> He says that "you're either a Christian who has temporarily lost his way, spiritually, or you were never a Christian at all except on the outside."
>
> Well...no. If you're a firm Christian, maybe it's nice to believe such a statement, but it simply isn't necessarily the case. I, for one, was a firm Christian, inside and out, for a long time. It wasn't a case of going through the motions; I believed strongly in the Bible and what the pastors at my Lutheran church taught me. There were moments where I thought I felt a connection with God.
>
> Fast-forwarding to today: I am agnostic, but am most of all not a Christian, as I have many fundamental problems with the religion. I have not "temporarily lost my way, spiritually"; I have spent a lot of time examining various faiths and considering them (which is, of course, something that most people of faith don't bother doing), and have come to my own conclusions.


I think what Sam is saying that no matter how firm your faith at any point in time, if you give them up, you were never really a Christian; for a Christian, the commitment is forever. In other words, if you really were a Christian on the inside, you wouldn't or couldn't turn your back on it. I personally wouldn't use this definition, but each person has different ideas about what defines a Christian. It's when people start imposing their definition as fact on others that things start to get dangerous (not to say that Sam is doing that).