Please explain when exactly you were and were not a Christian
A pet topic of mine is the tendency of some Christians to fixate on belief and its boundaries. You can't just state why you think belief in x, y, and z is important to Christian faith and life; you have to claim that those who believe x and y but not so much z are not real Christians. You can't just disagree with someone with a different view from yours; you have to stage an inquisition.
It frustrates me to see this all-belief-all-the-time orientation used to frame things as us real Christians vs. them fake ones. When people take a similar approach in drawing themselves outside the circle, it just makes me sad.
Tim Lambesis, frontman for the metalcore band As I Lay Dying, is in prison for the (unsuccessful) arranged murder of his ex-wife. In the past week, he made headlines again—for a pre-sentencing interview in which he claims that he and his bandmates, who have a large following in the evangelical music world, essentially faked their Christian faith to sell records. (Leave aside the suggestion that the two stories are equally newsworthy.) It's not that Lambesis was an impostor Christian from the start. He claims he gradually found some atheist arguments persuasive, and he began to lose his faith.
