What is a Christian?

[southernleftylady]

I see that CNN is making a special report...
"What is a Christian?"
so what is your answer to that?

[ronnykmarshall]

1. This should be good.

:popcorn:

[Taverner]

2. One who tries to be like Christ

Technically, you could be an athiest Christian if you pattern your ethics after Jesus.

[JerseygirlCT]

30. Yes, in it's simplest terms (I don't mean that in a bad way) it's a follower

of Christ.

The details of that become pretty personal, don't they?

[Deep13]

3. My understanding is that in practice...

...it is someone who believes people are evil by nature and that a divine sacrifice was necessary to redeem them. Christ was the god of the OT who became human for that purpose. By larger implication, suffering makes people holy, whatever that means.

[zeemike]

32. Boy are you confused

Christ was not a god of the OT and in fact was not a god at all
Christ is a title that means The saviour of man.
Jesus who is believed to be the predicted saviour of man or the christ taught the divinity of man and the forgiveness of sin

[BOSSHOG]

4. I find many "christians" in this country

(And I don't mean all) have a terribly hard time conceptualizing the relationship of religion and our constitution. Many think its just fucking god given that they should have each and every liberty and freedom in our constitution, but have a difficult time accepting that other American Citizens should have those same rights because of something "christians" read in their magic book. I'm also disturbed that said "christians" pick and choose in their magic book, using passages which justify their hate and ignoring those which would make their life uncomfortable. I don't understand it; and I don't think they are christians in Jesus eyes.

I am very confident in sayting that dobson, falwell, robertson and other radical clerics are not christians.

[Nederland]

5. Answer

Please keep in mind that the following answer is the one true answer and that any others the dissent from it are wrong.

Like all words, the definition of "Christian" depends entirely on how it is used by the people. Some people, like the poster above, might claim that you can be an atheist and a Christian at the same time. This is akin to insisting that the color blue is really red. Sure, words are just labels and there is technically nothing wrong with the idea of re-labeling blue to mean red, but unless people go along with your definition in the end you are just wrong.

I think, but do not know for sure, that most people use the word Christian to mean people that believe that Christ is the Messiah, came to earth, lived a sinless life and died to forgive us of our sins. That is definitely the classical definition of the Christian faith that applies equally to Catholics and the vast majority of Protestant faiths. Since that adds up to almost everybody that claims to be a Christian, I'd say they win by virtue of numbers.

BTW, I do not consider myself a Christian and think the whole idea of God giving a rat's ass about anything we do or say rather silly...

[Deep13]

18. pretty much

It is based in belief, not behaviour. Acting like a Christian (whatever that means) does not make one a Christian. It is believing that counts. After all, ethics and morality do not come from Jesus anymore than they come from any other religion.

[zeemike]

33. You meant to say that Jesus is the Messiah

Christ is the Messiah is like saying that the Pope is the leader of the church. Christ is a title and the proper way to say it is Jesus the Christ.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. True story I heard through a rabbi. Not a joke, I promise.

Jerry Falwell was getting a urological exam ca. 1978 and his doctor was Jewish (yeah, I know, Lynchburg has 97 Baptist churches). He was probing Jerry medically and philosophically.

He asked, "Jerry, what do you call a man who loves another man?"

Falwell's eyes lit up and answered, "Why, a homosexual, of course!"

The doctor thoughtfully responded, "That's funny you should say that. When I was growing up, I always heard it was a Christian."

Falwell shut up like a clam after that.

[greyl]

7. Christian (n) : a person who believes themselves to be a Christian.

Christian (adj) : veritably ambiguous term (see Christian (n))

edit: swapped ambiguous for meaningless

[grandyb]

9. I'm not sure how much interest there is in a definition to the term

Christian here..Actually leftist demos are pretty close in there ideology about the environment, social justice and challenging the status quo..Jesus was an activist, a perpetrator of human social justice, always challenging those who condemned others for life style indications. He was a person who called a spade a spade..Thank you very much but to be Christian is a follower of this man in all his goodness..To organize a religion was not the purpose of his existance..any religion...that just happened because men need power.

