Christianity as belief system or way of life

I'm still early on in Brian McLaren's book Finding Our Way Again. The first chapter is on 'Searching For An Everyday Sacredness.'

He shares a story about a bookstore manager who said the most popular books (at that time: 2008) were 1) how to get rich in the new information economy, but 2) books about spirituality, and in particular, books about Buddhism. The person telling the story wondered why books on Buddhism were so popular, and not books on Christianity. He says,

"I think it's because Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, and Christianity presents itself as a system of belief."

I present to you our present political situation in the USA as a more recent example. The GOP candidate, who everyone recognizes as one of the most vile, crass, pompous people to ever enter the political arena, is also seen by so many as the "Christian" candidate. One of the few (and humorous) bits of info I heard about the recent Republican convention in Milwaukee was how the popular gay hookup site Grindr crashed due to overuse during said convention. They spew a system of belief, but sport a shallow everyday spirituality.

McLaren says, "The word spiritual captures this reintegration for us [restoring normalcy to the rhythms of life involving prayer, generosity, sabbath, fasting, pilgrimage, a sacred meal, and liturgical year] for us; it says, 'We don't believe that conventional organized religion has all the answers for us, nor does secular, reductionist science. We need a fusion of the sacred and the secular. We need an everyday sacredness.' The word spirituality tries to capture that fusion..."

On into chapter 2 he then expands this thinking into... "As such, spiritual practices are pretty earthy, and they're not strictly about spirituality as it is often defined; they're about humanity." !!!

Yes! I will always remember Reggie McNeal saying discipleship is basically (something like) "becoming more human." You know, as in 'the way God originally created us to be!'

So, you know, it's easy to point to how others are viewing Christianity as a mere belief system but not really living it out as a way of life. The more difficult task, of course, is considering the log (or forest) in my own eye. How am I living out the way of Jesus (or following Jesus) in my own life?

I suppose Jesus would continue reading this book for starters... ;)

What are YOU doing to be more human?