True Christianity

(or "True religion")

If we point to any "bad" action that is done, or has been done, in the name of Christianity, a Christian will generally say - that's not "true Christianity".

For example, Hitler was a Christian.  But now Christians say he wasn't a true Christian, because of all the bad deeds he did.

A pastor molests a child.  So Christians say he can't have been a real Christian.
Christians burned witches.  We now know how horrific and disgusting that was (thanks to the secular Enlightenment). But Christians will say that wasn't "true Christianity."  Christians tortured, maimed and murdered "heretics" during the Inquisition.  According to today's coffee-morning Christians, the Inquisitors weren't real Christians (see note at  bottom of page).  Christians have persecuted  gays,  preached against women's rights, treated women as property, for centuries - but now we discover that wasn't "true Christianity". 

In fact, whenever a Christian commits an immoral deed, it happens like magic! - they cease to be a real Christian!  Many Christians would even claim that the woman in the picture below is not following true Christianity.



So now you know how to spot a true Christian.  They have never done anything bad.  If they have done something bad - then they weren't really a Christian.

Christians will reply - "We're not perfect - just forgiven".

If that is the case - they should stop moralising to the rest of the world, stop claiming Christianity is about high moral standards, stop taking kids into Sunday School under the pretext of teaching them good morals.  Christians are no better than the rest of us - in fact their holy texts tend to drag them back to medieval (or even Iron Age) morality.  Their religion is not about morals - it's about belief. 

When your child is invited to Sunday School or Church holiday club - it's not to learn morality.  It's to learn belief in the supernatural.  And that belief can be used to justify any action, from burning heretics, to flying planes into towers.

Is there such a thing as True Christianity?  Daniel Harbour, in "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Atheism", had some interesting things to say about this.  This whole section paraphrases and quotes him. Given the wide range of interpretations of Christ's words and the rest of the Bible - and given the historical tendency of those words to produce just as much evil as good - we can say one thing for sure: "Whatever Jesus had to say is simply and radically ill-suited to the foundation of a stable society".   Christianity is not a basis for a stable society and the same applies to all other religions including Islam. Consider the claim that there is a true Christianity based on what Jesus really said.  For that claim to mean anything, we must be able to know what  true Christianity is.   It is not sufficient to say that "true Christians are moral people".  For then we are deciding first what morality is and then deciding who are the true Christians.  No wonder then that all true Christians are moral, and no wonder that Christ's "real" bidding leads to goodness. The only alternative for true Christianity is a close reading of the New Testament. So, the question is whether Christ was a holy man whose every dictum and edict we could follow  without fear of trespass.  The first problem we encounter is that the gospels, which purport to report the life and works of Jesus, were written well after the events they relate.  Their authorship is doubtful. Some are believed to be the work of several authors. Their purpose was not to tell the truth. They were propaganda in a political and sectarian battle.  They plagiarised, or quoted, Old Testament texts in a bid to create from Jesus first a messiah then a divine being.  They vilified their opponents and in that vilification they laid a groundwork of animosity and antipathy  that would distil over centuries into a potent anti-Semitism.  However, if we are clever enough to know that the documents are hashed and re-hashed, then perhaps we are clever enough to detect the real Jesus beneath the propaganda.  (Why, if a god were speaking to us, would it require all this detective work and making of allowances?  Wouldn't it be clear, concise and obvious, if he were really out to save us?) Undeniably, there is much to be admired in Jesus' aphorisms and actions.  He advocated pacifism, "Resist not evil, turn the other cheek..."  This noble advice runs through many schools of thought, many much older than Christianity.  Eastern thinkers such as Gautama Buddha professed it.  Of course, unless you want to be a victim of genocide, bullying or crime, that maxim should not be taken too far.  However, its emphasis on  the nobility of the human spirit in adversity is an inspiration to us.  He also  told us to be generous and non-judgmental - advice that, if followed, would have positive effects on the world. Curiously, Christians rarely seem troubled to heed their god's word.  They are forever judging others; their glasshouses are full of stones. They are all too willing to ignore the needy.  Certainly, one meets almost none who has followed Christ's teaching on giving and lending to the fullest extent: "If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have and give to the poor".  In fact, a truly Christian society would be one where no-one owned or owed anything, no-one were ever punished and which would give any portion of its wealth to any individual or organisation that asked for it.  Is such a state desirable? Some of Christ's teachings, then, are admirable when dilute, even if caustic to humans when neat.  Yet the New Testament reveals Jesus as decidedly flawed.  When ignored, Jesus became petulant. He labelled his detractors "serpents", a "generation of vipers". When mocked, he became vindictive.  He envisaged for his enemies an eternity of "wailing and gnashing of teeth" in a "furnace of fire", an "everlasting fire" "fire that is not quenched" "where the worm dieth not". The doctrine of everlasting torture has justified such inhumanity and caused such terror in children, adults, the elderly and dying that it cannot be the work of a humane person. He labelled gentiles "dogs" (unless you are Jewish - that means you).  He childishly cursed a fig-tree for not bearing figs - even though it was not the season for figs.  In "Feet of Clay", Antony Storr examines many different cult figures, including  all sorts of iconoclastic, iconified men, from Jung and Freud to Gurdjieff and Rajneesh, and Jesus. What he reveals is that Jesus' petulance and vindictiveness are entirely typical, though not universal.  Gurus are 'teachers who claim special knowledge of the meaning of life, and who therefore feel entitled to tell others how life should be lived'.  They believe themselves to know the truth, usually by personal revelation, and their followers believe them to, too.  They are often dismissive of detractors, derisive and damning.  Jesus' attitude is not surprising, therefore.  It reveals him merely to be one amongst many cast in the same psychological mould.  Moreover, Geza Vermes' study of "Jesus the Jew", reveals him to be one of potentially many cast in the same cultural mould.  There were many such teachers, exorcists and potential messiahs loose in that period of Jewish history. In this light, he does not shine as particularly holy, nor do his teachings seem, except in some instances, commendable.  They are not the key to saving either society or self.

_______________________

Note on Inquisitors and Witch-burners
The fact is - these "wrong-doers" were actually following the commands of their god to the letter.
If "god" didn't want them behaving like this - if he didn't want untold suffering to result - he should have phrased his tyrannical demands a little more carefully.

The Bible says: "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live". (Ex 22:18)
It says: "Kill unbelievers". (Deut 13)

An unchanging, all-knowing god should have thought very carefully about how his words would be interpreted and used in later years.  These are clearly not the words of such a being.

As the ethics of our secular society move on, becoming more and more enlightened, we no longer persecute gays, we allow women the vote, we don't treat women as property, we don't stone people to death for working on the wrong day, we allow freedom to speak against religion. Christians are always having to adapt, always playing catch-up.  They must ignore more and more of their own Bronze/Iron Age holy texts.

Geoff Mather 2007 (with an extended passage from Daniel Harbour on this page!)

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