Fundamentalist evangelical christianity is idolatry

Fundamentalist evangelical christianity is idolatry. 

To prove this we first need to look at the way this sort of Christian defends the claim that the Bible is God’s divinely inspired holy word. 

These arguments each tend to point to some demonstration of power assumed to be unique to the almighty God of all realities, ranging from power over time demonstrated through reliable prophecy to power over death demonstrated by the resurrection of Jesus providing the momentum for the rise of Christianity assuming Christianity could not have survived if Jesus did not really rise (nevermind all of the other religions that somehow managed to gain momentum despite supposedly being founded upon lies). 

These arguments can largely be boiled down to the assumption that to have power over time, space, matter, life, and death within a reality of your creation is equivalent to being the perfect almighty God of all realities.

These arguments dissolve the moment you consider the existence of nested realities. 

I, as a software engineer, am capable of creating a reality overwhich I have power over time, space, matter, life, death and have access to and control over all information in that reality. People have even created virtual realities in virtual realities, such as the guy who used minecraft to build a computer in minecraft to run minecraft. Yet they and I are still limited and fallible beings.

Granted, with each level of nested reality a degree of sophistication is lost. However, this only means that if our reality is nested within another reality, that other reality is likely to be more sophisticated than our own, and the reality that one is nested in would be even more sophisticated and so on. 

Regardless, the point still stands, power over space, time, matter, life, and death over an entire reality is not enough to conclude that a being is the almighty God of all realities. 

To be clear, I am not claiming that we live in a nested reality, nor am I claiming that the being over our reality, if there is one or more, is not the almighty God of all realities. 

My point is that we human beings cannot lean upon feats of power in any effort to discern if any being, spirit, or book is at all divine or divinely authoritative. 

Another method of discernment that people will lean upon is an analysis of the fruits of a supposedly divine thing, if the fruits are good then it is of God, if the fruits are bad then it is not of God. 

And it cannot be denied that there are people who have yielded good fruits from their efforts to interpret and apply the teaching. 

However, it also cannot be denied that rotten fruits have been yielded from efforts to interpret and apply the teachings of the Bible. 

Furthermore, it also cannot be denied that, much like with Christianity, good and bad fruits have been yielded from efforts to interpret and apply other religious teachings and scientific findings.

Not to mention the moment you point out abhorrent things in the bible, like the claims that God commanded the genocides of various people groups, especially when explicitly including children, suddenly the fruits don’t matter and we are expected to assume there was a good reason like “maybe the children would perpetuate their culture or seek vengeance in their older years”. When any bad fruit can be hand waved away because “there must be a good reason” and “God’s ways are higher than our ways” it sort of undermines any effort to use fruits to separate the divine from the deceptive. 

Finally there is the fact that cult leaders and manipulators use kindness, gifts, and other good things to maintain control over people all of the time. 

So we cannot lean upon demonstrations of power, demonstrations of knowledge, the production of good or bad results, nor good grace to determine if any being, spirit, or book is at all divine or divinely authoritative. 

It is at this moment, when there is no apparent metric that guarantees the Bible is at all divine, when many Christians will utter the phrase, “well that is where faith comes in”. 

Pause.

Let us take a look at what we are doing here. 

You have used your limited and fallible human judgment to discern that the Bible is good, and now you are going to use faith to assign divine value to your fallible human judgment of the bible, placing it above criticism. 

It is commonly taught throughout churches that atheists make a God out of the fallible findings of scientific research. That they take these findings that result from studies run by fallible humans and blindly assign divine value to them, placing those findings above criticism. That they make an idol of scientific findings.

Both of these practices are idolatrous and equally worthy of condemnation.

No scientific finding should ever be placed above criticism nor should faith ever be used as an excuse to assign divine value to any conclusion derived from fallible human judgment. No matter if that judgment hinges upon the perceived trustworthiness of another being, spirit, or book because you must first use your fallible judgment to deem any being, spirit, book, or whatever else as trustworthy.

