3 ms·

That's a bit of a No true Scotsman.

• jacquesm 12y ago
  In a manner of speech, yes. This all started when the person of Christ was co-opted to become the (conveniently deceased) figurehead to a bunch of institutions, his name on the one hand and his followers adopting his name but not really paying overly much attention to the principles (assuming history as recounted is accurate, likely it is not) is the root cause of that. Imagine that your 'personal brand' of good intentions is stolen from you and re-purposed as a fig-leaf to cover anything from warrior popes to insane riches and abortion clinic attackers. In light of your comment of course 'no true Christian' would ever do anything like that. I suspect Christ would not be pleased about a large chunk of those that lay claim to being Christian.
  • logfromblammo 12y ago
    If you are having difficulty imagining that, just read _Small Gods_, by Terry Pratchett. Maybe also read it if you are not having difficulty. The premise of that story, exploring the difference between followers and believers can be mapped directly to... well, quite a lot of religions, I'd think.
• pnathan 12y ago
  Yes and no. It's pretty clear from the Bible what good treatment of others is - there's a long historical record of people recognizing this and advocating for it. There's also a long historical record of people not doing so. So the difference is that a True Christian would, e.g., explicitly focus on pursuing the Golden Rule[1], whereas a No True Christian would conveniently ignore or bend it at their convenience. [1] "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Famously spoken by Jesus, quoting Hillel.