Name labels

[nemorathwald]

There is an interesting conversation on saramichigan's blog between those who discard Jesus of Nazareth and those who prefer to salvage the good parts of his teachings. But how can you be a Christian who says Jesus is sometimes wrong? Isn't that a contradiction in terms when it comes to a man who demands nothing less than your complete and utter subjugation? Describing the level of sacrifice that he requires, he compares it to your horrific death by torture: Matthew 10:38; Matthew 10:37-39 Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34: Mark 8:33-35: Luke 9:23; Luke 9:22-24 You have to brainwash and enslave your mind so that truths contradicting what you are taught can never even be considered: 2 Corinthians 10:5. He doesn't say "follow my ideas," he doesn't say "love is the way," he says "I AM THE WAY. I AM LOVE. I AM PERFECTION PERSONIFIED." The guy is a megalomaniac cult leader.

This is more like the Flaming Eye of Mordor than the cute and harmless depiction so often presented, but even if that were not the case, why should I call myself by the name of a person? Buddhist, Christian, Krishna, or what have you. When you do that, you're attaching yourself to everything about that person, both pro and con, and suddenly you can not admit to any imperfection in that person. It's not enough to appreciate some of their ideas, or you'd name yourself after the ideas, wouldn't you?

For example, there is a good reason that I call myself a libertarian and not a "Randist." Despite her valuable contributions to libertarianism, Ayn Rand was a nasty and unpleasant person who I would not even want to have lunch with. The rightness or wrongness of a message is not dependent on the likeability of the messenger. This is why it's never right to exalt any guru or teacher by labeling one's self by attachment to that person. Even if you can't find a flaw in them, it's a limitation on further impovement. If you glue your feet to the shoulders of the giants on which you stand, you can never get higher. cosette_valjean ultimately decided for this reason to drop the label "Christian" and call herself a "love-ist."

So back to the question for the nice, non-cultist Christians out there: If you call yourself a Christian, but acknowledge that part of Christ's teaching and example is morally wrong, often harmful, and deserves to be rejected, what use is there in keeping the name?

Comments

[delosd.livejournal.com]

OK, being the devil's advocate for a moment, let's consider evangelical Christians. (Seriously devil's advocate, since I'm Jewish. ) There is a very basic reason why the name of Christ is used to refer to his followers - because they believe him to have been the son of God. Whatever they may think of Christ's teachings, no matter how much or how little they respect them, they consider Christ to be a deity that died for their sins, and that they can find salvation through Christ's intervention. Thus it makes perfect sense to call the religion by the name of its founder, they're not just talking about a teacher or popularizer, they're talking about someone they consider to be God.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

I agree, the reason for making the name of the religion "Christianity" is simple, and inseparable from what it actually teaches. I'm not advocating someone stay in the religion and just not call themselves Christians. This is pretty much all or nothing. To be consistent, it's necessary to either grovel in abject cult victimization or leave the religion outright. He has allowed no middle ground, and even comes right out and says in the passages I cited "you aren't my follower without 100%." "Whatever they may think of Christ's teachings" you say? This seems to imply someone can follow Jesus -- even consider him to be the god of the universe, which by definition is infinite in all perfections -- and at the same time disagree with him and/or not respect him. How does that work?

[delosd.livejournal.com]

Well, first of all, who claims that people are consistent in their beliefs? But that aside, let's take up your question. I'm going to categorize a bit, so as to make discussion easier.

#1) Evangelicals that believe that the New Testament is the infallible word of God, and absolute truth in all particulars.

People that believe this but still don't follow/agree with 'the word' exactly can have multiple (and very human) motivations. One is that they would like to follow the word, but are too weak and prone to human frailties. Another is that they simply consider some things to be too hard to follow, or they are too lazy to follow them, but they know that since the core of their belief is that Jesus died for their sins, as long as they have truly accepted Jesus as their savior they will go to heaven. (Yes, this is a double-think sort of situation, but it is not logically undefensible.) In fact, by that logic, even if they consciously and willfully reject elements of Jesus' philosophy and teachings, they'll still get their heavenly reward.

#2) Christians that believe that Jesus is their savior, but that the New Testament is NOT necessarily the absolute truth.

How can this happen? You can have people that believe that while Jesus was God, the people that actually wrote the stories and accounts of him were just fallible human beings, and they easily could have made mistakes in recounting, or unintentionally (or even intentional) added their own biases or beliefs to the account. However, even if some of the details of the message are wrong, they still get the Heaven Insurance Plan as referred to in #1 above. :)

#3) Christians that neither believe in the infallibility of Biblical text, or in the concept of Jesus as deity.

Yes, there are Christians who follow christian belief because they agree with some or all of the philosophical concepts. However, one does not have to agree with everytenet of a philosophy in order to consider oneself an adherent of that philosophy. Continueing to call themselves 'Christian' even if they don't accept all Biblical teachings is simply a way of acknowleging the primacy of Jesus' teachings in their philosophy. And besides there aren't any good names for someone that believes in Christian philosophy without being Christian. (Well, except possibly for Unitarianism. )

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

The motivations are a lot more comprehensible when viewed in the way you describe.

And besides there aren't any good names for someone that believes in Christian philosophy without being Christian. This is what's needed. Time to rev up the meme-machine. I will start soliciting suggestions from each of them that I meet.

Steve is dead on

[dawnwolf.livejournal.com]

Especially in point #2. But even if one dosen't question the authenticity of Biblical accounts, there all all sorts of varieties of Christianity out there - from Unity Christians to the Society of Friends to - well, Unitarians would be pushing it - precisely because people have different approaches to the beliefs contained in different versions of the Bible. And then there's the Gnostic gospels, etc. They're all Christians because that's how they choose to identify, regardless of whether one sect of 'em agrees with the rest - or even with everything in their particular version of the Bible - or not.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Get out of my head! The issues you're bringing up and the questions are the same ones I have in my head, but which I have trouble articulating. In some ways, I understand fundamentalists better than "Cafeterians" and liberal Christians. I LIKE liberal Christians better, but think they're on less solid theological ground. Like you said, the gospels don't seem to leave much room for middle ground or "lukewarm" believers.

I'm calling myself a slightly deistic agnostic these days

[cosette-valjean.livejournal.com]

Just thought I would clarify that although I certainly live my life by love and always will. If I believe in anything, it would be in the power and purity of love.