Really Like this Song - Maria Mena 'Just Hold Me'

Heard this on Radio 2. Just like it, that is all!

Find more Maria Mena albums at Myspace Music

When Biblical Truth and Experience clash!

Ok, I know that is a provocative Title and of course it is intended to be ;-). Last week I attended an evening where a well-ish known Christian was speaking, who has a ‘Healing Ministry’. This was the second of Two evenings put on by a local church.

Firstly this Blog post is not meant in any way to personally criticise a fellow brother in Christ. This is simply me trying to work my faith out and when I come up against something that I find a contradiction I need to get my head round it.

The evening consisted of a singing time of Worship. Then a ‘talk’ followed eventually by what I am going to call ‘doing the stuff’. Sadly just as the ‘doing the stuff’ started I had to leave, as it was 9:40 and the car park I was in shuts at 10:00, but I digress. The ‘talk’ consisted of stories where this person had been used by God in various situations for miraculous healing of others, interspersed with ‘teaching’ from the Bible. Herein lies the issue. It is good to hear stories of God healing people as this builds faith and that is not where I had a problem. It was the ‘teaching’ that was brought that I was, to put it mildly, astonished to hear.

There was one important thing that the person said that I totally agreed with. That when praying for healing you don’t have to tell God what to heal and you don’t need to convince God to do so by many words. A simple ‘be healed in the name of Jesus’ is all that is needed, the rest is up to God. This is largely what Jesus did and what the Bible records the Apostles doing. Great we can agree on that! The whole issue of how ones faith interacts with God’s sovereignty and the resulting healing or lack thereof is another issue entirely. I am not going to go into that here as I don’t have any semblance of a coherent understanding of it theologically.

However apart from that one point, what was taught as being from scripture seemed to me wrong on so many levels and I have not heard a mangling of scripture like that in quite a while. However what is clear is that after I left there were several medically verifiable miraculous healings that I am certainly not going to credit to any power apart from God Himself.

So what do you do with that? Clearly incorrect biblical interpretation yet God powerfully using this person in the area of healing. My approach to these things is always to measure anything I see by the plumb line of scripture. Or be a Berean (Acts 17:10-11). For me if I don’t see it in scripture at least in principal then I do not accept it. I absolutely, 100% believe that God can and does heal today miraculously, I have seen it.

My theological view point is most definitely Reformed and I truly believe it most accurately reflects what scripture teaches. But clinging so close to the importance of right doctrine can have the effect of quenching the spirit. This is possibly why churches that hold to reformed doctrine tend to be very conservative and not actively move in the power of the spirit. New Frontiers churches seem to be fairly unique in this area. NFI is rooted in Reformed doctrine yet is clearly charismatic in its expression of the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit.

I totally believe in the absolute sovereignty of God. I totally believe that the gifts through the Holy Spirit seen in the New Testament are for today's church in whatever measure God sees fit to pour out and on whomever He desires. I would even go as far to say that holding a reformed view of scripture does not contradict or stand against the active gifts of Holy Spirit in healing, prophecy, tongues etc.. and actually supports it. It is the holding to certain traditions, viewpoints or teachings of the Reformed Giants of the faith so tight that possibly quenches the spirit.

Therefore whilst I may disagree with much of the teaching and emphasis that comes out of the likes of Bill Johnsons ministry at Bethel Church who this person speaking was certainly related, God is clearly using the ministry to perform amazingly miraculous healings. So I give God the Glory for that!

So where does this leave us? Someone wiser than myself offered these points:

• Miracles only endorse the power of God not the man.
• Miracles only endorse the power of God not the mans teaching.
• Miracles only endorse the power of God not the mans life or lifestyle.

All I can say again is that God is sovereign and who am I to question who He chooses to use as part of His divine redemptive plan. I will continue to hold to the closed handed issues that the Bible is very clear on and I will endeavour to passionately seek and treasure God alone as my ultimate and only source of true joy and only way to salvation. I most definitely want to have a far deeper experience of knowing God more intimately and being open to the working of the Holy Spirit in as yet unimaginable ways, but without throwing my intellect and brain out the window. I repeat we must always measure any and all spiritual experience we may have against the unmoveable benchmark of Gods word. Let none of us, whatever doctrinal position or tradition we hail from, just believe what we have seen or heard without testing the spirits (1 John 4:1-3) and examining the scriptures daily (Acts 17:11).

