer of all. (For example, “if anyone believes in me, the Father and I will come and make our home within that one.”)

If we take Luke’s descriptions of the indwelling of God: the Holy Spirit scattered throughout the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles seriously, it appears that the intimate indwelling of God within believers is an accepted reality in the primitive Church.

The purpose of this incarnation (or indwelling of the divine presence) within those who believe is to make possible a deeply intimate relationship between God and the individual Christian.

So intimate is this interior relationship between the God, who is the origin and destiny of all that exists, and the individual that St. Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews claim that this divine indweller knows us more completely than we know ourselves, and is constantly working to transform and fit us into an existence in which agape love is the essence of life.

What all this means is that through Christ, and the indwelling of God: the Holy Spirit, we are able to know and experience the presence of God, not as something remote and fearful, but rather as in intimate, deeply personal reality.

Moreover, it means that we can live a life and existence that is grounded and rooted in the God, who is indeed the origin and destiny of all that exists, but is also more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.

Thus, we can share (as much as we are willing) the perichoresis (the divine life and indwelling) that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share with one another.

I am a Christian, because this offer of sharing divine life and intimacy is something beyond anything else I could imagine. To know and love God, to be fully known and fully loved by God, to share the life of the Trinity far exceeds any hope, promise or expectation I can envision. It is simply the ability to say “Holy, Holy Holy,” and know and love ever more profoundly, intimately and completely the One who is Holy.

Life lived beyond the Self

Over the last several decades, observers of our culture have given many titles to a phenomenon which creates havoc in our lives, relationships and civic life.
Narcissism, self-absorption, self-referencing, egoism, selfishness are but a few of the familiar names given to the inability of individuals and groups in our society and culture to significantly engage anything beyond themselves and their own self-interest. A sense of personal entitlement, specialness and civic and social disconnect are manifest in myriad ways in daily life.

Interestingly, the inability to significantly engage anything beyond the self and self-interest is also found among people who have suffered severe emotional and physical trauma. In this case, the phenomenon is rooted in anxiety and fear. Civic and social disconnect are a means of protecting a person from the possibility of future harm.

What the folks in the latter group have to teach everyone is that life lived predominately within the boundaries of the Self and self-interest is not much of a life at all.

The reason for it is rather straightforward. Living within the boundaries of Self and self-interest is social isolation. Isolation leads to loneliness and feelings of helplessness, loneliness and helplessness lead to depression and the realization, that in the words of Thomas Merton, “we are our own mistake.”

One of my psychiatrist friends claims that there is a direct relationship between the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants he writes and the level of social disconnect and isolation people in his practice experience.

You don’t have to read very far in the Gospels to realize that a sense of personal entitlement, specialness and civic and social disconnect are the antithesis of Jesus’ vision of the Reign of God. In fact, in may passages, he actively condemns such attitudes and behavior.

Jesus’ vision of the Reign (Kingdom) of God is a vision of self-giving love, personal equality, and solidarity with and humble service to the poor and marginalized. Most of all it is a vision of deep and profound connectedness, where all things will be joined together in God.

Having fought in a war, it often frightens me to observe the same aggressive mindlessness, relational disconnect and personal unawareness that I experienced in combat being manifested in something as simply domestic as a trip to the grocery store.

Combat has made me, and most other combat veterans I know, long for a vision of all humanity joined together in a commonwealth of justice, peace and love.
I am a Christian because of Jesus Christ’s vision of The Kingdom of God. It is the absolute antithesis of my experience of war, and my means of healing and reconciliation from that war. It is also the antithesis of my daily experience of our contemporary culture.

Working to realize Christ’s vision of the Reign of God is the means by which I can beat my sword, not into a plowshare, but rather into a sculpture that proclaims that glorious day when all will be reconciled and made fulfilled in God.

Values & Principles

It has become popular, in this post-modern world, to talk about the relativity of almost every moral and social value. I do hear, and to some extent understand, the logic behind that talk.

However, in my wartime experience I participated in the complete relativizing of values. I’ve seen, and in a deep and personal way lived with, the results of that relativizing.

Thus, I do know, that at least for me, it is possible to relativize and rationalize myself into a very deep emotional and spiritual morass. I really believe that same possibility exists for everyone.

Since (for reasons I’ve alluded to in what I’ve said previously) I want to experience the fullness of God’s agape love, live Resurrection life, and be committed to Christ’s vision of the Reign of God and work to realize it;

Since I’ve experienced my ability to relativize and rationalize into heading off in a detrimental opposite direction; Therefore, I need to have some values and principles to make sense of my life-experience and move toward what I hope my life will become.

Simply put, I need something to believe and trust as I work toward the ends that I seek, not something to help me not believe and mistrust.

The Scriptures, theology, the spiritual and mystical teachings of my Christian forbearers, and the guidance of Christian elders seeking the same life-outcome that I do, provide a time-tested, comprehensive set of values and principles that I can use to interpret my life, and work to cooperate with God:the Holy Spirit in realizing the ends I’ve chosen for my life.

I am a Christian because Christianity provides me with the values and principles I personally need to live my life in the way that I have chosen.
My theological education and vocational practice help me to understand when the wisdom of my Christian forbearers needs to be explored and examined in light of new information.

My experience of a directed spiritual life for the last thirty years has helped me learn to be discerningly attentive to the movement of God in new directions, toward a deeper truth.

However, I’ve also learned, through these intellectual and spiritual disciplines, that the appeal to relevancy for relevancy’s sale is not sufficient reason enough to reject, out of hand, all the wisdom and experience that has gone before.

Finally, in an age when all of us are inundated with information, opinion is routinely confused with fact, and pundits seldom reveal their motivations and agendas, it is good to have some time-tested, long-experience validated values and principles for living a life rooted in following Christ into the Reign of God.

It’s well worth noting that Christianity is one of the few remaining resources providing, protecting and preserving such long-experienced wisdom. That is also one of the reasons why I’m a Christian.

Conclusion

These then are the reasons why I am a Christian.

I hope this exposition has been helpful, and has provided you with food for thought. I thank you for your willingness to listen!

Our next topic will cover, “Why be a sacramental (catholic) Christian?”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.