A couple of summers ago, on a gorgeous evening in June, I was taking a stroll around a public park when a very friendly stranger approached me and struck up some simple conversation.

I've been around the block enough times to know where these conversations are going. What the person is trying to sell me varies, and you can usually figure it out from their initial approach, but sometimes I'm surprised. Despite my being used to it, it still vexes me that friendly conversation is almost never without an ulterior motive. Not least of all because it often makes striking up friendly conversation difficult.

This fellow was mainly a straight shooter, because he got to the heart of the matter very quickly by asking me if I went to church every week. I told him I did not. He asked me why.

I happened to be very "on" that day; I usually don't have a quick wit. So, I told him it was because services in churches tend to involve prayer, and that Jesus instructed us in the Beatitudes not to ostentatiously make a big show of praying in public, and that we should instead do it in secret. (This is Matthew 6:6, for the curious.)

This threw him off. He continued by starting to talk about the Book of Revelations, and all of these things were coming true. I told him that this book was written for Christian missionaries in the first century proselytizing in Asia Minor, and it was meant to give them hope that their suffering was not in vain. It was not, as is often believed, a prophecy of literal events that were to take place.

"But Jesus is coming back soon," he insisted, ignoring my point altogether, "to judge the world."

"So," I asked him, "you believe that Jesus is about to return to earth and bring judgment?"

He nodded.

I continued, "In the first chapter of Acts, right before Jesus ascends to heaven, the apostles ask him when he is going to return, and he says that no one but God knows. Not even he knows. Only God. How, then, can you claim to know something that Jesus said only God could know?"

A pause.

"But the signs are all around us!" he said, getting agitated. "You can see the world slowing descending into chaos."

"Jesus said, in Matthew, 'It is a wicked and adulterous generation that seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it'."

Again, a pause.

It went on like this for a few more minutes, until I got bored and continued along my way, leaving him frustrated that I didn't accept his version of truth. What I like most about these kinds of interactions is that no one ever gives me credit for quoting the words of the very person they revere as a savior in order to refute them. To me, this is quite telling: it doesn't matter that I'm quoting their own scripture, what matters is that I'm disagreeing with them. There's too little humility in this.

I tell this story as if to make myself sound clever, as though I'm capable of getting the better of people intellectually, but I'm not always so level-headed, and my arguments aren't always well-reasoned. I happened to get lucky in this story, because when it happened, I had been spending the past few months intensely studying Christian theology.

I actually learned this from the gospel of John. Some of my favorite passages in this book are the ones where Jesus is being confronted by the Jewish aristocrats of his day, in public discourses. In them, there's usually a debate in which the Jews assert their own righteousness and decry Jesus as being a heretic, and Jesus manages to get the better of them with a quick-witted retort, often quoting Jewish scripture to make his point.

It wasn't my idea to use one's own scripture to argue against a person. I just asked myself, "What Would Jesus Do?"

To me, these stories point to a simple universal truth that transcends the anti-Semitic meaning they were almost certainly written to convey: that an individual's spirituality is often at odds with the fundamentalist tenants and ritual practices of institutionalized religions. Jesus was an underdog at odds with the religious elite of his day; obvious parallels can be drawn between this and an individual at odds with Christian leaders today.

It's not that I dislike or oppose Christianity, or any major religion. I've just grown weary over the years of having people come at me, as Christians, proclaiming the truth, when the reality is that very few Christians seem to agree with one another. My investigation of Christianity confirmed this: within the realm of believers, the number of interpretations of Christianity seems to be as numerous as the number of Christians. The conflict of the Christian religion is not one between those who believe and those who do not. It is internal, between the varying sects of people who hold radically different views of what they claim is the same thing.

Indeed, this is actually the best way to get rid of proselytizing Christians, when there's more than one of them. When it comes up, ask questions. What was Jesus' primary message? What was his relation to God? Are we saved by works or by faith? Which of these two is more important? In what way was Jesus divine? Was he divine from birth, or did he become divine at the resurrection? Etc. Eventually, you'll hit upon a question that will cause them to disagree with each other, and while that discussion kicks off, you can slink away from the conversation without them noticing.

In John, Pilate is questioning Jesus in private, asking him why the Pharisees have handed him over to be punished. Jesus says that he has come to earth from a metaphysical realm so that people might learn the truth. The passage ends with Pilate asking Jesus: "What is truth?"

This dangling question, which leaves the conversation between Jesus and governor without any closure, serves a Socratic theological function for the reader. We are left to wonder about this very thing, which is, of course, the essence of religion.

My advice to young people about religion would simply be this: that in the search for truth, and that as you grow older, and venture into the world, be very careful about the things you accept as truth, and the people from whom you accept it. Truth is subjective, and what is truth is one context may not be true in another. Life will be difficult at times, in ways that you cannot foresee now. Whatever you choose to believe, it will have to sustain you through periods of intense difficulty.