[...] The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

— Acts 11:26

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

— John 13:35

I frequently wonder what it means to be a Christian, who deserves to be called Christian? I look around and see many that claim to be Christians, but their life, their actions, their words, are very much unlike Christ.

I've been wondering about the nature of names.

It seems to me that names usually are not something we choose ourselves, we receive them from other people.

Our parents give us a name; our family give us a name; our friends give us names (nicknames are names as well); everyone around may give us a name.

Cool; Funny; Boring; Silly; Square; Arsehole; Caring;

These are also names we receive, not always we know about them. These we receive from how we act around others, from the identities others see in us.

Christian, I feel, is only a legitimate name when received from others, when others see us as following the Way of Jesus Christ, when others see this as our identity.

Naming myself Christian is meaningless, it is an identity that others have to see in me, when others see Christ through my life, my actions, my words.

Am I a Christian?

Because ultimately it is very simple: Give everything you have, do, and are, to the weak and unworthy, by love.

So simple, so humanely impossible.

The reasons, and consequences, and our own human nature are what makes it complicated, and creates so much conflict about the meaning of it.

How to love someone to death?
How to love someone to death that doesn't deserve it?
How to love someone to death that may hate you?

We affirm that God, with His infinite creativity, made all the infinite variety of creation, but paradoxically we expect Him to repeat his stories in the same way He did in the past.

If we look at the accounts of God's actions, we see that He doesn't repeat Himself: the plagues against Egypt only happened once; the Red Sea was opened once; in the book of Judges, each time the people were rescued it was in a different way; Saul's story is not the same as David's, which is not the same as Solomon's; each prophet is used to convey His message in a different way; Jonah, Jesus, and Paul face storms at sea with completely different outcomes.

God doesn't repeat His stories in the same way. The garden of Eden will not return; a community like the early Church will no longer exist in the same way; the breath of the Holy Spirit that propelled Paul and the first Evangelists will no longer blow in the same way.

God is THE creative creator, and He made us to be His co-creators; let's make new stories together.