I feel that I should explain a few things.

I often wonder why I even bother with Christianity anymore. I'm very aware of how much time I've put in writing about it on here, and frankly I would like to move on to other things again. But the fact of the matter is that it's been on my mind a lot lately, and it won't stop until I've followed this train of thought to its natural conclusion and it's done with me. All the same, I do wonder why I bother with it. For a long time I didn't, but it kept bobbing up every now and then throughout my teen life. Encountering figures like Desmond Tutu, C.S. Lewis, the mystics John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, and especially people in my own life, showed me people for whom this faith had something real and true and beautiful, and it was a constant source of inspiration to them. Seeing them live this deeply within their faith made me admire them, and envy them their ability to access that through Christianity. It has long stopped doing that for me. For a while I wondered if their convictions, their love and compassion, was proof that Christianity did work. But then I realized that it was not the system, but the people themselves that inspired me. As I've mentioned here before, I have great faith in people who have faith. I also viewed these kind of people as an outsider. But I wanted to know what it was at the centre of their faith that inspired the joy and serenity they seem to possess. I wanted back into Christianity, but I felt it was too late, and I had moved on. I don't necessarily need it. Nonetheless, this religion has still been a subject of great fascination and frustration for me. So I should explain where I stand with it. Get comfortable, this is going to take a while.

As I grew older, I became more aware of different religions, a process that was accelerated in the post-9/11 era, where religion and diversity became a huge topic in schools and media. As I became more aware of different religions, I took an interest in them and studied them. The more I studied, the more I realised that there was something of God in each of them. Understanding their system of ethics, and the profound experiences that they were rooted in brought me to the conclusion that they too had a grasp on the sacred as much as my own faith tradition. This unhinging of my previous understanding of religion--the deep humanness of it--was liberating for me. I was someone who was raised in an environment of tolerance and open-mindedness. To discriminate against others for their religions never would have entered my mind, and yet I felt I needed some divine sanctioning for this ingrained attitude. My heart wanted to celebrate diversity, but my head wanted God's permission first. I believed in my newfound universalism, but I had no direct evidence for it. Yet seeing the way people of various traditions conducted their lives according to their faiths, reading the texts they regarded as holy, I was convinced of this idea. There were similar traits among each of them. How could a religion like Islam--that endorsed critical thought and social justice--be evil? How could a religion like Buddhism--that endorsed compassion for all beings, and offered the chance to transcend endless suffering--be godless? How could a man like the Dalai Lama not be holy, just because he didn't worship the God of Abraham and Isaac?

However, this liberation also brought with it a sense of inertia. I still felt I needed a way to express my own spirituality, but what were my options? To choose one road would be to exclude all the others in a way. I couldn't stand the idea of not making a choice, but the idea of defining myself also meant creating a border around me, which excludes more than it includes. You may ask, "why choose at all?" If the mind, as Comte-Sponville says, has no fatherland, then why the need to pretend it does? To choose did indeed feel futile, because I understood intellectually that the truth ultimately transcended any single path. God was greater than religion. Yet I still needed a way to that truth and I did not feel I could trust myself on my own to reach it.

For years I've been orbiting around Buddhism, but I can't make a decision about following it specifically for a few reasons, one of them being my fear that I would commit to it for all the wrong reasons. In some ways it felt more true to Buddhism not to officially convert to it, because otherwise it would simply be exchanging one parochial worldview for another. Again, perhaps I needn't make a choice. But a large part of me longs to actively express my spirituality, and to openly acknowledge the sacred in my every day life, something a secular lifestyle often overlooks.

Amid all this, Christianity hasn't completely lost its appeal. For all its baggage throughout history, even in spite of its narrow view seemingly built into the Bible, I've been drawn to it. I felt the ministry and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth has a great deal to offer to our contemporary world. This I cannot deny. I believe this is so because it is mirrored in other faiths. The problem with that was that I only really saw its value when I held it up to the alternatives. I could not put stock in Christianity until it was validated by other systems, so this meant I had other built-in standards by which I was measuring it. I think that because I've tried to view the Gospels through the lens of Eastern philosophy to make sense of it, I wondered if I belonged to that mindset, which is why I turn so often to Buddhism. The language of this faith tradition was always more accessible to my logic-saturated mind. It allowed me to think more. And yet, for whatever reason, my sights always wandered back to the images of cloistered cathedrals, humble monastic cells, bread and wine, lambs, blood --and crosses. Always the Cross loomed in my mind whether I wanted it there or not: a symbol of death turned inside out, into a symbol of selflessness and love. It is a dramatic and therefore unforgettable image, and therefore I could not forget it. This may be because I have been raised in a predominantly Christian context. To deny this cultural heritage would be apocryphal. But whatever the reason, I am drawn to it, like a big, horrific magnet.

