I like the audacity of what Thomas Jefferson did with the gospels of the life of Jesus Christ.
Jefferson went through and teased out of the narrative of Jesus's life as recorded in the gospels what he considered to be the essence of Jesus's message and teachings, sans all supernatural elements. I believe that Jefferson felt that Jesus's followers had embellished the story of his life in the decades following his death in the same way that many followers of religious prophets tend to do, and simply put this aside and considered whether Jesus's philosophy could stand or fall on its own merits, and without the need for validation through supernatural means.
Here it is if you want to check it out:
http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/
In my case, I was raised a Christian and I find Jesus's message as recorded in the gospels to be a sturdy model for living one's life. In particular, I find Jesus's emphasis on turning away from worldliness, being gentle and loving toward others, being humble in general, and recognizing the harm that can be caused by institutional religious and political bureaucracies to be essentially true based upon my own experience. I recognize that Jesus was not the first to teach some of these things, but it was the tradition I was brought up in, and thus it was through the teachings of Jesus that I first heard them.
I see myself as fundamentally a Christian in that I consider myself to be a follower of Christ. To me, though, what it means to follow Christ is to take the teachings of Jesus and follow them in my own life and see whether or not they work in the way Jesus suggested they would (in my case I have found that they work well).
When, however, you overlay supernatural elements with the basic teachings of Jesus, things get more complicated. Now you have a whole set of ideas that challenge our rationality, are un-provable, require enormous faith to believe completely, and are subject to erosion at all times. I have seen many people come to Christianity, begin to question the supernatural elements, and gradually fall away as their rationality finally couldn't assimilate the supernatural ideas. Often such people never really focused that much on fully internalizing Jesus's teachings into their lives, so distracting are the supernatural elements.
Any time I talk to someone about religion I don't ask them to believe in anything supernatural. I just ask them to look at the teachings themselves, try the teachings in their own lives, and see how it works. If the teachings work in practice, perhaps they may choose to look into the supernatural elements when they are more mature in their faith if that's what they choose to do. For me, I have found the requirement that I believe in something supernatural that was recorded by another human being to be distracting and frustrating (on what basis could I conclude that the person who wrote it down in the first place wasn't mistaken?). I would rather work within the parameters of the world in which I live and use the rationality that helps me define my own consciousness to guide me. In other words, I think that the teachings of Jesus provide a well-reasoned rationale for essentially being "good" that stands on its own without needing additional supernatural proof of its truth.
If someone tells me that I am supposed to believe something because someone wrote it down 2,000 years ago without any other confirmation of its truth or accuracy, I think it's reasonable to ask for more proof. If someone asks me why I need more proof than the statement of a handful of scribes from 2,000 years ago I would tell them because God made me skeptical of unsubstantiated claims and I believe he made me this way for a reason. Even though this is my take on things, I don't mean to suggest that people who come to different conclusions or who arrive at different beliefs based upon their own experiences are wrong. I'm just sharing what makes sense to me.
What frustrates me is when I feel that I am diligently following the teachings of Jesus and this pursuit is providing a sense of wholeness and purpose to my life and someone wants to basically say "You're not doing it right." I want to say "But how do you know
you're not the one who isn't doing it right?" When I have such discussions I am always reminded of Jesus's suggestion when he was advising the mob preparing to stone the adulteress that perhaps the ceremonial first stone should be thrown by someone who was without sin in their own lives.
I always liked Dave Barry's line about how people who want to share their religion with you almost never want you to share your religion with them.
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