What does "Christian" mean?

This last week I read The Shack, which I did not want to like--I thought it was going to be like a Mitch Albom book or something (sorry, not for me)--but I found myself enjoying it immensely. Now that it is read, I feel renewed passion for God and feel provoked to know Him better. Really, many factors have contributed to my thinking more deeply about, or even rethinking, what "Christian" means, but The Shack is the catalyst for written reflection here.

For any reader who hasn't read the book and intends to, you might want to skip this paragraph (just this one!) since it spoils elements of the plot. I like to read book reviews of the books I have finished reading (usually on Amazon, along with some of Amazon's related discussion boards) to observe all the differing opinions, and with this book I notice a polarized readership, even among Christians. (The term "Christian" does not mean the same thing to everyone, but here I refer to people who, one can safely assume, would consider themselves "Christian.") That a short fiction novel would stir so many in such different ways, even among Christians, is remarkable. For author William Paul Young, working within Trinitarian doctrine, to imagine the Father as a large black woman--or even just a person with a face upon with another can look--Is this blasphemy? To fill the mouths of God's three persons--most notably, I think, Jesus--with speculative statements, like Jesus' statement, "Who said anything about being a Christian? I'm not a Christian."--Is this heresy? (Or how about this one, Jesus' lines again: "[Creating institutions] is an occupation for those who want to play God. . . . [Religion, politics, and economics] are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about." Wow.) The questionable and controversial parts of the book become thought-provoking in light of what I find to be the book's most striking theme.

Despite not quite knowing what to think about some of this book, the theme of God being personal and utterly relational is what really struck me. As often as Christians throw the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," it's easy to overlook what this phrase is communicating. The familiarity of it even dulls our senses. If Jesus is in fact God, and the person of God's three persons with whom people can personally engage and to whom they can relate--the Word of God (according to the first chapter of John)--then we have an earth-shattering realization on our hands! How can it be anything less than that?

So, what does it really mean to be a "Christian"? What does it mean to love and worship God if Jesus is the Word of God made flesh? What is the essence of what "Christians" call "Christian"? If one looks at the recorded words of Jesus, the "red letters," what (or who, actually; what Jesus) does one encounter? If one reads the New Testament and even the whole Bible in a manner that allows the four gospels' recorded words of Jesus to inform the rest (because to suspend disbelief while looking at Jesus' words in the contexts they are said is to let Jesus inform everything else; e.g. John 14:6), what does the reader face? And for the reader who takes the leap of faith to believe Jesus' words to be the truth, to believe Jesus is The Truth, what happens?

I would agree with the author of The Shack that a relationship is what happens, that the "Christian" is in relationship with God by Jesus, who is in fact God (again, John 1; verses 1 and 14: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."). To believe that the Bible is true and that Jesus' words are true is to exercise faith, and faith can only be exercised when God is already there enabling it, pursuing relationship with us. (I say "enabling" in the same way that He enables the very existence of all things; I don't intend to get into Calvinism/Arminianism/etc.) But relationships are a two-way street, and we need to pursue the God who pursues us if we have entered into that relationship!

'Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.' (John 15:4,5, ESV)

"in the world but not of the world"

In the seventeenth chapter of the gospel of John, in the Bible, Jesus prays to God about " 'the people whom you gave me out of the world' " (John 17:6; ESV for all Bible citations hereinafter): " 'I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world . . . I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world' " (vv. 11, 14). What does it mean to be (as someone once condensed it) "in the world but not of the world"?

"In the world" versus "of the world": what is the distinction? My computer's Oxford American Dictionaries provides several illuminating definitions:

world [noun; from the Old English w(e)oruld: "the age of man"; in the New Testament, a translation of the Greek kosmos: "order or world"]: the earth, together with all of its countries, peoples, and natural features
"the world": all of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth
"(wo)man of the world": a person who is experienced in the ways of sophisticated society; "the world, the flesh, and the devil": all forms of temptation to sin

in [preposition]: expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else; expressing inclusion or involvement

of [preposition]: expressing the relationship between a part and a whole; indicating an association between two entities, typically one of belonging; expressing the relationship between a category and the thing being specified which belongs to such a category; indicating the material or substance constituting something
"be of": possess intrinsically; give rise to

(Admittedly, I have done some picking-and-choosing with my definitions, and I am sure a personal bias cannot be avoided, despite my best efforts to limit definitions to those I regard as most appropriate to their use in the phrases at hand: "in the world" and "of the world" as used in the context of John 17. I invite the reader to be critical of my chosen definitions and research definitions/etymologies themselves. That being said, I am going to work with the above definitions.)

"In the world" might mean [enclosed by/surrounded by/included in/involved in] the "world," or [the earth and its order in terms of: countries/people(s)/features/(sophisticated) societies/institutions/temptations].

"Of the world" might mean [a part of/associated with/belonging to/in the category of/consisting of/intrinsically possessing to give rise to] the "world," or, to say it again, [the earth's: countries/people(s)/features/(sophisticated) societies/institutions/temptations].

"In the world": If we are in the world, the world (or perhaps we could at this point say "the way of the world") is what surrounds us, what we are immersed in, what we are inevitably involved in; the way of the world is our situation.

"Of the world": If we are not of the world, or not of the way of the world, then the world's way is something of which we are not a constituent or category, something by which we are not defined or upon which we are not dependent for our identity or being. We are not the masses, and the world's way is not our distinctive, and we do not at our essence own, yield, or contribute to worldliness.

So, if we are in the world but not of it, the way of the world is indeed the situation but not the basis for who we are. That we are of the world is inevitable yet incidental somehow; it is in some sense necessary, it seems, but not ultimate, because it must be incidental to That which we truly "are of": the true and ultimate basis for who we are. Then to what do we belong? By what are we categorized? Of what whole are we a part? And what do we possess intrinsically, what is essential to our being? The answer (if we are in the world but not of it) cannot be "the world."