I don’t think it’s presumptuous to say that Trump isn’t a Christian. I think that’s pretty clear. It’s something he has to claim to get political support. And his behavior and rhetoric don’t really align with any interpretation of Christianity that I’m aware of; these days, republicanism and fundamentalism are often conflated, but even I wouldn’t assume that someone is a Christian just because of their politics.
My interest is more with your reference to “the biblical definition of ‘saved’”. If you are implying that there is a clear, singular, biblical definition of what it means to be saved, can you point me to what that is? Because to my knowledge, this is not something that’s unambiguously laid out in any single passage. Some people think that if you receive salvation once, it cannot be lost no matter what you do (my Baptist church). Others think that you’re only saved if you show evidence of good works, and that you can lose salvation through sin or turning away. Others think humans have zero input in it, and we are predestined by God to be saved or condemned before we are born (Calvinists). And all of them find evidence for these things in the Bible, right?
In light of that, I was just curious what your biblical definition of salvation is, because it says something about where on the spectrum you fall. It sounds a little bit like you are saying “truly saved” people must be outwardly changed if their salvation was real. Is that accurate?
Another question I might ask is: is there a difference between someone who sins every day and is unrepentant, and someone who commits those exact same sins yet repents every evening and asks forgiveness? What’s the practical benefit of repenting, even if it’s heartfelt, if it does not change behavior?
“It isn’t that people shouldn’t speak or share their negative or traumatic experience with Christians but rather that Christians need to point out the behaviors that are not a part of Christ or the faith.”
I gotcha. I definitely agree that people of faith need to be holding each other accountable. I’m writing a piece now in which I include a plea for liberal/moderate Christians to help address the harmful influence of fundamentalists. So I’m glad there are people like you talking about that. Many Christians seem to have forgotten that Christ said to love your enemy, to feed the hungry, to give to the poor.
I thought what you were saying was that, when an ex-Christian talks about any pain or abuse they received from other Christians (including pastors and others who are entrusted with power), other Christians need to be more aggressive in pointing out that the abusers must not have been real Christians. To me, that would seem dismissive and invalidating. It would be like if I was a professor, and someone came to me and said “when I was in college, I went to a professor’s office hours and they sexually harassed me, and it was traumatizing.” And if I then told them, “well that professor wasn’t a true embodiment of the educational establishment” because I wanted to protect academia. Isn’t that missing the point? An innocent person was hurt by a person in power who they trusted. (Even if there wasn’t a power differential, and it was another student who hurt them, I wouldn’t say “they weren’t displaying studently behavior.”) But as a professor I should definitely hold other professors accountable for how they treat students, not cast doubt on a victim about what happened to them, just because I care about the reputation of my ideals and I don’t want people to think badly of them.
I’m quite familiar with what you’re saying about the difference between relationship and religion. I was taught that way myself. And I understand the motivation behind it — we don’t want to be legalistic, prideful, ritualistic followers of some human-devised organization, like the Pharisees and Saducees that Jesus so often spoke against. We want to be personally connected to the source of life itself.
The problem I ran into was that as much as I looked for that relationship, I couldn’t find it. (I’ll include my reply to your other response to me, here, so there’s just one reply chain and because it ties in with this.) I understand that in your own near-death experiences, you had an undeniable sense of the reality of Jesus. What I understand is that near-death experiences can vary widely from person to person; some people see Jesus like you did. Some see the afterlife promised by their non-Christian religion. Some experience a force that is not part of any religion, but is the universe itself. Others experience nothing but a void. But for each individual, it feels realer than real.
My surgery probably doesn’t count as a full-on NDE, because I was anesthetized. But I certainly didn’t experience any sort of presence of God as far as I could tell. If I had an experience like yours, maybe it would change my mind. But as far as I can tell, people become convinced of wildly different things during NDEs, and so to me it sounds like projection whenever someone says “I now know this is the reality of the universe which is true for everyone.”
The other problem I have with “relationship not religion” is that even if you claim it’s not a religion, it still fits the primary definition of religion, eg. “The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe”. Any belief that Jesus is still alive and that you can talk to him is still a religious belief. I understand wanting to distance yourself from the poor behavior of others who claim Christianity, but to be honest I think that they likely have a faith that’s just as deep as yours and yet they still do bad things.
When I officially stopped trying to believe, I left it open-ended with God. I had been in this cycle, where for a period of time I would be praying earnestly and reading the Bible and trying to connect with God; then I would think, “there’s not any work that I can do, I just have to receive God and let him reveal himself”; and I would wait for him to speak to me, but then nothing would happen, and I’d think “OK, I can’t put God to the test like that, I need to seek after him if I want to find him”; and I got exhausted with that cycle. Finally I said, “OK God, here I am, I want to know you, but I can’t seem to find you, so if you’re there please find me.” … and it’s been 10 years of silence. In that time, when I allowed myself to consider that maybe the silence was because God wasn’t real, a whole lot of other things clicked into place that supported that hypothesis.
“So yes, I am a believer, but It doesn’t mean that mine is an easier life than a non believer…” really, why not though? You don’t have to fear death. You can trust that God’s plan is working out as it should. He gives you power not to sin. He fills you with love. Don’t those things make it easier to get through life?
