Believer, But Not A Christian

29 posts / 0 new
Last post
I'm A Believer 2's picture
Believer, But Not A Christian

I believe in God, simply because who else but God could have created the world and all the planets. But I don't call myself a Christian, because I don't go to church or lead a "Christian" lifestyle. I mean, I'm a good person, but I'm definitely no Saint.

Anyone else like that?

Subscription Note: 

Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.

Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.

paw42uk's picture
I think that you will find

I think that you will find that the vast majority of people who do actually believe in God are like you, Not Christian!

Mirta's picture
I agree with you,I'm a good

I agree with you,I'm a good person ( I do my best),I believe in a sort of God, but I'm not christian, or of other kind of religion, and neither atheist...So finally what am I?

Onwem's picture
Welcome to the club! I don't

Welcome to the club! I too don't consider myself a Christian and I have little desire to be. I have a good heart. I'm far from perfect and I'm fine with that. I believe there's something bigger than me, within me and outside me. Some call it God, gods, Nature, Allah, Buddha, Spirit, ancestors, etc. Sometimes I do too. But I'm not a staunch follower of/in particular allegiance to any. I go with anything that resonates with me at any particular time.

dtommy79's picture
Same here. Although I'm a

Same here. Although I'm a Christian. Well, I guess I'm a bad Christiona since I often miss Sunday masses :)

Tman127182's picture
Being a theist doesn't

Being a theist doesn't automatically mean you're a Christian btw...

Tman127182's picture
Also, how do you know that

Also, how do you know that god is the only answer to your question of "why does this universe exists and why are we here?" Also how can you verify what you believe is even true?

mysticrose's picture
I'm also a theist but no

I'm also a theist but no longer a christian. Having a religion for me doesn't make sense. I don't want to sound mean but I would rather waste my time doing good things than to attend religious activities. I think the God that no one really knows will appreciate good deeds than religion related actions.

Zaphod's picture
That would be cool, a

That would be cool, a religion that practiced the acts of doing good things rather than going to do religious activities. Do you mean you do something like charity work one day each week? I tried weakly to set a up a religion like this once but with no God it was hard to get people interested and have it be called a religion.

dtommy79's picture
It's kind of similar with me.

It's kind of similar with me. I'm a Christian, but I have my unique view on the whole thing and God. I sometimes wonder if I can actually still call myself a Christian.

samking009's picture
You're not a Christian...you

You're not a Christian...you're just a normal being because everyone is a believer. We all believe in something all. But to be a Christian is to believe in God and profess His existence and His manifesting in the form of a human being through Christ Jesus for the redemption of those who believe in Him.

Zaphod's picture
Not really sure I follow you

Not really sure I follow you here Samking009. I can say don't agree that all of us are believers. but not sure by what you mean by believers.

SammyShazaam's picture
Being a Christian would imply

Being a Christian would imply that you follow the word of Christ. I've read many versions of the Bible, and there's absolutely nothing in there that would require you to attend mass, or do most of the things that the church has made up over the years. So no guilt :)

Being a Christian also has nothing to do with being a good person. As a matter of fact, some of the nastiest people I know, and those in history who have committed grievous atrocities against mankind, have called themselves Christian. Likewise, there are many people who believe in kindness and compassion from the inside of their being, and don't have to follow dogmatic orders from some almighty being in order to make the right choice.

BroPouliot's picture
I'm not a Christian too. I am

I'm not a Christian too. I am a simple Believer. I believe in the Creator who made the heaven and earth. However, I am not an atheist or belong nor a member of any of the so-called denomination or organization congregation's name (church/group). I was once called a Christian in the Catholicism and Adventistism church.

mysticrose's picture
Believing in a god that we

Believing in a god that we don't really know is a complex subject but it's far better that to dedicate our lives about a god with a name yet we're not really sure about. Life is simple, if god exist, for sure he would love to see his creations happy and content.

Zaphod's picture
What makes you so sure this

What makes you so sure this God he, she, transgender or without gender would want to see its creations happy and content. It could be oblivious to it's creations or even had just created us by accident.

SammyShazaam's picture
True. I have on several

True. I have on several occasions through nothing but sheer neglect, created perfect worlds for entire civilizations of bacteria and completely accidentally allowed them to reproduce for many of *their* generations. I go on completely oblivious to their hopes, dreams, struggles and sorrows until one day I find that moldy piece of whatever in the back of my fridge and wipe it out Old Testament style.

I sometimes wonder what bacteria would think about that, but I rarely ever care.

firebolt's picture
Yes, you don't have to be a

Yes, you don't have to be a christian to believe in God and those who press that opinion on you are just jaded and don't understand anything they preach. I think it's all in how you take it and at what point you are in your life at the time.

ginamoon's picture
I am a Roman Catholic.

