First it’s important to tackle the two biggest issues I have with Christianity head on: the existence of suffering and the existence of the devil. Or, in the opposite order if you like, for one cannot exist without the other. If you were raised in a religious household and had even the slightest amount of curiosity about why things are the way that they are, you’ve probably asked a parent, loved one, or youth pastor why bad things happen to good people. Perhaps you’re like me and wonder why babies are born with deformities, or aids, or why people have to suffer eternal torment for never having even heard of Jesus. (Isn’t that why we have missionaries after all? And if unsaved “savages” get a free pass due to ignorance, wouldn’t it be better to leave them alone rather than introduce them to a concept they may reject, therefore sending them to hell by default? It’s a classic “desert island” scenario that most likely doesn’t exist in reality, but it is an interesting thought experiment.)

Maybe your questions were a bit more along the lines of Brad Roberts’ when he sings these lyrics in the song ‘Swimming In Your Ocean’ by the Crash Test Dummies: “why does god cause things like tornadoes and train wrecks?” Inevitably, if you went around asking these questions to the older, wiser devout followers of Jesus in your life, you’d be met with the seemingly simple answer that its the devils fault. It’s all his doing, and anything bad comes from him, everything good comes from god and that having a “personal relationship” with Christ gives us the ability to weather the storms satan sends our way. I don’t know about you, but that “answer” opens up way more questions than I had before. Let’s break this down. God is perfect. He makes no mistakes. He exists “outside of time”, whatever that means, and he’s also ever present and full of love. So, we’ll give him the titles of Omnipresent, as well as Omnipotent, Omniscient, and supposedly Omnibenevolent.

The problem here is that something or someone who is all of those things at once cannot possibly create a being, Lucifer, who would eventually betray him and bring destruction and suffering to the universe. How can a perfect being create imperfection? And considering that god knows everything that will ever happen while also MAKING it happen at the same time, doesn’t that make him responsible anyway? So how can he also be good? It makes no sense. At least, not to me. Some of these teachers, if they’re any good, will entertain your questions down intellectual rabbit holes…to a certain point. Perhaps they will say that there is a paradox lying in the center of everything, and that we cannot possibly understand why god does what he does because we don’t have the ability to understand. That’s still not a satisfying answer. Like, at all.

If you take a Calvinist approach, the rabbit holes may go deeper, but they’re also darker. Having attended a Calvinist church for several years as a teenager, I was initially taken aback at how readily the church leaders and teachers tackled these big questions where so many in my life before then had seemed baffled or confused. It’s what initially attracted me to that particular brand of theology. However, the answers are perhaps worse than the questions. They’re so bad in fact, you’ll wish you had never asked. You’ll be told that god does whatever he pleases, and that “good” is defined by whatever it is god decides to do, whether it be tornadoes and train wrecks, or hardening Pharaoh’s heart in the book of Exodus to “show his power”. (Remember the plagues?) Calvinism teaches that these things that we consider “bad” are totally good and we should thank god for them. Why are they good? Because god did them. (I assume killing firstborn children would still be bad under any other circumstances if a human attempted it, unless, you know, god told them to. Then it’s totally okay.)

After realizing how depressing this philosophy was, it made me a bit bitter towards Christianity for a while. I mean, struggling with questions that didn’t make any sense was more appealing than believing that we're all garbage playthings for a mighty deity to toy with and that “good” was arbitrarily defined by whatever he felt like doing. But once the mental Pandora’s box was opened, there was no putting all of the ideas back in and locking it up. After all, what other logical conclusion could you come to if you were a Christian who had a brain? If you really, truly believed the Bible was the word of god and that every bit of it was true, but you also enjoyed thinking occasionally, how could you possibly come up with another answer? Leaving the church felt like a bitter defeat. To say nothing of the disappointment you felt for everyone else still living in this mental purgatory and all of the suffering and doubt you knew it must cause them. The problem of course is the disconnect between the old and new testaments. I wanted to follow Jesus, I rather liked his views on love, forgiveness, poverty, and anti-violence, but this jealous and vengeful god of the Torah was hard to accept. Even harder to accept was the idea that Jesus is one in the same as this god while simultaneously believing that god “never changes”. It didn’t make any sense.

