Because I am a theologian, this is a question I get a lot.
I have to admit, I find the question vastly dull. That's because the question presumes that when I have religious desires, they look something like this:
But really, when I have religious desires, they start out looking more like this
or this
or this
I am certainly happy to share a sense of wonder at the natural world with non-religious people. That basic starting point can go in a number of directions.
But, when I have religious desires, they also look like this:
or this:
or this:
Again, I am certainly happy to share respect for human creativity and imagination and cultural achievements with non-religious people. I invest the religious imagination with more seriousness than non-religious people do, but that's a personal decision.
When I have religious desires, they also look like an attempt to find an answer to things like this:
or this:
Once more, I am certainly happy to share a revulsion at human cruelty and structural injustice with non-religious people. I do not presume that one must identify as religious, or spiritual, to react with anger and sadness at the destruction of lives and hopes.
For me, "God" is the most effective shorthand for keeping all those contrary motions together. Whether or not that shorthand works for you isn't really my business, unless your religiosity or lack thereof is something you choose to share with me.
For me the Bible is a document that both shows consistent resistence to the cruelty of empire and shows the temptation to let answers degenerate into patterns of violence. The Bible remains my religious focal point, to which, for reasons I can't always articulate fully to myself, I maintain a loyalty that helps me articulate the values that motivate me to keep "fighting the good fight."
For me, the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is an example of one way people have tried to work out the tensions between the contrary motions in the images above, and subject to those same tensions, as Christian triumphalism has been a mainstay of the European imperialism Christianity originally resisted. I am supremely uninterested in the options of rejecting that story or giving it sole legitimacy as an explanation for the tensions of existence. I am interested in exploring to what extent it works, in finding out where it doesn't work, and seeing if the places it breaks down can be fixed. Whether or not that puts me in a box called "Christian" is kind of beside the point. I will say, however, that various conversations here at Daily Kos where I've had to engage with sweeping generalizations about Christianity, have made me realize that if "being in the box" is a boring concern, I'm much closer to the label "Christian" than I'd thought before I had those conversations.
