What's In A Name

Every year around Easter, all the main weekly news rags run a cover story about Jesus. It’s usually interesting to see what they write each year, but what I think is more interesting is reading the letters to the editor the following week. I remember one letter a few years back in which the writer described himself as a “non-Christian follower of Jesus.” At the time I thought, “Now there’s a contradiction if ever I heard one.”

And maybe it is. From a literal perspective.

But one of the great things about language is how it tells a story about the people who speak it at any given time in history. A word can start out meaning one thing and over time it’s meaning changes, sometimes to the point where the original meaning is completely lost. Most of the time it doesn’t really matter what a word meant when it was first coined. Language is about communicating and what is communicated when a word is spoken is what really matters.

The word Christian literally means “Little Christ”. It means “a follower of Jesus” So how could someone be a “non-Christian follower of Jesus”? And why would someone want to identify themselves that way? I think we can understand this by looking at what the word Christian means today to the proverbial man-on-the-street. If a person can follow Jesus and not be a Christian, than the word Christian must NOT mean “follower of Jesus” anymore. Not to everyone. Of course, it can mean one thing to one person and other thing to another person. I think that’s what we have to understand.

It’s telling, really. It says the Christians of today have lost the essence of Jesus in the way they live their lives. Our lives, overall, apparently don’t look like Jesus. And people wonder why churches are closing all over the country. And yet if you look at the churches that are thriving, at least some of them are doing so by bringing the Way of Jesus back to the front. A Way that includes living generously, with love, healing, and reconciliation between people and with God. Jesus is just as attractive to people today as he was 2000 years ago. It’s his named followers that aren’t necessarily so. It’s something, with God’s help, we should be working to change.