The Clause

This was recently pointed out in Newsweek Magazine, when Lisa Miller took notice of the many groups and people who choose “Follower of Jesus” or “Christ Follower” on their Facebook profiles rather than “Christian.”

It’s understandable that people all like to be creative and unique when creating their online profiles, but this trend points to something more—dissatisfaction with being labeled a Christian.

It would seem people are turned off by relating themselves to the not-so-earnest Christians and some of the dark periods in the history of Christian behavior, therefore they choose to call themselves Christ Followers instead, a name that does not hold as much of the negative baggage the name Christian might.

It is out of these ideas and ambitions of wanting to be more true to Christ’s calling in relations and interactions with other people, that some choose to rename themselves.

Though I understand the motives, I have always felt this solution was a bit humorous and quite possibly the wrong one.

A friend of mine, seeing and pointing out the tragic humor in the situation, chose to respond to, and tease a little, those who would rather not label themselves Christian. In his Facebook profile he listed his religious views as, “Insert creative way to say Christian here.”

What this points out is that although we may each have a different name or label we prefer to use to express our Christianity, we are striving to follow Christ’s example.

But the solution should not be to move from one name to the next, sticking with each only as long as it takes us to scar it. Rather, we should be working toward living our lives in a way that will maintain a good name and glorify the name of Christ which we carry as our own.

It creates a division. When shying away from the title Christian, we are saying we don’t want to be part of them, we don’t want to be associated with those Christians.

Not only is it an attempt of division from and disassociation with other Christians but it is an ill-conceived and failed one. If I call myself a Christian and you call yourself a follower of Jesus we are each tying ourselves to the same name, the same leader.

So long as we each desire to be associated with Christ we will have to be associated with each other.

Yes, but not everyone using the name of Christ is with us in following him, right? What can we do about those who use the name but not the values of Christ—the lukewarm Christian?

Concerning the lukewarm Christian, I like something Francis Chan wrote in his book Crazy Love. In Crazy Love he wrote, “As I see it, lukewarm Christian is an oxymoron; there’s no such thing. To put it plainly, churchgoers who are ‘lukewarm’ are not Christians.”

Those who are devoted followers of Christ need to live their lives and use the name Christian in such a way that it would truly be absurd for others to claim the name and not live up to it.

For a while in the 1930s, the Packard automotive company declined to place their name or emblem anywhere on their cars.

The idea was that the cars would be made with such quality and sophistication that when you saw one of their cars you would know it was a Packard without having to read a nameplate.

As Christians, we need to live with that same mindset, that those watching us will know who we are in Christ without us having to claim a self-proclaimed name.

It is important that we differentiate ourselves from those who do not truly follow Christ’s example, but we should do it in our walk with the Lord and the way we live our lives, not by what we call ourselves.

We need to live our lives so that nonbelievers see us and say to each other “That’s a Christian” rather than “That’s not a Christian, that’s a follower of Jesus.”

That is why our efforts should be in bettering and restoring the Christian name rather than creating a new one.

We need to be true so the counterfeit can easily be spotted and will not pass using our good name, Christ’s name. It’s a daunting task, but it must be done for Christ’s namesake.