Christian Practices

Street artist in front of Georges Pompidou Museum in Paris

As Christians we are defined by what we believe. While the center of our faith is a message and a story, how we live out that story is vitally important. As significant as belief is, it isn’t something that only takes place in our heads. To believe something is also to live a certain way. As James says in his epistle, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” and “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (Js 2:14,18). This isn’t earning salvation. This is the straightforward, common sense reality that our lives reflect what we really believe. For example, if you believe it’s going to rain, you will carry an umbrella. Or if you believe a crime is being committed, you will call the police. If you can’t see a belief put into practice, it’s a fair question to ask whether we really believe it or not. Faith is primary, but faith needs to be put into practice.

Practices do something to us

In talking about practices, we’re talking about what we do as Christians, how we put our faith into action. Practices are things like evangelism, prayer, fasting, living justly, and a host of other things we do as expressions of our faith. They are beliefs at work. While practices are something we do, they also do something to us. We become certain kinds of people as we habitually do certain actions. For instance, forgiveness is something we do, but it also does something to us. As we develop a habit of forgiving, we often become more forgiving and we realize our constant need to be forgiven. Forgiveness breeds forgiveness, and it shapes and transforms us. Generosity is another activity that as we do it, it does something to us. When we give cheerfully and realize the joy that our gift brings, then we are more inclined to give again. It becomes a virtuous cycle spreading generosity into different corners of our lives. In this way there is significant overlap between the idea of a practice and a spiritual discipline, but I want to use the word practice in order to be able to talk about more than is traditionally considered under the category of spiritual disciplines. Christian activities like creativity, evangelism, creation care, and seeking justice aren’t often considered spiritual disciplines, but they are expressions of our faith. We do these things because through them our belief takes concrete form.

Practices fit within the larger story of God

So, what makes a practice Christian? There are a lot of things that Christians do that non-Christians do as well. Without even mentioning basic human activities like eating, sleeping, working and so on, non-Christians pray, seek justice, give generously, and do any number of things that Christians do. What distinguishes Christian practices from other types of activity is the underlying narrative that the practice fits into. In other words, Christian practices fit into a larger story of God, the world and human beings. It is the story of a good God who made a good world, but evil entered the world twisting and corrupting everything. From that point forward God has been in the process of putting the world right again. God called Abraham kicking off a long meandering tale of Abraham and his descendants who sometimes succeeded, but more often, failed to be the people God was calling them to be. All this lead up to Jesus whose coming marked the high point in the story. It was the moment when God’s rule decisively broke in and evil was overcome. We live in the aftermath, knowing the decisive battle has been won but the war still isn’t over. We take our cues from the larger story attempting to understand our place in it. Therefore, the Bible is our starting point for understanding what makes a practice Christian. Christian practices are creative and genuine attempts to live within our moment of the story. This underlying narrative can lead to the same external action possessing different meanings for those who perform them. For example, two people can both generously give money. One wants to make the world a better place and gives on that basis, but a Christian gives because he or she believes that a gracious, good and generous God stands behind all of creation. Giving, for the Christian, is worship and an attempt to shape the sort of world that God desires. Now the Christian may not have much depth in understanding the practice of giving and how it coheres with the grand narrative of Scripture. However, the more he or she does understand, the deeper, the more meaningful and the more transformative the practice becomes. Understanding the theological reality that lies under our actions helps give them greater significance. In other words, we need to tend to the roots of our practices, so that they can bear the fruit they were intended to bear.

The Church is a community of practices

While Christian practices find their origin in Scripture, we perform them in a community that exists across time and space. The Church is the context in which we do these practices. It is the garden in which they come into full fruit. We pray together with the saints who have prayed throughout history, but we also pray together with the saint who lives in our neighborhood and is a part of our local congregation. We learn from both, and we live our lives as Christians with both. We need the history of the Church to give our practices perspective and coherence, but we need our fellow Christians to live out our faith with. We need real, flesh and blood people to love, serve, forgive, sing and pray with. The Church is a community of faith, which means it’s also a community of practices. We’ll examine what all this means in more detail as we introduce and explore specific practices in future posts. Where do our practices come from? How has the Church expressed them in the past? How could we faithfully and creatively live them out in the present?

This post is an introduction to the idea of Christian practices, but I want to take the next few months to look at and dive into the specific actions we do as Christians. I want to look at the activities that we engage in, so that we might tend to their roots, so to speak. In that I’ll be helped by my friend Rachel, who geeked out over the idea as much as I did. She’ll be writing the next post in the series looking at creativity as a practice of faith.