Growing up Christian Reformed

Today a topic at Scot McKnight’s blog is “Trumanist” Christianity. The term comes from the movie The Truman Show, in which Jim Carey portrays a man who is unaware that he exists in a completely contrived world.

I, too, grew up as a Trumanist Christian, and like in the Southwestern Baptist Seminary article that McKnight references, in a denomination convinced it had the monopoly on the truly true Truth. (I wonder if there is anything to the title The Tru(e)-man Show, or if I am reading too much into it.)

I remember hearing several stories of how, when some scholar or another questing person seriously studied the Bible, he (it was always he) was convinced that the Christian Reformed denomination (sorry, SBC) was the one most Biblical.

We knew we were right, and that God had elected us so. So many churches had given up their Sunday evening services, but in our thanksgiving we could continue to faithfully dedicate that time to the Lord. And there were so many other kinds of church folks who broke the Sabbath, using it for pleasure and frivolity (and even yard work!) when the Lord had commanded we set it aside for study and rest.

Those poor Baptists who didn’t have their babies baptized--they had to agonize so much about the eternal fate of a child should it die, while we had the assurance that the Bible taught that the children of believers are holy.

No, the Christian Reformed Church held the keys to the way, the truth, and the life, and joyful were the elect who found their way into the true fold.

Among many of its members, the attitude still exists, along with a general fear of relocating anywhere outside the CRC "map."

I am very thankful for the Christian training I got growing up Christian Reformed, and I hold to Reformed theology quite strongly. But it's been wonderful to get out of the bubble (and it's not even politically correct to claim you have a bubble when you are Presbyterian[USA]) and meet my Baptist, and Methodist, and Disciples, and pentecostal, and charismatic, and non/multi-denominational, and Catholic, and emerging brothers and sisters.