This past Christmas, I read Karen Armstrong's book The Case For God, and my hope for religion--not just faith, but religion--was renewed. She showed me that it does have a place in human society, but only because she illustrated its original meaning. Religion, she argues, is not something you intellectually believe in, but something you do. It was a skill, a technique, similar to practicing scales on a piano, which could help someone improve and expand their spiritual life the more they did it. It was the way one carried out what one believed. The ritual in religion had potential to awaken the spirit of action and enlightenment. She also gave historical evidence of the same transcendent experience in all religions, eastern and western, so this put my mind to rest about that. That wasn't enough to make me consider returning to Christianity, however. It was a crucial moment, but not the end.

I tried going to church a few times over Lent, and while I wanted a spiritual community, I couldn't relate to the liturgical practices. I couldn't say the Apostle's Creed without feeling a knot in my stomach, knowing I didn't believe 95% of it. I believe in forgiveness, and I believe in God, (although in no form resembling the traditional bearded patriarch), and I believe that in all likelihood Jesus died under Pontius Pilate's governance, since this governor was a real historical person. Everything else I couldn't swallow. The biggest issue barring me from Christianity is its historicity. In our contemporary Darwinised world it is perfectly alright for Christians to believe that the story of Genesis is nothing but a creation myth. A lot of the supernatural aspects of the Old Testament are generally viewed as myth and metaphor to most Christians today, thankfully. Therein science and religion may coexist. The problem comes up with the stories surrounding the life of Christianity's protagonist. Can a person see the Virgin Birth, the various miracles Jesus performed, and the Resurrection, as metaphor rather than fact, and still be considered a Christian? To be a Christian, in the orthodox sense, meant that these things had to be accepted as things that actually occurred in history, even if the Fall, Noah's Ark, and the parting of the Red Sea did not. And even if the Virgin Birth and the miracles were debunked, the Resurrection surely had to be accepted as a real historical event in order to be a Christian. This was the event that everything Jesus' life lead up to, we are told. It was what the Christian argument hinged upon. This does not work for me as literal, so I decided I must not be a Christian.

Furthermore, I could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, which sucked the humanity out of Jesus and injected him with divinity--all done centuries after his death. I believe he was a man, nothing more. Therefore, I must not be a Christian. I also knew that all of the documents in the New Testament were written decades after Jesus' life ended, and in all probability he never said most of the things he was quoted to have said. So I could never be certain what the original followers of Jesus actually said and did. Unable to reach the historical Jesus, I couldn't be sure either way if the Gospels had any validity. It troubled me that people called these books the Word of God, when they were selected out of a plethora of gospels that were floating around at the time. For example, why did the Gospel of Thomas get rejected from the canon? Why did the canon close at all? Why did Paul get so much stage time in the New Testament? This to me seemed like the texts were edited by individuals who had their own agenda to promote, and closing the canon for all time was a way for the Church to exert its power and authority. How could I call it the Word of God when I knew it was tampered with, not to mention penned by humans? I could make no final conclusions from looking at history, so the way was barred for me.

But that wasn't the end either. At the beginning of the summer I started reading a book called The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. Spong is a Bishop in the Episcopal Church of America. He is also a theologian and a Biblical scholar. In this book he basically says flat out that the Bible is not the Word of God, but a document of very human origins. He deconstructed the Bible, one argument at a time, showing how its books were the product of human insight at best, and aggressive nationalism at worst. He goes through the passages that promote anti-Semitism, child abuse, homophobia and misogyny, and says they must be jettisoned from the Bible. They are not Holy Writ so they have no reason to be there. He does the same with texts that promote a patriarchal order, including the image of God as Father, and even the texts that the Church uses today to defend its stance on birth control. To "be fruitful and multiply" Spong argues, may have had a place in a time when the Jewish tribe was small and relied on its progeny to survive, but now that the planet is groaning under the weight of overpopulation, birth control is now a moral necessity; the sacredness of life is being compromised by the unchecked quantity of it. The best way to view the Bible is as a Jewish Epic, like the Odyssey was for the Greeks, or the Mahabharata was for Hindus--not the final truth, but a way for a people to tell the story of their nation using the language they had, with all its power and limitations. Finally, Spong casts the light on Jesus not as a god, but a man. He is not God, Spong says. In all likelihood he was a person conceived out of wedlock (yes, a bastard child; hence using the story of the Virgin Birth to avoid the scandal). And in all likelihood he had a wife (there are many theories about Mary Magdalene being this person, and Spong thinks that there is text evidence for it). Not only that, but he may have even had female disciples, so his community was not a Boys Only club as it has become and been up until now. He probably did a lot to infuriate the orthodox Jewish authorities, and so he was crucified and died for it. That's it. The Bible is not the Word of God, it is a collection of books conceived by human minds and shaped by their limited knowledge. But knowing this, Spong argues it is still possible to be a Christian. He believes that even though none of the Gospels can be seen as historically accurate, they point toward a man with whom people had a profound experience and that the miracles and the Resurrection, are still viable symbols for today, even if they did not literally happen.

