What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Growing up as a Christian, I was taught that Jesus, the early Christians, and their early theology were the gold standard that modern Christians should follow.

Lately I've been wondering if they were all just a bunch of loony tunes, and anything positive in Christianity was added later after the religion became more respectable.

Any thoughts?

Read the NT it's recorded there.

GC

Oh, so it is all bullshit. Thanks, bud. Knew you were on top of things.

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(I think of Islam as "Christianity on steroids")

Specifically, it struck me as "Calvinism on steroids". As an Air Force firefighter, I was stationed there for four months in 1992, in Riyadh. I lived in Eskan Village, about twelve miles outside of the city, and so we commuted to work at King Khalid Int'l Airport.

Being as we were trained EMTs, in the military, the brass made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that we were not to help any auto-accident victims we might encounter on the commute. The reason given to us was that the locals regarded such incidents as the will of Allah, and forbade, for thirty minutes, human interference.

I can't attest to the truthfulness of that justification. But we did see a couple of accidents in my time there, and not only did we not stop, no one else did. They left folks to die on the roadside, for the sake of inshallah, as if Allah couldn't simply blow the fuse on the whole operation by killing the engine on the ambulance or firetruck five miles from the accident site.

But it struck me as Calvinism writ large: you will take your god's will as it is and there is no appeal.

I was lucky to have a thoughtful Presbyterian handlineman on my truck, so in the evening, after we'd secured the north end of the flightline, Tommy and I would talk, and talk a lot of religion, using USAF-issued NIV Bibles. I didn't try to deconvert him, and he didn't try to deconvert me; we simply discussed what we saw, and read, and thought.

We both thought that inshallah stuff was horseshit ... but only I could use the word "horseshit" guilt-free. Tommy was still wound a little tight.