What should we call ourselves?

When I was growing up, people who followed Christ were considered 'religious' and the word 'Christian' was something we called ourselves. Some like to add the phrase 'born-again' to the word Christian. When people asked me 'Are you religious?' I used to say 'No, not at all, I hate religion, but I am a Christian'. And it's true that I don't like the formal structure of religion. I don't like religious services and normally fall asleep in a sermon.

But I was quite honoured to think of myself as a Christian. It was a word that created a warm fuzzy feeling. Recently people who call themselves Christians have done things that I totally disapprove of, like invading a foreign country and killing people. I believe the way of Christ was the way of peace, not the way of the sword. In the Middle East to be a Christian means to be a follower of Bush and Blair, not a follower of Christ.

A friend of mine to the question 'Are you a Christian?' worked out this as his answer: 'My parents were Christians and I honoured them in what they believed. I grew up as a Christian, but now I would call myself a follower of Jesus'. He wanted to express in a Middle Eastern context honouring what his parents believed but separating himself from what people believed to be a 'Christian' culture. Even if they were totally wrong in their perceptions of what a Christian culture is or should be.

So, reading in Scripture that the early disciples called themselves 'followers of the Way' I really liked that phrase. I like the pun, since Jesus called himself the Way, the Truth and the Life. So I started to call myself a follower of the Way.

My son, a theology student, hated it. He had two reasons - firstly all the people he knew who called themselves 'followers of the Way' were fundamentalists Christians who were antagonistic towards other Christians, let alone non-believers. They were separatists. Secondly he found it precocious, implying we were like the early disciples and that other Christians were somehow 'off the rails', that people who called themselves 'followers of the Way' thought of themselves as somehow better and those who merely called themselves 'Christians'.

My other son and I had been chatting online and had coined the phrase 'relational Christians' which we found helpful in expressing our belief in the emphasis on relating to God rather than following a set of rules. But that has the same problem 'born-again Christian' does, separating other normal 'Christians' as not being part of the programme and also not overcoming the basic problem than many of those who don't follow the Lord believe a Christian to be a follower of Bush and Blair!

So what is the answer? Do we need a word or phrase to identify ourselves? In Arabic I can express it as 'Mourideen' or 'Mureed Isa al Massih' or roughly translated as 'a disciple that is totally committed to following Jesus who is the Messiah'. That expresses relationally what I want to say. You can see the relationship between a disciple and his master expressed in Mureed-Sheik in this blog article. It expresses the honesty/truth in the relationship between master/disciple and the interest the master has in the disciple and the disciple in following the master. In English it cannot be correctly expressed.