An Agnostic who Believes in Jesus

Today, I’m going to talk about religion and Christianity. Again. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record on this blog, but religion has always been a subject of great interest to me. I’ve also had something of a crisis of faith over the past several months that has had me questioning my own Christian beliefs. I was raised to be a Christian, but many of the “Christians” I see are some of the nastiest, most judgmental, ignorant and bigoted people I’ve come across. It makes me wonder if the path of Christianity is truly meant for me. That being said, I thought I’d give my interpretation on the history of Christianity. I should probably do some research and be prepared to back up my statements, but that’s not the point of this little exercise. Take this as the point of view of someone who once called himself a Christian but is now more of an agnostic who believes in Jesus. And yes, I believe that is a thing. An agnostic can still believe in Jesus. Bear with me and you’ll see what I mean. * * * In the beginning, the Universe was without form, or at least any kind of form that we know. It existed as a dense, hot singularity until some abstract force acted on it and caused it to expand. This is known to modern scientists as the Big Bang, and it was the beginning of the Universe as we know it. The force that acted on the singularity is bigger, more powerful, more abstract and more mysterious than anything we can comprehend, and there is no way any human being can truly know what it is. As the Universe expanded, stars and planets began to form. After billions of years, one of these planets became capable of supporting life. We know this planet as Earth. After billions of years of evolution, modern human beings became the dominant species on Earth. These humans became aware of the world around them to decide that the abstract force that created the Universe must be watching over them. As people have a tendency to do, they attempted to personify this force. They called it many names and experienced it in different ways, but to keep things simple we’ll call this force God. People everywhere worshipped God in different ways, and this gave rise to several religions all over the world. One of these religions was Judaism, followed by people in what is now the Middle East. These people believed that they were “God’s chosen people,” and that they would one day be saved by a Messiah who was the Son of God. Many people believe that this Messiah was a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was something of a radical who questioned and challenged many of the religious teachings of the time. He also taught that we should love our enemies and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. He gained many followers during His time, but those in power didn’t take kindly to the way He questioned their authority and ultimately had Him executed. It was believed that He came back from the dead, thus demonstrating His power over death and proving to His followers that He was the Son of God. Of course, not everyone believed that a man had come back from the dead or that He was truly the Son of God. After all, it’s a hard thing for a person to believe. His followers attempted to spread His teachings, and while many of them were mocked and even killed for their beliefs, eventually some very powerful people decided that this new religion called Christianity was the one true faith. This led to the foundation of the Catholic church, which eventually spread Christianity to all parts of the world. By this time it looked as if Jesus really was the Son of God, and that He and His followers did what they were always meant to do. It was during this time that the holy Scriptures of Christianity was canonized into one book, known as the Bible. Many people all over the world believe the Bible to be the infallible Word of God to this day, but there are some problems with that belief. First of all, the 66 books that make up the Bible are far from the only Scripture that pertains to Jewish or Christian beliefs. They were only what the church believed to be relevant. Second of all, the Bible has been translated and reinterpreted so many times that it’s difficult to know exactly what the original meaning of what some of the Scriptures were meant to be, and the fact that many of the stories presented in the Bible predate the written word just makes things more confusing. While much of the Bible is true, much of it is also full of folklore that was not meant to be taken literally, and some of the mistranslations and misinterpretations over the years have filled the book with things that simply aren’t true. Faith can be a powerful thing however, and over time the folklore and half-truths were taken as absolute truth. Armed with the not-always-infallible Bible and a position of nearly absolute power, the leaders of the church began to impose their will on the rest of the world while passing it off as the will of God. Teachings that were meant to keep people in line became church dogma, and after several generations few people bothered to question any of it. Even different denominations of Christianity that broke away from the Catholic church fell into the same traps. The dogma of the churches allowed people to persecute and condemn others who didn’t fit into a specific mold of what a Christian should be, and soon this beautiful religion of peace that was meant to be founded on teachings such as “Love your enemies” and “Love your neighbor” became a bone of contention to modern people at best and a breeding ground for hatred and bigotry at its worst. There are still people who forego the more extreme and hateful dogmatic teachings and follow the teachings of Jesus, and they do provide hope for the future, but sadly the damage to Christianity’s reputation has been done. So now the question after that long-winded explanation is this: where do I fit in? I was raised as a Christian to be a Christian, but I’ve grown so disillusioned with church dogma and the hypocrisy of those claiming to follow Jesus that I find it hard to fall in line. I still believe in the teachings of Jesus, mainly because it’s hard to argue with anybody who says that we should love our neighbors and help the lowest, poorest and most “wretched” of people. It’s a beautiful message, and I would be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t moved by it even a little bit. I’d like to believe that Jesus was also the Son of God and that He did rise from the dead, but I’m both skeptical and open-minded enough to think that may not be the case. For now, I choose to look up to Jesus as a kind and wise teacher as well as someone who wasn’t afraid to question an unfair status quo. I have to plead ignorance of everything else while I make my own path in the world simply because I cannot know about anything else having to do with this force we call God. That’s the best I can do, and that’s the reason why I can call myself an agnostic who believes in Jesus.