Will the Real Christian Please Stand Up
I have been known to start up debates and discussions with Christians on more than a few occasions. Some might even call it picking a fight or even a form of intellectual or spiritual bullying of those less knowledgeable about religion than I am. In any case, one drawback to doing this is that I hear the same claims and arguments a million times over from Christians who just don’t know the facts and history of their own religion. Today, I would like to focus on one of the more bizarre things that I hear over and over again from so many Christians. Many times when I have these discussions with Christians, they will tell me at one point in the conversation that Christianity is the majority religion in the world and that all those people can’t be wrong. This claim of truth by popularity isn’t new, nor is it bizarre in and of itself. However, later in the conversation, these same Christians talk about how Christians are always being persecuted for their beliefs because they are in such a minority not only here in America but also in the world in general.
Now, for an atheist like me who relies on logic and reason, these two statements seem on the surface to be completely and totally contradictory. How is it logically possible for Christianity to be both the majority religion and, at the same time, for Christians to be the persecuted minority? Such statements are enough to short-circuit the logic chips of the HAL 9000. While it is to no surprise to me that many Christians often have a logic of their own, which by most standards would be considered illogical, this is surprisingly not one of those times.
After exploring these statements further with many Christians, I have solved this paradox, which unfortunately for Christians, leads to a Pandora’s Box of problems for them. But first, let’s decipher this paradox. When Christians say that they are the majority religion, they are factually correct. More than half the world identify themselves as Christians. And here in the United States, that number reaches roughly 80 percent. However, every Christian I have met, without fail, has made a claim resembling the idea that they are a “real” Christian, while some other person claiming to be Christian is not a real Christian. For instance, if you were to ask a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian who they would consider to be fake Christians, they would quickly point a finger at people claiming to be Christians who just go to church on Sundays and then live their lives. They might also point to people who claim to be Christians but don’t hate gays or protest abortion clinics and claim that those Christians aren’t living the full or true “word of God.”
On the flip side of the spiritual spectrum, if you were to ask more politically liberal Christian the same question, they would very quickly point fingers at those Christians previously mentioned and claim that these false Christians don’t love thy neighbor as thyself, nor do they follow the “turn the other cheek” philosophy, which they claim Jesus was all about. These Christians think that the other Christians give Christianity a bad name and that they don’t represent the true beliefs of Jesus or God.
And then there are the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Almost no one outside of their ranks believes they are “True” Christians, and not surprisingly, almost no one in their ranks believes that anyone outside of their denominations are “real” or “True” Christians. In fact, for every Christian claiming to be a “real” or “True” Christian, there are a ton of other Christians claiming that that Christian isn’t a Christian at all or is a “Christian In Name Only.” In other words, they are fake Christians.
It is in this way that most Christians see themselves as being in the minority. One Christian explained it this way. Even though over 80 percent of people call themselves Christians, only half go to church. And of that half, only a third can “rightly” be called evangelical. So, in actuality, instead of 80 percent, this Christian wanted to claim 13.2 percent of Americans to be Christian. Of course, this number only came up when it was advantageous to be a minority.
This reasoning, however, creates some problems for Christians. If, for example, we were to ask all of these different Christians who the “real” Christians were, they would all have different answers. Many would actually have diametrically opposed answers. But surely there must be some sort of independent analysis we could do to figure out who the “real” Christians actually are, right? Wrong. You see, the Bible is the common source document for all Christians, so in order for us to prove someone’s “Christianhood,” we would have to square their beliefs and actions with the Bible. The problem is that there are passages in the Bible that do indeed justify the claims of all of these different Christians. And while there are also passages that contradict the claims and actions of any one of these Christian claimers, it would be hard to make the argument that because a particular Christian doesn’t follow a particular passage that they could not be a Christian. The reason? There is no shortage of passages in the Bible that no Christian follows. All you have to do is go to any atheist website to find them. Plus, many passages in the Bible contradict other passages in the Bible. In fact, whole sections contradict other whole sections. I don’t want to go into too much detail about this here, you can do your own homework. Needless to say, that the message of Jesus is sometimes a message of peace and other times a message of “the sword.”
This being the case, the Bible can actually be all things for all people. That is the real “Truth” about Christianity and as a result, anyone claiming to be a Christian has equal validity to the title. Of course, one could easily argue the other way, too, that in fact, no one is a real Christian at all and that Christianhood is actually impossible. I mean who could really smite thy enemies and turn the other cheek. In the end, I prefer to accept everyone’s claim of Christianhood… it gives me people to debate with.
Filed under: Real Christians, Religion
