What is a 'true Christian'?

Hi, Archer. I'm glad you started this thread for many reasons; the listing and explication of them is probably irrelevant.Hypocritically judgmental Christians, as pious and smug as they were grasping and mean-spirited, led me to a precocious atheism by the age of 10: nowhere else could I see a gulf so wide between professed belief and conduct, except, perhaps, among southern politicians, who were just an acute subset.Yet I have met extraordinary people who were Christians; I've met extraordinary people who were not Christians, yet who lived Jesus' creed more sincerely than the vast majority of professed Christians.The doctrinal/historical inconsistencies of conservative, evangelical Christians are apparent; Catholic Scientist et alia are doing a fine job of exploring those in this thread (I really like CS until he pisses me off ).So I'd say this: A true Christian is someone who sincerely tries to live by the precepts of Jesus of Nazareth, knowingly or not.I don't think he was any more divine than you or me, but he was certainly a moral and ethical genius.How do you spot these true Christians? I'd offer one first-order Electric Kool-Aid Christian Test: They don't throw stones.

I understand your objection about the Good Aborigine.I'd call him a true Christian anyway, just as I would someone who fit the description but lived before Jesus. I think the qualifying essence doesn't require knowing anything about Jesus: it's not a dictionary definition. After all, Jesus wasn't a Christian, either, in that fashion of strictly speaking.On the other hand, I'm a deeply flawed atheist with a history of violence, so there you go. A long time ago, and I don't remember what--it just occurred to me as I typed. Pay more attention to the like and the smile.

I'd have left off the "knowingly or unknowingly." If we'd been sitting in a pub, I could've just socked you in the arm in a manly man kinda way.

I mostly self-identify as an atheist because every human formulation of divinity is so...small; perhaps, if one could worship a vast universe becoming aware of itself and call that god, I wouldn't.Plus, I'm stingy with belief. I've been hurt before. When I formulated my knowingly or unknowingly clause, I imagined some legalistic contemporary of Jesus (or almost any American Christian, now) insisting that the 99% of humanity who hadn't gotten the word was damned to eternal torment, and I thought, Who is the truer Christian? That guy or Buddha? Or that guy or the Good Samaritan? Seemed like a no-brainer. Spinach much?

Which is what you might expect in the years following a teacher who emphasized the strong authority of personal spiritual experience: early Christians could testify to their understanding of what was revealed to them in prayer.That genie got stuffed back in the bottle pretty damn quick.It didn't take long to get from the Kingdom of Heaven is within you to sit down and shut up.