pat robertson.

perhaps you’ve heard of him?

inspired by torch, the folks at open conversation, and even bizket, i’ve given some thought to what it means for us to be Christians.

it seems like a common response to the blathering of folks like robertson, fred phelps, and their ilk is to attempt to disassociate ourselves. we don’t want people to meet us and categorize us with them, to assume that the Christians they have seen in the media are synonymous with us. ultimately, the difficulty of defending ourselves becomes too much. we drop the moniker altogether. it is after all just a label, a word – and we are to be known not by what we call ourselves but by our love for one another.

i don’t think it is that simple.

i think stepping away from the issue is an easy escape, a cop-out. much harder is it to live a life trying to love radically, to see Jesus’ story writ on the world so large that the imitators are seen as precisely that. what i don’t think we can do is walk away from the name of ‘Christ’ in our lives and allow our culture to take it over and diminish it. God granted his name to his people in the old testament, and the tetragrammaton was considered so holy as to be unspeakable, unchangeable. his character must be made visible, not hidden behind clever wordplay and our own fear of being labeled and misunderstood.