No Stupid Questions

I met a group that called themselves 'Jesus Freaks', but they were just annoying trying to indocrinate people on music festivals.

I thought that is kind of what Quakers are?

Isn't this just the Golden Rule? I've tried to live like this everyday for 20 years, but it can be difficult in this day and age. Most people don't think like that. It's easy to hold the door for people or say thank you, but it's hard when you don't receive the same courtesy. Jokes on them, though, cause they'll burn in hell!

I'd call you a fan. I'm a fan of Gandalf.

Jeezie. Like Swiftie, but for fan fiction on the Hebrew Bible.

My Grandmother always called this sort of thing being a "red letter Christian". Basically like you take a highlighter to everything Jesus specifically did or said and discard the rest.

My Mom's family all followed this principle since like the 70's thus saving my trans ass from any hint of intergenerationally inflicted religious trauma so I am a fan. My 92 year old great uncle went to bat to fight for non-binary gender accommodations in his seniors home because one of his nurses is an enby who was getting a raw deal from a number of their paitents. Honestly, though I don't think the Christian God is what he says he is, his kid seems weird but as a rules for life kinda thing the results seem good. .

From reading your post it seems like you could be interested by the Jesus movement (that is the jewish followers of Jesus, before catholicism was codified and adopted by the Romans as state religion). Everything that wasn't authoritarian fear-based catholic was branded as "gnostic heresy" and purged from the canon, but there's some real good shit that is very close to the core message of Christ.

A recent(-ish) example of gnostic christianity is catharism, which was a heresy that lasted for a few centuries in the South of France. They had no clergy, just a caste of ascetic wise men and women who would walk the land and dispense wisdom and judgement. Very egalitarian, very spiritual, very christ-like. As you can imagine, they got crushed in one of the rare "self-crusades" in history (meaning the King of France sent his own armies to burn down cities in his own country and murder thousands upon thousands of his own subjects). As you can imagine there is not one history teacher in France who will tell you about this episode.

You answered your own question because the literal term for a follower of Jesus Christ is in fact the word Christian lol got em.

Like uh... normal? Jesus, as described, seems like a pretty chill dude. It's christianity that gets into the crazy shit.

Agnostic or spiritual.

There is a lot of good messaging in the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, etc. You don't need to be religious to appreciate that. Just like how somebody who appreciates in the mission and words of The Amazing Randi does not need a special label.

The labels start to come into play when discussing your belief or disbelief in a god or gods.

An enthusiast?

The Jesus fandom.

Do you need to be an -ian? Like, if you like the teachings of Ghandi, or Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius, you don't have to call yourself a Ghandian, or a Socratian, or an Aurelian. You just agree with their teachings.

I feel like you're just making a dig on Christians, and it's not like a lot of them don't deserve it, but what you're talking about isn't a religion. You don't need an -ian to like a philosophy.

Sounds like you're describing that you view how he is depicted as a good role model. I think the best way to describe it would just be "I'm atheist/agnostic/etc but view Jesus as a good role model" or something to that effect.

Or just lean into chaos and go with "Jesus is my role model" with no elaboration and let people make of it what they will.

I use the term Atheistic Christian, which essentially means I believe in a lot of the teachings of Jesus, but I don't believe he was any kind of divinity.

A Jesuit! Oh wait...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuism

Neither are perfect because Christian Athiests includes people who are "culturally Christian" as that can include clergy as an authority and rituals, and Jesuism would include splinter religious groups and is very easily confused with the Catholic Jesuit order. hopefully it's a starting point though!

This describes me. I think about this often. The best I’ve come up with is Buddhist. Ultimately isn’t that what Christ taught?

What a coincidink, I just commented this on another thread.

The Thomas Jefferson bible might be up your alley. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

So you have your faith but don't subscribe to crazy rules writen by men that have nothing to do with the faith?!

I would call you "Intelligent"