It is common to hear devout Evangelical Christians talk about “true Christians” or “true believers.” Most Americans claim to believe in God; particularly the Christian God. They may not regularly attend church or read the Bible, but millions of Americans say they believe in the Christian deity when asked. More than a few Evangelicals fall into this category. They occasionally attend church, throwing a few bucks in the offering plate when they do. Their Bibles largely go unread outside of opening them at their pastor’s direction during his sermons. Prayers are occasionally uttered, especially in times of trouble, but they rarely “pray without ceasing.” These nominal Christians make up the majority of Evangelical church memberships. Are they “true Christians?”
Typically, it is Christian apologists who differentiate between true and nominal Christians. It is important to them to divide fake Christians from real Christians. However, when asked to define the term “true Christian,” apologists rarely agree with each other over how the term is defined. Is it right beliefs alone that determine whether a person is a “true Christian?” Or is how a person lives their life the standard by which professing believers are judged? Or, perhaps, a “true Christian” is someone who has prayed the sinner’s prayer, putting his faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation? Or maybe, just maybe, a true Christian believes the right things and lives the right way. Of course, what, exactly, are the right things that must be believed (orthodoxy) or practiced (orthopraxy) for one to be a “true Christian?” Who decides what beliefs must be believed to be a “true Christian?” What beliefs, if any, are optional? Who decides what constitutes the behavior of a “true Christian?”
I grew up in the Evangelical church, making a public profession of faith in Christ at age fifteen. For the next thirty-five years, I lived my life as one who was a committed follower of Jesus; one who followed the teachings of the Bible. I was, in every way, a “true Christian.” Those who knew me best believed I was a “true Christian,” yet, today, countless Evangelical apologists say otherwise; that I was a fraud, a deceiver, a follower of Satan; that I led thousands of people astray, damning their souls to a Christless eternity. Nothing in my lived life suggests that this narrative is true. Critics will search in vain to find people who knew me that would justify their opinions about my life. By all accounts, I was a devoted follower of Jesus. Sure, I sinned just like any other Christian, but the bent of my life was towards holiness. As one woman who knew me well said, “If Bruce is not a Christian, nobody is.”
Apologists use the “true Christian” label to differentiate themselves from the rest of Christians. Much like Calvinists who call themselves “elect” or “predestined,” “true Christians” want everyone to know that they are not like those fake Christians. Read their blogs and websites and you will find substantial verbiage devoted to rooting out from their midst those who are not “true Christians.” No two apologists say the same thing about who and what a “true Christian” really is. You would think God would deliver the same “true Christian” message to Evangelical pastors and churches, but he doesn’t. Christians can’t even agree on the basics: salvation, baptism, communion.
“True Christians” want to be viewed as special; people who believe the right things and live the right way. “True Christians” are God’s chosen ones, not like the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. However, while it is certainly true that unbelievers have different beliefs from “true Christians,” their lifestyles are often different from and superior to that of many “true Christians.” Revival Fires, John, James, Dr. David Tee, and others who claim to be “true Christians,” behave in ways that are contrary to the teachings of the Bible. While believing the right things is important to what makes one a “true Christian,” so is living by the teachings of Christ. In fact, I would argue that behavior is superior to belief. When Jesus summed up the law and the prophets, he said:
Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:36-40)
Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it. Jesus said nothing about right beliefs. Love God, love your neighbor. During the end stage of my ministerial career, I often reminded church members that if we didn’t love our neighbors, we didn’t love God. Such thinking is uncommon in Evangelical churches. What matters to most Evangelicals is right beliefs, and right interpretations of the Bible. How else do we explain how vicious and hateful many Evangelicals are? Oh, they have the right beliefs — proudly so — but their behavior suggests that they don’t love their neighbors as themselves. And if they don’t love their neighbors as themselves? They don’t love God. I didn’t say this, God did. 🙂
Don’t tell me that you are a “true Christian,” show me. I know all I need to know about Christian beliefs. If you want to convince me that Christianity is true, I suggest you show me by how you live your life. Talk is cheap. It is unlikely that I will ever be convinced that Christianity is true. Still, I might come to admire and appreciate the followers of Jesus if they dared, you know, to actually practice the teachings of Christ, starting with those found in the Sermon on the Mount.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I should send this to an Evangelical cousin of mine. She gives a LOT OF LIP SERVICE to her version of ” Christianity “, yet she crashes & burns when mercy, compassion, forgiveness OR love come up. Not much forgiveness. In fact, IF I sent this to her, she’d get angry, hateful & defensive.
From what I see on the Internet nowadays, it’s not even about beliefs anymore, it’s about who you hate. Remember that idiot’s comment about the sin of empathy? Remember how he told Christians it was their duty to hate the minister who spoke to Trump about compassion? I’ve seen Christian accounts where the more people you hate, the better. Along with MAGA, American Christianity is a cult of hate. That is the only belief they care about (besides worshipping Trump.)
Apparently they conveniently FORGOT the passage ” you cannot serve two masters ” & think that DJT is a new Messiah.
If there IS an afterlife, they’re gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do…..
I enjoy reading novels set in the Civil Rights period, after the Supreme Court had made its desegregation decisions, which seem to have been as effective as a glass hammer in the South. I particularly enjoy those where a black person is accused of a crime, usually murder of a white person, and the defendant is represented by a white lawyer, laying his career on the line to do the right thing.
