Re: Funny anti-religious Internet pics
Kulindahr, I hate to go off topic but I'd like to hear your take on how many "actual christians" there are. Wikipedia says there are around 2 billion who call themselves that, but I think you would have to say far fewer.
On topix:
I'm going to start with a rather scholarly distinction, between broad and narrow meanings: the broad meaning includes all that has a claim to some category, the narrow only those which fit a precise set of requirements. As an example, take the concept of "driver": in the broad definition, everyone who can get into a vehicle and manage to steer it along a course is a driver; in a narrow definition only those capable of handling most adverse conditions and dealing with on-road emergencies qualify. As another, "chess player": in the broad sense, anyone who knows how to move the pieces is a player; in the narrow sense only someone with a grasp of basic concepts of strategy makes the cut.
In the broad sense, anyone who claims to be a Christian is, because the term indicates followers of Christ, and anyone who says he's following has to be counted (this is the definition used by census-takers and pollsters). OTOH, in the narrow sense only those whose lives show significant characteristics of Christ to their neighbors (in the broad sense) count.
So, taking the narrow sense, that being what I mean in such comments as I made, I'd venture optimistically that five percent of those fitting the broad definition can be included in the narrow.
In a pastoral perspective, though, the narrow definition has to be adjusted to include all those making forward strides in showing those significant characteristics of Christ. These may appear to outsiders to be total losses, but consider someone who has been a thief, drug dealer, pimp, and murderer (with a lot more violence on the spectrum) who turns to Christ: if he changes so he's only stealing occasionally and has a GF who's also a prostitute, he's made some big strides. To all of us who don't know him, he won't appear as much of a Christian, definitely not in the narrow definition, but to those who know he's a testimony of how a life can change and keep changing. Including those, I'll expand my count to ten percent.
To some that may seem awfully pessimistic, but given the numbers who participate in hateful activities when the clear words of Christ condemn them, I don't think so. Some may be misled, but the words are there for them in the book, and there are ministers who expound those words clearly.
Of course many realize what they've really been doing when it gets close to the end, so it may be twenty or thirty percent or even more who die actual Christians -- but there's no way to gain data on that in the least, so it's outside the scope of even guessing.
Oh -- superb video; tragically quite true: many Christians run when faced with the real thing.
me . Authority gos with anything pretwnding to give an absolute superior answer to everything, without accepting any sort of reasonable discussion.
