Now What?

After having spent a year studying the Bible cover to cover, I hope to spend 2011 exploring “What we believe, and why.” Churches regularly, and rightly, jump to questions about what Christians and congregations should do. We repeatedly ask the question, “How should I act in this situation? How should I respond to this problem? What’s the right thing to do? What’s the wrong thing to do?” Not only do we apply these metrics to our own behavior, we level them against the world around us. If we’re honest we have to admit that we’re more willing to ask what other people should be doing and not doing than we are to ask it of ourselves. When you address life on such a piecemeal basis, you’re bound to get overwhelmed. You’re bound to get it wrong much of the time. And you’re certain to miss the point of the Christian faith. At its heart the Christian life is not a system of rules or a program for behavior modification. It’s a relationship.

When we focus on rules and rituals, we reduce what is at heart an eternal relationship with an infinite God. The focus of the Christian life is connecting with a God who is on one hand real and personal and on the other beyond the reach of our intellect and imagination. Because God is real our relationship with God is dynamic and responsive. God speaks and acts persistently, and we respond in new ways to each unique overture. Because God is infinite, our relationship with God is never complete. There isn’t a point at which we’ve “mastered” the Christian faith because it’s not a program. The deeper we plunge the more we discover. The moment we feel we’ve learned it all is the moment the relationship begins to stagnate.

The Heidelberg Catechism presents a framework for understanding who God is and who we are in relation to God. For 450 years the Catechism has served as a road map for biblical faith, summarizing what the Old and New Testaments teach about God, God’s people, and the practice of relating to God. The Catechism assumes that there is one true God who reveals himself to us in the Bible. The Catechism assumes that the epitome of God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ, in whom God came to the earth as a human being. Finally, the Catechism assumes that the way to a relationship with the one true God is through a relationship with Jesus.

This year I hope you’ll join me as I explore the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” The answer to this question begins not with behavior but with belief. Your beliefs about yourself, your world, and your place therein will more profoundly impact your behavior than anything anyone tells you to do. Behavioral transformation is a byproduct of the belief transformation – the life transformation – into which Jesus Christ invites us.