I was born in El Paso and lived there until I was 14 years old. I grew up eating and enjoying Mexican food that far surpassed any other. When my parents moved us to East Texas, we had to learn to eat Tex-Mex, which just isn’t the same. It’s not bad, but it’s not “EP-Mex.”
I have wandered through the wilderness of Mexican food for almost 50 years, and I have eaten it all over Texas and various parts of the United States. I’ve had fast food Mexican. I have eaten it all, from extreme good to just edible. The only place I’ve found that reaches the top of Mexican food is El Paso.
So it was with growing excitement when someone told me of a Mexican food restaurant in Central Texas, between Waco and Tyler, that was authentic El Paso Mexican food. This person, who I’ll refer to as Hank, asked me, “Have you seen Arturo’s Mexican Food (not the real name—I’m using aliases to protect both the person and the restaurant)?” I replied I had noticed it the numerous times I had driven by it, but had never stopped. Hank said, “The people who own it are from El Paso, and the food there is just like the stuff you’d get in El Paso.”
I couldn’t wait to try this glorious find in Central Texas. A place that didn’t serve chile con carne poured over a tortilla rolled around cheese and called an enchilada. A place that knew what enchilada sauce was. Somewhere that wouldn’t dream of putting “taco seasoning” on the meat that was spooned into some factory-made taco shell. No, I was going to get the real stuff.
Again, I have eaten at many “Mexican food” restaurants, including fast food chains. I have come to lower my expectations. In doing so, I have learned to enjoy the meal. When I order enchiladas, I may not get what I consider to be enchiladas, but they’ll do.
So, one day, my wife and I stopped at Arturo’s. It was close to the dinner hour, and the place was packed. We were seated and looked over the menu. Of course, I was going to order the enchiladas. Any decent Mexican food restaurant has to be able to make a decent enchilada. That’s just a given in my world. I don’t remember what my wife ordered, but the food was brought to us.
I looked at my plate. There was no red chile sauce on my enchiladas. I really couldn’t tell what was covering my enchiladas, but I still hoped. I cut off a bite and placed it in my mouth.
It was the worst Mexican food I had ever eaten in my life. There was nothing El Paso-esque about this food. It wasn’t even good enough to be considered Tex-Mex. It was horrible.
I never talked to Hank about my experience at the restaurant. We don’t see each other that often, and when we do, there are a lot of other people around.
One day, though, I heard him giving his spiel again about Arturo’s. I heard him tell someone else that it was like El Paso Mexican food. I stopped him immediately, and I told him he needed to quit saying that, because it just wasn’t true. I told him it was the worst Mexican food restaurant I had ever been to, and that I would never go back there.
What’s the point of all this? It’s this. We are told things about something we think we know about. We accept as truth what we are told, only to discover that when we experience the thing, all we were told was not true. Not that we were lied to, but that the speaker was badly misinformed or mislead.
This is particularly true when it comes to the Christian faith. There are a lot of people who have a cursory awareness of what Christianity is supposed to be, but they never really experience it. Instead, they experience something resembling Christianity, sort of a Christianity-lite, if you will, but because it’s not what they were told it would be, they reject it entirely.
How Do We Misunderstand what Christianity Is?
Looking back on my Arturo’s experience, there are a couple of things I should have taken in to account. I should have realized that Hank had never been to El Paso. He had been to New Mexico, and he had eaten the Mexican food I have cooked, which still retains very much of my El Paso roots. My cooking was the closest he had come to El Paso Mexican food. I should have realized that his awareness of El Paso food was very limited.
I also made the mistake of assuming the crowd at the restaurant knew what good Mexican food is. It’s easy to look at a crowded restaurant and come to the conclusion that the food was good. Upon further reflection, though, I have come to the conclusion that the crowd did think the Mexican food was good, but that’s because they don’t really know what good Mexican food is. They were lost in their ignorance, and assumed that what was passing for Mexican food was the real deal. How this was possible in a state such as Texas where there are much better Mexican food restaurants available, I don’t know. I did discover on my travels to and from Tyler and Waco that there are no good Mexican restaurants on the route I take. I’ve tried them all; they all fail, with Arturo’s topping the list as the worst one.
Just as ignorance about Mexican food can lead people to believe what they are eating is good stuff, so, too, can people assume that a church is “doing good Christianity” simply because the place is packed out, and someone who should know better but didn’t told us it was good.