[newyawker99]

23. Hi grandyb!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[zeemike]

34. Welcome to DU And i agree....n/t

[Iwasthere]

8. Someone who blindly follows their minister or preacher...

... or the bible, without question. Or in a word, "Sheep!"

[Nederland]

10. Christ Agrees

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them..." -- John 10:27

:)

[Igel]

11. It's pretty much whatever someone who calls himself Christian

means by it.

By convention, we exclude mass murders and obvious atheists. But you can consider Jesus to be a sort of quasi-Gnostic philosopher or God in the flesh, a man who lived a decent life (but not more) or a perfect man who died for humanity.

There are traditional definitions; however, probably the majority of some mainstream churches don't meet them. Yet they're Xians.

The church I was in was pacifist, kept sort of kosher, and rejected both the cross as a symbol and Xmas, and yet it was firmly Xian, taking "communion" on Passover and only on Passover. For some people, I wasn't Xian. For others, I was a Nazi fundamentalist arch-Christian. Depends who you talk to, we don't have a Royal Academy dictating definitions, so you wind up with an inclusive and somewhat fuzzy definition.

[saltpoint]

12. Likely there'll be various and contradictory answers.

A Christian might be someone

who likely accepts the Messianic archetype;

who is not put off by focus on a small corner of the world over two thousand years ago;

who keeps some or all of the tenets of Judeo-Christian practice close to self;

who is willing to weigh the 3-year ministry of Jesus against evidence in support of and in contradiction to its principles;

who can understand or appreciate parables and indirect speech to establish context;

who is moved by the visible despair of those crowds who listened to Jesus in the New Testament;

who finds solace in the sense of inclusion offered by Jesus' words;

who believes in uplift of the human condition from disenfranchisement, poverty and humiliation;

who seeks community and finds it in a local church;

who applauds a sense of inclusion;

who finds sustaining value in ethical constructs;

who finds the fractured narrative of Jesus' life tragically but lyrically beautiful;

who are startled to discover passages of powerful inspiration like the Beatitudes;

who senses in the story of Jesus the deification of the ordinary and every-day;

who identifies with the notion of great sacrifice being necessary for some kind of redemption;

who is astonished by Jesus' widening the circle to include everyone;

who is struck by Jesus the rebel, Jesus the socialist, Jesus the solitary prophet, etc. -- someone who fights for what is right and true;

who has been mistreated or disregarded and senses in Jesus a presence, even if figurative, of another who has walked the same road;

who senses in Jesus a strange blend of quietude and anger at the events which surround him;

who is shaken by the force of the story in the Gospels and some of the mysterious figures there;

who is impressed with the nimble answers Jesus gives to the snide authorities;

who respects Jesus as someone who didn't follow all the rules, didn't paint by the numbers;

who is a presence, even if figurative, who welcoms them as they are -- a place of ultimate permission of Self;

and so on.

This is quite incomplete as a list, and definitely not the transhuman Jesus, just the Jesus of the impressions of many people who call themselves Christian. I believe modern Christians do not understand what is meant by Pauline Christianity and make no distinction between Paul's work and the work of James and the others who appeared to be quite uneasy with Paul. I mostly distrust Paul. I don't think he brought much clarity to Christianity, and I blame him outright for some of its sins.

In recent times Republicans have whipped the fundamentalist Christians into homophobic frenzies, anti-science frenzies, and so forth. For those people to allow themselves to be so led suggests to me that they are anti-Christian, not "Christian."

The bumpersticker, "Who would Jesus bomb?" is a pretty good one. It confronts these fundie Christians and forces them to make a distinction between their love of a Prince of Peace and their vote for a bloodthirsty monkey.

[JerseygirlCT]

28. Yeah, ok, I don't really need to answer -- you've covered it

and some!

I always felt the same about Paul. A friend recently led a pretty good lecture that gave me a few pauses, though. (Which is good!)

