It appears that the consensus is that a good Christian is a dead Christian.
What makes a Christian a good Christian?
- Thread starter LucyDuke
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brennan
Argumentative Brit
Erik Mesoy
Core Tester / Intern
Depends on what you mean by conclusion, which is something a context-sensitive word with too little specification here.
I could probably write five paragraphs and have nine out of ten Christians here agree to it. However, the question itself is large and vague - somewhat like asking "Why does the Earth exist?" - and there's no single, simple, short answer. ("Because of gravity"?)
There are a hundred and fifty thousand words in the New Testament alone, and two thousand years of applying and understanding them, millions of words written on their interpretation, and a billion Christians each with their own lives.
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My scribbles on how to be a good Christian:
-Love your fellow man. This is normally rendered "neighbor", which I feel misses the usage of it to refer to any other man you happen to meet regardless of nation or religion. In the words of CS Lewis: "You have never met a 'mere' mortal." Do not write groups off as/with stereotypes, but seek to understand their people. Do not write people off for ever, but offer them forgiveness. Do not discount foreigners. Offer love and grace and kindness to everyone. Be charitable as matter of doing the right thing and not because you expect to reap benefits of it, which leads handily to the next point:
-Do things because they are right. Act virtuously. Throw out your selfishness. Do the right thing if it is ever opposed to the easy thing or the pleasurable thing or the rewarding thing. There is nothing wrong with having other motivations, but they should be secondary. I generally find that my other motivations either are evil, or get satisfied anyway when I do the right thing. And when I am self-effacing, I find people telling me that I'm their role model.
-Pray. Say prayers of thanksgiving when you are happy. Say prayers of lamentation when you have lost something. Complain to God when life is bad. Ask God for counsel, healing, blessings. Even more, ask for wisdom, which improves all the other aspects, and so that you can say right prayers. ("God, I don't want to work. Please give me a million dollars. Amen" is usually a blasphemy, not a prayer.) Commune with God and grow closer to Him.
-Read the Bible. Read especially what Jesus said and what the early apostles/disciples wrote to one another and as advice to the churches. Use these to derive any principles that I may have missed or forgotten. Then go and read about the Bible, too, and learn the cultural context and nuances that are largely lost in our modern society. Feasts and famines are largely a thing of the past to most of us, as are planting and harvest. A simple example:
Weeping? In poor agrarian societies, every handful of seed sowed is one that can't be stored or eaten, in a time and place where starvation is a very real threat. How many of you reading this have ever had to balance going hungry now against having food next year? More likely anything that you don't eat now will be stale and rotten in a month.
-Rely on God. As John Ortberg puts it, if you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat. Put your life in God's hands and trust Him to hold you. This is related to prayer: if you need a miracle to get something done, pray for it, then start working, and wait and expect the miracle to come along. (But I warn again, because a lot of people are bent on misinterpreting this, this is not a money dispenser or a magical panacea. Ask for wisdom, like Solomon, to ask for the right things.) Most famous in this area is possibly the paraphrase from 1 Philippians: "he who began a good work in you..."
-Act. This relates to a great many of the other points. Put your faith into practice. Turn the words into works. Find someone to forgive, someone to love, someone to help. Find errors to correct and wrongs to right. Treat the words of Jesus as commands to be followed, not just quotes to be remembered.
-Accumulate good servants. Money is the canonical example of a good servant but a poor master. Knowledge and power are others. Seek to gain as much as is healthy of these and to put them to good use. Which again leads neatly to the next point:
-Exercise and practice judgement. The world is not all of one piece. People will stand against one another and lie and disagree and argue and fight and make war. You must exercise judgement as best you can, and train yourself to become better, and ask God for guidance, and observe the results of what you have wrought. Do not shrink from reality and say "but I did what I thought was best". Do not let labels or stereotypes substitute for thought. Be willing to discard old prejudices if they are contradicted by new information. (This ties into Love your fellow man, above.) Rebuke people when they are wrong, and don't lie to spare people's feelings. Be also careful of "I did the best I could"; far too often I see it as an excuse for not becoming able to do better. Again, another point worthy of separate mention:
-Try to be like Jesus. Jesus was perfect and you aren't and won't be in this life. I know this perfectly well, now stop using it as an excuse to not try to improve yourself. Any goal lower than perfection opens up the possibility of stopping short when there are still rectifiable errors.
-Be abstentious. IMO, too many people interpret this as applying to sex and too few as applying to e.g. power. The world is full of habit-forming things and demons trying to use them to distract you to evil. Find joy in Christ. If I were to pick a word to describe the attitude I try to hold to this world, it might be "amusing".
-Seek the spirit and not the letter of the law. Many of these goals are related to and can be derived from one another, not least because I am writing them in the same spirit, the spirit that I am trying to follow. Be ready to reconsider if one of these points grates on all the others. (On the other hand, try to be sure that you are comparing it to the actual spirit and not to your personal prejudices.) Another important aspect of this is to look for intent rather than nitpicking over apparent contradictions. There are some things where a middle road is advisable and going too far to the left and too far to the right are both dangerous, and there are times to turn metaphorically left, and times to turn metaphorically right, and setting "turn left" up against "keep right" out of context is unhelpful.
