Any person who has ever made it through a formal education system has been taught that two plus two equals four. That simple bit of arithmetic is taught to us early on, before almost anything else. By the time that we graduate from college, it has been so ingrained into our vulnerable little minds that most of us would never think to question it as fact. Two plus two equals four; it's that simple. But what I find interesting is that, according to my math major best friend, it has never been proven that two plus two equals four. It is accepted, yes, but try as they might, the great thinkers of the world have yet to prove mathematically that two plus two equals four. But still it is taught, and I, personally, refuse to be swayed. Two plus two cannot possibly equal anything but four for my mind to be at peace.
Similarly, anyone who has attended Christian school for all of his or her academic career has been taught Christian doctrine. And, similarly, while it has yet to be proven as fact, most students accept Christianity as the truth, and Jesus as the way, the truth, and the light. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that acceptance, just as there is nothing wrong with believing whole-heartedly that two plus two equals four. But just as my mathematician friend spends his days pondering the simple arithmetic problem, some of us leave our Christian educations wondering if Christianity is truly the only right way to go. I am one of those people.
There are a number of reasons that I can list off that define why I do not consider myself to be a Christian. But there are a few things that I do agree completely with Christianity on. First of all, I do believe in God. I believe in a higher power, and I pray to Him (or Her) every night. I believe that God has my best interest in mind, and a divine plan for each and every living being, though I typically refer to that plan as "fate" or "destiny." I do believe that Jesus was a man, a good man, and very probably the best. I believe in his teachings about the here-and-now, in his message of compassion, love, and tolerance. I also believe in a Heaven, a beautiful afterlife spent in the presence of all of the souls that we hold close to our own here on Earth, though I haven't exactly got the specifics worked out in my head.
Where I differ in my views from the views of Christianity is not in Jesus's message, but in other specifics of the Bible and the doctrine that rose out of it. To begin with, I do not believe that the God I have faith in created the world in seven days. I believe in evolution, because to me, it seems logical. I believe that God started things up by planting the seeds for progress and evolution, and that everything that grew from those seeds was all part of God's plan, but, though I've tried, I simply do not believe that Adam and Eve roamed the earth before the dinosaurs. In fact, the scientific part of my mind has a little trouble going along with the idea of Adam and Eve in the first place, because, knowing what we do about genetics and such, if the entire human race evolved from only two individuals, the effects of inbreeding would have caused our species to die out long ago.
Staying in the Old Testament, I also find it difficult to believe some of the stories about God's various doings, such as the story of Noah's ark. In fact, this story in particular has always bugged me. It is interesting to imagine God purifying the world in one fell swoop, but for me, the means the Bible describes Him using to do so just don't add up to the end result. Sure, all of the land-dwelling creatures would be killed, and the birds as well, as they would have no place to land and would certainly become fatigued, fall into the water, and drown. But what about the sea creatures? Would they even know about the flood? It wouldn't seem to give them any trouble at all. If God was that displeased with all of the inhabitants of the planet, I don't think He would let the fish and sharks and whales off on a technicality.
Moving on to the New Testament, the next part of Christianity that my beliefs differ from greatly is the idea of Jesus being the son of God. If I get to Heaven and Jesus is sitting there at His right hand, I'll be the first to admit my mistake. But as it goes, I just simply don't believe it. It's not a conscious effort; I just find myself in the same frame of mind when I hear Christians refer to Jesus as the son of God, or to his virgin birth or miraculous resurrection, for that matter, as I do when I hear people discussing classical mythology and Greek gods: the ideas intrigue me, but I just cannot think of them as fact. Along the same lines, I disagree with a majority of Christians in thinking that it is their duty to save non-Christians by converting them and convincing them of Jesus's authenticity. If someone truly does not believe those things, his or her lack of faith cannot be transformed by mere persuasion. Persuasion takes place in the mind, while faith resides in the heart. It takes experiencing something for one self to change what's in one's heart.
This leads me to another difference between my faith and the Christian faith: the belief that the only way to make it to Heaven is by believing that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins. I am more of the Hindu belief that there are many paths that lead to one God. There are just too many good people in this world who do not believe in the divine sonship of Jesus, and I cannot fathom those good people being excluded from Heaven for that reason only. There are newborn babies who die before they have a chance to sin (and because I do not believe in Adam and Eve, I am not a believer in original sin), and I refuse to believe that they are denied entrance to Heaven because they had not yet been baptized, mainly because babies are incapable of making the choices that baptism asks people to make, so I cannot see how baptism would make any difference in the posthumous fate of those tiny souls. I could go on and on, but to keep things brief, I'll leave it at this: Jews do not believe that Jesus was the son of God, and Jews are God's chosen people. If God's chosen people don't get the privilege of Heaven, I find it difficult to believe that anyone does.
