Step One

The Choice to Be a Christian

Dying to False Hopes and Saviors;
Rising to Jesus Christ, Savior of the World

The first step is the choice to make Jesus Christ as savior an active participant in everything I do. This is what it means to be a Christian. To do this I have to die to all trust in my ability to save any part of my life in this world without giving Jesus an active part. This is the first grave.

The first step will transform our whole life, but it is not difficult, nor is it vague or complicated. It is a simple – but profound – decision to do something

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practical and concrete.

As Christians we believe that Jesus Christ is alive, that he is present to us all of the time, that he sees our every action and hears our every word. More than that, we believe he is present within us, sharing in us by grace, sharing his divine life with us, sharing in our human lives and in all our human actions.

Whether we think about it or not, and whether we explicitly choose it or not, as long as we are united to God by grace, Jesus has an active part in everything we do. There is not a word we speak, not a thought we have or choice we make that Jesus does not want to influence, in the measure that we leave ourselves open to his action.
But he will not violate our freedom, and he will not force his influence upon us. His union with us by grace is a partnership – for him to act with us we have to act freely with him. Every graced choice and action has to be a joint decision. If we don’t choose to act in partnership with him, we put up an obstacle to his acting in partnership with us.

The first step along the path to the fullness of life is to make a conscious act of faith that Jesus Christ is living within us, and to invite him to take part in every thought, word, action and decision of our life.

You might pause to do this right now.

Then we have to show that we mean it. We have to try consciously to make Jesus Christ an active participant in everything we do. We need to interact consciously with him in every activity of our day.
This sounds simple, and it is. It is also concrete and

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down-to-earth. There is no one who cannot do it. So why is it that so many people don’t? The answer – for many, at least – is that they don’t realize the need. Most people don’t consult a doctor until they feel sick. Most people don’t ask for advice until they feel confused. And most Christians, it would seem, do not interact with Jesus as savior all day, every day, simply because they don’t think such constant interaction with him is necessary for salvation. For them, to say "Jesus is savior" means that Jesus has opened the gates of heaven for us. It does not mean that Jesus has to be the foundation of our lives here and now.

So what does it take to accept Jesus Christ authentically as the only savior of the world?

A Prerequisite

Before we can build our lives solidly on Jesus Christ as a foundation, we have to dig a hole. The deeper the hole, the stronger the foundation. This means we have to go deeply into ourselves and understand our need for Jesus. We have to be deeply convinced that Jesus Christ is not an option, that seeking total relationship with him is not an "extra." Only a relationship with Jesus can save us from veering off into destructiveness, distortion, mediocrity and meaninglessness.

If we think the choice before us is just a choice to be more rather than less – more Christian, more holy, more religious, more devout – we don’t understand the question. It is not a question of more or less; it is a question of either-or.

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The question is, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only savior of the world, the only one who can save your life right now from becoming what you really don’t want it to be?" This means your personal relationships and family life, your social life, your professional life. You need to understand this invitation as an either-or: Either make Jesus an effective, operative part of everything you do, or see your life "miss the mark" (the root meaning of sin) and slide off into destructiveness, distortion, mediocrity and meaninglessness.

The Root of the Problem: Original Sin

Why do we need to be so pessimistic? Aren’t we all basically good people? Isn’t our society founded on good principles and values? Isn’t what we have learned from our religion enough? Aren’t the Ten Commandments sufficient to keep us on course and living reasonably good lives? Why do we have to relate consciously o Jesus, to interact explicitly with Jesus in everything we do?

The answer lies in the concept of original sin. Yes, people are basically good. God did not give us flawed equipment; our human natures were not made defective at the factory. Nor did the sin of Adam jog God’s creative hand and cause it to slip. So far as God’s work is concerned, we were made perfectly according to specifications.

But beginning with the first sin ever committed on earth, the human environment changed. Because

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everyone born into the human race must grow up in a formative society, in a culture, when the human environment changed, the existential situation of every person born into this world was altered at the root.

We are social beings. The family, the society, the culture into which we are born radically influence our attitudes, values and behavior. Before we are old enough to understand what we are doing or to make free choices we are already being programmed by our environment to feel, to think and to act in particular ways, both good and bad. The world into which we are born shapes our initial attitudes, values, priorities and patterns of behavior I ways too all-pervasive to analyze. Absolutely no one is exempt from its influence. Once sin came into the world, the good influences of culture were intermingled with bad influences.

Original Sin – and the cumulative effect of every free human choice, from the first sin to the most recent one – has injected falsehood or distortion into the environment. The world was not created bad; people were not created bad; but the environment into which all people are born was created and is being created now as both good and bad by the free actions of individual human beings. For centuries upon centuries these free actions have been both good and bad. The human environment has been enhanced by the good actions of people and infected by their bad actions, and this is the environment that forms and shapes the fears and desires, the assumptions and prejudices, the emotions and perceptions of every human being born

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into the world.

Because of the distortion of truth in the environment, our intellects are darkened. Because of the distortion of values in the environment our wills are weakened by fears and misdirected desires. This is a characteristic of our being, of human existence on earth. From the moment we are conceived in our mother’s womb we exist in solidarity with the human race and are subject to its influence.

This, in part at least, is the meaning of Original Sin. And this is why we are doomed to live and act in ways that are distorted and destructive unless we are re-formed, re-shaped, and re-created in our perceptions and judgments, in our attitudes and values by Jesus Christ, the only true light of the world. Only Jesus can show us without distortion the way to live and the truth by which to live; only Jesus can lead us to life. That is why he said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"(John 14:6).

Only through constant, daily interaction with Jesus as master of the way and teacher of life can we gradually be freed from the darkness and distortions of our culture, purify our values and desires, put aside the fears and priorities programmed into us by our culture and learn to live life to the full. To seek this ongoing, constant interaction with Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life is what it means to accept Jesus as Savior.