Fundamentalist evangelical christianity, alongside many other religions and faiths, practice the exaltation of fallible human judgment to heights of divinity. Therefore, fundamentalist evangelical christianity, and anything like it, is idolatrous.

To be clear, this does not mean that all religions are idolatrous. Nor does it mean that all Christian practices are idolatrous.

 For example, the only requirements Jesus expresses for being a Christian are to believe in Him and be baptized. 

Jesus is claimed to have said to believe, be baptized, and you will be saved. He then later says He will handle the baptism. So all that is left is belief. (Mark 16:16) (Matthew 3: 11)

If belief in Jesus is what it takes to be saved, then isn’t Jesus asking us to use our fallible human judgment to assign divine authority to him in the same way as the fundamentalist idol? 

If he had used the word for “faith” then yes, but since he explicitly used the word for “believe”, not exactly. To see what Jesus is asking of us we need to do a word study on the word “believe”.

When we perform the word study we find that to believe is a matter of placing trust or confidence in something or someone and that it is faith only when involving divine revelation. It is not a matter of absolute knowledge.

Source: biblehub - /greek/4100 pisteuó

So how do we put trust and confidence in Jesus without using our limited and fallible human judgment to assign divine value to him? 

Well, Jesus is said to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14: 6). 

Therefore, if you trust that in seeking truth and life you will grow closer to truth and life, you are trusting Jesus and are thus saved. 

You don’t even have to identify as a Christian, you could be an atheist, wiccan, hindu, muslim, or whatever else. It might not be that all shall be saved, but whoever seeks that which is true and that which brings life with humility in knowing that any conclusions you reach could be wrong, up to and including any judgments you make about the Bible and its claims, you will be saved even if you lack any degree of certainty.

That is an example of non-idolatrous Christianity for anyone who feels like you have to be a Christian for your mental health or physical safety.

Now let us address some common responses to this argument that I came across while workshopping it.

“Human judgment is fallible, that is why the Holy Spirit guides us if we pray to God.” 

Let us take a look at what this person is saying here (and they did read over my interpretation and affirm that it was a correct assessment of their position).

This person has encountered a spirit, and, using their fallible human judgment, they have deemed this spirit to be trustworthy. This spirit claims to be the almighty God and that the Bible is divinely authoritative. In response, this person has used their fallible human judgment to discern that these claims are legitimate.

In response to my assessment the person responded saying, 

“Yes, that would be correct. You seem to take the fallibility of human judgement to the point where we can never trust anything ever for any reason. That sounds like either a state of paranoia or apathy. We are not robots, we can discern things.”

To which I responded, 

“You are right, it is unreasonable to let the fallibility of human judgment hold us back from ever trusting anything.

So too is it unreasonable to ignore the fallibility of human judgment to deem a human judgment to be worthy of unconditional trust.

Therefore my personal position is to trust what seems trustworthy, but never trust unconditionally because the fallibility of my judgment is inescapable.

So when a text claims that an entire civilization of people can be irredeemably morally depraved such that genocide becomes good, and that is contrary to the reality I observe, that is a huge red flag for me. It suggests that at the very least that portion of the text is not worthy of my trust. I am more inclined to believe that the text is lying about that other civilization, in much the same way military leaders will very commonly make up lies to dehumanize the enemy in war times. [earlier in our conversation this person was defending the biblical claims that God commanded genocide, hence this part of my reply]

When presented with two possibilities, and I cannot know for sure which is true, and one is more dehumanizing and the other more humanizing, I am more inclined to favor the humanizing possibility up until strong evidence suggests otherwise.

Of course I could be wrong in that judgment as with any judgment. At the end of the day the best I can do is use the information I have to make the judgments I will, always with recognition that I could be wrong and so always trying to remain correctable.”

That is where this particular conversation seems to have ended. However, I have heard people take things a step further and say something like,  “Well, when I encounter God there is this feeling within me that just lets me know I am encountering God and not some deceiver.” 

