Am I a Christian?

Embracing Label Pacifism

Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash

For the past 12 months, I have been going back and forth over my place in the Christian world. Am I Christian? Am I not a Christian? If you follow my writing, you will see a strange fight with myself, as if I were one of those patients with a corpus callosotomy, my left side fighting my right side. One day, I will declare my adoration of Christianity, the person of Christ, and my desire to return to the Church. On another day, I will antagonize Christianity and attack its core truth claims, and kvetch about Christians. I realize that I'm coming off as Christianity's BPD boyfriend, and I forgive my readers for being somewhat bewildered.

So, to make this whole unfortunate situation more tenable, I have made a decision. It's a decision many people — especially the Christians in my audience — will probably dislike. But I think it's the right path forward. I also offer this model — let's call it the Label Pacifism Model — to others in a similar situation to me. I hope others will find it helpful.

The Christian Label Pacifism Model: I will not label myself one way or the other. If, after grasping my relationship with Christianity, you decide that I match your criteria for being a Christian, fine. I will accept that in your eyes, I am a Christian. If, on the other hand, you hear the exact same evidence and conclude I'm not a Christian, fine. I will accept that in your eyes, I am not a Christian. I don't care. I am keeping my identity small, and whatever you decide I am in regard to Christianity, I will accept, shrug, and carry on.

Let's break this down.

Reasons you might call me a Christian

I love Jesus

Truly, unapologetically, completely, and without reservation. This was even true when I was a Satanist.

I think Jesus represents one of the greatest and most radical inversions in human history, and I'm still too much of a Satanist to be immune to that intoxicating High Blasphemy. The notion that a man tortured to death on a criminal's cross might ascend to Godhood, and thereby reverse the order of things, making the first last and the last first, is an epochal inversion of the pagan world that came before it. It is a cataclysmic shift so strange, so vast, that we are still feeling its effects 2000 years later. It is such a beautiful, startling, and blasphemous inversion that I get why someone might look at it and think, “Yeah, God did that.”

But setting aside the historical impact of the Jesus story, I just love the man himself. Sure, he had weird moods and said gross things sometimes, but I think following Jesus as a model and philosophy of life is an objectively good way to live. I also love how he loves the outsiders, the prostitutes, and, most of all, the children: the eternal oppressed underclass in every society.

If Christians are those who love Christ and try, in some measure, to live out their ethics, then there is a reasonable sense in which one can call me a Christian.

I believe the gospel is true

Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean it is literally true. I don't believe it's the kind of truth a journalist would uncover at the site of Jesus' tomb. Instead, I think it is true in the way Shakespeare, Milton, and Dostoyevsky are true.

So, I don't mean Jesus physically raised from the dead so that our consciousnesses continue on for eternity. But I mean it is true in a mythic, spiritual sense. I believe that self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and rising from ego-death as a new, glorified being speaks to something primordially true in the human condition. I believe that Grace, as the disruption of karma, as the wiping of the slate, as a beginning again and a fresh mercy for a better life, is a deep yearning of the human heart, and we desperately need a world where such grace is accessible to us. The gospel is the truth that grace is accessible to us, and Jesus is the avatar of that grace.

In a way, this kind of belief makes following Jesus more possible. It is easier to follow in the footsteps of Christ when you aren't bogged down by all that creedal shit. I can follow in his footsteps when I take the story more seriously, and the dogma less so.

So, I try to follow the gospel of Jesus — not in a literal sense, but in a poetic and mythic sense. That might be a good reason to call me a Christian.

Christianity is my culture

I was forged deep in the furnace of Christianity. My mother is a pastor, my father runs an international ministry, I was born on the mission field. From the very moment I was born, my imagination, social world, moral drive, and symbolic structure were infused with Christianity.

I've given up fighting this; I embrace it. I can't change the fact that I am from a particular region of the United States ( Southern Appalachia), with distinct culture, dialect, and customs. No matter how much I plaster over that history, it will always be there –– always part of my being. My mountain twang still exists — it now just comes out unconsciously when I'm particularly stressed or tired.

