to have cake and eat it too
I am very interested in the question regarding what it is to live well. It naturally follows that I am also very interested in answers to the question, or even better are exemplary lives. Moreover, I am particularly interested in exemplary lives which ended in martyrdom.
Anyway, I want to consider here whether or not I ought to be considered a christian. There seem to be some pretty strong reasons for thinking not; I don't think that Jesus was the son of God, or that the bible is anything more than a bunch of paper with words printed in it, or even that God exists. In short, I utterly lack faith.
But(!), there is a fairly significant aspect of christianity which concerns your deeds, and generally the way you live. For instance, the life and deeds of Jesus are held up as exemplary, and his teachings are to be followed. If ones status as a christian were to be decided based purely on actions and not at all on beliefs, then I might be in with a chance. Even then I am left with the problem that my life merely lines up with the good life that Jesus was on about, rather than me actually following the teachings of Jesus.
Now, assume I am somehow counted christian, surely if the term now means “person who lives well in a way which lines up with what Jesus taught” then the term is so vague and broad that it is void.
It might also be pondered at this point whether the good life as exemplified by Jesus was good because it was his, or because of some objective moral standards about good lives. I'm going to go with the latter. But then any reason I might have had to become a follower of Jesus seems to vanish completely, I can just live according to the dictates of morality and rationality.
As you can see, I like to think I can have my cake and eat it too. And besides, if god is as reasonable and lovely as is made out, I'm sure he'll have me in heaven regardless of my lack of faith.
9 comments:
Heh, how very controversial of you :) I might point out that different Christian denominations would have radically different responses to this question.
Mainstream Protestants would be horrified by the thought of defining Christianity as a certain kind of behaviour - that's like Protestantism's big thing: justification by faith, God's grace is sufficient, nothing you do makes any difference etc.
Modern Catholicism, as I understand it, acknowledges an element of right living - i.e. they emphasise the idea that 'faith without good works is dead' (uh I think that's in James somewhere...?), but you still wouldn't be 'in' without faith.
It's only us raving liberals (these days) who might suggest that what you believe isn't the main issue, and that what Jesus was all about was showing people how to live right - not in order to start a new religion but in order to make life better. In which case you might be 'in' - but as you rightly point out: in what?
Seems to me that it would be a stretch to call someone a Christian who doesn't hold Christ in some degree of reverence (whether believing he was God or just following his teachings in some deliberate way). But 'Christian' is just a word. I don't think our lives will or should be judged according to which label we identify ourselves with.
Have you read C.S.Lewis' 'The Last Battle'? The last few chapters have some interesting things to suggest regarding this question. Thought it terribly heretical when I was a kid, but have since come around to it.
I'm not sure it's explicit in the post, I think you'd need to ask what would your motivations would be for becoming a christian?
If you believe christianity is about living a good life; aren't you already doing so? What would taking on this identity do for you? The idea of conversion implies a complete change of life, a decision to try to live an exemplary life. Wouldn't becoming a christian merely a change of label? And what's the point in changing a label if life hasn't changed?
Hi,
Interesting post. I like it.
RE: "I want to consider here whether or not I ought to be considered a christian."
Be "considered" a Christian, or be a Christian? What are you really considering here? =)
I think Jesus wasn't particularly interested in labels, and I'm not either. I don't think it really matters to God what whether we call ourselves or others "Christians". I suppose labels only really matter with respect to others' opinions of us and perhaps our opinions of ourselves. I don't think labels change or achieve anything in and of themselves.
RE: "I don't think that Jesus was the son of God"
If you mean that in the sense of him being some kind of spiritual super-hero God as part of the traditional Trinity - I agree with you.
RE: "In short, I utterly lack faith."
Hmm... faith is an ambiguous term these days. So you choose not to believe a set of hard-to-believe ideas that are commonly held to be important. I don't believe them either, because I don't think the bible refers to beliefs when it mentions "faith".
Rather I think faith is what makes us "faith-ful". It's the loyalty and commitment to actually follow the example and teachings of Jesus in how we think and behave. I don't think the popular gospel ABOUT Jesus is what Jesus actually preached. Rather, his message was about "how to live" - the topic of your post. Personally, I think he taught a pretty good way to live, and I haven't found better, which I think is ultimately why I follow him.
RE: "If ones status as a christian were to be decided based purely on actions and not at all on beliefs"
Like I said above, I don't think status or labels matter. If you refer to God's judgment of you, there is ample evidence in the bible to suggest that his judgment is based on our behaviour, not our beliefs. But of course, a large majority of Christians would say that idea is wrong...
RE: "surely if the term now means “person who lives well in a way which lines up with what Jesus taught” then the term is so vague and broad that it is void"
I don't think so. If the "Way" of life he taught was broad and vague, maybe I would agree. But I he taught a way of life that is quite challenging and mastered by few - both Christians and non-Christians. Furthermore, this Way comes at a cost. A big part of following Jesus is about loving others (by which I do NOT refer to romantic love, of course), at that sometimes means sacrificing what we want for ourselves. That can be hard, and I am still learning how to actually live like that. So I while the label of "Christian" may be void, it is not void to describe the way of life taught by Jesus.
