“Let me be clear, I am Muslim not because I think Islam is ‘truer’ than other religions (it isn’t), but because Islam provides me with the ‘language’ I feel most comfortable with in expressing my faith. It provides me with certain symbols and metaphors for thinking about God that I find useful in making sense of the universe and my place in it.”
Reza Aslan
This quote encapsulates some of what I’ve been thinking about lately. I no longer identify as Christian but I’m not anti-religious either. I don’t practice the religion but I see enough good people practicing it in its multiplicity of forms to respect that it does good in this world.
In this middle state I’m realizing that my years in church as a youth is baked into my mental DNA. One good thing about growing up a hardcore fundamentalist is that it’s almost impossible to slip a biblical reference past me that I wouldn’t catch.
However, I’m coming to a nascent theory that every religion has two “books”, the texts that are held up as sacred and the interpretive lens that is used to read these sacred texts. I’ve shed the Calvinist Reformed Baptist lens years ago, even though I’m still deconstructing some lingering subconscious moods and stereotypes.
But I’m also starting to realize coming that I most likely won’t ever be not-Christian. It’s not that I intend to return to church or participate in its rituals, and I’ve definitely shed the interpretive lens of one radical sect within the religion, but this constant reading of the Bible for my first twenty years means that this book is still a major part of how I see the world. A few months ago I read the Daodejing and Zhuangzi but I couldn’t shake the feeling I was still approaching it from a Christian perspective.
I’ve heard there is a Jesuit saying “give me a child till he is seven and we’ll have him for life.” Maybe that makes me one of those despised “nominal Christians” from the pulpits of my youth, but here I am.