Seth Carter

We’d just left town for a trip.

The kids were all loaded, everyone went to the bathroom, we’d just eaten, snacks were packed, and then, just a couple miles out of town, one of our kids, started shouting “Hot Taco!”

When you are around a little kid often, you begin to understand the nuances of their language, but this was a word I’d never heard before. At least I had never heard him say it before, and he was adamant: “Hot Taco!”

We began a line of questioning to figure out what he was communicating and soon, following the line of his pointing to the sky, I said, “Helicopter?”

Yes, there it was. Hot Taco. Helicopter.

Words mean something. If you are trying to teach, coach or communicate, you know that the words you use — and the way you hope the recipient understands those words — is important.

This is why when we say or hear something like “I’m a Christian,” it’s very helpful to know what we are talking about. We need to define what that means.

Blogger and author Natasha Crain, in her book “Talking With Your Kids About Jesus,” quotes recent research that shows 70% of Americans self-identify as “Christian.” But only NINE percent of Americans actually hold to a Christian worldview, (meaning accepting core truths taught in the Bible).

A worldview is pretty much what it sounds like, how a person views the world or thinks that it works.

Everyone has an idea of how we came into existence, what seems to have gone wrong, how it can be fixed and what it will look like for the world to be restored or returned to some semblance of where it began.

For almost three-fourths of a society to claim a worldview title and less than one-tenth of that same group to hold to what it actually means ought to surprise us a little. That gap is significant. We need to ask some questions.

Let’s start by looking at where this word came from. The New Testament book of Acts chronicles the lives of Jesus’ disciples right after he left the earth. He ascended to heaven and then they wondered what they were supposed to do next. A mighty move of the Holy Spirit, and some inspired preaching by the apostle Peter, led to several thousand people devoting their lives to Jesus, realizing that he really was the Messiah and had become the final sacrifice for their sin. Day by day, this community of like-minded people grew, while the Jewish religious leaders grew uncomfortable with the influence of these “Jesus people.” A persecution began, and a man named Stephen was martyred, causing this group to be scattered across the surrounding nations. At Antioch, in northern Syria, Barnabas and Saul (who would become Paul) met with the church and taught “considerable numbers” for an entire year. Then it says, in Acts 11:26, “the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”

The term “disciple” might make us think about the 12 young men who Jesus spent time with for about three years. We might think about their willingness to change their lifestyles to spend as much time with Jesus as their rabbi. Or the miracles that happened at their hands, and how their faith in God grew.

Hopefully we are thinking about their devotion to obey the commands of Jesus and the intimate friendship they had with him. They were those who were committed to knowing, following and obeying, even at great personal cost, based on an understanding of Who they were following.

Today, someone might identify as Christian and qualify it by saying, “I believe in God.” That might not tell the whole story. It could be that their worldview acknowledges a “supreme being,” and causes them to pray. They might say that God is everywhere, including the belief that “god” is naturally present in each us. But it’s sufficiently vague to know what really is motivating this person’s spiritual outlook. The book of James even says, “the demons also believe, and shudder!”

Some people like the phrase, “I follow Jesus.” Again, this can be vague enough as to not be helpful.

Some might deny the doctrine of the Trinity, might affirm that Jesus, Satan and humans are siblings, or even believe that humans can progress toward being gods themselves. To say, “I follow Jesus,” we have to know what we mean when we say “Jesus.”

What is a Christian?

Unhelpful definitions of “Christian” often fall into four categories (as outlined by Natasha Crain): Based only on a belief in God, but not necessarily the characteristics of the God of the Bible based solely on moral behavior, while rejecting the Jesus of the Bible based on Christian practices, going through the motions spiritually, but living by any other standard or desires based on any acceptance of Jesus, perhaps as an “enlightened master,” or “good teacher,” but not the Jesus, Son of God, as prophesied and fulfilled in the Scriptural accounts of Jesus.

As you can see, words can mean a lot of things. A Christian is someone committed and submitted to living the life God asks us to, while cultivating a personal and intimate relationship with him and his people. A Christian is truly a disciple, in word and in deed.

Two people can say “hot taco” but one of them is pointing to their plate and one is pointing at the sky.

Which one are you?

(Seth Carter is director of Campus Ventures in Powell.)