RE: "I can just live according to the dictates of morality and rationality"
You could, but what if there is more to life than morality and rationality? What if following Jesus in how we live goes beyond these? While there are many areas of overlap, I think "morality and rationality" don't cover all of the Way of life Jesus described. It is moral and rational to not harm others, to respect them and be considerate... but I think the kind of love Jesus taught goes beyond traditional ideas of morality and rationality. And I think my life is made far richer by following that rather than merely adhering to morals and reason. This is why in response to your main question, I don't think you can simply say "I think I live in a moral and reasonable way, so I am probably following Jesus" - I think that would not be following him very well.
RE: "And besides, if god is as reasonable and lovely as is made out, I'm sure he'll have me in heaven regardless of my lack of faith."
Hmm... amazing that you think popular Christianity portrays a reasonable God. I don't think it does.
Anyway, your statement seems to refer to the idea that Christianity is about life after death. It is this for many people, but it's not the point of it for me. I have doubts about the existence and nature of heaven and hell, yet I still try to follow Jesus because I've found Christianity is about life before death, life now. I think I'd be missing out if I wasn't learning to enjoy the way of life Jesus taught... and that's not some kind of brainwashed "Christian" answer. I've thought it through. I've seen what other ways of living get people and I can see many advantages of this way. And not just advantages for me, but for other people also.
All this means I think I can follow Jesus despite my lack of belief in the hard-to-believe ideas of popular "Christian" doctrine. I don't think God would judge me unfavorably for simply not believing those ideas, and I probably wouldn't like him if he was like that. Personally, I think many "non-Christians" are more closely following Jesus than many who call themselves "Christians".
I grow tired and my thoughts disjointed. I have also written too much already, but I hope you find some of those comments interesting.
A couple of the comments suggest that it is worth trying to articulate more precisely what I was attempting to do here. I could have been considering either whether I should be labelled a Christian, or whether I should become a Christian. I will come back to those, but what I actually had in mind was whether I am a Christian.
Because I am not treating Christianity as merely an ethnic identity (at least no in the current context), I do not think it makes sense to reduce talk about being a Christian to talk about being labelled as Christian.
My point about having no reason to become a Christian was not supposed be a response to some earlier question in my mind about whether I should become a Christian. Instead, it was intended to point out that if there is anything more to being a Christian than following the dictates of reason and morality, then I could see no reason to become a Christian and incorporate those further things into my life.
katherine: I guess the various different types of Christians have a lot of differences, but shouldn’t they also have something in common (beyond that they labelling themselves Christians) that makes them all Christians? I have not read The Last Battle, perhaps you could lend it too me if it is not too long?
nathan: I hope the first part of my comment addresses your questions.
incognito: Thank you for the very thought provoking comment.
In saying that I lacked faith I was meaning it in the broadest sense. I guess I was being lazy and did not want to go through all of the possible forms it takes and then say of each that I lacked it. I guess it will suffice to add to the list that I am also “faith-ful-less”. We are both very interested in how to live, personally, I am not interested in this because Jesus was, nor is my particular choice of how to live to follows Jesus’ example. The question seems to be whether you can live the “way” of Christ, without actually being a follower, or ever having even heard, of Christ.
I am interested by your discussion of morality and rationality because I suspect we may actually disagree here, but I am not certain that we are talking about the same things. For instance, you refer to them as the traditional ideas of morality and rationality. Personally, I am very critical of traditional ideas about morality and rationality, often because they fall short by leaving very important things out. It seems common nowadays to see rationality reduced to logical consistency and morality to some shallow ethical calculus, which worries me.
Also regarding my image of god, I have done too much philosophy not to imagine god as an ideally rational agent.
I appreciate your tap dance around the ugly head of hypocricy, not wanting to be considered a mainstream religious person who is on all points fallible as I am, and you are as well. The beauty of Christianity is that it has so many natural parallels without having to open that book of words that means nothing to you.
To look at this world and NOT see a Supreme Being's involvement is an approach that takes more "faith" than to believe. From this point if a person does not wish to see the delicate balance of Atmosphere, Weather, Plant and Animal life and even the "universe" of the human body as evidence of God's existence, then we are done. If we can believe that but not wish to live in his plan, that is understandable.
Man, and by that I mean all humans, were put here to be a companion to God. We got full of ourselves, forgot our origins, and had to revive that relationship - over and over again.
Saying no to the things the conscience tells you are bad can be a difficult task. Not immpossible, but hard. If this dilemma you find yourself in is because your parents said not to, and all your friends are, and you disobeyed mom and dad and they kicked you out of the family, then that is a personal problem.
addendum: your hope of heaven is a quanundrum - if the Bible is just a book, and God may not exist, then why are the promises of heaven so prevelant?
rocky: I'm not sure I follow. Exactly what sort of faith are you attributing to me for not seeing a supreme being's involvement in the world? And the dilemma I described in my post was one that christianity finds itself in, certainly not one that I am in. I am sorry if I gave the impression that I was in any sort of dilemma.
Regarding heaven; because I do not believe it exists it clearly follows that I do not have any hope for getting in. I was merely jesting that if I am wrong and it does exist then I deserve to get in.
Heh interesting post.
I'd suspect that you do not exactly fit any definition that the label Christian has been attached to.
Seeing generally that label has required the person to believe in the existence of God and Jesus having something to do with him.
Still if ones behavior, morals and ethics are similar to Christs, I'd suspect it matters little whether you are labeled Christian or not.
Seeing IF an afterlife of some form or another exists for "good" people I'd expect to see any one with similar behavior, morals and ethics there.
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