She thought that it was crucial to understand him in the context of his very real, very visceral belief that the end was near. Not in any metaphorical sense, but as in an hour. He was very bright, and very, very passionate -- in the way converts often are!

I do think he's very easily used by those for whom intolerance is comfort, though. For those who really require an authoritarian, law-and-order view of life and faith, he's easy to pigeon-hole. I'm not sure that was really his intent, though, at all.

But I do agree that my antenae immediately go up when people seem to put far more importance on his words (or those purported to be his) than on what we're told of Jesus' own words and life.

[zeemike]

35. Wow....nice post n.t

[LanternWaste]

13. In all seriousness, I think it's a pretty simple answer...

In all seriousness, I think it's a pretty simple answer. Someone who believes accepts Christ as their Lord and Saviour.

However, I'm the first to say that what we do with that promise while on earth is a serious bone of contention (definition-wise)

[JerseygirlCT]

29. But what does that mean to you?

(Not snarky, serious question).

What does the acceptance mean?

What does "Lord and Savior" mean?

I think the strength of Christianity lies in the breadth of possible meanings there.

[On the Road]

14. What is a Democrat?

(ultimately it depends on who identifies themselves as Christian.)

[LiberalFighter]

15. Someone that doesn't believe in Paul

[Deep13]

20. Historically and under present practices, it is someone who does.

[joeprogressive]

16. It's not Mitt Romney

Hey Christian Coalition, will you be supporting a non-Christian if Mitt gets the GOP nod? silence.......................

[Sapere aude]

17. I would guess that Christians are followers of the teachings of Christ as in the Gospels of

Mathew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible. Yet I have read the Gospels and what Jesus taught is not what the Christians who make a lot of noise politically preach. If you turn on the radio to a Christian station they are constantly quoting the Old Testament and the Gospels are in the New Testament.

I find that many so called non-Christians follow the teachings of Christ as in the Gospels yet they would not call themselves Christians.

[Deep13]

19. The real soul of Christianity is in Paul's epistles.

They pre-date the gospels and explore the Christian mythology in fact greater detail. The reason many non-Christians seem to be following Jesus' ethics is because they are universal in scope and not original to Christianity.

[JerseygirlCT]

31. I don't find them any less valuable for that.

In fact, that only underlines for me the importance of the message.

[Arugula Latte]

21. Is a person considered "Christian" without accepting the divinity of Christ?

Do other mainstream Christians, let's say, moderate Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics, consider someone a Christian if that person calls him/herself Xtian and thinks that Jesus had some good teachings and was a good philosopher and what have you, but doesn't believe in the son of god/rose from the dead stuff?

That might be a naive question -- sorry -- I am about as far removed from religion and religious people as one can get ...

[kineneb]

24. not by the classical definition

See the Nicene Creed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed

(this time, wikipedia is pretty good)

I am Buddhist, and think Jesus was a Bodhisattva. Lots of good stuff in the Synoptic Gospels, especially Mark and Matthew.

Most of the rest of the NT is dross. Paul invented a mystery religion out of a failed Jewish reform movement. The only other book to look at is James, which is not Pauline at all (it emphasizes good works and faith).

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. Using the derivation of "Christ", they should believe Jesus was divinely annointed

at least - because that's the meaning of 'Christ' in Greek. That wouldn't necessarily mean he was 'the son of god', though - and some people argue the first 3 gospels can be read as just saying Jesus was chosen by God, without being God.

[mitchtv]

22. "Faith without good works is dead"

that eliminates most who say /believe they are Christians.

[kineneb]

25. ah, James.

I hate it when I know the NT better than most Christians. Now gotta' slog through the OT.

[cosmik debris]

26. A person who puts sugar on his porridge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[More Than A Feeling]

27. Pshah, real Christians don't eat porridge!

Anyone who says differently is a deceiver sent from the Father of Lies!

[moggie]

37. Someone with strong opinions about chocolate

Chocopeniphobe? Is that a word?