And if not a feeling then it might be some particular sequence of events or “confirmations”. 

This claim is not any different from the Holy Spirit Claim, it just further abstracts the reasoning moving it closer to a personal opinion that cannot be challenged without conceding the feeling that their beliefs are anything less than absolute. Regardless this can be addressed in the same way as before. 

You have this feeling or sequence of events that you have used your fallible human judgment to discern as a trustworthy means of identifying divinity. This feeling tells you that this spirit you have encountered is the almighty God and that the Bible is divinely authoritative. In response, you have used your fallible human judgment to discern that these claims are legitimate.

Your human fallibility is inescapable. I will repeat for emphasis, 

“...it is unreasonable to ignore the fallibility of human judgment to deem a human judgment to be worthy of unconditional trust.

Therefore my personal position is to trust what seems trustworthy, but never trust unconditionally because the fallibility of my judgment is inescapable.”

I have come to believe that this is the best way to navigate life,

“At the end of the day the best I can do is use the information I have to make the judgments I will, always with recognition that I could be wrong and so always trying to remain correctable.”

The war on the spiritual journey

Many Christians have developed a compulsion to skip or otherwise take shortcuts through the spiritual journey. The root of this tendency is highly damaging.

It is no wonder we are compelled to skip or shortcut the spiritual journey, going along with such compulsions is highly rewarded in the modern Christian landscape. Furthermore, resisting such compulsions is shamed and in some cases punished. 

Often I ask strangers how they can be so sure the Bible is fully endorsed by God, or how they can be so sure the spirit guiding them is the Holy Spirit, or how they can be so sure the god they encountered was actually God. Almost every time I am answered with an insistence that the right thing is to believe first and ask questions later; this is supposedly how we trust God. 

There is a journey to be had to potentially reach those conclusions, but the expectation is that you will adopt a conclusion before you have taken the journey to reach it. 

Additionally the new Christian who proclaims conclusions about the Bible’s inspiration/inerrancy/infallibility, Jesus’s divinity, the existence of the trinity, a literal six day creation, the existence of hell, and everything else with such high charisma and yet has not studied them, often is treated as a more mature Christian then the one who does not proclaim those things and yet has studied the Bible for years or decades (many may even invalidate the latter's choice to identify as a Christian). 

Throw in the fear of hellfire for not professing the "correct" conclusions and most Christians will proclaim conclusions about God and the Bible while their Christianity is still in its infancy, or while they themselves are still children, and once you have made these proclamations, God forbid if you ever backpedal. Potentially world shaking and relationship ending is the grief you will be met with if you come to realize that you made these proclamations before you had good reason to do so. 

How tempting it can be to avoid having to go back and take that journey when you can instead turn to your spiritual experiences as assurances that your assumptions were correct and need not be reassessed. 

How tempting it is to hang onto those conclusions you assumed when you go back such that you can curate your spiritual journey to lead you back to the same “correct” conclusions and not to wherever else it might have taken you.

It's the “wherever else” that I think is the driving factor behind all of these compulsions to skip, shortcut, and peer pressure. Christians fear a spiritual journey where no conclusions are assumed or favored because they fear that journey may lead them or others to unacceptable conclusions.

Ironically, it is in our attempts to trust God that I find the real lack of trust in God comes in. Christians don’t trust God to guide their spiritual journey to the “correct” place. So we feel the need to establish conclusions before we reach them, proclaim certain tenants as absolute no matter how little you know about them, and pressure other people to do the same.

We are not allowed to be uncertain. We are not allowed to refrain from proclaiming conclusions before we have reached them (proclaiming conclusions, or “truths”, as they are called in church, as a congregation is a common practice way to pressure people into skipping/shortcutting the journey). We are not allowed to reach different conclusions from the denomination of the church we have grown socially dependent upon. There is an expectation to assume certain conclusions and a mentality that you are not a “real” Christian worthy of a position of influence within a church until you have. This all needs to change. 