Speaking of the afterlife, I also differ from Christians on the topic of Hell. Having not been there myself, I can't say that I know for a fact that it exists or not, but I lean towards not. The God that I believe in is a loving, caring, and understanding father, and naturally, fathers punish their children to keep them in line. But eternal fire and brimstone is a little different from time out in the corner or no TV for a week. In fact, one thing in particular has always bugged me about the concept of Hell, and that is the idea that, if one asks forgiveness and truly means it, they can get away (literally) with murder, but a suicide victim doesn't get that option, and according to Christianity, is destined for Hell. One might argue that if someone commits that particular no-turning- back type sin, they deserve it. I have always wondered, though, how the loving and compassionate father that I believe in could condemn someone who was miserable enough in life to actually go through with ending it to eternal misery in Hell as punishment.
Along the same lines, I definitely do not believe in a Satan figure who inspires all of the evil in the world. As a psychology major, I know that people do bad things for many reasons, but when traced deeply enough, these bad things usually evolve out of fear, anger, peer pressure, lack of judgement, or a disorder that effects morals and conscience such as certain personality disorders do. The idea of a literal Satan, to me, comes across as a scapegoat.
So far, all of the things I have mentioned have been on the more faith-based side of Christianity. But most of my differences from Christianity are differences from the more political side of the religion. This includes views on things like abortion, birth control, the death penalty, divorce, homosexuality, test-tube conception, surrogate motherhood, treatment related stem-cell research and cloning, and even premarital sex. While I don't think that I could personally ever go through with an abortion, I feel that it is every woman's right to make that decision for herself. I believe whole-heartedly that with the planet's current overpopulation and with the teen pregnancy rate through the roof, birth-control is more than okay; it is absolutely crucial. I believe that sometimes, the death penalty is completely appropriate. I believe, being a child of divorced parents, that sometimes divorce is a necessary evil. I one-hundred percent believe that homosexuals are equal to heterosexuals in every way and deserving of equivalent rights. I feel that test-tube conception and surrogate motherhood offer people who desperately want children a chance for happiness. In my opinion, stem-cell research and cloning offer hope for the treatment of certain elusive medical maladies. And I believe that, if completely consensual and done for the right reasons, premarital sex is not the grave sin that many Christians believe it to be, but a bond shared between two people who love each other, but just may not end up with each other for the long run, and sometimes even a preventative measure against divorce. All of these opinions are, of course, only opinion, and I completely support the inherent right of any human being to oppose my opinions. However, an entire religion that opposes my opinions is more than likely not the religion that I belong to.
While I'm sure that there are more that I cannot think of at the moment, I have listed and described most of the major reasons that I give to people as to why I do not categorize myself as Christian. There are, of course, a couple of more surface matters, as well, such the fact that I do not attend church, nor do I think a church service is important for myself. I feel that I can communicate with God just as well sitting alone in my room as I can in a room full of others. Better, actually, because the focus is entirely and completely on God, and because of circumstances which I have already mentioned, I do not feel the need to take part in the sacraments. I also do not celebrate most Christian holidays, due to my lack of belief in certain commemorated aspects surrounding Jesus's existence. I do celebrate Christmas; however I focus my celebration on the peace, love, and unity associated with the holiday, not on Jesus's birth.
So, with all of the discrepancies that I have listed in mind, I am still faced with one burning question: why is it that certain devoutly Christian friends and professors of mine insist that I really am a Christian anyway, and that I simply don't know it yet? As I wander back through all of my reasons that I am not, I try to find their reasons that I am (a very liberal one, but a Christian at that) hidden behind my explanations.
As far as my stance on the creation theory versus the evolution theory goes, I can see my friends' point. As I understand it, only strict fundamentalist groups require a belief in a literal and historical seven day creation. In more liberal groups, six or seven different acceptable opinions about creation have been formed, and as far as I can remember, my opinion that God planted the seeds for progress is actually one of them. This idea also takes care of my lack of belief in Adam and Eve characters, and therefore original sin, as well. And, staying with my discrepancies with Old Testament beliefs, my problem with accepting many of the Old Testament stories could also be worked around. As it has been explained to me, it is now a common belief among Christians that the early Bible stories are not necessarily to be interpreted literally, but rather taken as fables or parables with morals instructing the readers on how to live properly, similar to the stories that Jesus later told with the same purpose in mind.
