My version of Christianity encompassed everything in the universe and more. God was the master mathematician, the skilled physician, the ultimate chemist, physicist and philosopher. And the Bible was his perfect, divinely inspired word.
Being a Christian had implications. I had to devote my life to God. This meant my thoughts, my desires, and my actions were all subject to God’s will. The music, movies, and media I consumed went through the filter of whatever I thought God’s will was. I erred on the side of purity and holiness, and expected others to do the same. I constantly asked God for guidance, and then strained my inward thoughts to try detect a response.
My life was framed on an eternal scale. It was a blip, a dot, a smidgen, truly insignificant. Taken literally, this life didn’t matter that much. And that made all the sense in the world, given that I was guaranteed a place in heaven.
Jesus preaches about hell a lot. I took it seriously, and literally. I deserved eternal torture, and without Christ it’s what I’d be getting, and the same was true for all the unbelievers. The stakes were cosmic.
All of this was built on the foundation that this was all certain. More certain than life itself. That these were ontological facts about the universe we lived in. One hundred percent guaranteed, backed by history, science, morality, and overwhelming miraculous evidence.
My epistemological bar was really high, but that’s how it was taught to me. That’s how the church sold it. That’s how my family believed it. And no one bothered to tell me otherwise.
I was taught that you can’t be a lukewarm Christian. That if you doubt it means you’re double minded and unstable in all your ways. That you ought to take up your cross and follow Jesus into persecution and death. Christianity made itself all or nothing. It made itself exclusive. I didn’t do that to it.
It’s not my fault that it doesn’t hold water. It’s not my fault that I called its bluff and it had no winning cards. It’s not my fault that it was sold to me with higher standards than it could hold to. It’s not my fault that the Bible isn’t divine, and miracles are mundane, and that people have all sorts of cognitive biases that cause them to buy into traditions and beliefs.
Without absolute certainty I won’t be able to do the things that Christianity requires. At best, I could force myself to be a cultural Christian, but I find many of the core tenets too unsubstantiated to act out on without feeling like a lunatic. You try praying to a God you don’t believe in.
