Christian Light or Colin'ism


How do I respond when confronted by a friend who is heavily steeped in the Christian faith?  I often take the soft approach and share how I attended Catholic Church growing up and later changed to Unitarian Universalist  (UU) church. I embrace many Christian values such as love your neighbor, avoid lying and stealing, and help the needy. Hell, I even buy into turning the other cheek when someone slaps me. My beliefs start to veer away from traditional Christianity when asked about the afterlife. My soft answer goes something like: “Heaven and hell are states of mind that we experience during life. We can cultivate a heavenly, peaceful, and loving existence. On the other hand, life can be horrible, sad, cruel, and lonely. Once our body dies, our mind ceases to exist.”  I admit, this is not very comforting, and extinguishes the hope of seeing our dead, loved ones in the afterlife. (All we have are memories.) My ability to remain Christian light gets even more difficult when asked if I believe in God.  I do not believe in the god of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. There is too much bullshit and suffering in the world for me to accept an all loving, all knowing, and parental god figure. My gods align with the concepts of love, beauty and justice.


I prefer to define myself by what I believe and value and not on what I do fail to believe. I embrace Unitarian Universalism, Buddhism, paganism (mostly of the Native-American variety), with a side of Judeo-Christianity. Perhaps the time for soft answers is closing. More to come…

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