I know I have only scratched the surface of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and I pray we never become satisfied with where we are in all God has for us and all He wants to do through us. Let us remain humble, bearing with one another in Love (Ephesians 4:2) while we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12-13).

Christians and Anti-Semitism

I have recently been studying the issue of how Israel and the Old Testament covenants relates to the New Covenant in Christ. The paper LINKED HERE is the focus of that study. This is for a discussion group I am part of. However I am not going to comment on the actual paper or the issues is raises, nor on my ‘current’ thinking on what the Bible says.

What I wanted to simply comment on was one point raised in the paper. That of the historical Churches partaking in what can only be described as vicious Anti-Semitism. The likes of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther having quite unbelievable views about Jews. Over the course of History the Church or individual believers have either directly or indirectly been responsible for all manner of persecution and suffering brought upon Jewish people.

Of course my knowledge of history is very limited and I do not know the cultural pressures and influences of the time but I simply cannot grasp or understand how a person who follows Christ can hold the entire Jewish nation as accountable for crucifying Him. My brain simply cannot get round the concept of that thinking. Even a cursory reading of Romans 9-11 demonstrates Jesus was a Jew, the Apostles were Jews, the Jewish Messiah, that anyone who becomes a Christian has effectively become part of the ‘true Israel’.

For Christians to blame the Jews for killing Christ is ridiculous. If Christ had not died then we would all perish in the final Judgement. No one would be saved, period! Yes sin was committed by those that called for and carried out Jesus’ execution. Yes this was under God’s sovereign rule and plan. No I can’t explain how the two are true at the same time but they are! Those individual people who were responsible will either face righteous and just judgement or are covered by the sacrifice of Christ if they later repented and followed Him. You can’t blame an entire nation for the actions of a handful of people. It is like hating Germans or Austrians because one Evil Nutter called Hitler was responsible for killing millions.

So yes we should be ashamed of our fellow brothers and sisters throughout history who misguidedly treated the Jewish people the way they did. Distance oursleves massively from any hint of anti Jewish feeling.

We should humbly love, reach out to and be ready to die for serving and bringing the Gospel to the Jewish people as we should to any other nation of the earth. Now I know some would say it is anti-Semitic to evangelise Jews but I say surely it is anti-Semitic not to.

It is staggeringly unloving to refuse to share the Gospel with anyone because of any prejudice you have. A Christian has no excuse as one utterly under the Free Grace of God, saved by no merit, no work, nothing you could ever possibly do to earn your salvation. Grace, Grace, Grace and for those that think us Reformed types add Grace as an afterthought more Grace!!!!!!

When Should/Shouldn’t we leave a Church!

I have been pondering this thought a lot recently and have been meaning, for some time, to write some of my thoughts down about it. It probably would have been a very controversial post for a number of reasons that I will not go into on a public space (but I linked to a nicely balanced viewpoint on the subject below, instead of getting myself in trouble ;-) ). People come and go in a Church congregation for many reasons, it is just the way it is. We cannot force people to stay though the reverse may occasionally be necessary. However recent events have made me think about what are ‘legitimate’ or positive reasons for leaving a church and what should be considered ‘insufficient’ or negative reasons.

There are two broad ‘categories’ of people who leave churches. Those that leave and do move on to another church and those that leave, effectively never to return. I think very broadly speaking those that move on to another church would be considered true believers and those that leave and don’t return to the body of Christ ‘could’ (emphasis on could) be considered to not have been true believers. They partook in Christian stuff for a while but were never truly submitted and regenerate.

Please don’t hear what I am not saying. I want to make clear it is only for God to know who are His unto salvation, sheep, and who are not, goats, to use a biblical terminology. We are not to go through our churches looking to route out goats in the congregation. However it is clear from scripture that there should be fruit in a persons life if they are saved and it ‘may’ be a sign of a persons not surrendering their life to God if they show no long term fruit (but by no means the only reason). There is much more that could be said about that but that is not the point of this post (No doubt I will be accused of being judgemental etc….). But where do I get the distinction and my line of reasoning from? Well the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. More on that below to give insight into why people may leave the body of Christ for all intents and purposes permanently.

Reasons to Leave a Church

• Category 1 – Those that move on to another Church. This has been written HERE far clearer and probably less controversially than I may have written it. So that link is really the answer to the question posed in the heading.
  
