Am I A Christian?

 

It was an unusually cold Thanksgiving, one in which we got an early snow fall. My cousins from the south were visiting for the holidays and were excited (perhaps overly so) to see snow for the first time. They woke up the morning after it snowed, ready to head outside with all of them yelling, “Snow! Snow! Snow!” Before anyone could stop them, they ran outside and dove in, without any coats or gloves or anything else that should have been part of the routine. And just as quickly as they had run out, they came running back in yelling, “Cold! Cold! Cold!” It was then that the decision was made that we needed to take them to buy some winter gear.

Later that day, during our shopping trip, I found myself sitting in the back of my grandmother's Grand Torino station wagon with my cousins. There were so many of us that we had to pull up the third-row seat, which in a station wagon faced backwards leaving some of us looking out of the back window. I’m not sure why but as we watched the traffic behind us, one of my cousins asked if I was a Christian. I told them all that I did not know. I was then asked if I went to church. In fact, I had three churches on rotation depending on whom I was with. My dad was Lutheran, my mom was Missionary Baptist, and my grandmother occasionally went to a church that I think may have been nondenominational. I visited at least one of those churches each week, although very rarely did I go to the same one two weeks in a row. So, my answer to my cousins’ question was, “Yes, I do go to church,” which I said with pride without telling them that my attendance was not voluntary. In response I was told that by going to church I was in fact a Christian.

For several different reasons, I was never comfortable with the idea that going to church made me a Christian. The idea that simply walking into a building made me a Christian seemed…well…empty. In fact, it seemed as empty as everything else in my life at the time as I lived…correction…survived the day to day of being a codependent teenager. God was the furthest thing from my mind, even during those two or three hours every Sunday morning and so I just could not see how going to church made me a Christian. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned that it didn’t.

It was at that time that a friend gave me a book that took everything that I learned in Sunday School, and in confirmation class, and explained how it all pointed to one man: Jesus. In response, I looked at Jesus for the first time and really started learning what He taught. From these studies I learned about God’s gift of salvation through which He offers life and freedom from the burden of sin. I also learned that how I respond to His offer determines whether I am a Christian or not. I accepted His offer and am blessed to be able to say that I am a Christian.

So, what exactly was His offer and what is it that makes a person a Christian? Keep an eye out for a future post where I will explain.