Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Definition of a Christian part 2

continued from my other blog…

http://jamvng.xanga.com/724024907/what-defines-us-as-christians/

That previous blog was actually written pretty suddenly for me.  After reflecting over my own life, as well as talking with other people, or seeing what other people have been learning, the question just popped into my head.   What defines us as Christians?  What differentiates us from everyone else?

A large part of this came from looking into my own life.  What makes me different than say any of my non-CCF/Christian friends?  Am I more happy than them?  Do I have more hope, more love?  Do I do more things than them?  I know plenty of non Christian people who work hard in school (which I don’t do enough =P), who volunteer a lot, who have some close relationships with people, and who enjoy helping people.  So what makes me different than them (besides the “I know Christ”, what about practically)?

It looked like I was delving back into the fundamentals of Christianity.  I’m surprised I never really seriously considered this question myself.  Growing up in church, lots of these things I just didn’t ask myself.  I think no matter how mature you are in your faith, having these fundamentals are important no matter where you are.  I figured this would be a big enough topic to warrant a new blog in itself.  So I’ll be hopefully trying to delve more into this.  The BASICS, the gospel, and all that.  I guess as I do delve into, I’ll just be putting out some of the thoughts (which may be unorganized at times) I have out.  Hopefully this blog doesn’t die too soon haha.

Anyways, I mentioned in my previous blogpost that by living like Christ we should be different.  And since we ARE called “Christians” it should be our defining characteristics, no?  If we are named after Jesus, as Christ followers, He would be the one we model our lives after.

“This is how we know we are in him: Who ever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”  1 John 2:5b-6

Truly knowing God, and having a relationship with Him, means we would walk as He did. 

So if Jesus were living in this day and age, in this society, in your place, as a student, as an employee, etc etc, what would it look like?  What would a present day Jesus be like?  Back in the New Testament, it’s pretty obvious what Jesus’ reputation was like.  People knew what He did, and were eager to meet Him.  He performed miracles, healed the sick, spent time with the marginalized, etc etc.  Should we not be having the same impact with the people around us? 

I guess you can say that as students we are in the “training" stage, just like Jesus didn’t “officially” start His ministry till He was thirty.  We don’t know too much about His childhood/young adult like, but as shown in Luke 2, He was pretty out of the ordinary already (in a good way heh). 

Ok…so how the heck do we live like Jesus anyways?  And how do we know what He would be like in our shoes?

Stuff to think about…