It took me years to realize that the symbol system and stories and music and language and practices of Christianity formed me in ways that I could not escape by simply no longer going to church, Joseph. But they formed me in ways that transcended the strident certainty of the Church of Christ. So I would pray without realizing I was doing it, and would be moved to tears by hearing a hymn in a movie score without wanting to be, and when my roommate would find the wallet she thought she’d lost I’d say “call the neighbors” without realizing she didn't know the Bible like I did and wouldn’t get the joke. My life had been inflected by faith from the time I was growing in my mother’s belly and to have only negative feelings about Christianity was to also have some negative feelings about my own being.