I am becoming more and more interested lately in the role our personal psychological composition (e.g. personality type, and so on) plays in the religious choices that we make. We make it seem at times that we are what we are - Roman, Anglican, Presbyterian, etc. - based entirely on reason alone. But I think that if we were honest with ourselves we'd realize that so much more goes into making the religious choices that we do. I once jokingly remarked to a vehemently anti-catholic friend when we were arguing about Catholicism (I was Roman Catholic at the time), "What... did you get beat up by a neighbor who was Roman Catholic when you were a kid, or something? Is that why you hate RCism so much?" My point being that he seemed to have more of an affective aversion to RCism rather than intellectual one; it was something deeper, something more primitive within him. Not something less valuable or important, but just different.
Some people, in my experience, seem to prefer subscribing to theological systems that purport to have answers for everything, or they are looking for a particular unshakeable and infallible authority to ease their troubled soul (pope, sola scriptura, etc.), while others are drawn to and convinced by systems that are very amorphous and ambiguous. Either preference, though, seems to be driven more by an individual's psychology and personality rather than being a purely disinterested pursuit of "truth", though the quest for truth certainly does come into the equation. And as we are constantly developing and growing as individuals, our psychology is influenced more and more by the various life experiences that we grow through, and we bring all of that to the table as well.
We all do this. I think about this in relation to my own life as an artist-deacon. As an artist, I am fine with seeing things from multiple perspectives, and am not necessarily worried about how it all ties together. My "looser" mindset even trickles into the country/bluegrass band me and some friends have: I always joke with them that I am not very concerned with staying in strict time, people coming in singing all at once, and so on, and how that is analogous to the dripping paint, multiple perspective, and criss-crossing lines in my art. I think it is that inherent ambiguity that I live with as an artist that has helped me remain faithful to Jesus Christ in times of darkness over the years. Other people though, could not stand having dripping paint, and "gray" areas to deal with. To them, everything is black and white, and very often they think that anyone who accepts some level of ambiguity is a complete wacko. I accept that there are people like that out there... who have to have neat answers for everything; that is their personality type, and that's fine. That's how God made them, and allowed them to grow as people. But I do find it frustrating to read of people who write about their religious life, or conversion to another denomination, as though it were entirely an intellectual matter, when, no doubt, personal and psychological reasons were also at play. It just seems dishonest.
People make decisions for personal reasons as well as for intellectual ones. It is not just a bare examination of the 'cold, hard facts'. I think that when people begin to acknowledge this more it will bear fruit ecumenically, as well as in other ways.
