Christ was not a Christian; Buddha was not a Buddhist and Confucius was not a Confucian

Recently we have been going through some team storming while helping to launch a young church. The church spun off from our home church and has been "under construction" for the last two years. As with any team, the period of forming is beyond us and we are well into the "storming" phase. This will eventually pass and we will move into "norming" and "performing". In the meantime though there has arisen issues around accountability, communications, commitment, inclusiveness and falling into the status quo approach to church.

The more I thought about these things, the more the statement "Christ was not a Christian, Buddha was not a Buddhist and Confucius was not a Confucian" becomes important. I heard this while watching an unnamed program about religion on our local PBS station (one of my favorite stations). The show had some very insighful comments from religious leaders (including the Dalai Lama, priests, ministers, Muslim clerics, and others). This one stuck with me so I wrote it down. I wondered how I might use it for good. With the events I mentioned above weighing on my mind, and adding pages on Evernote (www.evernote.com) I once again came across this wisdom from other people.

Why is this statement important? Well, I believe it helps keep things in perspective. Even in faith we must remember that it was not Jesus, Buddha or Confucius who founded the respective religions associated with their names. It was others. These individuals simply taught what they each believed were important and life-changing lessons. It was those that came afterward that took those lessons and elevated those individuals to higher positions within a hierarchy or organized faith or philosophy. It was later generations that either correctly interpreted the wisdom or royally screwed it up. Too often people in today's world want to associate the world's screw-ups and human foibles to these wise men and not accept accountability or responsibility for themselves.

When faced with issues of faith and trust, it is important to keep perspective. It is flawed humans who make choices and decisions. Choices are in our hands--even choosing not to choose is still choosing (maybe a future blog post on that one?). In our current situation with our church I have this underlying sense that some people want me to believe that choices are not in my hands. I guess that is not really my conception of how the Creator/God works. The movie "Evin Almighty" had a great line about this. Does God give us success or the opportunity to succeed? Does the Creator give us forgiveness or the opportunity to forgive? I truly believe the latter is true. Whether you call the grand force of the unoverse God, Creator, Allah, or whatever, I truly believe we must make the choice to do something with what has been presented to us. We must make the most of things in life. Issues will not fix themselves. Ignoring them won't make them go away.

The issues our team of church leaders is facing were created by us. We are accountable and responsible for recognizing that and taking steps to either live with the crap we have served ourselves or doing something different and getting better. (Here is where Einstein's definition of insanity comes in--doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results). I hope those involved in the issues with our church and anyone who happens to read this journal can work towards understanding that you must fix the issues you created in yourself before you can fix the issues in others.