Stepping away from the literal Bible and into the doctrine that rose up around it, my opinion on conversion to Christianity could also be explained away. There are some groups of Christians, although they are few, who also do not believe in making a conscious effort to convert people. The Amish are one group, the only one that I can think of off the top of my head, to be honest, to whom conversion is not a priority. But even if there is only one group, that means that it is not a necessity to believe that one has a duty to convert others to be a Christian.
That brings me to the idea that it absolutely is a necessity to believe that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins to gain access to Heaven. This concept seems to be a source of controversy between believers in Christianity. Something that I have noticed, through my experiences in Christian schools, is that as people get older, their minds tend to open to the idea that non-Christians can be good and deserving people, as well. So, while most of the Christians that I know in my own age range would beg to differ, many others would say that even that discrepancy is not enough to keep me out of Christianity.
My views on baptism, also, are represented by certain Protestant groups. Baptists and certain other groups share my feeling that infants are incapable of making the pact with God that baptism requires. As far as my views on the other sacraments go, Protestants for the most part observe only two, baptism and eucharist, and since I am talking about Christianity in general, and not specifically Catholicism, I will confine myself to those two. I have already covered baptism, so I will move on to the sacrament of eucharist. While I do not definitively know of any groups that do not observe the eucharist sacrament, I do know many people who consider themselves to be good Christians but do not partake in the sacrament of eucharist, usually because they do not make it to church. Taking part in the symbolic offering of bread and wine does not seem to be a make-or-break part of Christianity.
The existence of Hell and the opinions that surround it also seems a little undefined in modern Christianity. As time has progressed, most people seem to have moved past the literal "fire and brimstone" concept of Hell, and the more liberal of my Christian friends seem to have given up on the concept of Hell entirely. They believe in a more purgatory-like situation, which is much closer to my earlier analogy of time out. They believe in punishment from the father, but not in eternal misery for mistakes made on earth by ever fallible human beings. They, like I, believe that God is a little more understanding than that. And also like I, they hold a different and less literal and blameworthy view of Satan. For them, Satan is an idea, a representation of pure evil, not a cause for it, and certainly not a horrible red creature who sits in the bowels of Hell wielding a pitchfork or a human embodiment of that character who pops up on Earth at the most opportune times to trade souls for good fortune. If my friends can be good Christians and believe that, then certainly so could I.
On the topic of religious politics, opinions are also changing. Abortion, birth control, the death penalty, divorce, homosexuality, test-tube conception, surrogate motherhood, treatment related stem-cell research and cloning, and premarital sex are hugely controversial issues within the Christian church, and many, many Christians still view all of the above as completely and without a doubt wrong. But another group of Christians, a more liberal group, are becoming more accepting of those issues and are developing views on those topics that are more abstract, recognizing that there is more to most situations than a simple black or white, right or wrong way of looking at things. It is becoming less of an impossible idea that Christians can hold these more open- minded views and still be Christians, and if I were a Christian, I would most certainly fall into this rapidly growing group.
As for the fact that I do not attend church, it may not be proper, but I know plenty of Christians who do not. Most of them simply do not have time, but many do as I do: they pray nightly, they speak to God, and they use their everyday lives as a form of worship. The issue of attending Church seems to be more of a surface issue, to me, and not something that would bar me from Christianity if I truly believed that I should be included. But, still, I do not.
Why don't I feel that I am a Christian after all of that? I have explained all of the discrepancies away, so why do I still not agree with my friends and professors? Why am I not calling them right now to tell them that I just figured out that they were right all along? Because the last thing on my list was the fact that I do not celebrate the Christian holidays, or at least do not celebrate them with the proper Christian mind set. I do not celebrate because I do not believe in what the holidays commemorate. Not believing that Jesus was the son of God, and not believing that he was born to a virgin mother or that on the third day he rose from the dead, may not keep one out of Heaven, but it certainly does keep one out of Christianity. Jesus's teachings are only part of the basis for Christianity; I don't get to be Christian just because I agree with what he taught. I need to also agree that he wasn't just some unbelievably enlightened guy, but was the son of God, and I do not. And, like I said, with matters of faith, it takes more than convincing. No one is ever going to be able to talk me into believing those things about Jesus; if I ever do have a change of heart, it will be just that - not a change of mind. And until I do have that change of heart, I will not be a Christian, and I'm fine with that. The belief in Jesus as Lord is a sacred thing that bonds all Christians together, and I would never belittle that by pretending to believe only because I'm sick and tired of people belittling me for not.
© jessica huby, 2004
