More Christian, Less Romanian, Less American

 The Bible is My New Culture, The Heaven is My Citizenship

“Who am I these days?” a question my husband and friends have heard me ask a lot recently. Because I can’t decide if I am more Romanian than I am American…or if I am at least one or the other! Born and raised in Romania, having spent the last 10 years in America, I’ve been torn between two cultures, neither one I fully seem to embrace today. Some refer to this situation as the “living in between.” I am made in Romania, no doubt! Everything about me was Romanian, from the first steps, to the first words, and the first thoughts. But living in America made me realize that my Romanian-ess had little place in this vast American culture. The different American ways began an inner battle, engaging my whole self against this newness of living. Unconsciously, I began to de-Romanianize as I was focusing to Americanize myself. Some people call this process assimilation. To be successfully integrated into a new culture, the individual relearns new ways of living, acting, speaking, thinking.

And yet, the reality of not belonging to the people group I’m living among draws a clear distinction between them, the locals, and me, the “foreigner”. As enlightening as the articles may be on the process of “living in between” two cultures, and the process of assimilation, one thing is certain for any “foreigner”: the uncertainty of self.  With each new day, I search for ways of trying to relate to one culture or the other, or to reconcile one culture with the other, or to explain one through the other. Like a waltzing dance, I’m rotating inside two cultural borders. Going back home, a couple of year ago, made me acknowledge a restless estrangement to my home. I was as much of a foreigner back home as I am here. In other words, I am no more Romanian than I am American. And yet, I crave to be something. I want to be one of the two. Living in between makes me feel like a bouncing ball.

You would hear me refer to myself as a Romanian Christian even as I am awaiting the American certificate that will declare me an “American citizen” (something I am deeply grateful for). But I still question what it means to be a Romanian or an American. I wonder if a person can be both at the same time, or if by becoming one, an individual un-becomes the other. But none of the above questions are as change provoking as this one: what if I allow my nationality to take too much credit for my identity?

As a Christian, my identity should be in Christ alone. My culture is Christianity. My citizenship is Heaven. My birth certificate is “my second birth” in Christ’s Church. In Psalm 87, God writes the spiritual birth certificate of all the new believers:

⁴ I shall mention Rahab and Babylon among those who know Me;
               Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia:
               'This one was born there.'"
           ⁵ But of Zion it shall be said, "This one and that one were born in her";
               And the Most High Himself will establish her.
           ⁶The Lord will count when He registers the peoples,
              "This one was born there."
               

My earthly birth certificate is overridden by the supremacy of my spiritual one. “This one” (me) and “that one” (you) are born into the kingdom of heaven when we turn to Christ. Zion, the Church, becomes the new city that holds our new birth. And the One who records our spiritual birth is Abba God Himself! The Church’s identity is the heavenly citizenship—born of God by faith in Jesus Christ. It is not the eradication of national distinctions but rather a oneness of all distinctive cultures into the body of Christ.

What a practical spiritual genealogy I am given once in Christ! When I accepted Christ as my Savior at age 18, I was born into a new family. God’s Church is not just a Sunday morning, symbolic gathering. It is a real, practical, domestic, hands on household! The Church’s family relations are as real as the aunts and uncles, parents and in-laws, grandma and nephews we celebrate with each Thanksgiving. It is a household created by God, Paul declares. It carries the reality of belongingness. Paul calls the believers “fellow citizens” in God’s Church (Ephesians 2:19).  A fellow describes a member of a group sharing commonalities, or equalities in status, power, and rank. As a family of God, Christians live their lives guided by and submissive to the Word of God. The Bible institutes, affirms, and guides the new way of living. The Bible is the new culture! In other words, the identity of the believer draws from the new culture established by Christ in the family of God.

Not only am I born into a family with a spiritual identity, but my citizenship is also being redefined. I belong to God’s kingdom. “But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives” (Philippians 3:20). Our new Christ-like identity focuses on living like citizens of heaven while dwelling temporarily in earthly countries. The more I study the Bible, the more I understand that I do not live for myself and my culture anymore—whatever that culture is! Once a Christian, I am to live for Christ! (Romans 14:7). I am reminded that I, Anca the Romanian (or American), am no longer I who lives, but that Christ lives in me. I am a new citizen—a Christian. I am part of the Christian culture—the Scripture. I am part of a Christian family—the Church; therefore my goal is to learn to live as a Christian within American borders. I wonder how much of our daily lives are shaped by our nationality and not by our citizenship in heaven!

