Am I a Christian?

We live in a label obsessed society, a culture that needs to know what groups someone belongs to before they want to know anything else (or specific) about that person.

People may notice I discuss scripture here and there and wonder whether I am a Christian. To answer that, we'd first have to determine "what is a Christian," or perhaps even "what is Christianity?"

If you google it, at base, a definition provided is "a person who has received a Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ and his teachings."

I certainly meet the first clause - I've had several Christian baptisms over the years and even a Mormon one - and I'd say I even meet the second clause, albeit a very important (to me) caveat. But, even meeting those definitions, I refuse to call myself a Christian, because often the label implies much more than what the simple definition entails.

Take a look at something like the Nicene Creed; it represents an attempt to coalesce typical "Christian" beliefs. And it explodes way beyond things Jesus himself directly taught or said. Bundled into Christian beliefs are often implicit assumptions, like that the Bible we have today is inspired, inerrant, and entirely sufficient. All of these things go way beyond "believing in Jesus Christ and his teachings," for example. Or just take a look at the proliferation of Christian Creeds in general - if it were just a matter of following one guy and his teachings, then these things wouldn't be necessary.

On the subject of inerrancy, I submit for your consideration the following essay that outlines some of the problems with accepting the scripture as inerrant; I would also recommend perusing the site Yeshua before 30 CE and giving a hard think about how it could be possible the things that have been handed down to us about the person we call Jesus Christ may not be based in the reality of the person that he was, the teachings he actually taught, and the things he personally believed.

Look no further than the modern day to see how easy it is to misrepresent someone and something they believe. It happens all the time in mundane conversation among people you know, I am sure, especially in the realm of the political or spiritual. Are we so naive as to think that the account we have of "Jesus Christ" couldn't have been manipulated in some fashion?

This, in fact, is the entire premise of a lot of cults, in particular the Mormon cult of which I was a member for about a year. If I can impart any wisdom to you, that wisdom would be don't trust anyone who says to you they are speaking on behalf of God. They might be speaking to you on behalf of the Bible, or on behalf of some doctrine invented by some theological movement, but claiming the authority of God in a conversation (and giving any other person that authority) is a very dangerous idea.

I used to call myself a disciple of Yeshua and his teachings. I do not know that I can quite use that phrase today, since I am not as active in studying his teachings and applying them at this particular moment, but I am entering a period in my life where I desire to get back into spiritual study and practice. It is likely that I will end up there again. That would be the caveat I mentioned earlier in regards to the second part of the definition provided at the beginning of the essay: I wouldn't call myself a follower of "Jesus Christ" and his teachings, but of Yeshua.

Some might argue this is petty semantics. I won't get into that here but I think it's a very important and meaningful distinction. I've not been led astray by anyone who claims to follow Yeshua, but I've constantly been misled and taken advantage of by people claiming to act in the authority of Jesus Christ. So, at the very least, it has been a useful distinction.