“He
Wasn’t A REAL
Christian”
Responses_to___He_Wasnt_a_REAL_Christian
So oft times when we Freethinkers point out to a Fundy yet another Christian televangelist caught with his pants down, or another pile of Christian corpses having killed themselves for some obscure theological reason, or yet more Catholic priests turd-burgling little boys, we are met with uncomprehending stares. They tell us they don’t understand what that televangelist or this latest pile of carnage or those priests have to do with their religion. The dreaded Christian blank-face look appears, a "force field" is thrown up around their brain, and out comes the knee-jerk photon torpedo response they've been trained to parrot: "Those people messed up? Well then, those people must not have been real Christians in the first place!"
Is 100% compliance to all the laws and rules of The United States a requirement to maintaining one's citizenship here? Of course not. People such as the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart break the law when they pick up hookers in Indio, California (October 11, 1991) but no one doubts their citizenship because of that. Likewise, is 100% compliance to all the rules and regulations of "The Kingdom of Heaven" a requirement to retaining one's citizenship in "The Kingdom of Heaven"? Of course not. The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart was a REAL Christian before, during, and even after, the prostitute incident, and if he was screaming "Praise Jesus!!!" as he climaxed in his white Jaguar, so what?
It makes me wonder whatever happened to the Christian bumper sticker "Christians Aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven". For what these Fundies really mean, when you translate it, is that Christians are indeed perfect, for if and when any show signs that they weren't perfect, well then, they weren't Christians to start with, because Christians are perfect and CAN'T mess up. And round and round the "logic" goes. Of course, seeing how their "logical conclusion" requires perfect and sinless Christians, and seeing how their own Bible admits there are no such creatures (1 John 1:8-10) the only real logical conclusion to be drawn is that "real" Christians don't exist- never did, never will. So next time a Fundy pulls the "he wasn't a REAL Christian" excuse on you, hit him over the head with THAT bit of information, and then ask HIM for his OFFICIAL membership card that proves he himself is what he says others aren't.
Imagine the following short conversation:
Christian: "He wasn't a real Christian."
Skeptic: "And YOU are? Prove it!"
Dear Christian friends: since you can't even prove that you yourself are a "real" Christian, how the hell can you prove someone else, usually a total stranger thousands of miles away, isn't? And on top of that, I ask you: who set you up as the official judge & jury over all the other Christians in the world, to determine who is or isn't or was or wasn't a "real" Christian? Who the hell are you to be the judge? Do you have magical powers to look inside the hearts of strangers, of people you have never even met? Who are you to usurp the role of Biblegod as judge of all mankind? Did he hire you to commence and run Judgment Day a little early, that you are now the official spokesman for Biblegod to tell the rest of the world who are and aren't the "real" Christians? Have you been authorized to set up your own private "Judgment Day" to stamp "saved" or "unsaved" upon the "souls" of the living and those who've been dead for centuries? What ever happened to the following verses- they no longer apply to YOU???
Matthew 7:1} Judge not, that you be not judged.
Luke 12:14} But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?"
Romans 2:1} Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.
Romans 2:3} Do you suppose, O man, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?James 4:12} There is one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you that you judge your neighbor?
Like
James said, who are you, that
you judge your neighbor to be or not to be a "real" Christian? You who
are in a church don't even know if someone else in even your same church is or
is not a "real" Christian, so how can you judge someone you've never
even met? Who set you up to judge all Christians far and near who are less than perfect (as if you
yourself aren't), condemning all to "hell" with your
flippant
“Well, they must not have been REAL
Christians to start with, for real Christians would
never do such a thing!”
Have you never messed up yourself, made a mistake, or fallen short of some goal? Are you everything that a "real" Christian should be? Should Christianity take Jesus down from its pedestal and put your happy ass in his place? Does it turn out that YOU are the only perfect Christian to ever have existed in the history of this planet??? The answers are obvious to all except the most calloused hearted Fundies.
Another problem that arises is the fact that Christians themselves can't even agree on a definition of the word "Christian" (See my essay: God Is Not The Author ). Due to this fact, they really aren't qualified to tell us who was or wasn't a "real" Christian, since they can't even agree on what makes a person a Christian or what the hell a REAL Christian is to start with! If you can't define what a Martian is, then you also can't tell us what a Martian is not! Some have even said that the only REAL Christian that ever lived got himself crucified 2,000 years ago! Of course, if Christianity had an official membership card (with secret decoder ring included!) this whole controversy wouldn't even exist. As it is, are we non-Christians supposed to somehow keep up with all of Christianity's internal squabbling, judging who is or isn't a "real" Christian, and if so, judging by whose definitions???
Christians have tried to define their problem children out of existence with this knee-jerk response of theirs that has been justly criticized by Humanists thusly:
Suppose a secular Humanist were to say something along the line of:
A secular humanist could NEVER do anything unethical; that would not be a secular humanist thing to do. Only good people are secular humanists!
What is wrong with this picture? By defining a member of your group as being good BY DEFINITION, one can conveniently avoid being associated with the doers of evil.#1
Let me translate that so even the most hard-hearted Christian can understand it. What you Christians have done, by implication and by following your reasoning to its logical conclusion, is to have set up the following underlying syllogism:
A real Christian would never have sinned.
Rev. X sinned.
Therefore, Rev. X was never a real Christian.
---in other words---
All Christians are perfect.
Rev. Jim Jones wasn't perfect.
