Why I am not a Christian
I bought Bertrand Russel’s “Why I Am Not a Christian” today. I had gone in looking for some Kierkegaard and a book of logic puzzles (they’re calming for me), I think I shocked myself with the selection I walked out with. (I did get the logic puzzle book though)
Why would I pick up “Why I Am Not a Christian?”
Questions about God and the nature of things have been the ever looming monster in my life, a battle of inward dialogue I have been having with myself since my first tepid steps outside of the box I was given as a child. For several years (as evidenced by the general thought patterns represented within this blog) I was comfortable working within the inward questions of my own Christianity.
The first question that occupied my mind was that of Hell, then I moved towards soteriology, followed by scriptural integrity, authentic Christology, chasing the dream of the early church, and postmodernism within Christianity. (you can follow this path of questioning via reading this blog chronologically) Somewhere along this path the inward agnosticism I had always battled began to emerge and the real struggle for my faith came. Whereas my previous questions only served to strengthen the resolve of my faith (by alleviating the certainty derisive to the true nature of faith), this new foreboding question was targeted at the very structure of faith itself.
I continued to partake in a group of freethinking Christians (though after my world blew up I stopped going for a while) known as an emergent cohort, and still largely considered myself part of the Christian populace, and for all intents and purposes a Christian (whose tenor I haughtily viewed as somewhat more authentic than that of others who were unwilling to face questioning and critical views of their systemic beliefs). I sit now, in the faux wooden chair and the throwback decor of my favorite coffee shop, and now openly confess that I am no longer a Christian.
Even know typing those words brings the sense of magnitude instilled in me by my teachers, and I begin to work through the ramifications of such a statement.
I should begin making clarifying statements here.
I was reading through “Why… Christian” today, in the aforementioned coffee house. The text opens with a lecture, by the same name, given by Russell to the National Secular Society somewhere in the late-20′s. Russell opens with a series of criticisms on the various “proofs” for God, Causality, Natural law, Design, Morality, and so forth. All of these criticisms I read with my now standard critical approach (I tend to run an inner dialogue with the authors I read, questioning them in the margins and highlighting a multitude of passages that any casual reader of a text after me would think I simply love the color orange) until I began to reach his criticisms of Jesus, this is where I began to feel an inward increase of vigorous objections and felt something within what we would term the heart (of course the ontological distinction becomes necessary between the heart as the vascular organ and the heart as perhaps the second player in the ever going struggle for control of the will).
Thus I must come to state where my current position interplays with the large majority of my readers, Christians.
I now view my position as that of an outsider, yet a friend. Where I do not share Russell’s belief that the entirety of religious systems are detrimental to the progressive and beneficial evolution of humanity as a whole, I instead hoist up what I see as beneficial examples of religion as that which should be sought after heartily by those still within those systems, and mimicked by those outside. When I see the social justice of Christianity played out, my heart is drawn to such displays, and when I see the detrimental side of the interplay between religion and politics my heart is spurned.
It is my high view of Christ which keeps me connected to Christianity, and my high view of the social justice of Christ which keeps me connected to Emergence (which is in no way a statement that those outside of this system [and those inside must forgive my usage of the term system] as the only expression of social justice, instead it is the expression I see which most promotes social justice as a necessary core tenant).
Thus, here I am again, fully appreciative of the phrase “Friend of Emergent.” And take comfort in the knowledge that I’ll still be able to carry on in that “conversation,” I look forward to the continued interaction with my local cohort friends, and the renewed interaction with my online friends (probably many of those don’t follow the RSS anymore, so that may be a while).
I’ll probably spend the next while clarifying my position on the subject, but as always, the comment section loves questions.
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