I read about this further in Spong's book This Hebrew Lord. Its argument was that Jesus must be viewed "through Hebrew eyes", and that most of the imagery we have inherited in Christianity has been removed from its original context, and therefore distorted. Obviously Jesus had an effect on the people around him which they could only express with the words they possessed. It is important to look at him in his original Jewish context to understand the things that were said about him. People called him 'Lord' and 'Son of God' because these were images and words pulled directly from Jewish scripture to describe the Jewish Messiah, a human. 'Lord' and 'Son of God were titles for a man, the descendant of King David, not a divine being who came down to visit us from Outside. Even if he wasn't literally the descendant of David, he acted in such a way that made people believe he was the Messiah. This was the only language they had to express the experience they had with him. Spong also argues that as long as the Bible is seen as a human document and not the Word of God, it is possible to be a Christian, because Jesus was a man who defied tribal barriers: instead of rising up to crush and scatter his enemies, he preached the idea of loving his enemies. He reached out to communities outside of his own, regardless of who they were. His message of love and compassion are what shine through the Gospels, though hidden beneath the political biases and limited language of their writers. His story, Spong says, was the turning point at which the Jewish epic was transformed into a universal epic, and that is why he is significant and worthy of following. That is why he was called Christ.

After reading his work, I've been able to look at these facts not with trepidation, but relief. Of course all of this information has existed before Spong came along, but the fact that it was admitted by a person of considerable authority in the Christian Church, a Bishop no less, gives me hope for this faith tradition. Indeed, Bible scholarship came into its own about two hundred years ago, and yet it so much of its discoveries do not reach laypeople. Not through the Church anyway. Church authorities view it as a threat to the status quo, a threat to certainty which they seem to think that regular people cannot grasp. So they repress it, while people curious enough find out anyway, from other sources less friendly to Christianity. People use this information to level attacks against Christianity, and what I find interesting here is that Spong uses it as a defense of Christianity, or at least what he believes it should be.

There is one more problem I haven't addressed though. Still unsure about how to enter any path without negating the others, I read something else Spong said:

"Is our only alternative then to seek to honor positive tradition in all religious systems, creating in the process a pantheon large enough to hold us all together, a religion of consensus where the edges are blurred and the divisions are papered over? Some traditions, like B'hai, seek to do that, and they do it with great integrity, but that pathway, while positive for many, does not seem to me to offer the best hope for either religious toleration or a religious future."

This was exactly how I was feeling.

"I propose, rather, a different route into what I think is our inevitable interfaith future. Each of us as participants in our own particular faith must journey into the very heart of the tradition that claims our loyalty. I, as a Christian, must plumb the depths and scale the heights of my own faith system. I must learn to separate the essence of Christianity from the compromises this religious system has made through history...We Christians must journey beyond these forced political divisions to the core of our faith and there allow ourselves to discover its essence, to enter its meaning and finally to transcend its limits. We do that, however, while still clinging to what we call our ultimate Truth and what we regard as our 'pearl of great price.' That must also be the pathway that every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and any other participant in any other religion of the world must walk."

Spong makes the case that Christianity is a way that points to the truth, and not the truth itself, and that eventually one must go beyond it. This made perfect sense to me, now. I think I could understand this because of my experience as an artist, and a person. We as humans deal with the concrete, the tangible, and physical, in order to reach the abstract, the intangible, and the spiritual. Great art is created by focusing on the specifics. That is what specificity is to acting choices, that is what imagery is to literature. We deal with particulars to reach the universal. Jesus spoke in the concrete language of symbols because that is how the human mind works. Tibetan Buddhism employs the same method, by focusing one's energy on mandalas. We can't tend to the soul without the body, which is something I think Jewish wisdom understands quite well. We can't reach God but through the physical, because that is what our minds can wrap themselves around. It is like in the Bhagavad Gita: Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal himself in his full glory, but to do that would blind Arjuna, so Krishna takes on a physical form while on earth. That is what religion is. Trying to be specific in spirituality as one is specific in art. Trying to put clothing on the ineffable. Of course, it gets to a point where the clothing must be shed, but until then, it's a necessity.

So that's where I now stand with religion in general, and Christianity in particular. It's a very complicated relationship, but one I feel strongly about. Spong is just one individual, but his ideas resonate with me quite deeply, as does Armstrong, and even Lewis. That being said I haven't reached a final conclusion, but this doesn't bother me anymore. I know my journey is not over, and it excites me. But all in all, after reading these authors, I feel it is now possible to enter this faith tradition if I so desire, let alone any tradition, without giving up my intellect and my skepticism.