The truth is, as a Christian, the reason why I am struggling and allow myself to live “in between” is because I do not fully understand and embrace the reality of the new citizenship in heaven and adoption into Christ’s family. No matter what my earthly passport and birth certificate say of my earthly status, my citizenship is in heaven for through Christ I was adopted into God’s family and I received a new name –Child of God. As beautiful as the cultures are, the Church’s main pursuit is Christ and His glory. Like a chorus with different voices, the culturally diverse and unified Church sings a Gospel-centered proclamation, to the glory of the Father! Therefore, I will cling to the culture of the Gospel to shape my identity. My pursuit from now on is to learn how to be a Christian who reflects God’s glory!

Wrinkles, Calloused Skin, Varicose Veins, Hair Loss—Aging For The Glory of God!

There is an emotional and mental affair I have been having with a decade-ago-version of my body. I have been spending countless hours, days, months, agonizing over the mental realization that I am aging. There is nothing like the day I realized that the dudette in the mirror is getting old. A closer look at my face, hair, skin, body and I was face to face with the image of my grandmother. Talk about a crisis! Even the bathroom mirror must have felt emotionally sympathetic to my desperate realization. I pulled out pictures from 10 years ago, and I started almost worshiping myself: “Look at that face, hair, skin, body!”  Forget the fact that my husband finds me beautiful and attractive, that I am healthy and able to use my hands, feet, mouth, ears... Me and my aging have been secretly carrying a war, while just as secretly, me and my younger image have been waltzing together, in my mind and heart. The more we two bonded, the more I alienated myself from the current, aging body. I would use every means to “attack” my current image: jokes about aging, remembering the younger days, forgetting the daily dudette in the mirror, grumbling, complaining, complacency in the face of the unchangeable, unthankfulness, and even avoiding the subject. 

One verse that has been putting in perspective my attitude towards my body is 1 Corinthians 6:20: “Therefore, honor God with your body.” What does it mean to glorify God with my body?  Does the fact that this verse is a command change the way I look at the use of my body? How is a Christian woman in the 21^st century to put her aging body to the glory of God?

In today’s day and age the body is either overplayed—in the worldly media—or underplayed sometimes-- in Christian churches. On the one hand, the world makes an idol out of the physical appearance, as it worships digitally and surgically idealized body images. On the other hand, some Christian communities neglect discussing the body at all: some think it is the cause of all sinful desires, always in conflict with the spiritual, new man; others just find it unspiritual talking about the material. 

As a 21^st century woman, I have been cultured to compare and lust after a flawless, idealized Hollywood -ian body. Conscientiously or not, I have been emulating this tension in my attitude towards the body with every complaint about or adoration of it or a body part. Furthermore, as a 21^stChristian woman, to this whole body tug-o- war add the battles of the fleshly desires within the body. What is a Christian woman to do of how to approach the image of her body? Surely one cannot conform her body to the image of the world. Nor can she denigrate and despise her body because of the sinful battles carried within it.  

Biblically, the body is neither to be made an idol of, nor to be belittled or denigrated. While the Gospel doesn’t make an idol out of the body, it certainly expresses its value and beauty. I am bewildered at how God chose and saw it “good” to intimately create the first human body as an earthly home for the human soul. While God purposed the body for His own glory, it was man’s choice to sin with it. Even more, God chose to incarnate His Son into a human body, and have his body killed as a fragrant sacrifice for the propitiation of our sins. It is Christ’s body that we partake. Also, God ordained that the church of Christ would be Christ’s body, orderly functioning as Christ’s earthly hands and feet, mouth, ears, etc. 

So, how is the Gospel addressing the body and its purpose? How can I, a woman of God, glorify God with my body?

1. The purpose of my body—more than just pretty skin and bones

In the light of this contemporary culture, there is nothing more shocking than Paul’s association of the body first to the image of baked dirt and, secondly, to that of a tent in 2 Corinthians chapters 4 and 5. Paul is not downplaying the image of the body but rather he draws attention to what the body carries inside. This frail body (as “clay” and “tent” suggest) is chosen by God to hold His very presence.  “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). In other words, Paul underlines that the body was made for the “precious” content—Jesus Christ—and not the content for the body! Jesus was not made to fill up beautiful, gorgeous, and perfectly manicured bodies! Instead, He comes inside our hearts and bodies in spite of the wrinkles, aging body, veins and hair loss! 

