A true Christian is one who follows the teaching of a certain Jesus of Nazareth.
Several problems arise out of this simple statement@
- there is no archaeological evidence that such a place existed when Jesus is said to have lived. OTOH a Nazerene, other than the inhabitant of Nazareth means one who follows certain religious customs (eg not cutting the hair etc.)
- What information we have about Jesus is very ambiguous (vide Nazareth supra). The Gospels are very much later than his time, and were concocted only after Judea and Palestine, generally, had been given a thoroughly rough going over by the Romans. Apart from the short life-span, people had been butchered and scattered, and Jerusalem had been burnt to the ground and the Temple destroyed. Memories of an humble Rabbi were not the most important thing on people's minds. Survival, avoidance of slavery, shortage of food and accommodation were the issues of the day. Out of all this confusion come the Gospels. Sadly there is an element of Chinese Whispers/Telephone about what they contain. Nothing deliberate, but memories would have faded, and those who would have known Jesus personally were either dead of scattered.
- Paul had written earlier. One can take the kindly view that he was a sincere man who had an epileptic condition in which he imagined he saw Jesus in one of his seizures (Paul's) and believed he got a message. Or a less kindly view that he was a liar and an attention seeker who say an opportunity to aggrandize himself. It is too often forgotten that he was a persecutor of Christians, and also that he was one of those whom Jesus is reported in the Gospels to have excoriated - a Pharisee. Nothing evil in Paul's writings about Pharisees!
- The canon of scripture was very late in being formulated. It came about the time of the Council of Trent, in the mid to late 1500s. But even at the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD there was much dispute about what should be allowed or rejected. We are supposed to believe that the Holy Spirit (through the intervention of the Divine Emperor, the pagan Constantine (converted on his deathbed!) inspired the choice of texts allowed. Still, the men in the council argued a lot, and all but rejected Revelation/Apocalypse. It just about scraped through as many thought it was totally demented, it showing all the signs of an unsound mind having written it.
So a true follow of Christianity would be one who eschews Paulinity and clings to what has come down of Jesus's teachings, always being careful to weigh the probablilities of what actually is in the Gospels being based on absolute truth, as against faulty memories or plain lies. All else has nothing to do with Jesus, who, poor Rabbi, gets lost in the welter of wannabe apostles' and disciples' writings.
What remains after this exercise is what a true christian believes and follows.
Nothing about a lunatic event called a Rapture there. That belongs to a false prophet of the 1800s - Miller.
I propose that all Rapturites should be called Millerites, as they have no connection with Jesus's teaching whatsoever. Hell and dammit! not even with Paul's! Miller was the adventurer who made some money on the credulity of those who believed his constant rejigging of dates for the Rapture, all the time selling Rapture Robes that were necessary to get into heaven...
Am I cynical? Take a fair and unprejudiced look at what I have said. I a,lso say that there is no such thing as a true christian.
