This post is going to be a bit different, and I imagine most will wish to skip it. Unless you are interested not just in religion, but in the highly personal, hugely heretical version of one specific religion held by one particular person (me), then it may be time to check Penny Arcade.
Recently, I was asked just what made me believe that I am, doctrinally, a million miles away from any established church. Unfortunately, my first choice was (had I thought for a moment) one of two examples guaranteed to inflame my interlocutor, so I didn't get the chance to get very far. Which is a shame, because I've never systematically expressed it: it is just a range of fairly internally-consistent individual stances.
Here, though, nobody can interrupt. Well, apart from the comments spammer whose work advertising porn and ringtones I remove every day. So I can work it out and benefit from any response (it will be one of those posts, I suspect, that gets me more emails than site comments).
And you can just skip it all and go to the last paragraph, probably. Practically speaking, that's the bit that matters.
Core Elements
I suspect that the threads which run through most of what follows are: a belief in the primacy of will; and a distaste for the primarily Greek idea that the perfect and the imperfect cannot interact. Related to this is a rejection of the idea that a physical component is required for any act of faith.
From the belief in the primacy of will flows the idea that it is a willingness to believe and be saved that matters. I believe in the mens rea, not the actus reus. I pity those Calvinists who believe that God chose who would be saved and who condemned before the beginning of time (Ephesians 1:4). They're welcome to their god, but he's not very pleasant and I wouldn't want to spend an eternity unable to look him in the face. I believe that we are saved by our own choice. However, as with most modern legal systems, I do not believe someone is bound by a choice they make without knowledge of essential, crucial and material facts. Since someone who knew the divine plan would, I am sure, be utterly and immediately convinced of its goodness, I have difficulty with what a failure to choose God means. I tend towards a slightly Lewisian view that the mere sensation, at the time of revalation, of having failed God would be punishment enough.
From a distaste for the dualism of Greek thought comes the rejection of the need for priestly intervention between God and man. Calvin stated this with his usual forcefulness, saying that it was "a most wicked infamy and unbearable blasphemy, both against Christ and against the sacrifice which he made for us through his death on the cross, for anyone to suppose that by repeating the oblation he obtains pardon for sins". On the contrary, since I believe in a personal and direct relationship between God and man, the interposing of any intermediary is surely a terrible thing to do to any person. Would I be happier if I could only interact with my best friend through an agent?
Although this separation between material and spiritual was at the core of a dozen or more discarded heresies, it can still be seen in much modern Christian thought. I cannot stand going to a church and hearing some minister launch into the standard "Oh Lord, we are not even worthy to enter thy presence." I half expect him to continue: "We really are horrible little people, aren't we? I for one am a little disappointed in You, given that You choose to associate Yourself with the likes of us." For God, the avoidance of situational narcissistic disorder must be an everyday struggle with such repulsive toadying constantly floating up from the only real company he has in the universe.
The effects of rejection of the need for components beyond pure thought come difficulties with rituals which , by their nature, stress the importance of the right words, movements, clothes and components. For instance, I find the Council of Trent's seven sacraments largely laughable in their clear political aims. It doesn't require a marxist analysis to see that. I believe in one "sacrament" - baptism - and that it is a personal act of will and thought which requires the participation of the individual and of God. It requires no professional intermediary between Christian and God, it requires no physical component nor magical words nor mystical hand movements. Reductio ad absurdum: is a person alone in a waterless desert with a copy of the gospels who wishes to convert doomed for lack of priest, water or the right formula? Of course not. So those are all optional extras.
Other Elements
I don't believe that anything in the Old Testament binds me any more. It is interesting stuff, but alien even to mainstream Christianity. Have you read Job? Do you really believe God indulges in bets over the suffering of humans? Do you believe Balaam's ass spoke to him about the satan in his path and he didn't bat an eyelid?
When I read it (it's an unpleasant but interesting read) it seems obvious that the God of Job belongs on Olympus. And the law is even less applicable: do you really think we should stone to death (on the evidence of two witnesses) homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), Hindus (Deut. 13), stubborn children (Deut 21: 18-21), non-virgin brides (Deut 22:13-21), or many, many more? That a woman defending her husband in a fight who makes contact with the crotch of his opponent should have her hand cut off, no exceptions (Deat 25:11-12)? Even Paul says it doesn't apply any more. But there are plenty of odd verses that the more unpleasant so-called Christians like to use from the tribal law of a small, semi-nomadic desert nation to attack things they don't like today.
If it helps people to believe that God created the world in six days, so be it. But, um, he didn't do it like that, and I would rather that scientists could be left to get on with finding more about the real process. And please, let kids read the scientific version in school. There will be plenty of time to be stupid, later.
I believe in the overarching truth of the Gospels, although they disagree with each other enough that we can see they are eye witness accounts only very much later written down: between forty and ninety years. I think Paul writes some good stuff, but he's just a man, and he is often wrong, often biased, sometimes downright wicked (just like the rest of us). I think that the middle ages might have been a little nicer had large segments of Paul not made it into the final cut of the Bible. Like Dr James Tabor in Jesus and John the Baptist, Apocalypticism Explained, I think that Paul was obsessed with the imminent apocalypse, and so didn't really care about social reform. So bad things should be borne for now: slavery, sexism and injustice. And like Bertrand Russell in Marriage and Morals, I think his attitude to sex is similarly skewed by his eschatological mistake.
From what I said above, one might suspect that I am deeply anti-clerical. That is not so. I merely detest anyone who sets themselves up as an intermediary who is needed to plead before God for others, whether that pretender be priest or Catholic "saint". I think that the role of ministers and priests is that of Rabbi: they should be teachers who have the time to study and to explain, to comfort and to guide.
I always feel sad going to communion. Part of this is that some churches have rules as to who may break bread with them, requiring a letter, or to have undergone a specific mystic ritual. I can't seem to find the bit in the gospels where someone wishes to eat with Jesus but he says that unless they have a letter from Peter then they will have to sit there and watch the rest eat. I dunno, maybe the modern church is trying to keep down costs in the face of spiralling wine prices.
But the way that communion is taken is the really sad bit, and it has been basically the same in every church I have been to. Everyone sits in absolute silence, and is handed a miniscule piece of bread, which they chew upon mournfully with an absoutely miserable expression. Then they get wine, which they sip with a thoughtful, pious look on their face that they hope looks prayerful. Some are praying, and I am sure that some are working out how they can get home in time for the match. There are minor differences in the delivery mechanism: the closer to Catholicism you get the less the active mournfulness matters (after all, the priest is doing magic for you: you can simply look a bit impressed, but for heavens sake do not grin or you'll get missed out!) but this is paid for by having to queue up and kneel. At the other end, you get to break your own bit of bread off, but you must look intensely, old-testamentally solemn.
Communion is supposed to be eating and drinking as Jesus did with his mates. I suspect that dinner with Jesus was rather more fun than we make it out to be, with everyone talking, passing the bread, pouring each other decent amounts of wine (which would only make things louder), listening to Jesus explain something, laughing about the look on Ben-Joshua's face after the big man cured his kid's blindness and complaining when Judas hogged the olives. I'll go to that church, thanks.