-Be together with someone. Find a congregation, get married, join a hobby club, play a team sport, etc. It is not good for man to be alone. Being part of a congregation gives you someone to help you find the spirit of the law as mentioned above with less danger of running into your own prejudices. Being married is a wonderful thing which will bring more love and happiness into your life. Being together with other humans at all is a good thing, so that you can learn love for all humanity and can be preserved from apathy and inward-turnedness of the soul.
-Spread the word. This is a good thing. Pass it on.
Anything I missed?
Edit: Bigfoot suggested that these deserve separate points.
Bigfoot3814
Deity
That list sounds like everything to me. I would just add repentance.
Edit: And forgiveness
Edit: And forgiveness
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Actually Jesus does talk about marriage when he was confronted with the issue of Divorce. He even goes back an quote from Genesis 2:17 and 1:27 in both Matthew 19 and Mark 10
I must say that how can people be called saints in places around the world in the Bible and yet they have not been canonised by the Church. You will see this in these Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, Phillippians and Corinthians. Even Paul had to go to Jerusalem to minister to the poor saints there. You see it is not the "church: that does the sanctifying of people but only God is the one that can judge those who are saints.
Romans 8:36,27,34 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
But according to Catholics, Saints are supposed to make prayer, or interceed for us, but the Bible says that the Holy Spirit is the only one who makes intercession and he does it for all saints.
http://www.catholic.org/saints/faq.php
But to the OP. It is possible for someone to be a "good" Christian. I know that MobBoss is trying to say that we are not good but only God, but the Bible does say that we have been made righteous because of what God has done for us at Calvary. (2 Corinthian 5:21). Thus a Good Christian is one that does their best to follow Jesus' example. You will see that Jesus did often delve into peoples lives, such as the woman at the well. He got very personal with her life that day. IF you read Matthew 23 he gets very specific in Condemning that religious leaders of the day and he calls them hypocrites and says that not to follow them. Many times Jesus does condemn people for their unbelief, so you can see that Jesus is not all about love, since he is much worried about their well being and often telling people what is wrong with them is the best way to show that you do love them. But most importantly a Christian should be one who speaks out against sin but is willing to forgive others of their sins, since Jesus forgave us of our sins. A good example of this is the woman caught in Adultery. He forgave this person even though she was very much guilty of the sin, but in many other passages he does state that adultery is very much a sin.
Erik Mesoy
Core Tester / Intern
Thanks. Looks like I did forget something. I agree that those probably deserve to be explicit points, although they're mentioned in a few of the others. Care to write them up in detail, and I'll edit them in so there's one easy reference post?
Bigfoot3814
Deity
-Gladly.
Repentance. People are not perfect, and there are times when we make mistakes. Fortunatley, God knows this, and offers a way to redeem ones self through repentance. By repenting, you are expressing your remorse over your wrongdoing and then being reconciled, when you recieve Gods forgiveness. There is no sin, no matter how grave, that cannot be forgiven. Remember, you can only recieve reconciliation if you are truly sorry for your sins. It is never too late to repent. As he was being crucified along with the two criminals, one of the criminals said to Jesus, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," to which Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Luke 23:42-43.
By the same token, Christians must also practice...
-Forgiveness. Christians are not supposed to hold grudges. When someone does you wrong, no matter how much, Christians are obligated to forgive that person. Why? Because God knows only forgiveness, and nothing of revenge. It's not the easy way, but it's the best way, because two wrongs don't make a right. Even as he was being crucified, Jesus called out "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23:34.
Both of these principles are examplified in these lines of the Lord's Prayer:
"...and forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us..."
That ought to do it.
Lillefix
I'm serious. You can.
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Does all of this include considering homosexuals unconditionally as equals? On other boards I've noticed christians tend to be a bit hypocritical when it comes to them. Example: I don't mind gay people, but they shouldn't marry(which in my eyes is a way of looking not looking at them as equals).
Erik Mesoy
Core Tester / Intern
My answer there: The issue is confusing, infected, and inflammatory, and I don't want to comment. It has a very, very low priority anyway, somewhere below "ten thousand people a day are dying of embarassingly avoidable causes and almost nobody is caring".
Veritass
Emperor
Looking from the outside in (as a non-Christian), here are some things that occur to me:
#1: It seems to me that the discussion on which Christian sect has a better monopoly on Truth should be extrapolated to the point where Christians acknowledge that Christianity does not have a monopoly on Truth.
#2: If you take Jesus' metaphor for the rich man getting into heaven being like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle, PLUS Jesus' statement about the poor being with us always, does that equal socialism or just paradox?
#3: I really like Erik Mesoy's summary of his thoughts on what constitutes a good Christian:
If you just extrapolate "Read the Bible" to "Read the Bible and the other good books of wisdom in the world", and extrapolate "Try to be like Jesus" to "Try to be like Jesus and the other prophets and good examples", then your list could apply to all faiths. I particularly like "exercise and practice judgment" and "seek the spirit...of the law", as these are calls to an ever-expanding thinking that responds to the changes in the world.