  What is clear from this is that there are actually few ‘good’ reasons to leave a church that you have committed to in membership and much of the time leaving has more to do with your own wrong heart attitude and pride than any actual perceived ‘good’ reason. Harsh I know but the list given under ‘Insufficient Reasons’ are all basically wrong attitudes of the heart and pride fuelled.
  
  That being said God is Sovereign and if a person decides to move on whatever the reason then they should go with blessing in the hope that God will use them and bless them wherever they end up. We also must examine our hearts to make sure pride and self righteousness is not causing us to think negatively towards that person. They are still our brother or sister in Christ irrelevant of church choice.
  
• Category 2 – Those that ultimately fall away/leave never to return.
  
  Looking at this second group of people is really a deviation away from the question in the heading which is mainly in regard to those that move churches.
  
  However it is a sad truth that over the now 21 years of being a Christian I have seen so many friends, who, for all intents and purposes appeared to be saved, turn their backs on God and His church. People that when I became a Christian and joined the youth group, seemed to be so on fire for God. Some even going on mission trips to foreign lands etc… People who I looked up to and who taught me much about God as a new believer. They Challenged me where I had incorrect thinking or actions and seemed to worship God far more enthusiastically than I did. Many of these are now living lives with no participation in the Body of Christ and with no active spiritual relationship with God. Some are even hostile to the church, full of criticism and accusation.
  
  Much of the criticism may in fact be true. It is true that often the late teen early twenty something age group is not catered for well in many churches. The transition from youth to adult in a church is often a difficult one. When the temptations of the World are suddenly opened up in all their life sucking glory. Suddenly the young person is no longer closely shepherded by the youth leader and can be cast adrift a bit if there is nothing in place to help the transition into the main adult congregation.
  
  However is it equally true that much of what is given for reasons to walk away from God are simply thinly veiled excuses to go and do your own thing. A heart truly submitted to Christ, yes can and does rebel and can live that way for a time, but will ultimately realise that living this way is foolishness and totally unsatisfying if you have truly tasted the Life Christ offers.
  
  It has always saddened me deeply seeing this, especially people I considered good friends. I of course don’t know their position before God. But I do know God is the father of the prodigal and will always welcome stray children home. I pray that they return and surrender to God again and that God reaches into their lives and brings them face to face with His awe inspiring majesty and beauty.
  
  Going back to the Parable of the sower. Where could these folks fit in with Jesus’ teaching. They seemed to respond to the Gospel so they are not the seed falling on the path, Matthew 13:4. So they must be either the Rocky Ground or thorny ground.
  
  [5] Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, [6] but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. [7] Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.
  (Matthew 13:5-7 ESV)
  
  But what does that mean. Who are the Rocky ground people and who are the thorny ground people? Jesus interprets this parable for His disciples.
  
  [20] As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, [21] yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. [22] As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.
  (Matthew 13:20-22 ESV)
  
  My understanding of these two is that the rocky ground people are those that give a response to the Gospel upon hearing it but that it is only a head/heart response. There is no spiritual soul regeneration within the person by God. Therefore they appear to be saved and do all the Christian stuff but having no root turn their backs when either pain and sorrow and hardship strike or simply find the shiny temptations of the world apparently more satisfying than Christ because they never truly saw Him to start with.
  
  The Thorny ground people I think are actually saved and have their soul made alive in Christ but ultimately bear no fruit because they never get much further than being saved and settle there because they are deceived  into being satisfied with the things of this world rather than with God. We all are to a point in this category and all go through our lives making idols of things other than God. I think it is a warning from Jesus to not be satisfied with trivial Christianity but in order to bear fruit we must be buried in and stand on the deep roots of the word and be nourished and empowered by the Holy Spirit as we are gradually Sanctified.
  
  Now the above two may look quite similar and only God knows the difference. They may leave the church for any number of reasons. Be it hardship in life or the hot potato of suffering, a relationship, sex, money, career but all ultimately because they have never truly been captivated and fallen in love with the beauty of Christ.

As I have said already ultimately only God knows the state of a persons heart towards Him and we must not go around making judgements about the actions and heart of our fellow brothers and sisters wondering if they are really saved. Be FAR MORE concerned with our own hearts and work to removing the huge planks in our own lives before judging the speck in someone else's.

