What Sort of Christian Name Shall I Call Myself?: Part II

This week we continue my journey of self-discovery wherein I will finally realize that I am a pompous windbag in need of serious help.

No, wait, that’s what happens in my personal quiet times with God; not on this web page.  Let’s try again.

This week, we continue that bracing megalomania known as “talking about myself on the internet even though no one on earth could possibly care about it.”  I’ve been checking out other blogs on the internet, and it turns out that this kind of thing is all the rage.

In the unlikely event that you did not read last week’s post and are interested in this one (which is slightly more likely than the event that you did read last week’s post and are still interested in this one), I’ll reiterate the criteria for grading possible names for myself below:

The first criterion is simply the aesthetic value of the word itself. I’m calling this the poetry
of the word. It’s analogous to one of the reasons I pull for various football teams: Namely, that they have really, really cool football helmets. Thus I’ve often pulled for the Detroit Lions – even though I’ve never even been to Detroit and I’m from the South – and the only
reason is because they have absolutely, undeniably, the coolest football helmets that have ever been made. Well, if I’m going to name myself something, I want it to sound as cool as the Detroit Lions football helmet looks. Names are meant to be inspiring.

Of course, names are also meant to be accurate. I don’t want the name that I choose for myself to make you think I’m a mass murderer who loves Michael Bolton and pulls for the Bobcats in the Griz/Cat game. (I mean, I could never get through the shame of you believing I loved Michael Bolton!)

So, picking up where we left off last week, below I offer a grade for three additional possible names for myself…religiously speaking.

4. “Traditional Christian”

Overall Grade: C+

Poetry Grade: F. You can’t be serious! This word is hideous. If it were a painting, it would be the childhood scribbles of an avant-garde artist (which, of course, you would not be able to distinguish from the most famous painting said artist created in adulthood; but I digress).

Accuracy Grade: B-. I actually refer to myself using this term frequently because traditional basically means the same as orthodox, but to my knowledge there is no denomination with “traditional” in the title of its name. Thus, when I want to avoid the whole confusion about denominations that orthodox often inspires, I’ll throw this term around. On the downside, “traditional” makes me sound like I want to club my wife over the head, drag her around by her hair, and order her to make me macaroni and cheese for dinner every night of her life.  (My wife shouts in the background, “why don’t you make my dinner instead, you traditional galoot!”  I mean, she’s actually shouting – she just came in the room and is reading over my shoulder). It turns out that, while the macaroni and cheese admittedly sounds nice, I don’t really want to do that. (And I’m pretty sure I’d say that even if she wasn’t reading over my shoulder). So even though, theologically speaking, the term works out okay, it still has quite a bit of baggage from an accuracy point of view.

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Overall Grade: D

Poetry Grade: D. Ugly term. I kind of like the root word fundamental, and usually adding “ism” or “ist” to anything makes it cooler (I mean, Griz is a cool word, but “Grizist” is cooler and “Grizism” is untouchable). Still, the way it works out here is very choppy and unpleasant-sounding. It reminds me of listening to some rather ugly language like German or Klingon: “Ich bein vein waschung schnauzing fundamentlist!”

Accuracy Grade: C-. One of my very best friends once asked me if I considered myself to be a fundamentalist; and he seemed rather surprised when I told him I did not. I think that’s because he knows I believe in the Bible and in absolute truth; two things fundamentalists also believe in. But fundamentalism typically means a whole host of other things that I either don’t believe or am not sure about. For example, I imagine that fundamentalists would typically agree with the following statement: “Every word in the Bible is literally true.” Well, that statement is obviously nonsense; so I can’t believe in that. When the psalmist says “God is my rock” he obviously doesn’t mean God is a literal rock that I keep in my pocket. More than that, there is a spirit of the fundamentalist thing which often seems to take great cosmic truths and turn them into tiny cult-like colloquialisms, and (even worse) to take tiny truths and turn them into what the whole shebang is about. So, for example, fundamentalists tend to take one particular (often obscure) passage in the Bible, bloat it all out of proportion with reality, treat it as if it were the only Scripture in the whole world, ignore everything else in the Bible that’s relevant to it, and make some kind of bizarre doctrine out of it… all because, well, it’s literally true. I
have a problem with that method of approaching the Bible.  You may think that in saying this I take the Bible less seriously than fundamentalists. That’s not true. In fact, I sometimes fancy that fundamentalists don’t take the Bible seriously enough; that is, they don’t take the whole Bible seriously enough.  And then they take whatever their pastor happens to say about one small passage in the Bible on Sunday way too seriously, which would not be so bad if the pastor didn’t take himself way too seriously.

Some people think fundamentalist means the same as evangelical, and to the degree that’s true, I think the term more accurately describes what I believe. But really they don’t mean the same thing entirely. My church (Missoula Alliance Church), for example, is explicitly evangelical yet explicitly not fundamentalist. So they cannot be the exact same thing. But, frankly, for all that, I don’t mind being considered fundamentalist: I would generally consider it rather more a compliment than an insult.  I’d rather be considered a fundamentalist, which is an at least tolerably Christian intellectual position, than considered a member of something indefensible entirely like the Jesus Seminar (a group of people who, as far as I can tell, hate Christianity with the heat of a thousand supernovas and yet want to be called Christian). There’s nothing quite as ridiculous as trying to be both Christian and non-Christian at the same time, and fundamentalists at least don’t try that alarming violation of the law of non-contradiction.

6. “Born-Again Christian”

Overall Grade: C

Poetry Grade: F-. This is the ugliest term ever; it is a cruel thing to do to the glory of the hyphen. Though I admit it is perhaps a case where the semantic meaning makes it impossible for me to evaluate the pure aesthetics of the words themselves. Maybe I’m too much like Nicodemus, but I can’t hear this word without thinking of umbilical cords and the rather alarming scene that was my wife’s C-section, full of splayed organs and lots of
goopy stuff. Blleeeccchhh!

Accuracy Grade: B. I think this term captures several of the central Christian truths in one phrase. It captures baptism, which has always been one of the most important symbolic acts in Christian thought and practice: The idea that we are to die to ourselves and be raised again to a new life is inseparable from Christianity. It also captures the personal nature of our relationship with God: It isn’t just something we believe, it’s something that happens to us, it’s something we experience. Since I view both of those things as essential to Christianity and thus central to my own beliefs, I think this term
pretty accurately conveys what I believe and I am unashamed to use it to describe myself.  I was dead; I was lifeless; but now I am alive and breathing again.

Yet it’s not a total win from an accuracy point of view. Like the term evangelical, it has
come to be weighed down with some political baggage. Also, though I think it captures the central Christian message well, the term could be accused of narrowing the scope of Christian belief too much. I mean, if I’m a born-again Christian, does that mean I’m not a Trinitarian Christian? Does it mean I’m not a mercy Christian? Does it mean I’m not a Jesus-loved-me-so-much-He-died-for-me Christian? Well, I want to be all those things, too, and I’d guess most “born-again” Christians are also those things; but as a term, “orthodox” captures all of those things better than “born again,” I think.