Therefore, Rev. Jim Jones wasn't a Christian.
Whether the Christians want to own up to the above syllogism or not, that is what they're basing their excuse of "he was never a real Christian" upon. Anytime any Christian anywhere does anything wrong, that's the FIRST thing out of the mouths of all the other Christians: "Oh him, he did WHAT?!!? Well, he must not have been a real Christian, for a real Christian would never have done that."
The
author has noticed, since 9/11, that this excuse is not limited to Christians.
Islamic clerics have also been using the same excuse, saying that the terrorists
who do these atrocities "are not real Muslims". I wonder
if they learned this rhetorical tactic from the Christians???
What exactly are Christians (or Muslims) implying when they casually dismiss wrong-doing in their ranks with their magical wand of an excuse? They are implying that “real Christians” (or Muslims) are physically incapable of ever doing such wrong things. The implication is that any people who ever claimed to be Christians, but weren’t morally 100% perfect, must have been lying about being Christians all along. Is this a valid option for Christians? No, and once again it me the Atheist that has to teach the Christians their own damn Bible, for according to Jesus, NO ONE IS “GOOD” except Biblegod.
Why are you asking Me about what is good?
There is only One who is good.#2
Therefore,
there are NO good Christians: never were, never will be. Being a Christian (at
least according to Jesus) doesn't make one good, much less perfect. And study
after study has confirmed this, that Christians are no better off morally than
their non-Christian neighbors. Prisons are filled with Christians.
Also
in the Christian Bible we find that ALL
CHRISTIANS HAVE AND PRACTICE “SIN” and any Christian who claims otherwise is a
LIAR. The Apostle John, writing to
Christians in one of his last epistles, said:
If we [Christians] say that we have no sin,
we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us...If we say that we have not sinned, we
make Him to a liar, and His word is not in us.#3
John
is implying that Christian churchgoers aren’t perfect, and he’s
not alone in that opinion. Listen to the Apostle Paul echo John's sentiments as
he describes the moral climate of the
church in Corinth:
For I am afraid that perhaps when I come
[to the church at Corinth] I may find... strife, jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders,
gossip, arrogance, disturbances;
I am afraid that when I come again my God may humiliate me before you, and I
may mourn over many of those
who have sinned in the past
and not repented of the impurity,
immorality and sensuality which they have
practiced.#4
Do
these ancient Christians sound like “sinless” or even "good" people? Yet these
Christians, whom Paul called “saints” and “sanctified” (1C 1:1-3), would not even
be called Christian by many modern churchaholics, as these
Christians would not fit their home-made definition of “Christian”. These
ancient Christians would have been chopped out of their theological family tree as an
embarrassment; chopped out via the knee-jerk "Oh them? The Corinthians?
Well, they're not real Christians."
Christians
dismiss the embarrassing “black sheep” of their flock with the magic wand of
"They're not REAL Christians” yet the fact is, they WERE “real” Christians, and their
Christianity IS what probably caused their problems in the first place, for
what they did is an example of the craziness that we Freethinkers keep
telling you deaf Christians Christianity causes in some people. When
you hand out a blank-check morality to people, telling them that any evil they
do can be forgiven, what do you expect?
You see these Christian screw-ups, yet you ignore the cause. You blindly stumble on, like addicted smokers coughing your brains out while denying between coughs that you are coughing! “Oh, them?? Well, smoking may cause coughing and cancer in them, but never in me, because ...” Listen! Christianity causes BRAIN DEATH as surely as cigarettes cause cancer. No, not EVERY one who smokes will get cancer, and not every crack addict will wig out and jump off a building. BUT WHY ARE YOU TAKING THE RISK, why are you flirting with poison, why are you playing with fire when so many around you have burned out (or burned up-- literally) already??? Christianity, in SOME people, leads to mental illness, and yes, THESE WERE REAL CHRISTIANS. Yes, those people at Jonestown and Waco were “real” Christians too, as real a Christian as you and the guy in the pew next to you. Their Christianity was real, and is what turned them into Christian corpses. We live in a cause and effect universe, and there is cause and effect going on here- connect the corpses, connect the dots, join the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle- it’s not that hard. These people were real Christians, and their Christianity contributed to their deaths.
To sum up, I'll use the words of Del Hitchcock} Next time you feel like telling the world who is or isn't or was or wasn't a "real" Christian, stick out your hands: do you see any holes thru them? If not, then...
shut
the fuck up!!!
#1) Dec. 27, 1995 AOL posting from MetroBC@aol.com #2) Matthew 19:17, NASB
#3) 1st John 1:8-10, NASB
#4) 2nd Corinthians 12:20,21, NASB
Responses to He Wasnt a REAL Christian
Table of Contents
Subject: jim jones, socialist/liberal Date: 12/17/2005 10:49:53 P.M. Pacific Standard Time From: SjDusk Reply To: To: JCnot4me
Mark Smith here} Yes, here we see a perfect example of how Christians ignore any negative evidence towards their religion. And guess what? When you ONLY let thru the POSITIVE evidence, golly gee, everything looks pretty darn good! No, according to this knucklehead, since Jim Jones wasn't HIS type of Christian, then Jim Jones must not have been a Christian at all. I'm sure that "SjDusk" keeps the official membership book of Christianity in his nitestand drawer.
One request for this xtian: First PROVE to me beyond a doubt that you yourself are a Christian, before you go and try to prove someone else isn't. You can't.
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