Jesus and the Christ go together; they are one and the same person as professed by believers/adherents, “true God AND true man”. Your distinction is false, if used as a criticism of religious faith or justification for your new irreligious faith.

Still, Season’s Greetings to you.

I do think that you’ve been ill served by whoever has provided your religious education. The sweet syrupy nice guy is not particularly in the Bible but rather the invention of gutless people who are not willing to afflict the comfortable of the day.

There are better than two billion christians of various denominations. Just apostolic christians (Catholics and Orthodox mostly) weigh in at about 1.5 billion. I strongly suspect that you have not encountered a representative sample. For instance, my own Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church has 6 eparchies, one in the US and maybe 5000 adherents in N. America. Yet our approach is legally recognized as one of the 23 distinct approaches to describing and approaching the reality of Jesus called rites. And we are different. My bishop condemned the Iraq War, formally. I had to personally speak to the man to make sure he wasn’t going to excommunicate me as I supported the war and was not quiet about it.

We’re good friends. This makes no sense to a surprising number of people that I tell this too.

This same man explained the phrase “turn the other cheek” to me this way. In Rome if you struck an equal you used your palm. If you struck an inferior you used the back of your hand. To turn the other cheek was to reply that the striker had used the inappropriate hand part and he really should correct his social faux pas. Unsaid was the part that of course the Roman was going to start off using the back of his hand. That interpretation is quite a bit different from the treacly never strike back lesson that is the interpretation provided by others.

I would encourage you to explore some of the rest of Christianity. Whether or not you become a believer (and as a christian, of course I encourage you to change your ind) you really ought to understand the faith better. It will, at the very least, assist in your analysis.

I believe freedom of religion and expression are God-given (irrevocable) human rights, including the right to reject a belief in God and/or the right to go your own way. I do not fear or despise atheists. Some of the greatest minds have been atheists who have blessed mankind with their work. I’ve been told (but I haven’t confirmed it) that Victor Frankl, who wrote of the most inspirational books of our time — Man’s Search for Meaning — became an atheist late in his life. I also suspect a disproportionate number of scientists are atheists. I’ve seen military tombstones with the atom icon.

I know many people have problems with self-professed “Christians” for various reasons. I have real problems with some of them too. The challenge, as always, is to look at people as individuals and not as definitive examples of an entire class. Admittedly, this can be tough when groups at times seem to adopt a herd mentality (aka team mentality). But no group (religious, political, ethnic or otherwise)is immune to group-think. And illusions of moral superiority are not confined to the pious.

I try to practice the Golden Rule when I interact with people, and I appreciate it when others do too. For me, benevolent and respectful behavior trumps differences in belief and background. I’d rather live next door to someone who differed from me in faith, race, sexual orientation, politics etc. but who practiced the Golden Rule, than be neighbors with someone who outwardly looked similar to me in every respect but who treated others badly.