THE DREADFUL CHRISTIAN: RHETORIC OVER TRUTH

I hesitate to tell people I am Christian. The word is just rife with misconceptions, conflict, abuse and ironically, demonification of the truth.

First, let me start with what a Christian is NOT.

-A Christian is not a Stepford-wife-like shining shell of false happiness.

-A Christian is not a red-faced portly guy in a suit screaming, "kill all FORnicaters and all homo-SEXSHULS!"

-A Christian is not a homely spinster hugging a Bible and praying for all the evil people to be saved from Hell.

And now let me blow all the preceding out of the water by saying that a Christian could perfectly well be any of those people above.

The thing is, Christians are human beings. Imperfect, in process: they can be freaks, hot chicks, weird old losers, wanna-be-rock-stars...in short, any living human being can be a Christian. There's no one media image that defines a Christian.

The one thing that DOES define true Christianity is this belief: that Jesus Christ is the son of God, sent to live and die as a man, take on our damnation and then to rise as Divinity and take His place as one of the mysterious Holy Trinity that makes up God.

Jesus said the top Christian priority is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor. It's all about love. Letting go of your ego and your desire to be the center of attention. (That's actually an extremely difficult thing to do in a world that sells "It's All About Me" t-shirts.)

I am no expert on world religions but the way I see it, Christianity is a large sphere containing smaller spheres like Buddhism, Catholicism, and Judaism, which are derivations of Platonic Truth.

Beyond that, it gets very complicated. Each Christian has his/her own personal journey, doubts, questions, reconciliations and drama on the way to the end of his/her life here on Earth. I guess a Christian term for each person's story is called his/her Testimony, or Witness.

Below are a few Christian principles which are often not practiced nor popular in this world:

-Be kind. Don't run people over, metaphorically or literally. Don't be afraid to step back to let others shine.

-God is not a lottery ticket. If you think you're getting a personal genie who is going to solve your life problems, you are in for a world of disappointment. God is more concerned with developing you into a noble character than giving you the "fabulous life." If you have to experience poverty, loss, betrayal, despair to get there, then so be it.

-God IS about intangible things like honor, integrity, dignity, sacrifice, and love. My poem "You Kill My Ego" (in an earlier blog) addresses the frustration I feel being unable to attribute those characteristics to myself. NOT being the hero, but practicing those intangibles, is paradoxically what it really means to be a hero. Humility is paramount. Imagine saving someone's life and losing your leg in the process, then having the person you saved run off without so much as thank you. Taking that gracefully, without resentment or bitterness, is true Christianity.

People may ask (and I certainly have), "why would you want to be a Christian if it's all about sacrificing and no big houses or nice cars - where's the fun?"

I don't have a pat answer. I can only say that I believe in Heaven. I believe the After-life is not going to be a glowing, vague blob of shiny joy. I believe this life is sort of a fun-house reflection of Reality, where things are not quite as they were meant to be. I believe that Heaven is full of activity, pleasures and joy that we can't really comprehend in these decaying flesh sacks we call bodies (the Bible is much nicer and refers to our bodies as Jars of Clay). I have had certain dreams that I believe were actually experiences of other Universes, where my soul left my body behind and went on adventures. I believe we can fly, and that there are other modes of existence beyond our imagination.

And I believe there is one God who created all of it. If we possessed even an inkling of His knowledge in our present earthly forms, I believe we would explode into a trillion shining, golden sparks.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I define Christianity.

p.s. I believe God is Good. The inventor of puppies can't be evil