Never Really Be Convincing

I have come to Christ through liberty and through an intimate experience of the paths of freedom.

My Christian faith is not a faith based on habit or tradition. It was won through an experience of the inner life of a most painful character.

I knew no compulsion in my religious life, and I had no experience of authoritarianism either in faith or in the sphere of religious devotion.

Can one oppose to this fact dogmatic formulas or abstract theologies? I answer No, for in my case they will never be really convincing. 

                                                   Nikolai Berdyaev ~ Freedom and the Spirit

My experience mirrors Berdyaev's to a great degree, particularly the bit about coming to Christ through the paths of freedom.

Like Berdyaev, my faith is not based on habit or tradition, although my faith did begin in those--or, rather, were inculcated through those. Had I not found the paths of freedom Berdyaev cites, I likely would have followed the millions of other recent apostates and ceased being Christian altogether.

I was never moved by any of the external compulsions and coercions organized religion insists upon and never felt the fear and trembling before externals that keeps so many traditional/conventional Christians "in line." 

And to those who have countered my faith with dogmatic formulas and abstract theologies...well, knock yourselves out, but I will never find any of it really convincing, particularly now when the bulk of the formulas and theologies fail to serve even the most superficial of spiritual concerns. 

And to those who claim that I do not really follow Christ, that what I follow is anti-Christian, I say...