And here I am, actively choosing to not walk away, for various purposeful reasons:

• If my perceptions are correct (and truly, that is all we have) I have experienced the influence of God, not necessarily ‘talking’ to me, but certainly directing me (only twice, and it had to do with pursuing after my wife, and having a child… no small things)

• Christ was on to something. I can’t *prove* he was God, but I will make that leap of faith for someone who just *got it*. Again, choosing to believe in him. And yes, the bible is fallible, so the gospels might not be perfect. But the spirit of Christ is in there, and that’s what I’m following.

• Do you remember the fundamentalist ‘tactic’ Christians could use for helping non-Christians understand the concept of God where:
  

  “Let’s say this whole chalk board is all knowledge possible. Now lets assume that this dot is the knowledge that you possess. Don’t you think you could have missed the knowledge of God’s existence?”

  The irony of this tactic is that the reverse is true:

  “Don’t you, Sir Christian, think you could have missed the knowledge that God doesn’t exist/doesn’t care?”

  And beyond that I realized that both are true: I just CAN’T know either way. My little febrile mind, and my limited capacity to understand all knowledge, space/time etc etc. It is beyond human grasp.

So I’ve reduced it to my experiences and a logic problem:

I’m relying on the infinite power and wisdom of God to catch my ultimate fall into the (possibility) of hell. I’m doing my best to understand something completely not understandable, and if I’m right and he exists, and he acknowledges my efforts, he may accept me. To follow the structure of that belief: he created me with the limited intelligence and capacity to understand him, so I rely on the fact that he knows I’m inherently flawed.

If I’m wrong, and somehow picked the wrong path, or God turns out to be a lot more diabolical that I hope him to be… well, its a Shakespearean tragedy at that point.

Or, it could be a gigantic cosmic joke. But that’s more Douglas Adams’ territory.

Essentially I’m a discriminating pluralist who is a Christian. There’s no way I can know with certainty that Christianity is ‘the one-truth’.  I’ve chosen to believe it because of my upbringing, personal experiences (‘Holy Spirit’ if you will) and the fact that Christ makes the most sense to me.

I irrationally believe in a God who threw this all together, and is watching us tear it apart.

The new atheist movement (militant fundamentalist all-religions-must-die) has, being somewhat of an oxy-moron, illuminated the hypocrisies of my own religious past. Although I had long pulled myself from the denominational bubble, militant atheists like Dawkins finally gave me the lens with which to view the structure in which I had grown up. Using subtle phrases, an isolationist worldview was pushed on me all those years. I was ‘inside’ with the ‘one-truth’, much like the new atheists – convinced of their assertions and willing to aggressively defend them. To see such an approach being used by ‘the non-Christians’ gave me additional pause, and led me to the distinct possibility that it was unlikely I held the ‘one-truth’ – as taught by my former denominational leaders.

In the end, it was the us-vs-them attitude that introduced my doubt, and gradually demonstrated to me that really my church leaders were mouthpieces of the bible college they had attended and in turn the denominational industry it represented. If they had ideas outside that denominational box I never saw them discussed. The building of polemic arguments against the latest ‘threat’, be it a court decision, a rock band, television, dating, alcohol, homosexuality, and anything considered a remote threat was commonplace. I now think that the polemic approach was less necessary in regards of the arguments themselves, and served a better purpose of ‘uniting’ the group. We then had a common enemy that we could fight together, ignoring the sometimes shaky foundations of our theology – and certainly ignoring any sort of pragmatism or compromise that could have helped meet ‘the non-Christians’ where they were at.

There was a single overarching idea of ‘unity among the body’, which was a twisted way of saying ‘stick to your denomination’. It was this imperialist mindset that gave unity its secondary meaning – the one pertaining to member retention and the guilt and fear associated with walking away from the ‘body’. I now look back astonished that I was always frustrated with our lack of ability to achieve ‘unity’ among believers, which I now attribute to the fact that they had an entirely different sort of isolationist unity in mind.

This brings me to their idea of self-control, their version of which took until much later in life for me to learn was actually repression, a repression borne through fear and negative reinforcement. I plan to write a much more detailed piece on the idea of the ‘dangers of repression as self-control’, but need to do more research into the psychology of these ideas (anyone have any pointers?).

However their biggest fear is that of ideas, and particularly ideas that challenge the denominational theology. There is no room for discussion, and no structure for conversation or debates involving derivations of the teachings. At this point, I believe that is because they were taught with certainty that they hold the ‘one-truth’, and therefore greatly fear (and have no need for) a clearinghouse of ideas. This is where the fear has become systemic, where leaders teach fear not out of some malicious intent, but because they are genuinely scared of being wrong themselves – and in order to protect themselves turn a blind eye to new ideas, interpretations and reason itself.

My emergence from fundamentalism has been refreshing and I feel more at peace with myself and God than ever. And so my persistent uncertainty dictates that I cannot run from ideas, only consume, evaluate and apply those that are sensible to my life as a human who identifies with Christ’s teachings.

Feel free to comment below…