The problem is that there are a lot of people who are good at playing church. They spend their Sunday mornings going to a Bible study/Sunday School, then sit through a morning worship service. Maybe they dressed up for the services. Then they come home and go about their daily lives, never thinking really about what just happened in the two hours they invested in church.
The question that should be asked is: “If the only difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is that the former goes to church, then where’s the incentive to become a Christian? If there is no evidence on a daily basis that Jesus is making a difference in someone’s life, then it’s easy to dismiss the faith as a sham.
Jesus addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Man will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will say to them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from Me, you evil doers’” (Matthew 7:21-23).
Jesus’ words are a clear warning that attending and ministering in Jesus’ name is not enough. There’s more to being a follower of Christ than simply doing things in His name. If preaching and ministering can still keep us from knowing the Son, how are we to do it?
In addition, there is a portrayal of those who profess to know Jesus but have no real knowledge. In the parable of the sower (cf. Matthew 13:1-10; Mark 4:1-12; Luke 8:4-10), Jesus describes a farmer scattering seed in his field. In the parable, there are four soils: hard-packed soil; shallow soil; weedy-soil and prime soil. The seed that falls on the hard soil is quickly eaten by the birds and never takes root. The next two soils—shallow and weedy—allow the seeds to take soil. But the shallow soil prevents a deep root system, and the plants grow quickly, but then die off. The weedy seeds are able to grow deep roots, but the weeds choke them off and the plants die. Only the prime soil is able to have seeds take deep root and yield a good crop.
Jesus describes the parable as the seed representing the Gospel, and the soils represent people receiving the Gospel. Some never receive it—like the hard soil. Others embrace the Gospel, but burn out because there is no depth to their faith (the shallow soil). Still others want to embrace the Gospel, but they allow the cares of this world to distract them and lure them away from Christ (weedy soil). Only those who give themselves fully to Him are allowed to grow and bear fruit.
Of these four soils, there is only one that ultimately produces Christians—the prime soil. The others produce non-believers and superficial believers.
Another parable—the parable of the tares (cf. Matthew 13:24-31—speaks of an enemy sowing weeds among the crop. The weeds are so entangled with the crop as they grow, that it’s impossible to pull the weeds without also destroying the crop. The owner waits until harvest time, when the crop will be harvested and the weeds will be cast into a fire.
Even among Jesus’ chosen 12, there was one that misunderstood Who and what Jesus was, and so, ultimately, rejected and betrayed Him.
In short, it is not a prudent thing to assume that church attendance and participation is enough to establish a relationship with Jesus.
What is Christianity?
The first thing Jesus says is that we are to believe in Him. “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:29). This belief is a faith commitment to Jesus, based upon a firm belief in God’s loving intervention to save us from our sins and to teach us to do His will.
Being a Christian, then, is more than believing we are going to heaven. It is a life commitment to Christ that is seen in the way we relate to Him and to one another. For clearly, the Gospel is about relationship. It speaks of God’s reaching out in love (John 3:16) to bring salvation of sin to the world and how that reaching out creates a new person (2 Corinthians 5:16-21) which leads us to a ministry of reconciliation, just as God reconciled us to Himself through His Son. This new person is now a child of God (John 1:12-13) because God makes it so.
How we relate to God is seen in the Great Commandment—to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Luke 10:25-37; Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-31). The best way to determine how we can relate to God and to our fellow man is to take to heart the lessons from the Sermon on the Mount. It is here that Jesus stresses we must have a righteousness that exceeds that of the most pious, and that we are to fulfill the Scripture, which is done when we follow the Golden Rule. The Sermon speaks not of doing things, but in the reasons for doing things.
Jesus also stresses that we express our love for Him and the Father by walking in obedience (John 14:15-27), and to place ourselves completely under His leadership (John 15:1-17).
The true follower of Christ demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit, which can be found in Galatians 5:22-23 and Ephesians 5:9. The true follower doesn’t expect the road to be easy, nor does he or she expect the road to be crowded, but the true believer never waivers from the road for too long.
Conclusion
There is so much more to being a Christian than just what has been taken here. This is just scratching the surface. Still, if we want to have a faith that is known and understood, it behooves us to begin to live it out, not according to popular perception, but according to God’s word.
There are those who crowd into restaurants, thinking they are getting the best cuisine that can be had. They never know how much more enjoyable the food can be if it is done right. The pale shadow of the food is accepted as the best, and the diners are the poorer for it.
So it is with following Jesus. If we take the shallowness of many in our churches as the norm, then we are missing out on the glorious fellowship that awaits a walk of faith in the presence of the God of all creation.
© 2019 Glynn Beaty