I Never Stopped Being a Christian

A mother once wrote to C.S. Lewis on behalf of her concerned son, who was worried that he loved Aslan, the lion Christ figure from Lewis’s children’s series, more than Jesus himself. Lewis wrote back with this consolation:

Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.

Lewis obviously meant this literally: Jesus is a real, living, breathing, present being, and the third person of the Trinity. But, even if we don’t take a literal view of the Christ myth, there is truth in Lewis’s words, if only at a cultural and psychological level. Imagine my bewilderment in realizing that I, a 35-year-old secular atheist, am the little boy Lewis was writing to.

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For six years, I was an engaged and prominent member of The Satanic Temple. For three of those years, I was a Minister of Satan. You can read more about that journey in my article The Limits of Satanism. but here are a few preliminary clarifications: the Satanism of The Satanic Temple is nontheistic and sees Satan as the icon of the heroic, unbowed will instead of the embodiment of all evil. This vision of Satan is still important to me, and I still draw inspiration from it. I’m not discarding this Miltonian and romantic vision of Satan – I’m instead expanding my mythopoetic landscape to embrace more stories that bring my life meaning.

As I have gotten some distance from Satanism and some space to reflect, I’ve found myself drawn irresistibly once more to my homeland: Christianity. I’ve found myself watching Christian YouTube channels, contemplating the person of Christ, and reading books on Christianity.

Don’t get too excited, dear Christian. I’m still an agnostic atheist. You won’t see me in church or on my knees in prayer anytime soon. I still have zero evidence for the reality of miracles or the existence of a God, and I’m still worried about the consequences of belief without sufficient evidence.

But, alarmingly, I have come to see, not that I am falling in love again with Christianity, but that I never stopped being a Christian. I don’t mean that I believe in the central creeds of Christianity. I instead mean that I never stopped living out the teachings of Christ, and never stopped thinking in Christian language, symbolism, and ethics.

Much of what I love most about the Romantic Satan, especially as seen in the pages of Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France and envisioned by The Satanic Temple, are aspects that I love most about Christ. The Christianity didn’t go away. It just slept, dormant, and gave itself life through other myths.

The Satan of Revolt of the Angels cares deeply for the suffering of humanity, chooses not to conquer heaven, and instead implores his demons to overcome the tyrants within their own hearts. Like Christ, he is the ultimate outsider, cast out of the religious power structures, and the hero of the downtrodden. He flounces the decrees of religious tyranny while arguing that, above all, “victory is a spirit” – an internal struggle against our own inner gods. He refuses to lash out at the power structures that persecute him. He suffers something of a crucifixion and sacrifice by being cast out of heaven for his disobedience and blasphemy. Like the little boy Lewis was writing to, in loving a fictional figure, I was loving Christ all along.

As Tom Holland argues in Dominion, the notion that a disgraced, naked teacher suffering a criminal’s death would be deified as a god was the greatest blasphemy of the time. In the ancient world, it was only the mighty, the beautiful, the war heroes (or war criminals) who were carried to heaven to become gods. Christ’s teachings and the myth of his resurrection turned the order of civilization upside down. I care about the least of these, the outsider, and human rights, because I am an inheritor of that morality. Even as a heathen, I cannot help but follow the sermon on the mount, because I know no other sermon.

I’m not going to start calling myself a Christian in my day-to-day life, and you won’t find me in a church pew on Sunday morning any time soon. I’m hesitant to attach myself to any religious identity right now, and I’m content to let other people argue about what I am. I’m not going to suddenly reform from my heathen ways and embrace a meek Christianity. I still possess the qualities that led me to Satanism, and I’m still the same person who fell in love with the transgressive Satanism of TST.

I also won’t confess that I believe Christ was literally raised from the dead, or that heaven or hell exists, or that a god with will, volition, and personhood exists. By many lights, this means I am not a Christian. But, perhaps, I am a cultural Christian, if only because it is the language I think in and the morality within which I function. I still love Christ, and I have never stopped loving him. I’ve fought against this for years, but perhaps it’s time to just accept the truth.

But that’s just me. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and I might feature them in an upcoming post. Also, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and sharing this article with your friends.