The dangers of Build-Your-Own Christianity

A few weeks ago I took a bunch of young adults through an exercise I used to do in scripture classes.

In short, you build your own religion.

This night, the group built a religion based upon the Australian culture. Within it, they had to name their religion and outline what those within the religion must do or believe, should do or believe, what they can’t do or believe and what would identify someone as an adherent.

One we chatted about our new Aussie faiths, we then did the same thing for Christianity. What must you do? What should you do? What can’t you do? What will identify you?

The aim of the exercise is to compare your lists and see that the things you determine as a must or should will not be the same as others. Some will wildly disagree. 

And, the deeper you think about the questions, the more exposed your self-imposed Christianity can be.

Eventually, I ask if the Christianity that they defined could include the following people…

The thief hanging beside Jesus.

An illiterate person.

A persecuted Christian.

A five year old.

Someone with a physical or intellectual disability.

The reason I select these people is that they expose the width of the faith.

The thief never, as far as we know, evangelised. He definitely didn’t go to church.

The illiterate person doesn’t read the bible.

The persecuted Christian may not attend church or partake in the sacraments.

The five year old, or person with an intellectual disability, will only have a limited grasp of theology.

The physically disabled person my never lift their arms to worship.

When we create a list of must’s and should’ve then we risk excluding those that God would not or does not.

This is the danger of such lists.

Lastly, I ask if they themselves would qualify - by their Christian definition - as a believer.

This, finally, exposes why they may shape their lists like they do. It probably looks like them.