We are all Christians — without having so much as a suspicion what Christianity is
Let me illustrate this from merely one point of view.
When Christianity requires us to love our enemies, one might say in a certain sense that it had good reason to require this, for God would be loved, and (speaking merely in a human way) God is man's most redoubtable enemy, thy mortal enemy; He would that thou shouldst die, die unto the world, He hates precisely that wherein thou naturally hast thy life, to which thou dost cling with all thy joy in living.
The men who have entered into no relation with God enjoy now — frightful irony! — the privilege that God does not torment them in this life. No, it is only the men whom He loves, who have entered into relation with God, whose mortal enemy (speaking merely in a human way) God may be said to be — but for all that out of love.
But He is thy mortal enemy. He Who is love would be loved by thee. This signifies that thou must die, die unto the world, for otherwise thou canst not love Him.
So there He sits, omnipresent and omniscient as He is, and watches thee, knowing the least thing that transpires in thee, that indeed He does, thy mortal enemy! Beware then of wishing anything, beware of fearing anything; for what thou wishest will not be fulfilled, but rather the contrary, and what thou fearest, and the more thou fearest only the sooner, shall fall upon thee. For He loves thee and would be loved by thee, both out of love. But as soon as there is something thou dost wish think not of Him, and so also if there is something thou dost fear; or if thou dost associate Him with thy wishing and fearing, thou art not thinking of Him in and for Himself, that is, thou dost not love Him — and He would be loved, out of love He wills it.
Take an example. Take a prophet. Think then first what it means to be a prophet, how severely tried and sacrificed is the life of such a man, by the renunciation of pretty much everything we men count valuable. Think of the prophet Jonah! Such a severely tried and tormented man has the modest wish to rest awhile under the shade of a tree. He finds this tree, this shade; it was so grateful a relief to him that presumably he wished he might hold on to this refreshment, feared that it might be taken from him. He scores a hit! God the almighty at once fixes His attention upon this tree, a worm is commanded to sap its root.
How dreadful (speaking merely in a human way) is God in His love, so dreadful it is (speaking merely in a human way) to be loved of God and to love God. In the declaration that God is love, the subordinate clause is, He is thy mortal enemy.
———and here we are playing the game that we are all Christians, that all love God, whereas by God being love and by loving God we nowadays understand nothing else but the nauseating syrupy sweets in which falsehood's witnesses to the truth are wont to deal.
Assuming that no God exists, no eternity, no accounting, then the official Christianity is a perfectly charming and elegant invention for very sensibly making this life as enjoyable as possible, more enjoyable than the pagan could have it. For it is well known that what constantly troubled the pleasure-loving pagan was this thing of eternity; but the official Christianity put such a slant upon this thing of eternity that eternity exists precisely for the sake of giving us a thorough relish and zest for enjoying this life.
Just as if one of the composers who compose variations upon one or more movements of a funeral march were to take occasion to compose with free poetic license a dashing gallop — so has the official Christianity taken occasion from some sentences in the New Testament (this doctrine of a cross and anguish and horror and shuddering before eternity) to compose with free poetic license a lovely idyl, with procreating of children and waltzes, where everything is "so joyful, so joyful, so joyful," where the priest (a kind of leader of the town band) is willing, for money, to let Christianity (the doctrine of dying unto the world) furnish the music for weddings and christenings, where everything is joy and mirth in this (according to the teaching of Christianity, a vale of tears and a penitentiary), this glorious world (yea, according to the New Testament it is a time of probation related to an accounting and judgment), a foretaste of the still more joyful eternity which the priest guarantees to those families which by their devotion to him have evinced a sense for the eternal.