The hypocrisy of Christianity is laid absolutely bare in these types of book, especially curious when you realise that the authors themselves are often actually Christians, but obviously of a different kind. I find myself getting angry at grotesque characters (making me realise that atheists are wrong when they say that, you can’t get angry at an imaginary god!), who do all sorts of things in the name of ‘Jesus’, from insisting on stringing the ‘n….’ up, to certainly denying his rights to a trial, usually being horribly abusive to their spouse, then insisting the whole family go to church. Then they say grace over their meal, giving thanks for their blessings.
Of course, decent people will say ‘but they aren’t real Christians’. Nonsense. They say they are Christians, they comply with many of the rituals, so they are because there’s no formal qualification to becoming a Christian. If I claim to be a doctor then I have to be able to prove it by showing a certificate as to where and when I qualified. If I can’t do this then I can’t claim to be a doctor. There is no such equivalent in Christianity. If people behave decently then they may or may not be Christians. Decent behaviour isn’t the sole domain of Christians, rather it’s the domain of ‘decent people’. People who behave properly, as determined by societal consensus (obviously difficult sometimes to determine), simply INCLUDES people who may be Christian but includes also every other group in a society, from the homeless to Muslims, to politicians. Being in any particular group doesn’t automatically render you a decent person, but then neither does it exclude you.
About forty years ago I read a book about the history of the NAACP, with all the legal machinations of the fights to get particular cases appealed from State courts finally heard by the US Supreme Court. I hope this is the one. It is titled “The NAACP: Its Fight for Justice”. The publishing date of 1981 puts it in the ballpark of my recollections (Thanks to Google Gemini for leading me to the title). It was an eye-opener for a white Australian.
You can read it online at https://archive.org/details/naacpitsfightfor00finc/mode/2up. You will have to register, but I think I registered my account with a disposable email address.
Recently I read a comment about there being over 40,000 evangelical sects/churches worldwide, each claiming emphatically that only theirs is the Correct One. The commenter said that if god truly wanted everyone, everywhere, through the millenia, to know what he required of them through reading his special book, surely there shouldn’t even be two divisions. Simple soul that I am, if I was charged with making a book of rules, commands, advice and mandates for my followers, I think even I could make a better job of explaining what I wanted of my followers in a crystal clear way to them all.
“True Christian” is a gross misnomer. How about “true God-lovers”? Separate the sheep from the goats (‘my sheep hear my voice’).
Jesus insisted on a ‘new birth’ because ‘true lovers will love the Father from the inside out.’ That is, a godly inward life will produce positive outward actions.
I’m SPIRITUAL but not RELIGIOUS. It’s almost a cliche, & YET it’s TRUE. Religion can CHOKE THE LIFE out of SPIRITUALITY by strict blind unquestioning adherence to centuries – old formulaic dogma. Monotheistic Abrahamic faiths are stubborn about dogma.
‘….produce positive outward actions….’ That raised a smile, Arnold, well more of a cynical ‘ha, ha, ha,’ actually. I’ve deconverted (and like Bruce, I humbly suggest no one was more dedicated than I was for decades.) So now I volunteer at a secular project that helps others locally and at another that seeks to make a difference to needy folk abroad. I feel privileged to know some of my fellow-volunteers who are producing ‘positive outward actions’ for our village and far beyond. None of us are ‘true god lovers,’ we’re just trying to be decent human beings – and this might shock you – ‘good without god.’ We don’t need any outer force from up there in the sky to love others and work to help them – and that means being totally inclusive of every race, every sexual orientation and much more. I heartily wish you could be brave enough to step out of the darkness of your ‘true god lover’ existence into our sunshine, it’s great out here, no longer serving a fictitious sky fairy and his threats of eternal damnation to all who aren’t ‘true god lovers.’
I’m not at all shocked–I see many who are ‘good without god’. So, are you “inclusive” with an asterisk?
Sorry, what does ‘with an asterisk’ mean?’ Haven’t a clue
Among other references an asterisk can indicate an omission.
Bruce: “And if they don’t love their neighbors as themselves? They don’t love God. I didn’t say this, God did.”
Zoe: Perfect. And, how often do we get that thrown in our faces. ie). ‘I didn’t say it, God said it.’
Nice assist from David.
As someone who used to be a Christian in a sect very concerned with who is and isn’t a “real Christian” – because the belief was one’s eternal soul depends on being the “right” kind of Christian, I pretty much think that anyone who says they’re a Christian is a Christian. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of different kinds of Christians. Some act like wonderful people with compassion and care; others act like hateful, mean, judgmental people. All of them are Christian as far as I’m concerned.
I think we have expectations about how a “good Christian” should behave, but I don’t think the nastier-acting people are not Christians.
It isn’t up to me to determine who is or isn’t a “true Christian”.
It took a few years after deconverting for me to figure out that it isn’t in my job description as an atheist to decide what it means to be Christian. If someone self-identifies as such then I accept their claim at face value. If one Christian doesn’t accept another individual who claims Christian beliefs, I think the onus is on them to correct the situation. People are going to be who they are regardless of their belief system. The vocabulary they use may change but, respectful or obnoxious, their personality and the way they relate to others isn’t going to fundamentally change.
It took a few years after deconverting for me to figure out that it isn’t in my job description as an atheist to decide what it means to be Christian. If someone self-identifies as such then I accept their claim at face value. If one Christian doesn’t accept another individual who claims Christian beliefs, I think the onus is on them to correct the situation. People are going to be who they are regardless of their belief system. The vocabulary they use may change but, respectful or obnoxious, their personality and the way they relate to others isn’t going to fundamentally change.
I’ve had more than one conversation with liberal Christians who point out the contradictions of Trump evangelicals and claim they can’t be true Christians if they support an evil man like Trump. I point out that these people make the same claim about them. Interesting how an omnipotent being lacks the power to clear up misunderstandings like this.