So there you have a brief look at why people leave a church and may or may not return or go elsewhere. Hopefully I haven’t said anything too out of line or controversial here!!

iPhone iOS4 on iPhone 3G Brief Review

This is just a quick review of my experience with the new iPhone operating system, iOS4, released on Monday. I have installed it on my iPhone 3G 16GB.

The update took a long, long, long time. Mainly because of the backup taking hours for some reason. My iPhone was nearly full so that may explain something but, wow it was a long time. The actual update and restore took less time thank goodness though I left it running at 1am on Monday night.

First Impression was ‘uh why is this taking ages to respond to anything I do?’. Yes the new OS running on an iPhone 3G has reduced overall performance significantly. No wonder they stripped out some of the new functions when running on a 3G like multi tasking and wallpapers. All stuff that takes memory which the 3G has so little of remaining once the normal tasks are running. I have had to make sure Safari is always closed properly and not just exited. (Hold standby button down until the Power Off prompt appears, then hold home until the app closes).

Also battery life sucks under the new OS. The drainage time has increased noticeably on a device not great in the first place.

Features I like:

• Unified Mail Box: This shows all your mail accounts in one unified location, hence the name. It is useful to see all in one go and not have to constantly switch back and forth. also useful when deleting mail.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Application Folders: The ability to organise your apps in folders by simply dragging one on top of another is really great. It means you can reduce the number of screens you have to flick through to find apps. As long as you remember which folder the apps is in. Folder naming is important to get right.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• iBooks: This is a new, free download from the App store. It enables you to download and read books. This is a nice addition though reading on an iPhone screen can be straining on the eyes. This may be much better on the iPhone 4 with its fancy new screen or on an iPad.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Calendar Control: A small but neat new feature is the ability to just turn off displaying calendars you don’t want to see. This may sound counter intuitive. Surely you want to see your calendars. However I use Google Calendar synced from the internet as well as seeing my Wife's Google Calendar that she syncs from her Blackberry. This new feature means I can just turn off the standard local calendar and not have to switch again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Open Attachments in Other Apps: Now this is a useful feature and has been long on the desired list. When you receive an email with an attachment like a word doc of PDF the email app will open it in the standard iPhone reader. However you now have a new option of ‘Open In’. If you have other compatible Apps that can read those docs you get the option to open it in them. I use ‘Documents to Go’ and the option to open and then save to my synced store is a welcome feature. Finally we can transfer between apps.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Other new features that I haven’t yet worked out the usefulness of yet are the Notes syncing to each email account. I sync my notes to my local Outlook account when I do a sync with iTunes. Syncing to a Notes feature of Google mail is vaguely cool but fairly useless.
  
  The spell check feature that underlines misspelled words is sort of useful.

Overall I like the new update but the lag on doing anything is starting to get annoying. There is only one thing for it. I will have to get an iPhone 4!

New Foetus Pain Evidence is Irrelevant to Debate

There is much in the news today around ‘evidence’ from the Royal College of Obstetricians. Link on BBC HERE.

Firstly I am not sure I entirely believe the report as there are many research folks who would disagree with this reports findings.

Secondly it states that a foetus does not feel pain before 24 weeks and is naturally sedated in the womb as well. The assumption therefore is that it is ok to abort/kill the foetus/Baby (interchange words depending on what helps you dehumanise the act) before 24 weeks and there is no medical/scientific reason to lower the limit.

However this entirely misses the point of the pro-life debate anyway and all it will do is reinforce the pro-choice lobby’s views getting us no where fast. The logic goes along the lines of ‘it is ok to tear a baby apart in the womb because they won’t feel it’. So if you follow that logic it is ok to kill a dying person as long as they are filled up with pain killers. Or it is ok to kill a person who is paralysed from the neck down and can’t feel their body. Or as long as the death is painless frankly anyone……..

You cannot separate science from ethics and morality, you simply can’t. I understand scientists just stating medical ‘facts’ but that is not the be all and end all of being human.

It is irrelevant if a baby can or can’t actually feel the pain of itself being killed in the womb. It is a human child and deserves every protection that a person who has been born deserves, period!

Jesus Ultrasound Poster and Subliminal Pro-Lifers

WARNING: This is a very blunt and personal view on the issues discussed and are entirely my own views and not those of any organisation I may be associated with!

Just saw this poster that is going to be used I gather by Churches across the nation in the run up to Christmas 2010. It is an interesting concept and design and I think I get where it is coming from.

