Author: Amy Sevimli

Redefine Christmas? How about Redefining Faith?

Have you heard about the new movement advertized on radio stations and in a mailbox near you called “Redefine Christmas”? The idea behind this movement is that people give money to their loved one’s favorite charities instead of buying them gifts in an effort to make the holiday gift giving more meaningful and do more good. Its attempt to encourage our society to rethink its understanding of and practice at Christmas made me wonder if the Church wouldn’t benefit from a similar redefinition, or some might even call it a reformation, of the word “faith.” The idea really hit home for me after I told a friend of mine about a book entitled Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith. His response to my book chatter was “What’s wrong with faith? Why does it need to be repainted?” Or, in other words, if faith ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

For a lot of people I know, this statement pretty much sums it up. Not only does the idea of repainting something as sacred as faith frighten them, but in their opinion, nothing is wrong with our faith. It’s not broken. Its fine just the way it is.

But for a whole lot of other people, faith is broken. So broken, in fact, that some people would prefer to get rid of the word altogether. For many people the word carries a restrictive, even oppressive connotation. It conjures up all kinds of thoughts and images that have nothing to do with Jesus, the Christian Church, or the way that Christians have sought to live in light of that word in the world. For still others the situation is more benign but no more relevant. To these people, faith is just outdated; something that their parents or grandparents did, but which now has nothing to say to the hope and fear in which they live their lives each day. It’s irrelevant.

For those of us who love our faith but take seriously the world’s misunderstanding of it, this whole conversation is sad. It is disturbing. It must change.

Because the fact is that for many of us our faith is completely relevant and even compelling. We don’t think of it as restrictive; we find it freeing. We don’t think of it as absolutism; we find it mysterious. We don’t think of it as the end; we think of it as the beginning of searching for who God wants us to be, for what God has in store for us in life, for where God is taking us. It’s an opportunity to be with communities of people who will both surround us with probing questions and good debate as well as care for and comfort us in times of need. It’s an opportunity to get to know and live in light of Jesus, not in the first century or the sixteenth century, but, now, in the 21^st century.

But most of the people I talk to don’t know that. They have never heard the story told that way. They have never talked with someone who would not recoil at their questions or try to correct their unbelief, but who would instead simply listen to them.

And I wonder, why not?

And then I wonder what would it take? How could we redefine faith, not to change its meaning but to communicate its compelling, living, and loving meaning in 21^st century language? How could we redefine faith in way that would reach out to people instead of push them away?

I am not just posing these questions rhetorically, but I am really interested in answers to them, not just from people who are comfortable with the word faith and have claimed to give it a role in their lives, but especially from people who are not. What would it take for those of us who use the language of faith to talk with you who don’t use it, who are turned off by it but who also want to and are seeking to believe?

Photo courtesy of: Zach_ManchesterUK

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