I am a Roman Catholic.
I believe that going in church does not define a Christian or not. It is on what we believe in and how we live our lives if it is according to the will of God or not (as what might have been described by prophets/holy books).

mysticrose's picture
I think there's another

I think there's another meaning for being a Christian. Christian means "Christ-like". Christ as portrayed in the bible is a man of goodness, love and respect. He's a perfect human being one can be. Disregarding if he truly existed or not, we can still be Christians by living our lives in goodness, love or respect whether we are theists or atheist.

SammyShazaam's picture
I wish more Christians would

I wish more Christians would follow your definition, Mysticrose...

Lauren's picture
tbh this thread touches on

tbh this thread touches on one of the most interesting conclusions I have come to about believing in a higher spirit: Everyone who claims a religion is in general a theist no matter how much they claim to believe in a specific god or follow certain rules. No matter how often people go to church each and everyone one of them will have their own interpretation of the god they follow. For example a Christian mother with a gay son may feel that God will still let her son into heaven.

I always remember an interview with Rozz Williams, lead singer of the crazed goth band Christian Death, where he said he believed in God. I was shocked because he was the last person I would have ever thought to believe in God since he went against everything that is expected of a believer. Then I realized that everyone who claims to believe in God or any higher spirit is believing in their created image.

SammyShazaam's picture
I also find it odd how so

I also find it odd how so many people here automatically associate Theism with Christianity. There's many, many religions in the world, and most of them are theistic. You certainly don't have to be a Christian to be a Theist/believer.

Spewer's picture
"Then I realized that

"Then I realized that everyone who claims to believe in God or any higher spirit is believing in their created image."

This is more broadly true than for just spirits. It applies to everything. For example, for all I know, you could be three bored high-school kids trying to have fun on a message board. The only "you" that exists in my mind is what I create using my senses and limited perceptions. It's more like an image on television, and not actually you. This is true even for people we meet in person. We have only our limited senses to use as input. What I know of people I meet is limited by my own sensory abilities and also by the fact that I interpret what I see against my own past experience. It's all I have.

So, in a very real sense, the "you" that I know from your posts here is just an idol, an image created from my own consciousness. That "you" may bear little resemblance to the real you. If we extrapolate this, it's makes ANY image we have of "spirit" beings that much more suspect and subject to our own world views. So in essence, ALL religions are forms of idolatry, with the idols being the mental images we create out of our own consciences. If I can be that wrong about a physically existing person, what are the chances that I get ANYTHING right about some spirit being?

Rob Beasley's picture
Here you go, Zaphod. A church

Here you go, Zaphod. A church of Godness, based on knowledge, calls out religions based on Historical evidence, but I am going to have to convince you that Jesus was the real deal.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Church-of-Godness/422237934548418

Zaphod's picture
Cool! first still wondering

Cool! first still wondering about this graphic you are using for your image, it was used on the facebook page you set up as well.

As far as Jesus goes I feel he was real just not really the son of God. I think he was a very intelligent man and even by today's standards, I am not in the pool of people on here that thinks he never even existed. I do not really feel like opposing all religions as I have said many times on here I feel they have their time place and usefulness.

I think a great church would be one that strategically tackled world problems without pushing it belief structure. I have lots of great Ideas for a Godless church and it would be based loosely around the Idea of balance of all things kind of like an all things in moderation type deal. I feel most of it efforts would be focused on physical well being, environmental impact and ending of world suffering human and animal alike with observation toward science and history. It'd be cool if it were a guardians of the earth type deal. One of the main goals would be to get the religion going in manner that would have no religious head so to speak though it would have elected officials but there would not be a pope so to speak or any other real chain of command I would rather it be ran more democratically and under a mission statement type deal kind of like a non-profit. I feel the land used to bury people of this religion should also be considered sacred land and people should be buried with the tree of their choosing thus eventually creating a forest that can not be disturbed as long as it is remembered as sacred ground. I would like all things done by such a religion to be well thought out though and decided upon in a fashion giving equal weight to the voting rights of all members of this religion. However that being said it would have to be difficult to obtain said voting rights as one should not simply be able to join and have a vote if it were that easy it would be way to easy for corruption to set in. that it for now on what I think would be good to have in a religion. whether people are for or against it I wonder what others would have to say?

SammyShazaam's picture
I'm sure there was a dude

I'm sure there was a dude named Jesus. I know several dudes named Jesus at the present moment, and it's not a new name so... Jesus in any given context could certainly be real.