If Appalachia is my geographic region of origin, then Christianity is my religious and metaphysical region of origin. And in the same way one might call me Appalachian, it might also be reasonable to call me Christian.

My ethical life is fundamentally Christian

Why do I care about the least of these? Why do I care about the outsider? Why do I care about expanding our circle of empathy towards those outside our tribe, outside our social norms or taboos? Why am I so moved by stories of self-sacrifice for the greater good? Why am I so moved by outsiders grafted in? Probably because I was force-fed Christian stories like "The Good Samaritan," "The Prodigal Son," and the grafting in of the Gentiles when I was pre-verbal. These stories exist at a subconscious substrate for me: a fish doesn't know it's wet, and I'm a fish swimming in Christian water. I believe that manifests in a life informed by Christian ethics.

If religion is what you do without thought because it is so ingrained into your being — if it is the story you are bound to, not only by choice, but also by habit and culture — then it might make sense to call me a Christian.

Reasons you might not call me a Christian

I don't accept the creeds.

When I say this, I'm not sure people grasp exactly what I'm saying, so let's break it down. Let's take the Nicene creed, for example:

I believe in one God.

Oh boy, we're not off to a good start. I don't believe in God, let alone one particular God. I look at the world and, while I see many wonders and mysteries, I see no God who interacts with our world in the way Christianity suggests he does. I have no reason to believe in God as a conscious being — I just don't see it.

If I were to accept the notion of God at all, it would be Einstein's God: the foundations that govern our universe, an ordering force pointed to by the mysterious organization of the cosmos, but who is so far beyond our comprehension that the human word "God" might not even make sense. (Mystical Christians will, at this point, enthusiastically gesture at apophatic theology. I know! It's awesome!)

When I look at the night sky, I feel awe that is so alien that it doesn't even exist in the same symbolic universe with Christianity. Whatever God I worship is not recognizable in most of the Christian literature I have read to date, and I've read a lot. It is impersonal, cold, terrifying, and awe-inspiring. There is no person there, only a vast mystery. Is that God? Sure. But it's certainly not Christianity's God.

The problems only compound from there.

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen

Nope, reject. I don't believe Jesus Christ was the son of a God with consciousness. I don't believe Jesus was himself God. I don't believe in a trinity. I don’t believe he ascended into heaven. The only thing in the Nicene Creed that I do believe is that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

The Apostles' Creed fairs no better for me.

I have no problem saying that the creeds are, in a spiritual sense, true. But by saying this, I mean they are poetically and spiritually true even if consciousness ends at death, Jesus wasn't physically raised from the dead, and there is no God. And, I can't emphasize this enough, I'm not the one saying that isn't sufficient. It's the Christian traditions themselves that insist that I engage in heresy when I suggest that the creeds are poetic but not literal.

So, if you, like the preponderance of Christian tradition, require not just symbolic, spiritual, or poetic confession of the creeds, but also belief in the literal truth claims, it might make sense to not call me a Christian.

I do not feel bound to Christianity

Because I do not believe in the literal truth claims of the creeds, I don't feel bound to Christianity in the way many practicing Christians do. Most Christians I know — from the most educated to the least — stick to their Christian practice because they believe that God has saved them from their sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I don't believe that, and I therefore feel free to play deranged cocktail mixer with religion. If it's all symbol — all spiritual truth rather than supernatural truth — then I can take the best from other traditions.

If this lack of stickiness to Christianity is a deal breaker for you, then it might be reasonable to say I'm not a Christian.

I do not practice

If a religious studies major were to follow me through my day, from the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I go to bed, I don't think he would see much Christianity in practice. He would see a great deal of spiritual and religious practice (Buddhist meditation and Stoic spiritual exercises in particular, with a dash of paganism and occultism), but I don't think he would log any explicitly Christian practices.

I don't go to church. I don't pray. I don't regularly read the Bible. I don't commit to regular Christian fellowship and accountability. My only Christian practice is consuming lots of Christian media on the internet and the time-honored tradition of arguing with other Christians. That last one might, honestly, be the most Christian thing I do.

