In modern Christianity, our beliefs trump our behaviour. Our systematic theologies and doctrinal critique and defence consume us so much, so we lose sight of how we show up as Christ-followers. Our identity embedded in an unholy dichotomy of believers of Christ different from the disciples of Christ.
As believers of Christ, our theology of Christ is supreme. We can articulate what and why we believe a particular doctrine of Christ and boldly critique other doctrinal streams. We can make advanced apologetic arguments that create our beliefs impenetrable to counter-argument. We can argue why Christianity is better than other religions. We can present a three step evangelistic formula for conversion.
Our theological rigour can lack love and mystery. We boast in our biblical intellect, sacrificing love at the altar of church doctrines. We lack the humility to recognize we don’t have all the answers, that there is a mystery of faith. Worse of all, we feel compelled to defend God at every turn. This becomes especially embarrasing when we cannot make sense of the contradictory belief and behaviour in fellow Christians—people speaking in the name of God while acting as agents of evil.
Disciples of Christ. Our identity as Disciples calls us from our heads to our hearts and hands and feet.
Discipleship is personal. It’s a commitment to and following of a person. You cannot be a disciple of a movement, a cult or a religious system. A disciple follows a person. We who are Christians are Christ-followers. Like the first disciples of Jesus, we respond to His call. Our following is not first and foremost an intellectual, theological act. It is merely an act of obedience to a call greater than our imagination.
Discipleship is communal. When we become disciples of Christ through our public declaration in baptism, we immediately become joined with a community of believers. People we didn’t choose to be with; who Christ has chosen. We become included in a global community of diverse nations, people groups, language, cultures, gender and sexual orientations. This community is not a random group but is called the family of God. The relationship is intimate. This community has a further mystery. We are also in communion with those on earth and disciples and angelic beings in the heavens. Our communion is eternal.
For Disciples, what we believe is not separate from how we behave. The early disciples did not have volumes of systematic theology to make sense of Christ and his doctrines. They only had access to Him as the Living Word revealed by God to the simple, unschooled fisherman. They learned what it is to believe in Christ through experiencing how he behaved and in obedience to the behaviour he expected of them – as His disciples.
Jesus did not write any books on doctrine. He prioritized what was important – that a small group of disciples experience Him and what his teachings of the new Kingdom meant in practice. An experience grounded in love. Nowhere is Jesus espousing theologies of hellfire and the afterlife above love and grace. Ironically, the learned teachers, Rabbis, scribes and Pharisees – the intelligentsia of the day was who Christ reserved his harshest criticism for. At every turn, he challenged their self-righteousness grounded in their theology.
He came to revolutionize not only our false thinking but to manifest a new way of living – of being. He came as the awaited the Jewish Messiah; unrecognized because He did not conform to the beliefs they had of how the Messiah would show up.
Christ-life was a radical life:
- Challenging the economic and political system of the time.
- Challenging pharisaical prescriptions that placed burdens on people.
- Breaking barriers of exclusion in race, gender, social class and religiosity.
- Reframing power and privilege.
- Reclaiming justice for the poor and marginalized.
In this new Kingdom the ones that mattered more were the poor, marginalized and persecuted. He came not as dictator imposing a new set of beliefs and enlightened teachings and doctrines. He came as a servant-leader, showing a new way that was possible but also costly.
Christ’s crucifixion shows the cost of discipleship. Sadly the crucifixion of Christ is romanticized in enlightenment art hanging in world galleries become a myth for many. His mission was not popular heroism. In reality, His crucifixion was an unjust, malicious, cruel and violent experience at the hands of the Roman colonizer.
There is nothing heroic in seeing a just man crucified—our penal theologies of salvation strip away the human indignity and trauma of the event. Jesus disciples, his mother and family, experienced a traumatic series of events which lost in our clinical arguments of how Christ death satisfied the grand salvation purpose. We turn God the Father into a clinically detached and narcissistic parent who self righteously watches his grand plan play out – his child a victim pawn.
If our faith were based only on doctrinal belief, Christianity would have been extinguished by now like the ‘invincible’ Great Roman Empire’s beliefs. Discipleship connects with something more profound, informing our beliefs and remains a mystery – lest we become arrogant in our knowing and replay our first sin as in the Edenic Garden.
Paraphrasing the words of Christ: His disciples will be known not by their beliefs but by their fruit (behaviour). Woe unto us who like the cursed fig tree, having the form of faith with strong trunks of solid belief yet unable to provide sustenance for the weary traveller of faith.
It’s easier to believe than to behave. Behaving, as disciples of Christ, is no walk in the park. Jesus’ call to action is a radical, life-changing and costly. This is why we cannot do this on our own. Any independent faith walk is doomed to fail!
Discipleship is dependence. It’s a dependence on God to enable and empower us to become His light and salt. All our beliefs will never be enough to carry us through this journey. Our dependence on Christ is an abandonment in faith. It’s not a fickle, crutch or a silly prosperity faith. We trust in One who is faithful and with Him we carry our cross. Suffering is an essential part of this journey as we mature psychologically and spiritually. Discipleship is not a life floating on clouds with angelic harpists.
We have the promise of companionship. We like Daniel and his friends are thrown into the fire, yet we are not burned. There is a fourth One who is with us – through refining fires. Our suffering makes us available agents of His mercy and grace called to bring radical love and justice as we engage deeply with our present world. We are not signing up for some fatalistic, masochistic commitment to an unknown god in the sky. It’s not a mercenary jihadist crusader call. We are signing up to the One who empathizes with our human condition experience in His incarnation. We walk with One who promised never to leave or forsake us. To be with us till the end of time.
Through His Grace, we become better beings, day by day; behaving as little Christ’s so that His glory is mysteriously manifested in our human journey. So that others may see in us a God that loves; One that is full of grace and forgiveness. God is inviting all to come into His Kingdom in the here and now, as it is in the heavens. As we do this, our behaviour becomes our beliefs; becoming one like the mystery of the communion bread and wine.
Stanley Arumugam
26/01/2019
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