Why I’m (still) a Christian
I’m being received into the Orthodox Church by chrismation (anointing with blessed oil) in three weeks. Thinking about this occasion has given me cause, therefore, to give consideration to my reasons for undertaking that step. But my reasons for why I’m entering the Orthodox Church are rather, properly prefaced by why I’m still a Christian at all. Through everything, there has been one concept that has captured my imagination, one that I ultimately cannot shake. One reason why, in spite of all of my wandering around – from a nominally Catholic home, to a conversion experience at age 15, to a weird mishmash of evangelicalism and Catholicism, to die-hard scholasticist Calvinism at the age of 20, to giving up on the concept of God entirely until realizing that I was ultimately trying to engage in moral reasoning as a Christian* while living outwardly as an atheist , to being spiritually rehabilitated (somewhat) in two theologically liberal mainline churches (the United and Anglican ch