There seem to be many ex-Christians here. So, I have a question.
I hear often enough some Christians say "They're not real Christians." about other Christians. Is that because they belong to different denominations based on different interpretations of the Bible, and therefore they don't recognize each other as "real Christians"?
Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, believe in God, the creator, and that Jesus Christ is His son, but they don't believe in the Trinity. That is significantly different from the mainstream Christian belief.
If all Christians have the same Bible, and the same Holy Spirit, should not Christians be able to agree? Why can't they? Would they have war among themselves if circumstances allow?
To be fair, most of the differences are not based on different interpretations of the Bible, but on different presuppositions as to the authority of the Bible. For example, Jehovah's witnesses place their founders' writings at the same level of authority as the Bible. Roman Catholics argue the church is 'Christ incarnate' and as such the Pope receives tradition, and that tradition is on a par with the authority of the Bible. In practice, this means that the JW's founders' teaching and the teaching of the Pope have pre eminence.
Protestants who are reformed put the Bible in its own category; it is the final authority. Reason and tradition are important to them, but they have secondary authority.
Charismatics and Pentecostalists put the revelations they receive from the Holy Spirit on the same level as the bible, and, as such, they are similar to Roman Catholics in that personal experience of the Spirit will often trump Biblical authority.
Liberal Protestants put reason ahead of Scripture and employ a hermaneutic that presupposes the need to re interpret ancient truths for our own time.
Now, all that said, there are still exegetical debates between those who hold to the same view of the authority of the Bible, but they tend to be over secondary issues.
For me, the reason for doubt and walking away is not this issue.
You underestimate how stupid it gets, since Christ simply means anointed one, there are at least two Christian sects who do not follow Jesus at all, they follow their "true" Christ. One follows St. John the evangelist and have an extended and edited version of his gospel, which they claim was actually written by Lazerus (he who Jesus Loved) about John not Jesus, and the other is the Johanites who follow John the Baptist and believe HE was the the real Christ and that Jesus was a Johnny come lately who usurped his own master (some version of Johanism actually believe the god who John the B was preaching about was not Yahweh but the godess Isis).
Love them all! They are up there with that Paula White person in the White House.
So much comedic value for so little outlay!
They have made war since The Reformation, it still goes on to this day. Catholic v Protestant.
I most often hear Christians claiming that ex-Christians were never the real McCoy. But my religious younger brother will go along with tossing out JW's, Mormons and Scientologists. To his credit he does challenge his Methodist minister for openly supporting Trump and encouraging his fellow flock to do the same.
The Bible is very contradictory and says many things about any particular subject. Christians have always argued about what is the " most right" passages to obey and the interpretations there of. For example Saturday was the sabbath. Christians wear clothes of mixed fabrics, and eat shrimp, pork etc. These things are forbidden in the Bible in some places and allowed in others.
This is the very typical thing one would expect feom a religion that does not have an actual god to dictate the religion to people. So people make up scripture, its interpretation and whoch scriptures are actually to be observed. If there was a god that made exactly how said god wanted to be worshiped clear there would not be these problems. As it is there is no god that is apparent.