Depending on your view of what/where God is, I lean away from "rely on God" and more toward "align your thoughts and actions with God" and "trust in God".
It gets a little dicey, of course, with "spread the word", because that's where people tend to get stuck thinking their view is the right view.
#1: It seems to me that the discussion on which Christian sect has a better monopoly on Truth should be extrapolated to the point where Christians acknowledge that Christianity does not have a monopoly on Truth.
#2: If you take Jesus' metaphor for the rich man getting into heaven being like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle, PLUS Jesus' statement about the poor being with us always, does that equal socialism or just paradox?
#3: I really like Erik Mesoy's summary of his thoughts on what constitutes a good Christian:
If you just extrapolate "Read the Bible" to "Read the Bible and the other good books of wisdom in the world", and extrapolate "Try to be like Jesus" to "Try to be like Jesus and the other prophets and good examples", then your list could apply to all faiths. I particularly like "exercise and practice judgment" and "seek the spirit...of the law", as these are calls to an ever-expanding thinking that responds to the changes in the world.
Depending on your view of what/where God is, I lean away from "rely on God" and more toward "align your thoughts and actions with God" and "trust in God".
It gets a little dicey, of course, with "spread the word", because that's where people tend to get stuck thinking their view is the right view.
What's wrong with thinking your view is the right view? Everyone who has a view does this, except those who think that their view that no one view is right, is the right view.
Veritass
Emperor
To some degree, we cannot help thinking that our view is the right view, or we would have changed our view. The slippery slope starts when we presume that our chosen view is THE right view, and other views are wrong, and of course, since those are wrong, they need to be fixed or changed...
In the nebulous areas of faith and belief, we would do well to remind ourselves that we choose what we believe. Surely something as wondrous as a God that could create this vast universe of ours would be ineffable, and even our chosen beliefs about God could only approximate or be metaphors for God.
The problem is that now you (as so many others are in this thread) are answering "this is what makes a Christian a good person, as I understand a good person to be." This isn't quite what the OP is asking, I think.
What do you mean by a "monopoly on truth"? I would quite freely say that not everything in every other religion besides Christianity is wrong - it would be rather absurd to say that, actually, as there are many common principles between religions. (The Ethic if reciprocity, for instance) I would say, however, that Christianity is the most true of the world religions, and ultimately Christ is the only way to God.
Neither, because socialism and charity are two widely divergent concepts. I'd argue that charity is a virtue that is commanded by God, while socialism is at best one alternative among many, and at worst directly contradictory to Scripture.
Veritass
Emperor
Asked and answered.
Well, for a Christian not to believe that Christ is the way to Heaven, I would seriously question their beliefs considering that is one of the most explicit, definitive things stated in the bible.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with that, but that kind of takes the CHRIST out of Christian if a Christian doesn't believe that Christ is the only way to get to the Father.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with that, but that kind of takes the CHRIST out of Christian if a Christian doesn't believe that Christ is the only way to get to the Father.
Veritass
Emperor
Cannot Christ be your chosen path to God and heaven?
As soon as you declare it to be the one and only path to God and heaven, you at least marginalize a huge portion of the world's population, if not damn them to Hell outright.
As soon as you declare it to be the one and only path to God and heaven, you at least marginalize a huge portion of the world's population, if not damn them to Hell outright.
From a Christian's point of view, no.
If Christ is just a chosen path, and not the only path, why would God have sent Him to die for us and to save our sins? If Christ isn't the only way to the Father, it really, really defeats the purpose of God ever sending Christ down from Heaven, doesn't it?
Now, the only way around that, I guess, is that you could say that Christ did come to save all people from their sins whether or not people believed in Him, but that stands in stark contradiction to what is written in the bible, and while I know that some Christians may not take the bible literally, it's a hard pill to swallow for someone to believe part of what is written in that book and not all. And, again, that Christ is the only way to the Father is pretty clearly stated.
A Christian* believes that Christ is the only path back to God - not Christianity. There is in fact a fairly major difference. I do not claim that salvation will be forever denied non-Christians, rather that they will be saved through Christ.
*Well, not to say all Christians do, but this to me at least seems far more in line with Jesus' teachings.
*Well, not to say all Christians do, but this to me at least seems far more in line with Jesus' teachings.
But to propose that here is salvation apart from Christ is to render Christianity meaningless. Christ Himself stated that no one could come to the Father but through him. I'm not sure how that translates to a "monopoly on truth." A monopoly on eternal salvation, yes - but truth? There certainly are truths in other scriptures and other beliefs.
Christ is my chosen path to God.
I also believe that He is the only path to God. I don't think that's relevant to whether Christ really is the way to God, or not. No one said the truth has only pleasant consequences, after all.
As Eran stated, though, that does not necessarily preclude the later reunification of non-believers with God - just that any salvation, now or later, must come through Christ.
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