{"id":185,"date":"2012-08-26T16:23:17","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T05:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skepticblogs.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=185"},"modified":"2013-01-16T02:35:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T02:35:10","slug":"do-christians-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2012\/08\/26\/do-christians-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Christians exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was a Christian for 17 years.\u00a0 During those years, nobody ever said to me \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re really<\/em> a Christian\u201d.\u00a0 A lot of Christians knew me very well.\u00a0 If anyone suspected anything, they never said it.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not a Christian now.\u00a0 Many of my friends still are, and some of them find my case a little confusing.\u00a0 Mostly guided by certain biblical passages I won\u2019t list here, many people have simply concluded that, despite appearances, I must never have been a Christian at all.<\/p>\n

So, Was I ever really a Christian?<\/em><\/p>\n

My answer to this question proves that I still sometimes think like a theologian:<\/p>\n

Yes<\/em>………<\/p>\n

………and No.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before I explain my answers, let me just say that I\u2019ve actually given up on trying to convince people I was really a Christian, and I\u2019m not going to try again here.\u00a0 If I convinced one Christian my faith was genuine, the guy next to him would probably disagree.\u00a0 The thing is, there are so many different answers to the question, What is a Christian?<\/em><\/p>\n

Since leaving the fold, I have been much more interested in hearing how Christians describe their religion and what it takes to be a true believer.\u00a0 I\u2019ve asked dozens of Christians, and received dozens of contrasting answers.\u00a0 In fact, if I took any one Christian\u2019s definition of Christianity as authoritative, most Christians would not really <\/em>be Christians at all!\u00a0 In particular, my<\/em> definition of Christianity would clash in at least one small detail with virtually any other person\u2019s definition.<\/p>\n

When I was a Christian, this didn\u2019t seem to matter. \u00a0I often debated minor points of theology with other Christians.\u00a0 Eventually, when we dropped the issue, we\u2019d think about how great it was that God accepted us despite our differences, though I\u2019m sure we both went away convinced the other guy was misguided.<\/p>\n

But now I find that the slightest difference in the interpretation of a verse or doctrine is enough to bring out that triumphant and seemingly all-important conclusion: \u00a0I knew it!\u00a0 You were never really a Christian at all!<\/em><\/p>\n

So, Was I ever really a Christian?<\/em><\/p>\n

First let me explain why I might answer No<\/em>.\u00a0 In my former life, one of the most crucial elements of my definition of a Christian was Someone that has a real relationship with Jesus<\/em>.\u00a0 Since I no longer believe that the God of the Bible is a real being, and that it is not possible to have a real relationship with Jesus, I now believe that I was never a Christian according to that definition.\u00a0 While I certainly used to believe I had real experiences of the God of the Bible, I am now of the opinion that such experiences were delusional and explainable by psychology.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the catch.\u00a0 I now believe that nobody is a Christian<\/em> according to that definition.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, my current understanding of Christianity has a very slight modification built into that key sentence.\u00a0 Now I would insert a couple of crucial words, and speak of Someone that thinks they have<\/strong> a real relationship with Jesus<\/em>.\u00a0 With this understanding, of course I was a Christian, and nobody could dispute this apart from accusing me of not even knowing what I used to believe.\u00a0 Furthermore, under this new definition, I now recognise many Christians I would not have recognised before.<\/p>\n

So to the Christians that have accused me of never being a Christian at all: I can only agree with you insofar as I do not think you<\/strong> are a Christian yourself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But I think there is an even bigger problem for these Christians.\u00a0 How could you<\/strong> ever know that you<\/strong> were a true Christian?<\/em>\u00a0 I was utterly convinced that I would never leave the faith, so certainty is no indication of your future.\u00a0 If it was truly the case that no real<\/em> Christian could ever leave the faith, you could only be sure that you were truly a Christian if you had already died!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a Christian for 17 years.\u00a0 During those years, nobody ever said to me \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re really…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[188,191,197],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apostasy","category-christianity","tag-apostasy","tag-christianity","tag-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}