Embrace yourself as a “Cultural Christian”: accept what you already suspect to be true.

Stay with me here: I suggest to you that there is no such thing as a Christian, Muslim or Jew nor has there ever been.  There are only people who identify as such; YOU may be one of them.  This should be a relief to you.  Let me explain why.

People are naturally predisposed to identifying with groups of various kinds.  While this can lead to judgemental groupthink-type behavior, it does not have to.  Calling oneself a Christian or a Muslim is no more significant than calling oneself a democrat or a republican; it is merely a label that often serves a particular purpose: political, social, educational, egoic, etc...  Moreover, many of you never had a choice in the matter; “X” tradition was foisted upon you at an early age, as it was for your parents.  

More interestingly, the fact that you were born in a certain city, state and country is as arbitrary as it is for those who were born in Aleppo, Jerusalem or Paris.  Happenstance is why you identify as one thing and not another.  This should be incredibly liberating; if it isn’t, this is an opportunity for growth.  That label you wear has no real permanency; “human” a.k.a. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the only one you can’t wash off.  

We are all struggling to figure out the bewildering, permutational nature of our existence.  Finding fulfillment in life is like trying to hit a perpetually moving target.  Life does not come with a manual; we are the ones who create them.  Every religious text we have bears the unmistakable marks of human authorship; what could betray this fact more than an overweening concern for not wearing blended fabrics?  And no specific mention of polyester?  Are we to believe that an omniscient being was unaware of this future discovery?

One also wonders this: Is the New Testament bereft of a discussion of the germ theory of disease because an omniscient entity is uninformed as to the existence of such a thing? Or is it because the Bronze Age people who wrote it were utterly unaware of what microbes were?  Similarly, the bible mentions a “Golden Rule” but lacks even the most rudimentary discussion of Euclid's Golden Ratio — a mathematical proportion so ubiquitous in the universe that it is also known colloquially as the “signature of God.”  

While these texts can occasionally provide us with good lessons, they also encourage brutish violence and hatred that should strike any 21st-century human being as bizarre and anachronistic.  I suspect that for many inwardly reflective believers, these books create more questions and confusion than provide answers.  This is precisely why an honest admission of your identification with Christian culture is the key that can open up new doors of understanding; you know you are more than a box with a label on it.