On Becoming a Christian

This is from an old email but I thought I would turn it into a blog post because I think it conveys some important points for consideration, to meditate upon. The question was asked:

What does it feel like to be Christian? Did you just know you were saved, like—bam—"Hey, I'm saved now" or what?

I'll be frank with you: there is no simple one-size-fits-all answer to this question. That will become strikingly evident as you notice the degree to which responses will vary. And with a thing as deep and rich and complex as the Christian faith, which at its core is a living relationship with God through Christ Jesus, that should be expected.

I shall tell you what I think this question is like. Take three women: one who has been newly married for one year, one who has been married for five years, and one who has been married for twenty years. Sit them all down in front of you and ask each of them to tell you what it feels like to be married. Are you going to get one basic, simple answer that will be consistent from all the women?

Would you even expect it? I should think not, and in that sort of context it is easy to see why. But the fact of the matter is, that is exactly what being a Christian is like. It is a relationship, a very loving, very deep, very committed relationship, one which the apostle Paul finds appropriately analogous to marriage—but a marriage in the deeply religious sense, not in the just-a-piece-of-paper sense it has been reduced to.

A woman who has only been married for one year will describe the experience quite differently from the woman who has been married for twenty years, just as a new Christian will describe their experience in terms rather different from someone who has been a Christian for decades. As relationships mature and deepen, new experiences and values are discovered and enjoyed, problems arise and get worked out and so forth. Someone who became a Christian last year will not have yet experienced the dynamic trials and triumphs of someone who has had a relationship with God for the last twenty years. For that matter, the trials and triumphs of each will not even be the same when they do happen, since every relationship is unique.

There is no simple, easily packaged and slogan-ready answer that can be offered to this question, quite honestly. This must be understood, not just by you but any honest inquirer. Christianity is not simply a set of metaphysical propositions to which one gives intellectual assent and somehow, like some altered state of consciousness, one magically feels a little differently. Propositions simply do not have that property.

Relationships do. And at the very core of Christianity is God, a personal being with whom one enters into a relationship through the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, about whom both the Scriptures and the corporate body of believers attest. Myself, I have been a Christian for about ten years now, in a very complex, fluid, and dynamic relationship with God on both the intellectual and emotional level. (God has a funny tendency to grab your whole entire being.) I began this journey as an atheist and—as if that did not already change my entire world—later experienced two more paradigm-shattering changes at the most fundamental levels of my epistemic convictions. Anything I could say about what being a Christian is like is going to reflect that unique personal history and those levels of enlightenment, insight, and profound growth in the knowledge and wisdom of Christ. An answer from someone else will reflect a dramatically different sort of history, and will vary to an even larger degree if that person has had a shorter or longer relationship with God.

What does it feel like to be a Christian? It feels like meeting, falling in love with, and marrying the most wonderful person in the whole world, and that experience intensifies and deepens and becomes more complex and intricate the longer you are married, a marriage whose dimensions and contours are shaped by a history rich with experiences of love, anger, relief, sadness, joy, betrayal, repentance, elation, and so on.

But that whole meeting the person for the first time? For a lot of people it can be a little awkward. It was for me too, including when that person is God.