~ True Believers Aren’t Only Christian

I want to dedicate this to a friend of mine Kate who made me see that we often write to a self perceived audience: thanks Kate.
In a conversation recently I realized that we often use words innocently enough that may have an overburden of intent, for Christians this includes one word that I have used in the title, two maybe; True, and more specifically, believers.
I’m sure that most people know the story of the man who thought he had a great idea and went on to invent the item he believed would make his idea work. It took time and so the story goes nine hundred and ninety nine times but on the thousandth attempt his experiments eventually succeeded. The man’s name was Thomas Alva Edison and the item was the electric light globe. He was a man of vision and created many products that we take for granted. But beyond the vision he was a True Believer, after all Jesus told the story of the one sheep that was lost of a hundred, Edison pushed his experiment to ten times that to see a result. Edison may have been a Christian, his wife definitely was, but regardless his vision and belief in the new technology resulted in 1093 patented inventions, he was a true believer.
“True Believers” come in all sort of areas. The Football true believer is possibly a universal code, concept, a person who will support a team regardless of their win/loss ratio, or championship success for decades. In Victoria there are supporters who have been and still are waiting for a Premiership flag since the last one that was fifty years ago. For some of these true believers it must surely rank as almost a religious fervour, a statement of faith that their beloved team will again hold up the trophy at the end of the season. Of course from observation, supporting a team in football, regardless of position in the stats becomes almost a statement of faith. This tends to come out at events like live games where supporters of both teams are allowed to mingle. Just to listen to the good versus evil vitriol of footballers tends to remind me, at least, of the sort of argument within Christian dogma.
So what has this to do with a person’s faith, Or anything else for that matter?
Faith is not a true or false statement. This might sound weird coming from a public Christian but it is true. As a Christian I choose Jesus as my motivator, it is only by faith and experience that I believe He is the right choice. I would imagine that people who chose Wicca, or Islam, Buddhism or even secular humanism or Atheism might make a very similar argument to me. “This is very much a quasi Gen Y concept, who seem to base their life choices on “what works for me.”
This is not to say that I accept any or even an alternate as just as valid as following the leadership of Jesus. He said that “He was the way the truth and the life” and then went on to say “No man comes to the Father (God) but by me.” This is the point where other faiths differ from Christianity. Some are willing to accept Jesus as one of their group of gods, others are quite willing to co-exist in isolation, while others are apathetic, and yet others are anti-anything associated with Christianity. Only time and death will tell who is ultimately right, but I am backing Jesus on that score.
Faith, if I am being brutally honest, is not about a secret knowledge, understanding or a sacred writing, but in what you invest your life and what gives your life meaning. For the Christian there is the concept of the now and not yet, now in terms of our daily life and the not yet looks forward to a life beyond this; after all I there is no life after this why was Jesus brought back to life?
For me, I see my here and now as an opportunity to reflect Jesus to those around me, so that in some way they may see the real Him, and desire to be introduced to my Best Mate and Saviour. This is my highest calling so that they too may be able to experience the highs of living the Jesus life, as the Christian Hippies us to say in the 70’s “Jesus, He’s the natural high.”