If I
Were a Christian
Stephen Harris
March 13, 2007
If I were a Christian, I
would choose to believe that the story of Jesus Christ is a poetic story of a
universal spirit living in humanity. I
would not believe that because of some supposedly empirical evidence, but
rather because of a personal leap of faith.
And a belief that the spirit of Christ lives in
everyone, if not everything, everywhere, like it or not. And if I believed that it would then follow
that there would be inside even the most despicable of people a gentle soul
being punished unfairly. So it would
then follow that everyone should treat their neighbors as themselves even if
their neighbors act like asses, because everyone’s neighbors would somehow be
the same.
One problem with treating
your neighbor as yourself, is that despite any
possible universal similarity, there are clearly infinite differences as
well. So treating your neighbor as
yourself isn’t as simple as treating yourself as yourself. It is more like treating your neighbor how
you would want to be treated if you were in their place, even if that meant
being misguided or dangerous.