He is Risen?

I remember back in church, we used to ask one another:

"He is risen?"

"He is risen, indeed."

I think I find myself still in that questioning state.  Not because I do or don't believe that Christ rose from the dead.  Frankly, I think the physical is often less important than the symbolic.  Sure, most will disagree with me, but the symbolic message of someone conquering death and conquering "sin" is way more vital to me than the fact or fiction of a given testament.  I don't mean to demean the religious importance of having Christ raise from the dead, but at the same time, the act of belief means that there is some uncertainty no matter what.

In church today, the comparison was used that we don't "see thoughts", but we "know they exists just like we don't "see God" but "know he exists" (I would prefer s/he, but it would be misquoting the analogy).  However, I realized that I don't know that thoughts really exist.  However, I do know that the idea of a thought exists, and its significance is not in my knowledge of it by my understanding of it.  I understand thoughts to be profound ways that human beings compute with their brain cells daily activity.  Do I know for sure that this is actually what a thought is?  No.  In fact, someone way more scientific then I would actually try to describe it in its intricate details, in a way that somewhat can be seen.   I am starting to feel the same way about Christ.  I can't say anymore that I am a Christian by any means.  At least mainly because my understanding of what it means to be a Christian is to believe with your whole heart, mind, and soul that Christ died for your sins and you must accept that in order to get the "key" to enter heaven's gates (I could have another side tangent about that but will save it for another day).  What I can say is that the idea of Christ and his resurrection is something that moves and inspires me.  Someone who sacrificed their life and made a payment so that we could live is beautiful.  This is simplifying even the symbolic nature of Christ's death and why he died, but I wish that at this Easter service I could have learned or discussed or simply been allowed to truly ponder what the story of Christ really means.  Instead, I was given an ultimatum, another bipolar extreme.  "You either believe that Christ died for your sins and accept that or you get the fires of hell."  This bipolar extreme is so madly uncomfortable to me, and in that discomfort stems a hope that none of it is real.  I should say it is more than a hope now.  I believe it is not real.  Why?

Life seems so much more than a pair of bipolar opposites.  We are not just male or female, white or black, short or tall.  We are a spectrum of beauty that I can't even begin to describe.  This is why the idea of God to me could never simply be about a choice or a belief that decides heaven and hell, saved or not saved, in or out.  I believe that life is to intricate and to varied for such an ultimatum to be true.  And just like a thought or Christianity's belief in God, I do not see this necessarily, but the idea of it is something that shapes and falls in line more with my understanding of life.