What's In a Name

Coming from a secular workplace, where to confess you are a Christian is far more shocking than announcing you are an alcoholic, I thought it would be tremendously liberating to work here. And it is an amazing privilege to work with so many wonderful Christians. And yet, to my surprise, I find that it is not enough just to ‘out’ myself as a Christian.

In my first few weeks, many wanted to know what sort of Christian I was. Was I a liberal? An evangelical? A liberal evangelical? A ‘happy clappy type?’ The answer is: I don’t know and I don’t want to try and decide either.

To my shame, it often took me months in previous jobs before I admitted freely I was a practising Christian.

And I know that to do so mystifies many people. They say, ‘I didn’t realise, you don’t seem like that’ as if by not wearing the sandals or whatever paraphanalia they associate with Christianity you have tricked them in some way into thinking you are normal. Once you have admitted it, they tend to put you in a box that you have to spend a lot of time and energy fighting your way out of again.

So then to go on to try and define what sort of Christian I am would only baffle non-Christ-ians further. Surely that is an argument we can get into only when everyone around us first knows what it is to be Christian?

The great parliamentary sketchwriter Matthew Parris wrote something once that each time I remember it, fills me both with shame and a renewed sense of purpose. And it reminds me why spending time and energy arguing among ourselves about what sort of Christians we are is far from the task Christ set us.

He wrote: ‘If I believed that [what Christians believe] or even a tenth of that… I would drop my job, sell my house, throw away my possessions, leave my acquaintances and set out into the world with a burning desire to know more and, when I had found out more, to act upon it and tell others... I am unable to understand how anyone who believed what is written in the Bible could choose to spend his waking hours in any other endeavour.’ Happy Christmas!