If I were writing your post, I would probably word it something like "I love Christs," instead of "I love Christians." Of course, the level-headed might simply scratch their heads wondering what I meant, the fundamentalists would undoubtedly exhibit their typical "reactive mind" (as the Scientologists call it), for its plurality-based heresy. Many would dismiss the statement as instantly Newage (rhymes with sewage), and the emotionally wounded atheists would also dismiss it for different 'reasons,' (reason often being the god of atheists), but just as reactively as the fundamentalists (since they are emotionally equivalent in their fanaticism). Those partial to Buddhism might simply equate 'Christs' with Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, or Arhats; Hindu sympathizers might nod in agreement since their are, in addition to Avatars, Gurus, Sannyasins, Swamis and all manner of Enlightenened beings. Jews might gloss over the post because the word Christ also sets off the "reactive mind" for them. Who knows what Muslims would think? That would depend on how fundamentalist they were, or is there were any Sufis among them who might agree with the notion.
I considered myself to be a Christian from the time I considered taking baptism at age 21 until fairly recently when I realized that the name Christian evokes in most peoples' minds a type of individual that I am clearly NOT. I do hold Jesus to be my model for human development, and the yardstick of Compassion, based upon the stories attributed to Jesus, but I'm not certain that the man ever existed as a single historical being. He may be a collage of several Wisdom-holders in the ancient world, some who are purely mythic. Or, Jesus may be entirely mythic himself. Even if the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus WAS correct in naming a certain "Chestus" [sic], he certainly was not 'God clothed in flesh,' even if he was 'a man anointed by God.' In any event, the tomb narratives which confound the notion of a metaphysical resurrection (which the entire ancient world recognized in some way) with a physical resurrection, is also something that I reject as did the primitive Christian before me. Saint Paul who wrote the earliest letters to new churches NEVER upheld a physical resurrection. That was a concession to the childish and ignorant of two millennia ago as a way to win converts. For Paul, it was only a resurrected Christ that was preached, and a metaphysical mystery.
Here is a newsletter that I receive from a very iconoclastic Christian theologian whom I had the good fortune to meet last summer - John Shelby Spong. His works have enabled many people, including myself, to justify reason with faith. As soon as the post-hellemistic mythos of God as an 'Old Bearded Guy-in-the-sky' dies, Christianity can hopefully move to a faith at once both reasonable and mystical - reasonable by virtue of its mysticism, not its mythology misread as history. BTW, when I asked Bishop Spong about the Gnostics (vs. mainstream moderns), he said "The Gnostics were good people." Spong too is a Gnostic in his own right.
"Karen Hutton from Pleasantville, California, writes:
Is there any purpose in staying a member of a traditional Christian Church if you no longer believe the things the church regards as its core beliefs? Why have you stayed with your church, given your criticisms of many of the basic aspects of Christianity?
Dear Karen,
Before answering that question, we need to identify what it is you are calling "core beliefs" or the "basic aspects of Christianity." I believe that what most people call orthodoxy in religious beliefs is little more than the imposed authority of some part of the Christian faith. The claim to be orthodox in one's belief is not to acknowledge a point of view that is true, but only the point of view that has prevailed. My studies lead me to believe that there never was a single consistent set of Christian beliefs. There were many Christianities from the dawn of Christianity itself. Various groups have tried to define true Christianity, but when they do they almost always define their own institutional, authoritarian system.
Some people, for example, assert that the historic creeds defined primitive Christianity. The Apostles' Creed, however, began as a series of baptismal formulas in local churches in the third century and these formulas differed widely until they evolved into a single form somewhere between 250 and 290 CE. I doubt if the actual apostles would have recognized much of it.
The Nicene Creed, adopted at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, was designed primarily to close the loopholes in the Apostles' Creed. The Athanasian Creed, a product of the late fourth century, was designed to close loopholes in the Nicene Creed. The earliest creed of the Church was only three words, Jesus is Messiah. The word "messiah" meant a variety of things to the Jews, so even the three-word creed had wide flexibility.
Others assert that believing in the Virgin Birth is a "core doctrine" of Christianity, but scholars can now demonstrate quite conclusively that both Paul and Mark seem never to have heard of it; and John, who was among the last writers in the New Testament, appears to have specifically rejected it since he refers to Jesus on two occasions as the "son of Joseph."
Still others suggest that the physical resurrection of Jesus is the essential core belief of Christianity, but I think I can demonstrate that Paul did not believe the resurrection was physical, and neither did Mark. Matthew is ambivalent. It is Luke and John, the last two gospels to be written, that interpret the resurrection as a physical resuscitation of a deceased body. So determining what the "core beliefs" of Christianity are is not as easy as people seem to think.
Some, usually in evangelical or in the conservative Catholic traditions, argue that doctrines like the Incarnation, the Atonement and the Trinity set the boundaries around essential Christianity, but once again these doctrines were not fully developed until the third and fourth centuries and it would be difficult to demonstrate that either Paul or Mark were Trinitarians.
My point is that Christianity has always been a movement and that most churches have simply frozen Christianity at fairly primitive levels. It is not to oppose basic Christianity that is the agenda of Christian scholars; it is to seek truth through the Christian story or through the Christian lens. That is what keeps me active in church life. Christianity is not static or doctrinal. It is a pathway we walk into the mystery of God. I grant that it is easier to walk the Christ path in some churches than in others, but true Christianity is always evolving into what it can be; its purpose is not to protect what it has been. So I would suggest that for you to see your role in your church to be that of a change agent, you are in fact being a true worshiper of Christ.
I hope this helps. I think institutional Christianity needs people like you and me in it."
– John Shelby Spong
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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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, but be reminded that I do not deny the obviousness of earthiness, and I am trying very hard to ground my higher energies to avoid that Gnostic flight from form. In fact, my recent preoccupation with laboratory alchemy is my own "high falutin" way of 'incarnating' the spiritual and the psychological alchemy that I've focused on with a physical alchemy of action on matter. Not political, and very solitary, but I'm an introvert and politics is an extraverted activity. 
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