This will be a tough one to write. Years ago Bertrand Russell wrote a book entitled Why I Am Not A Christian. My title here plays off of that title. I feel I am somewhere in between being a Christian and not being one. I would guess this is where a lot of folks find themselves these days.

I converted to the Christian faith back in high school when I was 18 years old. During the ensuing years of college, philosophy grad school, and theological school I gradually revised my belief system according to an increasingly broader scale. I guess I could say that I became a “liberal  Christian,” just to the left of evangelicalism and to the right of standard liberalism.

Eventually I became heavily influenced by the “process thought” of Alfred North Whitehead. I am at a loss how to determine exactly where this leaves me with respect to the usual “liberal vs. conservative” continuum. The main sticking point here is what to do with the notion of God’s omnipotence. The obvious presence and power of evil in our world and contemporary history makes me side with the “Process theologians”  (based in Whitehead’s thought) and argue that it makes no sense to claim that God is in “control” of world events and each step of our  individual lives. Rather, as Whitehead himself puts it, God is “our fellow sufferer and struggler in trying to maximize good in the world.

So, I have concluded that God is an eternal force for good in the universe, but relies upon our help to bring about the good we all desire in this world. The trick here is to make use of every opportunity to increase good in the world without detracting from it. Indeed, like Danny Glover  does in the beginning scenes film Grand Canyon we need to find smart and loving ways to transform dangerous and evil situations into positive outcomes. Or, to change the image, like placing the capstone at the top of an archway so that the force of the curved archway stones keeps the capstone in place. In this way we can join with Divinity in striving to stymie, or even occasionally overcome, evil in the world.

This brings me to the question of the Bible. Having long ago decided that the idea that the idea of the inerrancy of the thousands Biblical  documents makes no sense, I focus on those Gospel passages wherein Jesus proclaims his radical “Goodnews” message, namely the “Sermon  on the Mount” in Matthew 5 through 7. Here it seems to me we find the core of the Christian Gospel, radical though it be. It was this message  that drove both the Jews and Romans of his day crazy.

It is to these set of teachings, this style of life that I find myself drawn in recent years. Honesty, self-sacrifice for others, strong radical  commitments that lead to the wellbeing of the downtrodden, and inclusive love, agape, for all to the greatest degree possible given the extant circumstances. To be sure, none of this is easy, but it is what I see as the essence of Jesus’ teaching and approach to living. Surely at times it seems impossible to discern exactly what he meant when he said such off-beat things like “Love your enemies”, but at the same time it seems equally necessary to strive to understand and follow such teachings.

So, in the above sense I consider myself a Christian. This only at times corresponds to what the world or the Christian Church considers being a Christian entails. To be sure, I am still working on getting yet a better understanding of and grip on just what this all means. In some sense, I do believe, this very struggle constitutes a good part of what it means to be a Christian, Bertrand Russell to the contrary not with standing.