A design to show that Jesus started as a real baby and it is an image that everyone, or at least most people, can relate to. The lower caption pointing out that ‘Christmas’ starts with ‘Christ’ etc….

I could take issue with the main caption in pointing out that Christ was born 2000 years ago and therefore has already arrived etc… but that would indeed be petty.

What I found interesting was an article on Christian Today that says secularists have got all hot under the collar about it. This following quote being classic secularist nonsense:

“It gives the impression that it was politically motivated, that they are trying to put across some sort of subliminal message,” said Terry Sanderson, director of the National Secular Society, according to The Guardian.

“The image is too specifically associated with pro-lifers to be seen in a benign context.”

Sanderson added, “They should go back to angels and cribs.”

The last sentence showing his true colours and renders everything he said previously as not worth listening to. So as usual with these types as long as Christians stay silent and not dare speak up we can carry on in our freakish weird world of believing in God. But we must not under any circumstance have our faith say anything to rampant secularism and go poking our noses into society with our ‘moral convictions’ about truth and justice.

Sanderson is of course referring to the Channel 4 Marie Stopes adverts that ‘subliminally’ advertises abortion services.

Well Mr Terry Sanderson how is this for a non subliminal pro-life message: Abortion is the murder of the unborn!

Of course I don’t take lightly the horrendous emotional and psychological issues surrounding abortion and unwanted pregnancy. I have heard all the arguments about what about rape, what about babies with some sort of illness or disability, a woman's right to chose etc…. But the bottom line is that for a large majority of Abortions in this country the reason comes down to inconvenience and selfishness on the part of the couple. They simply don’t want the responsibility of looking after a child at that point. There are possibly some very very few instances where there may be some grey area but rarely. How can inconvenience, timing, cost, even disability or pregnancy due to rape (extremely rare by the way) trump the right of a child to have a chance in life? No one can decide that the child's circumstances once born would be too hard and not be fair to bring them into. Who are you to make that decision?

The issue in part comes down to the devaluing of corporate human life in the western world today. For so many different reasons but two being Darwinian evolutionary thinking and the Western idol of self. Where does an Embryo/Foetus become a human life. In UK law it is at 24 weeks! After that the medical profession and Government has deemed that you are now worthy of some protection in law! Despite much evidence to the contrary and babies being born before that time and surviving.

Again I state that I do not say any of this lightly and fully take into account the awful circumstances people find themselves in and the financial, practical and counselling help that they need and that is often not available to them. Yes it can be heart breaking and painful and mind bogglingly difficult to raise a child under, well any circumstances actually.

But this is a human being we are talking about and once conceived has every right to existence as any other human being. It is made in the image of God, knit together in its mothers womb (Psalm 139). Oh no, there I go with that God talk again.

For a great organisation called The Oasis Crisis Pregnancy Centre click on the link. They offer support services for women with unplanned pregnancy or women coming to terms with abortion. A Wonderfully caring counselling service they provide.

MUSE - Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever) [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

Love Muse and okay I admin it the Twilight films as well!!



and my Favourite track:

Grotivate your Church - Funny Spoof!

This is a brilliant send up of 'contemporary' church culture! Short video will have you chuckling for ages. If you get it!

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

What does Toleration Actually mean today?

I thought I would write this brief article on Toleration. Mainly I will quote something I read in a much bigger article that can be found here. The quote I want to look at is below.

The new toleration

The definition of "toleration" has been inverted in recent years. Historically, toleration implied disagreement. The powerful would tolerate ideas that they disagreed with or found unpleasant; they might argue against them or condemn them, but they did not suppress the ideas through violence or the courts.

Today, toleration means agreeing that selected categories—typically race, gender, and sexual orientation—are value-neutral, that is, that they have no significant bearing on human worth, moral standing, etc. To suggest otherwise is to commit the one unforgivable sin of being intolerant, judgmental or bigoted.

In other words, toleration has changed from referring to ideas to referring to people, and from learning to live with disagreement to agreeing that [specific] differences don't matter.

In my previous post on why we should vote in the election I mentioned the issue of ‘Toleration’ and quoted a book title by D.A Carson called The Intolerance of Tolerance. I think that title sums up the current view of what Toleration actually means. When you strictly narrow the categories by which you define what tolerance means it inherently becomes intolerant of anything outside of it. Now for those inside those categories this is not seen as an issue and seems entirely reasonable. However for those pushed to the boundaries or who are fully excluded this becomes a major concern and problem.