The mentality of fear that many Christians have towards an authentic, thorough, and unbiased spiritual journey is highly damaging and unacceptable.

I write this in part from personal experience but mostly in light of all I have learned speaking with thousands of theists and atheists over the last eleven years.

I am one who had skipped and shortcut much of my spiritual journey. My recognition as to the extent to which I had done this has been an incremental process over a long period of time and is ongoing. 

Apart from those who seek out my content on this blog and other platforms, I have explicitly shared a portion of the reality that I am dropping many of the conclusions I once assumed and arriving at other conclusions with very few people. 

To the credit of those few with whom I have explicitly shared my journey, while there was initial turbulence, most of them have explicitly expressed that they have come to trust that God will guide me on my journey. 

My thanks to those who made space for my journey instead of driving me away. I would love nothing more than to see this space made in the heart of every Christian in addition to overcoming the fear of things like uncertainty, skepticism, and a diversity of conclusions in recognition that we are all limited and flawed beings each on a unique spiritual journey. 

Christianity With Intellectual Integrity

Introduction

Eleven years ago my first attempt to evangelize an atheist did not go as I expected. 

They were receptive to what I had to say but with a condition. 

They would put forth just as much effort to consider Christianity as I would put into considering atheism. 

This challenge haunted me.

I had felt God burdening my heart for atheists, so I had already spent some years diving into biblical studies, theology, and apologetics, but to actually consider atheism felt dangerous and so I was hesitant.

Eventually, after what felt like a series of affirmations that this was something God wanted me to do, I concluded that God wouldn’t permit atheists to exist if there were not a spiritual path they could traverse to get from where they are to where I am in my Christianity. 

So I set out determined to forage that path so that I could guide others along it. 

For the following eleven years I would converse with thousands of atheists and theists of varying calipers including several hundred pastors, missionaries, and Christian academics. 

I compiled a list of fifty reasons people tend to give for becoming an atheist and I categorized, considered, and addressed every one of them in a series of earlier blog posts. 

Eventually, I managed to forage that path and the following is the product of that.

Establishing what is and is not intellectually compromising

First, let us establish what is and is not intellectually compromising. 

1. It is not compromising to question a claim.
   
   

2. It is not compromising to come up with and consider possibilities with no present grounding in sound replicable research.
   
   

3. It is not compromising to hope for a given possibility.
   
   

4. It is not compromising to be and remain uncertain so long as there are many possible explanations for something.
   
   

5. It is not compromising to not care to know some information. You are not obligated to learn as much as you can about everything.
   
   

6. It is compromising to start making claims about or using the information you do not care to know about.
   
   

7. It is compromising to just believe a claim without question.
   
   

8. It is compromising to refuse to question a claim.
   
   

9. It is compromising to hope for an impossibility.
   
   

10. It is compromising to treat or speak of a given possibility as though it were more supported than it actually is.
    
    

11. It is compromising to reject conclusions based on sound replicable research.
    
    

12. It is compromising to equate proof of one thing with proof of another.
    
    

13. It is compromising to suggest a given position is the correct position for everyone when the position is rooted in logical fallacy. 

Having established this list, and please add to or challenge the list in the comments, let’s see if it is even possible to become a Christian without intellectual compromise.

In order to accomplish this we are going to follow a hypothetical person, let's name them Sam, on their quest to go from the outside of Christianity to the inside of Christianity. 

As far as motivation is concerned, remember Sam is not intellectually obligated to learn about Christianity. So let's say that Sam is looking for something to bring them some hope where life otherwise feels hopeless, and they have heard that Christianity has some hope to offer. So they have chosen to look into it. 

Apart from motivating factors, since we are starting on the outside of Christianity, we are assuming Sam does not have any other starting knowledge or experiences that would make them view Christianity as anything special. 

So far, Sam has not compromised because there is nothing intellectually compromising about holding out hope for a given possibility.

Sam starts to read the Bible

So, our hypothetical person, Sam, is looking to go from outside of Christianity to the inside of Christianity without intellectual compromise. 

