Jesus-ish

Lately, I have been reading a number of opinions on the word 'missional'. While I once embraced this word, as time has gone on I have come to largely dislike it. The problem with 'misssional' in my opinion, as a label or a lifestyle, is how it seems to have ended up being just another exclusive club. Generally speaking, it seems in some circles that a person who doesn't identify as missional isn't as authentic or enlightened of a Christian as someone who does.

Give a label to a concept, and people want to know what the label means, so it must be defined. The definition allows people to know when to apply that label to something; however, the definition ultimately also allows people to know when NOT to apply said label. You have to draw the line somewhere, right? One cannot say anyone can be a part of the club, because then the label would cease to have any meaning. Therefore the club *must* be exclusive, at least to some degree. Labels also require standardization. In the process of defining a label, we have to ask, "What is the ideal model of this label?", which inevitably causes there to be varying degrees of adherence to a label, and a hierarchy is born; the same hierarchy many of us have railed against in the church system.

The way I see it, the primary force driving the downfall of Christianity isn't whether we are this label/are not that label, but rather stems from the problem of inclusion/exclusion on any level. Personally, I don't even draw lines around the word "Christian" anymore, because it is not up to me to decide a person's spiritual authenticity based on my own criteria. If a person identifies themselves as a Christian, in my mind they are.

Yes, I have drawn lines around my beliefs for the clarity and safety of my own spiritual journey. I still believe the question of equality for women in Christianity is a justice issue with no wiggle room. I still believe it is ludicrous for churches to invest exponentially more in buildings and staff than in caring for the real needs of people in the church and community. I still am convinced that the church has no business in politics.

My personal convictions are useful for you to better understand me. However, my personal convictions are decidedly not useful to me in determining how authentic of a Christian a person is. There really is only one measure of a person's authenticity as a Christian; I'll get to that in a minute.

Looking around the blogs lately I am seeing more and more people say they are tired of the same old conversation; they want more life in their life. It seems conceivable to me that the conversations we've been having about emerging/missional, new ways to be/do, have one big hang-up: they are just too difficult for many of us to put into practice at the level we might theorize about them. We generally theorize about something at the level of the ideal, and in practice we often will feel we have failed right out of the starting gate because we have set our standards so high.

So then, I have decided not to set complex standards and labels on my spirituality. I'm not missional. I'm not emerging, emergent, postmodern, Christian, heretical, democrat, or universalist. I'm just Erin, and it's my heart's desire to live my life looking for needs I can fill, and then filling them. I draw no religious lines defining to who is in our out of the "good Christian" club depending on what philosophies or theologies a person subscribes to; my line in the sand only depends on how much a person lives to be like JESUS. Notice I didn't say how much a person is LIKE Jesus, because we all fail at that, but how much a person lives their life with the desire to be like Jesus.

How do I define 'Like Jesus'? Simple. We know Jesus is love. Love, well, I'll let the apostle Paul tell you:

Love:

Never gives up.
Cares more for others than for self.
Doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

(1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, The Message)

You can call it missional, if you'd like. You can call it the prime directive, if that better suits you. Hell, you can call it 'pizza', for all I care. If Jesus is love, and love is manifested in the above ways, then I aim to spend the rest of my life being Jesus-ish.