jesus freaks

I used to love Christmas, back when I was a Christian. A celebration of the birth of Jesus, a miracle, a gift sent to save the world. Christmas felt holy. In fact, I remember breaking down during “O Holy Night,” “Long lay the world in sin and error pining ‘till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” I mean, how could you not cry? These days, I still love Christmas, but then I think, what is it? Days off work when I’ll see my family? Wondering who I need to buy presents for? Spotting an anemic-looking Santa at Culver’s and then a jollier one at the library? Watching St. Nick sing “Feliz Navidad” with an overly exuberant lady from Forte Bank while I wonder if I should double my eggnog recipe? It’s still fun and cozy and festive and all, but it does lose a bit of its beauty when you take Jesus out of the picture.

My relationship with Christianity experienced several fissures before it eventually dissipated in my mid-20s. I would experience doubt, and then I would come back, grateful, relieved. A number of things/problems/questions pulled me away from the faith, and one was that a lot of people seemed just fine without it. As an evangelical, I believed that I should be actively evangelizing to people, but when I actually had in-depth conversations with people who weren’t Christians, most of them didn’t seem to be missing something. They weren’t searching. They weren’t lost. They were doing okay. And, surprisingly, they still seemed to be moral people. Wild!

Aside from offering me community, which was admittedly huge and remains the part of the faith I miss the most, Christianity supposedly offered a life of hope, forgiveness, grace, love, purpose. In my mind, Christians were the Good People because they were trying to be like Jesus. And I do concede that many of the Christians in my life were incredibly kind, generous, patient, etc. But the more I encountered people outside of Christianity, the more I realized that those qualities aren’t exclusive to Christians. And if this is the case, if Christians are, for all intents and purposes, just like everyone else, why be a Christian?

One time I was pulled back to the faith by Shane Claiborne. Shane Claiborne is an activist and Christian who published a book called The Irresistible Revolution, which kind of posed the question, What if Christians actually lived like Christ? The Bible is full of these beautiful, terrifying things that Jesus said, like, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Then you have James, who said, “Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

It has been years since I read Irresistible Revolution, but I took it to mean that 1. Being rich is bad, 2. Pacifism is good, and, 3. Your beliefs are far less important than the way you live your life.

Shane Claiborne didn’t buy new clothes (why should he? He already had clothes! Why contribute to consumerism? Why perpetuate sweat shops?). He went to Afghanistan to protest the war. Shane Claiborne was so powerful to me because he represented a version of Christianity that felt special and meaningful and difficult but worthwhile. Because of him, my faith was reinvigorated, and I stayed for several more years.

I’ve been thinking of Shane Claiborne lately because he felt revolutionary in the same way Ms. Rachel seems to be. Ms. Rachel is, I’ve learned, a Christian, and I follow her on instagram, and a fair number of people have been calling her an anti-Semite because she’s talked about how the killing of children in Gaza needs to stop. Ms. Rachel, the children’s educator, faces death threats. And yet she remains rooted in love. She does not return hate with hate. She is speaking out, and it’s costing her, and I just feel that that’s Jesus. It is easy to be truthful if saying the truth doesn’t change anything about your life. But I always thought that living like Jesus wasn’t supposed to be easy, but it was something you aspired to because it was the right way. Because the way to bring about change is to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek. Isn’t there an assumption there that you will have enemies?

At my Christian college, not everyone liked Shane Claiborne, and I think part of it was because he argued that to live like Jesus, we must change, and that change would likely make us less comfortable. It is so normal to take the path of least resistance, to strive for comfort, and to actively push against that is something I find not only compelling but brave. I like to think that if I had the platform that Ms. Rachel does, I would use it for good. I would also bring light to atrocities happening in the world. But would I, really, if it meant that the internet and the state of Israel would unleash their contempt? If it meant I would be misunderstood by so many? If it meant that I would fear for the safety of my own children?

The thing about Jesus is that for most Christians, I think, he doesn’t actually do much. For some, he drives them to be kinder. And then, for a few, he inspires them to live radically. It is these people that make me wonder, mustn’t there be something real behind them, nudging them forward?