What better place to start than to read the Bible? 

Remember, for Sam, who is outside of Christianity looking in, the Bible is nothing more than a book that makes claims about God, the human condition, and history. Sam is under no obligation to think of the Bible as anything more than that. 

Sam is not obligated to revere the text in any way.

Sam can consider all of the possibilities pertaining to the nature of the book. 

Sam can consider that the book may be full of lies. 

Sam can consider that the book may be full of truths. 

Sam can consider that the book may be a mix of truths and lies. 

Sam can consider that the book may be filled with errors or misunderstandings on behalf of the authors. 

There is nothing obligating Sam to believe that the authors are anything more than humans making observations, assumptions, or reading meaning into situations where there may be none. 

There is nothing obligating Sam to only consider or assume any one set of possibilities.

As Sam reads, it would be intellectually compromising to simply assume everything they are reading is true, so they don’t assume any of it is true. 

Additionally, it would be intellectually compromising to simply assume everything they are reading is false. 

However, they would be intellectually compromised to deem anything which is impossible as anything other than false. 

This is a bit tricky because at first glance the Bible seems to be quite full of impossibilities. However, Sam recognizes that this book is positing the possibility that there is an almighty creator God at work in history. 

If you recall the list of things we deemed “not compromising”, There is nothing intellectually compromising about considering a possibility even if it has no groundings in research. That is called hypothesizing. 

With the limited knowledge Sam has, they cannot necessarily determine if an almighty creator God would be an impossibility. 

Within the context of an almighty God, the otherwise impossible claims of the Bible may be possible. 

However, this does not mean the claims are true nor does it mean that the claims of the Bible make sense in the context of such a God.

How Sam processes Bible stories

Sam is reading the Bible in search of a God worth hoping for. 

Remember, at this point, Sam is under no obligation to believe the Bible is actually Holy in any way; Sam is not obligated to revere the Bible in any way. 

Sam has no reason to assume a God even exists at this point. 

Additionally, Sam is under no obligation to bend over backward to support the assumption that each being claiming to be God from one story to the next is actually God or even the same being. 

So, there is nothing wrong with Sam coming to the conclusion that the being claiming to be God in Genesis 19 is not the almighty benevolent God they are looking for. 

Sam reaches this conclusion for the following reasons. 

The angels going to the city saved Lot for supposedly being a righteous man despite being willing to sacrifice the lives of his daughters before being willing to sacrifice his own life, and in an effort to save two strangers nonetheless. 

Also, the being claiming to be God chooses to destroy the city in a way that unnecessarily kills Lot’s wife and leads to incest. 

On behalf of the being claiming to be God in this instance, this suggests both a lack of control over destructive power and a lack of foresight. 

These things, among others, indicate to Sam that the being claiming to be God in this story is actually a different higher power claiming to be God. 

Sam is also under no obligation to assume the story is true. 

So there is also nothing wrong with Sam assuming this story is purely fictional. 

This does not mean Sam is closing themselves off from new information which might shed new light on this story. 

However, it would be intellectually compromising for Sam to proceed under the assumption that such information exists lest Sam ignores every potential indication of falsehood in the stories of the Bible or any other claimed holy book.

This is the way Sam processes this story and others like it. 

How Sam processes the Bible as a whole

Sam continues to read the rest of the Bible and ends up with mixed feelings about it. 

On one hand, the macro narrative of the Bible being the tail of a creator god trying to reconcile a broken relationship with his creation, on the surface, looks appealing. 

On the other hand, though some of the authors claim the god is almighty, the micro details seem to imply a god lacking in knowledge, as demonstrated by the being’s need to ask questions, test, and send angels to check cities. 

Lacking in control, as demonstrated by the unnecessary collateral when god destroys cities or floods the earth instead of just offing select people. 

