What's in a name?

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Acts 11:26

Every few months I get literature from a missionary organisation which works in many parts of the world and which, as far as I can tell, does a very good job of making Christ known. I have noticed recently that it seems to have dropped the word “Christians” when talking about believers, and replaced it with “Jesus-followers”. At first I thought this might just be a one-off, but it seems to have become the settled policy.

Does such a change puzzle you, perhaps even shock you? I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about it at first. The church, after all, has been called “Christian” for 2000 years, an honourable title surely, so somehow it didn’t seem quite right to let the name disappear. But on the other hand I thought of how easy it is for it, however time-honoured, to cause misunderstanding.

Words are slippery; they have a habit of changing their meaning over time. For Shakespeare, for example, “naughty” meant “wicked”, far more than just, well, what we might mean by it today, perhaps a light-hearted rebuke to a child.

Sometimes words pretty well die altogether, emptied of their meaning by constant wrong or exaggerated use. I once received a message from a charity after sending them an extremely modest donation: “Thank you for your incredible generosity…”. Incredible? How overblown is that! What word will they use when something happens that really is incredible – ie, impossible to believe?

I have personally sometimes wondered if the word “Christian” is, in fact, exhausted and needs to be decently buried in the grave of history. When first coined – in the ancient city of Syrian Antioch (Acts 11:26) – it had a very clear meaning: “followers of the recently crucified prophet Jesus of Nazareth”. But now it means a million and one different things, depending on who happens to be speaking.

I was talking once to a woman who had shown an interest in the Christian faith, and it seemed natural to me to ask the question, “so you aren’t at the moment a Christian, then?” She immediately reared up at me, “Of course I’m a Christian!” Oh dear! How dare I suggest such a thing! The trouble was that we were using the word in two quite different ways, and by asking that question I had obviously insulted her. For me, “Christian” means a believer in Jesus; for her, I think, it meant any person who reckons to live a respectable and decent life.

So, as I thought about it, I began to wonder if that missionary organisation was in fact onto something sensible. Acts doesn’t give us any indication of how much time elapsed between the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem and the coining of that new word in Antioch (coined quite possibly by mocking opponents of the first disciples) but it may well have been months rather than weeks – which means that for a significant period there was no such thing as “Christianity” at all, just a message – a “gospel”, good news - about Jesus crucified and risen from the dead.

A prominent theologian was keen to show how generous and non-judgmental Christianity is; he proposed that any sincere adherent of another faith – Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, whatever - should be regarded as “an anonymous Christian”. Well, that was all very well and all very welcoming – but then an angry message was received from a non-Christian who felt he was being patronised: “I am not an honorary Christian! – I am a Buddhist  (or Hindu or Muslim)” (I can’t now remember which).

You can always tell when a word is exhausted or dying by the instinctive need we feel to prop it up with qualifying words, like those wires they use to support drooping, ancient trees: fantastic becomes “truly fantastic”, amazing becomes “absolutely amazing”, and so on.

And that’s how it is with “Christian” – even within Christian circles. To say “I am a Christian” is not enough: we have to narrow it down to either a “born again Christian” (but how can you be a Christian and not be born again!) or a “practicing Christian” (but how can you be a Christian and not practicing!) or a “sincere Christian” (but how can you be a Christian and not sincere!) or a “Bible-believing Christian” (but how…?).

By substituting “Jesus-followers” for “Christians” that missionary society is, I think, acting wisely, not least because in many parts of the world the church has earned a not-so-good reputation, and it may be best not  to identify too closely with it.

In Acts 4 we read that the apostles Peter and John were taken to task by the religious authorities but maintained their witness with great boldness. And so… “when they saw the courage of Peter and John, and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13).

Great words! – “they took note that these men had been with Jesus”.

That’s what matters! Never mind names and labels - even the worn-out label “Christian” - which are open to all sorts of misinterpretation and confusion. Our prayer must be that people look at us and “take note” that we have been with Jesus. God grant it may be so!

(By the way, I’d be incredibly interested to know what you think.)

Dear Father, thank you that by your grace I can bear the honourable name of “Christian”, like those people so long ago in Antioch. But please help me to be sensitive to the fact that for many people it may mean something very different from what it means for me, and thus be a cause of confusion and misunderstanding. Help me to make it my great priority not to claim any particular label, but to live daily a truly Christ-like life. Amen.