The weakness of my body and all its aspects of aging are divinely orchestrated for my good, Paul suggests. My wrinkles and my hair loss are to keep me from making out of my body an idolatrous god. The clay-ness is what keeps us from stealing God’s glory!

Paul’s words are encouraging and convicting at the same time. I see now that, even though I wouldn’t call myself a thief, I have been steeling God’s glory every time I would complain about how my jar of clay is not perfect and valuable! By allowing my body image to define my identity, by entertaining an emotional and mental affair with it, by letting it be a source of grumbling, unthankfulness and complaining, I was actually worshiping it. I am praising God today because the very presence of wrinkles, veins, aged skin, loss of hair in my body are meant to keep me from self-idolatry. Therefore, they are for my own good!

2. The use of my body—an instrument of righteousness

The beaten and persecuted bodies of Paul and Timothy advanced the gospel of Jesus Christ! In spite of their scars, they were resolved to preach Christ. “We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). 

The ministry of Paul and Timothy evolved around Christ, his death and resurrection. When Paul carries in his body the death of Christ, he points over and over again to Christ’s “precious” body that was broken on the cross for our salvation. The very body of our Savior was crushed, tortured, beaten, flogged, and yet the “preciousness” of His body is in His endurance of these persecutions for the salvation of sinners. Christ’s body delivered the gracious redemption to a fallen people. Paul’s body carries the message of such a fulfillment.  Paul’s body carries Christ crucified and alive. His body carries the gospel day in and day out. Paul and Timothy believed that when Christ said “I will be with you to the end of the age”, Christ would never leave their bodies and souls. Their scars are on instruments of righteousness in the service of the living God and the advancement of His kingdom! (Romans 6:13).

Contrary to what some may read into it, Paul is not complaining about his tortured, daily put to death body. On the contrary, Paul is teaching us that our very body is screaming for redemption. While aging is a symptom of the denigrating sin, the body itself awaits its sanctification! He is not bemoaning his dying (aging) body either. In fact, Paul is disciplining himself to glorify God in his present body, no matter how imperfect it may be: “So, weather we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him” (2 Cor. 5:9).

Even though I do not have a human size statue of my body hidden in the closet to which I bow and whom I worship everyday, my body is still an idol to me. I care too much about how I look and I bitterly complain at and bemoan the silhouette I see in my bathroom mirror. “If only this face would look this and that way…” or “Look at my eyes!!” How easy it is, as women, to fall into the trap of using our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness. Each time we use it for other reasons than to glorify Christ we are giving our bodies an unrighteous use. What do my hands say about Christ? My mouth? My feet? You see, my grumbling and complaining about my body is bad enough. But what is even worse is that they come from an idolatrous heart. My mouth speaks my heart. And rarely do I realize that though my intentions are to preach God, I actually preach myself.

But it doesn’t have to be this way in Christ. Paul sets forth a great example in using his body for the advancement and honor of God’s kingdom—in spite of aches and scars. Personally, instead of being preoccupied (to excess sometimes) about how I look (or do not look), I should start using my body with the same discipline as Paul and Timothy did. I, too, am admonished to give my whole body (young or old) for the advancement of God’s kingdom. I resolve to use my mouth to speak words of truth and peace to the glory of God instead of devaluing and criticizing my body! I will use my feet, with or without veins, to share the good news (“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’" Isaiah 52:7). 

The body I have was given to me to glorify God with it. My aging body can be a walking tool for righteousness if it glorifies God. However, I often make of it an idol when I secretly desire it--the part or the whole--to be conformed to the ideal, cultural beauty. I also worship my body when I complain and grumble, in secret or in public, about how the body's aging chips away at this ideal image. Today, as a Christian woman, I am more aware that my body can preach either the gospel of Christ, or my own gospel. What I say about how I am aging to my children, family, and friends reveals not only where my heart is, but also whom I am preaching. May I allow the Word of God to change my heart, mind, and attitude towards how I view and express my body so I can join Paul, Timothy, and the church in advancing the Kingdom of Heaven to the glory of God!