Lacking in foresight, as demonstrated by a seeming disregard for the consequences of not moving the rock that caused the arc to almost fall only to be saved by a man who immediately dies as a result, Sara turning to salt and the incest that follows, and the consequences of permitting angelic beings the ability to interbreed with humans.

Lacking benevolence, as demonstrated by ways God treats humans which would be considered abusive by Sam’s standards. 

And lacking presence, as demonstrated by God's need to send messenger angels across time and space in order to deliver information when God could have just materialized a parchment with the information on it in front of the person, gifting them with literacy so they could read it if they otherwise could not. 

Remember, Sam is not required to assume the being in the Bible is God and therefore they are not required to bend over backward to try to justify its actions or apparent flaws. 

Sam is free to use the context clues to determine if they really think the Bible is describing the almighty benevolent God it claims to be describing. 

And after reading the Bible, Sam is skeptical, to say the least. 

Regardless, Sam is not obligated to expect the Bible to be perfect and recognizes that there could be many different beings claiming to be God throughout the stories. 

It might just be that the authors thought all of the beings were the same God or that the authors themselves were playing God. 

Sam is free to consider all of these possibilities and more. 

So as broken as the text appears to be to Sam at this present moment, there may still be a God that is actually worth hoping for somewhere within the text. So Sam cherry-picks the seemingly good from the seemingly bad as Sam is totally free to do so. 

Future information may prove it is not as broken as it appears, but that information is not relevant until it comes up. Again, lest Sam simply believes any claimed holy text is perfect and true under the assumption that there is an explanation for any indication of the contrary. 

Sam considers the qualifications of Christianity

Of the things Sam cherry-picks, they are privy to many of the teachings of Jesus. Sam recognizes that Jesus quotes stories they find problematic, but Sam is not required to assume Jesus fully endorses those stories. 

After all, Sam may very well quote the Bible in the future, but that does not mean Sam fully accepts and endorses the Bible.

Sam is also not required to believe the Bible when it makes claims about what Jesus said and did. 

In terms of qualifications to be a Christian as laid out in the Bible. Sam can only find two that seem definitive, but they seem initially problematic.

In Mark 16: 16, Jesus says to believe in Him and be Baptized to be saved, later he seems to imply that he will handle the baptism part, thus Sam is only expected to believe. This seems problematic because Sam cannot claim to know if any of the claims about Jesus are true.

However, Sam decides to dig a bit deeper here and looks up the word “Believe” in Strong’s concordance, an authority on word studies in biblical literature. Here Sam learns that, biblically speaking, belief has nothing to do with knowledge or absolute certainty. Belief is a matter of putting trust or confidence in something or someone. 

With this knowledge, Sam realizes that if Jesus truly is this almighty benevolent God, Sam may be able to trust that Jesus would establish whatever sort of relationship he wants with them, so long as Sam remains open and receptive to such a relationship. 

If trust in Jesus is all that is required to qualify as a Christian, then Sam believes they could qualify if they wanted to. 

So Sam is able to conclude that they could become a Christian without intellectual compromise.

The difference between Sam and I

I never managed to get that path to the destination I intended. There came a point where I thought the only major difference between Sam and me was my experiences with God throughout my life. I felt those experiences warranted my fundamentalism and level of confidence. 

Though the following reality would soon dawn on me.

Apart from perhaps Jesus, I believe humanity is limited in our capacity to comprehend things; either by limited memory space in our brains, or the limits of time such that we are likely to die before we learn all that we can. Additionally, I believe all of humanity, apart from Jesus, is morally flawed. 

If presented with a claim that a being or given text is morally perfect, the most I could do to verify this claim is compare its morality with my potentially flawed morality. If its morality deviates from mine, given my limits and flaws, it may be difficult for me to determine if it's an indicator that this being or text is not morally perfect or an indicator that my morals are flawed.

In order to determine if a higher power trying to enlighten me is the good God, in order to determine if any spirit trying to guide me is the good Holy Spirit, and in order for me to determine if the Bible is inspired by the good God, I will need to depend upon my inability to determine what is good and bad. 

