What is the essence of Christianity? What theological hills are the ones I must die on?
I'm in my mid-thirties, and I'm at a tough point in the faith. I've dealt with doubt before, eventually broke through it and rejected all forms of agnosticism and atheism, found other religions lacking as well -- and yet I still haven't figured out everything about Christianity, either.
I was raised in something of a generic, and yet very unstructured, American Protestant Christian home. However, there were a few theological quirks: my mother basically reduced everything in the Bible to Micah 6:8, my father told me hell isn't eternal and that people can be saved after they die (he vigorously maintains this belief to this day -- it's his own theological hill that he chooses to die on), and most emphasis was placed on endless End Times speculations rather than morality, even though both my parents identified as conservative Christians. (They remained outsiders in the faith, and few followed their highly idiosyncratic theology. As I've gotten older, I totally understand why few people followed them, despite my love for them -- they were very inconsistent theologically, and took a lot of the Bible grossly out of context, and could never admit or discuss their hermeneutical errors well with others.)
In my young adult years, I was exposed to the conservative Calvinist/Reformed, Vision Forum, somewhat famous/infamous "Brain Type" patriarchal Christianity of the Niednagel family, which holds that most people are Myers-Briggs ENTPs/FCIRs and cannot discern truth and reality well. True Biblical Christianity, according to them, is following rules and regulations to the utmost, and following the Bible according to black-and-white, linear left brain context, best exemplified in rigid Reformed Calvinism and ISFJ or ISTJ BEAL and BEIL Brain Types. My parents were believed to be generic ENTP FCIR right brain thinkers who took the Bible too creatively and didn't spend enough time on law, righteousness, and the like, which would explain their obsession with doomsday thinking, and the lack of emphasis on law/morality, and why my family never gave into the very different thinking of the Niednagel Brain Typists.
I also have been exposed to Calvary Chapel, which holds that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, and that God can be attained through ecstatic emotional spontaneous Pentecostal worship, coupled with a somewhat conservative theological bent. The Niednagels would dismiss this as right brain extroversion emotionalism, and to me, it seems offensively feminine instead of male patriarchal. God is not a woman -- He is a MALE, so why treat him so emotionally and reduce His holiness to a girly RUH-LAY-SHUN-SHIP? Men are systems thinkers, thus so should a male God be, not a "relationship."
I now think, and have thought for over a year, that conservative Lutherans have the best balance of all these matters, theological and otherwise -- but it's alienated my family and all my former Calvinist and Calvary Chapel friends, who would wish to persuade me back to 'their' ways.
Even so, I find myself fighting: is conservative Lutheranism just my own preference, or is it absolute truth? If it's absolute truth, how do I -- as a woman and descendant of Eve -- practice it best? Women aren't supposed to hold Scriptural authority in the Bible, and yet the men in my life have had such differing views on how the Bible should be interpreted, so it's hard to figure out who to submit to. They are all over the place! Where is the consistency in Protestant Christianity? I outlined what my parents, the Niednagel Brain Typist Calvinists, and the Calvary Chapelists believe -- and none of it is internally consistent or co-existent. What a mess!
It got me thinking, even back to the bigger picture -- what, then, IS the essence of Christianity, and what does Christianity offer that other world views or religions don't? Why is there such division in Christianity when the Apostle Paul told us not to have all these divisions? And as a woman, how especially do I deal with all of this, when Eve's curse is upon me? How can I figure out the truth when I'm supposed to have a male intermediary to decide my beliefs for me (women must submit to men authorities, and cannot come to Christ on their own), and yet all my male intermediaries would war over very different theological views, coming to completely logically contradictory conclusions?
Seems madness to me...
Not person on Earth can improve or replace or reduce down His Words to anything better.
