What Does It All Mean?

I have been pondering a lot lately...I hate it when I do that...it makes my head hurt and makes the formerly clear things quite muddied...I prefer black and white, but lately have been getting varying shades of grey (I like the British spelling of that word)...specifically, I have been wondering what it really means to be a Christian...how does that journey really start and what is the best way to communicate that truth?...here are some thoughts from my life and observations:

Fire Insurance: when I first got saved (I won't even attempt to define that word in the Christian sense - it's a book in and of itself), it was at junior high camp between 7th and 8th grade...much of the preaching and teaching done that week and in that day and age was about heaven and hell, that if you didn't want to burn in the lake of fire, you needed to get saved...I also remember a series of movies about the end times designed to scare the crap/sin out of you...so one night at camp, I thought, "If the guy next to me goes up to 'get saved,' I'll go too."...he did, so I did...I got saved that night mostly to make sure I went to heaven instead of having to deal with all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth...

Personal Relationship With God: this is probably the most tossed around phrase in evangelical circles these days, although I'm not sure the chapter and verse references of where it shows up in the Bible...we talk a lot about the God of the universe and how we can know Him personally and be friends with Him...but can we really 'know' Him...I mean, he's pretty big and all, so whatever we know about Him is scratching the surface at best...is this a way to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like God is a really cool big brother?...almost the opposite of fire insurance; more of an emphasis on heaven, and less on hell...

Born Again or Sell Everything: Story #1: a religious leader is told by Jesus that in order to see the Kingdom of God, he had to be born again...Story #2: a rich guy is told by Jesus that in order to get to heaven, he must sell everything he has and give it to the poor...so which is it?...it seems that we - the North American, Western church - have latched on to the concept of being born again, but we rarely talk of selling everything we have and giving it to the poor (He also said that it is very difficult for a rich person to get into heaven in later in the story)...both were directives by Jesus, but we emphasize one over the other...granted, the Kingdom of God does not necessarily equal heaven...but is our emphasis a sign of our comfortable lives, that because we have it good here in America, we don't want to downplay the American Dream by talking of giving it away?...I remember a story about Rich Mullins: as he drove by a store with all sorts of stuff in the front windows, he started crying...when someone asked him what was wrong, he said, "The things of this world just don't satisfy."...do they satisfy us too much?...

Follow Me: it seems that the most popular way that Jesus referred to becoming a Christian (which of course is a term he didn't invent) is in terms of following...He told his disciples to follow Him...Peter, Andrew, Matthew, Philip, and the rest...so they did...and according to Rob Bell, this meant that Jesus saw something in them that made Him think, "These guys (and girls) have what it takes and can do the things I do."...is the Christian life merely a journey in which we make a decision to follow Jesus and, with His help, do the things He did?...and if so, what did He do?...He fed people; healed people; looked out for the overlooked and downtrodden; He served; He prayed; He sacrificed; He stood against injustice; He forgave; He refused to be pigeonholed; He taught about truth; He loved life...and that's just a short list...am I a Christian, if this is the definition?...