See, this is the great problem with so many "Christians", or those like this man who think, or THOUGHT they were Christian. FOLLOWING Christ does NOT make us Christian!
You are a Christian IF you have been born again. That's it!
Those that have been made a NEW creation are His. They may stray, they may stumble, but NOTHING can make them change their mind that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was crucified, died to pay the sin debt of the world, and rose to life on the 3rd day.
So I would implore you to accept Jesus Christ, be made NEW, filled and sealed with the Holy Spirit, THEN you are ready to FOLLOW Christ with love for Him and others.
Sir, with all due respect, you haven't got an idea of what my Christian life was like. Not only did I believe with all of my being that Jesus had conquered death and payed the ultimate price for my sins, but that I also was his child. I was the child of God, bought by the blood of his son. I knew I was saved, and I knew that I was a new creature in Christ. I took this knowledge of truth and I couldn't resist telling everyone of the good news. I felt as if I was different. I felt as if I had been made a new creature. The more I learned about Jesus and God, the more I fell in love with him. There was no doubt in my mind as to the validity of the bible or of the existence of the God of the bible.
As I grew older, I realized that life was not an easy journey. I saw births, deaths, birthdays, marriages, and divorces. I went to college, traveled a bit and realized that this world was not a small one by any means. Then it hit me, out of all the long term friends that I had collected, most of them were in one way or another "Christians". Of course you can say that no one really knows if they were born again but God himself, and while that is true, most of these people were good people. They cared about their faith and about their impact on society. They truly wanted to love their neighbor and share the love that the father had once shared with them.
As time went on, these people struggled in general. All of the pastors that had become friends of mine and my family's hit rocky patches. This was a sobering moment for me. These people that I once thought of as righteous before God's eyes demonstrated to just be normal human beings. I know that as a child a particular picture is painted in your head as to what it means to be a man of God, a Christian. Obviously these were all Child like thoughts and I was now leaving that behind, I realized that God must know their hearts and it is up to him to judge, not me.
I continued in the faith, growing physically, and also growing spiritually. I also had rough areas, but I overcame all obstacles, I knew that God was faithful to forgive my transgressions because I had accepted the gift of grace given to me in the form of Jesus Christ on the Cross. I knew that this is what being born again is. You are no longer a child of the world, but a Child of the Lord.
Not only did I talk the talk, but I walked the walked. I really shaped my lifestyle to line up with my faith and my new way of being. I let the "Holy Spirit" guide my every move. I knew that God was right there, next to me. I wanted and prayed for his will to be done in my life, for him to finish the work he started in me. Prayed for the fruits of the spirit, etc.
One day, I realized that Solomon was right. The evil doers receive good things, the righteous are kicked in the dirt. Everything was vain. All the work that I had ever done was vain. All the things I'd ever aspired to do were pointless. Nothing mattered in this world because at the end we all died and decomposed in the dirt. However, I knew that I would reign one day with Christ, so that's what i had to look forward to.
I then became OBSESSED with finding more truth. I wanted to know how the prophets and the Law aligned with the new testament. I wanted to know how this cosmic composition so wonderfully and amazingly perfectly aligned with itself. A book with 40 authors, spanning over 1500 years, written across many different lands and cultures ended up here, on my desk at home. I then realized that Christianity completely revolves around this book. It is almost as if its Bliblianity, rather than Christianity.
I began to notice that Doctrine and tradition are what made people act the way they acted. I realized that there were hundreds of different views, and assemblies in the forms of denominations. I realized that very few "Christians" agreed with each other. Why would God leave a book that is meant to unite and teach his people about him, cause so much division. Why is it that when I present something I learned from the word to a pastor, or fellow Christian friend, they tell me that I did not interpret that correctly? Why is it that I started to discover apparent contradictions that no one had ever mentioned to me before?
Something was up. Either I was in the wrong Church, or maybe this bible was not as crystal clear as I once thought. I kept praying, I kept asking God and the Holy Spirit for guidance. I fasted, and prayed. Fasted some more, and prayed some more. I sought advice from my closest Christian friends and relatives, we shared meals and lots of coffee, discussing these matters.
One day, about to finish a 5 day fast, I realized something......
There is no one Christianity. Yes, most agree in the basic concepts of Jesus' death and resurrection, being born again, faith, etc...
But when it came to the details, NO ONE AGREES. Even in minute details.
So this lead me to research more and more. Until I finally realized that there is no way that the most intelligent and magnificent being that created this whole reality would want to divide its people. On the contrary, he is a being of unity. Everything in nature points to unity. His finger print is unity. The human race has long drifted from that. There is a problem with the world and the influence on humanity.
Christians call that Satan. I call it something else now.
Modern Christianity was just another structured separation scheme. Nothing in it pointed to what actually made sense. All the wars, the disagreements, ETC... I could not take it anymore and I decided to look at material produced by secular scholars as well as Christian scholars.
I eventually stopped praying, and stopped seeking God. I realized that it did not made a difference on my well being. In fact, I feel liberated and happier now that I know that God probably isn't up there blotting out names...
If I am saved I am saved, If I am not then I guess I am not.