Therefore, I cannot simply lean upon the moral guidance of any text or being claiming to be or be from the good God. Because I would need to lean upon my inability to know what is good and bad to determine if these things are or are from the good God.

Similarly, my ability to verify a being's claim that they are almighty. If I were to ask for them to demonstrate their almighty nature the most they could do is perform some extreme feat of power that is still limited enough for me to perceive and comprehend. Thus, though I can conclude the being is incredibly powerful, I cannot, due to my limits, verify if a being is almighty. 

I cannot get away from leaning upon my limits and flaws. Therefore, the most I can do is exercise my flawed ability to determine what is or is from God, improving it and regularly reevaluating any conclusions I arrive at or positions I take. To fail to regularly reevaluate my conclusions and positions is to ignore the reality of my limits and flaws, making an idol of my own ability to determine what is or is from God. 

When the full weight of this realization fell upon me it became clear that despite all of my studies, all of my knowledge, and all of my experiences with the supernatural, I was Sam. I am Sam. Sam, I am. 

Being a Christian of intellectual integrity (recap and conclusion)

As a limited human, I don’t think I am equipped to know if another being is unlimited, I can only verify up to the limits of my ability to comprehend. 

Thus I don’t think I am equipped to know if an almighty God exists seeing that I would struggle to tell the difference between God and a limited yet still powerful reality-warping, mind-reading, future seer. 

However, I recognize the possibility that a God may exist and hope that possibility is true under certain circumstances. 

I do not revere the Bible in the way most people think a Christian should. 

I recognize the Bible as a book that makes fascinating and oftentimes valuable claims about God, the human condition, and history. 

I also recognize that the Bible is not immune to being used to create widespread suffering and hate even if that suffering and hate is disingenuous towards the actual text. 

I recognize that I cannot know to what extent God endorses the Bible.

However, I know that the Bible identifies God as being the essence of goodness and truth. While I cannot know if that is the case, it is an idea I can get behind. 

I can not know if the God the Bible describes is the same God in every story, or if there are some stories describing a limited yet still powerful reality warping, mind reading, future seer who isn’t God, or if the authors are just playing God and taking creative liberties. Nor can I know if any claimed encounter with God is an encounter with the God who is the essence of Goodness and truth. 

I have no perfect way to seek God. 

So the only thing it seems I can do is to imperfectly seek after truth and goodness while at the same time sharpening my ability to do so. If there is a God and God really is the essence of goodness and truth, then in seeking goodness and truth, I seek God. If God is not the essence of truth and goodness, perhaps they aren't worth seeking. 

In addition to this, while I cannot know the actual mechanics of salvation and judgment, it is claimed that Jesus said we need only believe in Him and be baptized to be saved. 

Where this would be an intellectually compromising thing to do given a modern understanding of the phrase “to believe” to be synonymous with the word “to know”, a word study shows that in the context of the Bible, the word “believe” means to place trust or confidence in. 

So I can say that I am open and receptive to a relationship with Jesus, and if Jesus is God, I trust Jesus will make of my receptiveness whatever relationship He should choose to have with me. 

This is the most I can do without intellectual compromise. I think I qualify as a Christian and I choose to identify as a Christian because otherwise, Christianity seems to be a standard that can only be achieved by lying to myself or making an idol of my abilities to discern what is or is from a benevolent almighty God in so far as I can tell.

In the end, I feel this journey has contributed greatly to my spiritual growth. My Christianity and relationship with God have never felt more authentic and mature. My Christian practice is not as easy as it once was as now it requires a lot more effort on my part to grow ethically and intellectually given that I now recognize that I am not equipped to blindly trust. My choices to trust must be well-informed and regularly tested and reevaluated. As taxing as this journey can be, I have never felt more secure in my spirituality and free from the chains of fear.

I have run this past several people, atheists and theists. Most feedback has been positive. However, I am always looking for additional feedback. So if you have any, please reach out. I look forward to the conversations.