One of the things I’ve decided about Christianity is that anybody who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian. There really is no authority that says otherwise. Sure, there are authorities. There are multiple authorities. I bet there’s someone reading this right now who would tell me they know how to define someone into or out of Christianity. There do seem to be rules. I’ve had them enumerated for me by one or another helpful Christian in person, and there are more books than you’d ever be able to read, and more TV programs than you’d ever be able to watch, and more radio … Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
But they don’t all agree, do they? They can’t all be Christian then. Or. They are all Christian, every Christian as Christian as every other. As each asserts themselves to be.
In his neat explainer Sapiens Yuval Harari offers this take on Christian history:
[I]f we combine all the victims of [the Roman Empire’s] persecutions [of Christians], it turns out that … the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.
Now, I’ve often blamed Christians for all the crimes of Christianity. Christians are certainly responsible for much evil in the world. Yet there are as well nice Christians. Sweethearts, helpful, kind, compassionate. They consider themselves Christian. I can’t just call Christianity the source of evil if there are nice Christians who find it a font of encouragement for practicing love. People seem to find motivation for doing evil — and doing good — in all sorts of ideologies (just another way of saying “religion,” according to Yuval Harari).
Thus I have decided, as I said above, that it is not my business to police who is and who is not a Christian. Never will I remonstrate against anyone who goes against the supposed tenets of Christianity. The tenets of Christianity are the business of people who call themselves Christian. Those who kill over their disagreements need to be prosecuted for murder. But the disagreement itself is nothing I need have an opinion about.
source:
Sapiens: a brief history of humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari
2015. HarperCollins, New York
2 comments:
We now live in a world where anyone can be anything just because they say so and the same goes for anything they do. A poem, for example, used to be a thing that rhymed and even young children could identify one; a man had a willie and a woman didn't--simple--and the truth was everything that wasn’t a lie. There was no need for debate. But nowadays it's all got so--and so unnecessarily--complicated. Christianity is not a matter of choice. Admittedly working out what exactly the rules are could be easier--never understood why the Bible couldn't be a lot clearer--but there can only be one way, the right way and if it doesn't suit you then be something else and get on with it. We now live in a world where something-else's are more and more accepted. Why can't people just say they're semi-Christian or Sunday Christians or flexi-Christian?
I'm culturally Christian in that I grew up surrounded by it and know as much about Christianity as most Christians, but these arguments about who is "semi-Christian" or "cafeteria Christian" or whatever, are not arguments, I realized, on which I have a position. Sure, I'd like people not to be hypocrites -- saying one thing and doing another -- but hypocrisy seems to be a foundational requirement for millions of Christians -- and if that's a hidden tenet of Christianity, well, who am I to say different?
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