This might change in the future. I might, for example, decide to attend church or pray the Daily Office of the Book of Common Prayer, which was one of my most nourishing practices before I left Christianity altogether. I truly miss it. If that does happen, I will still adhere to Label Pacifism, for reasons I outline in the following sections.

So, if religion is what we deliberately practice, it might make sense to not call me a Christian.

Why label pacifism?

Two reasons.

First, because you degenerates are fucking exhausting

I love you, but I mean it. Christian border maintenance is exhausting, and I’m done. I’ve spent my entire life sinking untold precious hours into Christian disputes, into who is in or out, and most of all whether I am in or out. I didn’t ask for this — I was caught in the church's teeth and flapped around like a frayed rope in the mouth of a dog.

Growing up, I watched countless church splits and enormous acrimony over theological conflicts. My religious communities were always brimming with consternation over theological fringes and disputes like tiny Emperors perseverating over the borders of their lands.

I was born gay and Christian, and by no choice of my own, I found myself the subject of a global dispute over what gay people are, where they exist in the Kingdom of God, and what should be done about us.

I fought back. Some of the best work I have ever done in my life was fighting for the inclusion of gay people in the church. But it also drained me. It exhausted me. It wasted so many years of my life.

What’s most depressing, after my time away from Christianity, is seeing how much hasn’t changed. The same fights are happening. It’s like an eternal civil war in an insane asylum where the patients have amnesia. The exact same books that were published 30 years ago — about homosexuality, salvation, evangelism, etc. — are being published now. The exact same debates I saw in 2008 are raging in 2025.

Some people are able to sidestep this whole mess because it's an intellectual exercise to them. Not for me. Because I am gay, a doubter, a questioner, a heretic, I can't sidestep these disputes. They almost always drag me into their screaming maw, and I am almost always forced into the position of having to defend why I am here as a gay person, a doubter, a heretic. I left Christianity the first time because I simply became too tired of explaining myself every fucking minute of the day.

I could adopt the Christian label and fight for my inclusion as a nontheistic, multifaith Christian. I know a ton of people who do exactly that. But, honestly, I'd rather be fisted. After all my years in the border maintenance trenches, I now establish my right to put down my sword and walk away. I refuse to fight with Christianity any longer. I consider it a waste of my one wild and precious life to spend another minute with a Christian defending my place in their Kingdom. I’ll let the other people do that. I will continue to love Christianity, and Christ, and I might even find myself practicing in some form, but I'm done fighting with you over it.

Second, because I believe in keeping my identity small

Or, to put it another way, I now think it's best to label ideas but not myself. This is, in part, a self-protective measure. I think I'm prone to enthusiastically adopting labels, and this has gotten me into trouble in the past. After the recent religious catastrophes, I'm now extremely hesitant to adopt any labels. I think labels make me much less likely to critically evaluate the identity I am adopting.

I'm happy to take on some labels as mere descriptions. It is descriptively true, for example, that I am a man, an American, and gay. But other labels — especially labels that involve active commitment, practice, community, and belief — are trickier. They don't become mere descriptors; they get reified as selves. When this happens, when my ego becomes vested in a label, I see it much less clearly and have a much harder time staying calm when it is attacked.

So, despite practicing modern Stoicism daily, I don't call myself a Stoic. Or, despite doing non-dual Buddhist practice every morning (and essentially believing secular Buddhist positions) I don't call myself a Buddhist. And, despite my complicated relationship with Christianity, I don't call myself a Christian. I'm ok if other people call me a Buddhist, Stoic, or Christian. But I'm very cautious right now about adopting any label. This may change in the future. But this is, until further notice, my position.

One of the greatest insights I've received from meditation is that I am not my thoughts; I am not my ideology. As I meditate, day after day after day, the garments of identity start to fall away, like Lazarus' grave clothes. What's left is not thought, identity, or ideology, but only the undefined openness of consciousness itself. That's what I am — beautiful emptiness — even when I put those grave clothes back on.

But that’s just me. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section, and if your comment is excellent, I might feature it in an upcoming post.

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