However, history being what it is, I highly doubt the Jesus we recognize as Christ existed. Hear me out here... I'm not saying that Jesus of Nazareth was not born, and died in the traditional manner of execution doled out by the Romans back in the day. But given the multiple cycles of translation, exaggeration, paraphrasing and layering with symbolic analogy that I've seen layered on every "let this be a lesson to you" type of story... I highly doubt what we hear about Jesus today bears more than a 50% accurate resemblance to what actually happened.

Just look at how the media twists a simple event into the figurehead of a whole political movement, and realize that this has been done to that poor son of a god *so* many times at this point...

ginamoon's picture
I agree with Mysticrose on

I agree with Mysticrose on how a person should be living.
The term used is just to recognize a group. Also not because certain people on such group is not living the way the group should be living, it define the whole group. Even in a family, there would be a black sheep. :P

Rob Beasley's picture
The Logo is simple. If you

The Logo is simple. If you want to understand issues and reality, you have to take into account three primary elements, rather that lock your focus on just one. If you consider most cultures through time they all seemed to have a level of engagement in these three elements and regarded them as top of mind. Earth, Economy and Spirit.

For example the greens would take a polar view that everything had to be in harmony with the earth in their battle with the industrialists whose only focus was on the economic benefits, that ultimately feed off or manipulated consumer demand. Meanwhile the spiritualist sang kumbaya. What I began to notice was we were good at polarizing issues not solving them. This led to the notion that you had to balance or at least understand the reality of what seemed to be the key interests over time of earth, economy and spirit to find reasoned solutions and subsequently peace.

It's the same polarity, you see in the atheist/theist debate.

I agree with your observations about a good church. However, If you study history or read my book - great is not necessarily good because it puts things out of balance. I'm thinking of the Great empire builders. For the atheist argument they could do well to investigate the role of empire in religions. My research shows, that this is the root cause of all the magic associated with religions. Religions when they were authentic were just the ancients doing Plato and trying to build community. The Magic was all about feeding that evil wolf and fuelling the ambitions of empire by gifting them control over those communities.

Now this may come as a surprise perhaps, But I think the model you're speaking about is very close to the model the "real" Jesus was talking about. That's the guy, not the miracle worker of Rome's Invention. The "real" Jesus story comes to us in the Gospel of Thomas and he was most likely the righteous teacher of the Essenes of Qumran, disclosed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Essenes seemed to live in a community with equal rights and expectations. Prayer wasn't the thing it was just about integrity and doing what you like. The key here though is what they recognized was that we seemed to authentically like helping each other. the love thy neighbour thing. Of course this communal approach and its philosophy of a god that was inside us all, just like those two wolves inside us all, would have been a significant threat to notions of Gods in the sky that served the Pharisees, the Herods and Roman Empires. He had to go and the story of this humanist who taught personal knowledge or awareness over belief had to be buried literally.

6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"

Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

When you understand the Jesus, presented in the Gospel of Thomas (rejected by Christianity) and the story of the religious corruption by empire, you begin to see he was not about belief at all. And that belief now takes the mantle as the root of all evil. Jesus is just another Mandela, Ghandi, Buddha and other genuine seekers of truth or lovers of Plato's wisdom.

3 Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

And as a reminder on this good common theme of the good guys talking about something inside us. Here's that wolf story and its relationship to Plato again.

“An old Cherokee told his grandson “There is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is go(o)d. It is joy, love, peace, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth.”
The boy thought about it, and asked “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”The old man quietly replied. “The one you feed.”

Plato had isolated three characteristics for humanity. He classified us a lovers of wisdom (the good wolf or community spirit) or the lovers of pride or lovers of gain (the evil wolf of selfishness) In all cases they were all trying to describe something or a potential within us all.

If you build a church around these observations and perhaps the Jesus of The gospel of Thomas, it would have no authority other than wisdom. It would see all life as precious and of equal worth. It would encourage people seeking and finding the truth and reality. It would not accept any beliefs. It would marvel out our beautiful planet and embrace sciences efforts to guide us in repairing the damage belief, self interest and ignorance have brought to bear. It would encourage authentic selflessness and show us how to conquer the fear of our inevitable passing. It would encourage us to challenge all untruths, assumptions and beliefs. At least that's what the long lost Gospel of Thomas, The Cyrus Cylinder. The Dead Sea Scrolls, The scholarly work on the Bibles Books of Daniel and Isaiah and the histories of empires tells me.

Besides a Church of Go(o)d means you hang your intent on the door, or your heart on your sleeve.

Oh and I think he'd be a fan of democracy. But democracy based on knowledge and wisdom not beliefs and pointless debates.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Church-of-Good/422237934548418

Donating = Loving

Heart Icon

Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.

Or make a one-time donation in any amount.