The outrageous witch hunt against the Conservative candidate for Sutton, Philippa Stroud, is a prime example of this inversion of what society defines as Toleration (click HERE for good article on Christians in the media spotlight and Adrian Warnock’s take on it). The recent court case for Gary McFarlane is another example that highlights the shift on the way society views what is in or out of that category. Excellent article by Former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali shows that Religious conviction is no longer viewed on a level playing field with such things as Sexual orientation or Gender identity. Therefore one set of beliefs/values subjugates another in the name of equality and tolerance in the law.

That effective inequality is the main problem with all this legislation that the Labour government and lobby groups have pushed through. In the attempt to stop discrimination against people on the grounds of Gender, Race, Sexual Orientation, Age and Religion they have inadvertently (or purposefully if you want to be cynical) created a clash between those categories. In this post-modern, post-Christian, secular, humanistic society we call Britain, Religious conviction is trumped by all the other categories.

I had a debate with someone on Twitter around if Philippa Stroud was a bigot and what that actually meant. The tactic most anti-Christian or Atheist people use is to simply dismiss the Bible completely and thus to try and prevent a Christian from arguing from that point of view. A Christians whole frame of reference is Biblical so it can be effective, especially over such things as Social Media as there is so little space to actually engage and debate a person.

The main contention I have is that by a person saying ‘your view is bigoted or Intolerant’ they are effectively saying my belief trumps your belief. I am right and you are wrong. So by the Oxford English Dictionary definition of Bigot are in fact being exactly that and are being Intolerant themselves.

Bigot: a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others

We all bring our beliefs and world view to the table and to say one person is being Intolerant is simply to impose your worldview as the correct one and exclude another's. The very definition of Intolerance in the old definition above.

However generally the person is unwilling or unable to see or accept this. To do so would open debate and allow alternative viewpoints. As far as the person I debated with on twitter was concerned I was a homophobic hateful bigot simply because I was a Christian and held to Biblical authority and they could not accept they were being Intolerant or bigoted themselves. Because of the difference of interpretation of what it means to Tolerate or be Intolerant of something.

I truly believe this will only get worse in Britain in the coming years. It has already happened on more than one occasion that a person has been arrested under hate laws or breach of peace laws for simply repeating what the Bible says, specifically on the subject of Homosexuality. In a recent incident because the Police officer was themselves gay. It can be seen that Christians in public are targeted specifically on this subject because it will get them in trouble in Britain. Even if the laws were not instigated to do this the end result is that they are being used to suppress free speech by those that will not tolerate a moral world view that differs or clashes with their own.

Sadly these stories tend to misrepresent the Biblical world view and focus them solely on the Homosexuality issue making it more of a focus than the Bible actually places on it. Making Christians ‘sound’ like homophobes when in fact a true Christian is nothing of the sort in reality, though may be seen as one by the new definitions.

In my view Bigot, Intolerance or phobe has fear and hate fuelling it. Religious, self righteous types can be bigots and intolerant as much as Atheist humanistic types can be. A true Christian however will not, as they recognise that every one of us on this planet is justly heading for an eternity in hell unless God plucks them from the precipice. Thanks to Jesus Christ's supreme act Love and sacrifice the way is open for just that to happen. A Christian knows that it is only by Grace they are saved through no merit in them at all. Therefore they have no grounds to be self righteous towards anyone and are free to Love and serve others. Christianity defines what it is to have true equality and treat all people with love and respect.

But this does not mean it will agree with your world view. If you are not a Christian I cannot tell you that you are living in immoral life and expect you to change. I can only point you to Christ and if you give your life to Him then change will inevitably be the result as he changes your heart from the inside. But I can tell you that God has a better way to live, that if you live outside of that framework then things will not be as good as they could be and may in fact cause you harm. I cannot expect you to change or agree but I can point the way and this is not Bigoted or Intolerant or hateful because it disagrees with how you currently choose to live. A Christian is motivated by the Love of God for them which naturally wants the best for you.

But don’t expect Christians to be perfect and get it right all the time. We don’t and are on a journey ourselves of being changed. Take the time to understand who it is you are labelling and what they actually stand for before you judge them, you may be surprised by what you find.