AM I A CHRISTIAN?

I – an agnostic – do not reject the idea of a God of love (one who wants us to treat our fellow man with compassion and kindness and grants eternal life to anyone (atheists and agnostics included) who strives to help his fellow man and make the world a better place). However, I find it impossible to believe that God is going to burn me in Hell if I refuse to accept that Jesus was God/that God came down to earth in human form and died on the cross in order to forgive us for our sins. .Consequently, I am not a Christian in the accepted sense of the word. However, I sometimes think of myself as one, arguing that I am one of Jesus’ followers by virtue of the fact that I agree wholeheartedly with him on the importance of trying to love my enemies and trying to keep turning the other cheek etc.

Simply put, I do not give a frog’s behind about the opinions of the Apostle Paul, who in my opinion corrupted Christianity and made it acceptable to Rome by arguing that good deeds are virtually worthless: that a miser who exploits his employees to the hilt in order to amass great wealth could gain entrance to the kingdom of Heaven if he believes that Jesus is God/that God died on the cross etc. etc. etc.

It goes without saying that I am extremely antagonist towards the idea of a God of Fear (one who punishes us ruthlessly for the slightest infraction). I hence have a huge problem with the Old Testament and Islam in particular. Suffice it to say that a being who allows his followers to own slaves, mistreat non-believers, and sell young girls into forced marriages etc. seems more like Satan than God.

WILL BELIEVING IN GOD GET ME INTO HEAVEN?

Believing in God will not get you into heaven. You need to believe that:

1) God consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. 2) The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all equal and have all existed since the beginning, 3) New-born babies are responsible for the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and therefore have to be forgiven for ”their sins”. 4) God came down to earth in human form and died on the cross because that apparently was the only way or the best way to forgive us for our sins. 5) While God was manifesting himself as Jesus, he caused himself to forget when the day of judgement was due to arrive. 6) A tax-collector, who never met Jesus during his life-time (Paul) was visited by Jesus several years after he had been resurrected and received the above explanations from him (which is about as believable as the story about the Archangel Gabriel visiting Muhammed and helping him to write the Quran).

Having said the above, you still need to do good deeds as well, but still are not guaranteed a place in Heaven. This is because eternal life is – according to Paul – a GIFT that God gives to some of his followers (one cannot – according to Paul -ever DESERVE eternal life). John Calvin went a step further, arguing that 144 000 people were going to Heaven and were chosen before the beginning of time! Calvin also argued that people were slaves because God wanted them to be slaves (that it therefore was incumbent on them to serve their masters loyally)!

HOW TO GROW YOUR CHURCH

People are unlikely to join a church that has beliefs that are easy to believe. This is because they usually find it incredibly difficult to believe God is going to reward them with everlasting life for believing something that is easy to believe. They hence have to be confronted by beliefs that are almost impossible to believe, which also creates the need for a ‘’leader’’ who helps to explain how things work and sometimes manages to get rich by doing so.

Simply put, the leader of a church is usually cut from the same cloth as the attorney who speaks in Latin, or resorts to legal jargon, in order to ensure that the services of an attorney are always required.

Terence Grant

South Africa.

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