My dad told me, once, that if you believe what the Nazarene taught, you are a Xian. Church doctrine isn’t what determines that.

I found some comfort in that, at the time, because peeling that label off was hard. I grew up believing that God loved me and that Jesus did, too. It was hard coming to grips with the belief that the loving god I was taught about had to be as much a myth as Zeus and Odin. All those stories are interesting, culturally, and are useful to see how people have tried to explain a confusing world. But, none of them have any more significance than that for me.

I don’t like to use the labels “agnostic” or “atheist,” though. They come with their own baggage that I don’t care to wear, either.