Then I discovered Gnosticism. To be honest, I had first heard about it when Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code hit theaters causing a wave of protests from angry evangelicals. At the time, I dismissed it as some strange and mystical view on scripture, much like Kabbalah, which I had learned about from the media attention that Madonna received from being a follower. In my mind, it was weird, self help, guru bs and something to be dismissed. After being a Judeo-Christian, an atheist, a Calvinist, and eventually a Buddhist, I discovered Gnosticism in a used book store. A copy of “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels stood out to me, I took it home and dived right in. What I found shocked me. Books of the Bible written by women? A gospel by Judas? Discovering that Christianity was much more than what was approved in the Nicean Council? All revelations to me. But most importantly, there was this idea that the “god” of the Old Testament was someone completely different than Jesus. Jesus wasn’t even his son! In fact, Jesus had perhaps come to set us free from this cold, calculating deity. I’d read “Love Wins” by Rob Bell a few years earlier, so I was used to digesting theology that seemed a bit heretical to the modern churches’ eyes, but this was something more. It didn’t simply claim that there was no mention of an actual “devil” or “hell” in the Bible, (which, by the way, there isn’t), this was saying that god himself was the enemy. An angry, lesser god who created the world in his own image so he could be worshipped and loved by his creation.

In short, Christianity, as preached from the pulpit today in America, was the ultimate case of Stockholm Syndrome. What’s more, Christianity in its early days had so much potential to branch out into many different schools of thought long before Martin Luther nailed his theses to the doors of the church. It answered so many questions I had about why a belief system based upon Christ’s teachings was so far off from its origins. It helped me realize that I could still be a Christian and be fundamentally opposed to Christianity. I could still love Jesus and be totally at odds with the religion that flies his banner. I think it’s important for those of us who hold a special place for Christ in our hearts to realize that we can still follow him. We can still try to be Christlike without being embarrassed or ashamed. Jesus was a man who faced opposition at every turn, mostly from the religious leaders of his day. He broke commandments, dined with “sinners” and saints alike, and questioned the status quo whenever possible because love was more important to him than dogma.

As a lover of Christ, Christianity is the most tragic religion I’ve ever encountered. No other religion does the exact opposite of what their founder urged them to do so strongly. For some of us, Christianity has been weaponized against us. It’s been used as a political tool, a way to justify hate, and as a means to avoid personal responsibility or consequences for the actions of sick people. It’s hard to even see Jesus in a positive light for some of us, no matter how different we know his philosophy was from the one that Judeo Christianity peddles today. Even seeing a cross or a painting of some white guy with a beard holding a lamb can be off putting.

While I wholeheartedly believe that you don’t have to love Jesus to be a good person, I do believe that something has been lost in our society. Religion, or lack thereof, doesn’t hold all of the answers. Socially, we’ve made great strides to alleviate hatred and bigotry, but at the same time so many of us struggle with depression. Suicide rates continue to rise and we all feel a bit hopeless. We have to have faith in ourselves while also rejecting any spirituality whatsoever and that’s rough. It’s also not necessarily the best way to move forward. We can become so caught up in the fight to help others that we lose ourselves, become bitter, vengeful, and even contemplate taking our own lives when it seems that the world isn’t moving fast enough in the direction that we want it to go. At least, that’s how I feel at times.

But I don’t think the answer lies in a black and white choice; a choice to either reject our spiritual desires or embrace dogmatic principles wrapped in unsavory politics. Jesus said to love one another, more than we love our own lives. And the truth is, Jesus doesn’t belong to anyone. He’s exactly what we need him to be, and that’s okay.