hey whats going on everybody? Let me start off saying that I’m Christian, and Christian and Christianity aren’t the same things. Christianity is man-made, a set of rules. Christianity isn’t in the Bible. Christians are disciples. People who follow God.
Hey, if organized religion were to vanish tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind.
So we shouldn’t follow religions. Instead, we should do what you do, which despite the fact that you claim to “follow God”, is in no way a religion, because religions are made up, and what you believe in is true. Gotcha.
Which God would that be?
Actually, the beginnings of Christianity are in the bible.
The letters to Timothy and Titus set out rules for the selection of overseers, (episkopoi), elders, (presbyteroi), and servants, (diakonoi), in a way that clearly indicates that those are official roles within the church. Paul sets out numerous rules for the behavior of the people to whom he wrote. The Acts of the Apostles indicates that the leaders of the community met in council to decide rules under which people would be admitted to the community and rules that those people would follow once they were admitted.
Now, if one wishes to say that the rules set forth in those documents should have been the last such rules established, one may try to make the case for that position. However, your claim that “being a Christian” has nothing to do with “man made rules,” because such actions are not in the bible is simply not accurate.
How is following the rules told to you by other people any different than following the rules you read in a book?
So, just for a bit of clarification, based on that sentence:
The Bible is the book of God.
Those who follow God are Christians.
Ergo, Those who follow the Bible are Christians.
>Is that a fair conclusion?
Christianity is not in the Bible.
Conversely, the Bible is not Christianity.
Ergo, those who do follow the Bible, do not follow Christianity.
>Fair?
Now we substitute: Christians do not follow Christianity.
That seems to be a good expansion of your opening. It gets fuzzier when you say:
“Christians are disciples”
However, as a disciple is a student, there must be a teacher. Who is the teacher?
We know from previous arguments that it can’t be Jesus:
Those who follow Jesus follow Christianity.
Christians do not follow Christianity.
Ergo, Christians do not follow Jesus. I repeat, who is the teacher?
The difference is that you can ask for clarification instead of inventing it.
Nego maiorem ergo nego consequentiam.
As already demonstrated, Christianity is in the bible.
It’s all man-made, whether it comes from the Bible or your own head. There’s no “god” for anyone to be a disciple of, and even if there was a “god” it’s silent. Christians are no more the disciple of a god than any of the other thousands of religious groups that contradict them.
No one follows your god. No one can. There’s nothing there to follow.
And a Christian is simply someone who says “I’m Christian”.
I am not crazy about religions either, but I don’t understand what you are sayong.
Perhaps you could explain more about what you mean.
Well, I don’t think the word is. (But the word “Christian” is – Acts 11:26.)
If you’re saying you can follow a spiritual path without belonging to any church or organized or named religion . . . well, that’s not exactly a new-and-shocking idea.
See, I think we should follow the sandal, but others (heretics and blasphemers of course) want to follow the gourde…THAT is the problem. It’s so obvious that we need to follow the sandal that it makes me want to screech in fury and beat Der Trihs bloody with a wet noodle! 
But let’s assume that Jesus was a historical figure and he did communicate a message (true or false) to his followers. Which is more likely to be an accurate record of that message? Accounts of that message written down by people who heard if from Jesus himself? Or an oral relay of that message transmitted from one person to another over a period of two thousand years?
StreetDreamer, I like the title of this thread. After that, well, lets’ start with this: How do you follow God?
The latter, because they are capable of answering the question you asked instead of the question a person from 2,000 years ago would have heard you ask, as it were.
There’s the real problem; religions should have an entrance exam or something… then when someone said they were “Christian” we’d know something about what they believe without having to play 20 questions: YEC? Biblical Inerrancy? Transubstantiation? Trinity? Deuterocanonical books? etc, etc.
Can’t speak for StreetDreamer, but I use bloodhounds.
You do it like this.