I believe in Jesus, but I don’t believe in god. I don’t go to church, but I do celebrate Christmas.

Numbers 1, 3, and 4 of the Ten Commandments which refer to a god, do not apply to me. (As for No. 2, go ahead, make idols if you must, but keep me out of it.) They are, after all, a pretty decent human construct. (Moses?) I regard the others as fundamental ethical guidelines for behaviour. But I don’t believe humans go to heaven if they live according to these commandments or to hell if they don’t.

The Ten Commandments

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall make no idols.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. Honour your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
10. You shall not covet.

Hardly a controversial set of ‘commandments’ in a decent world. I celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus, arguably the most consequential man in history. I happily decorate the tree and enjoy a Christmas banquet. A birthday dinner.

So what am I? Before some smart aleck provides a mean answer…. I am a Christian atheist. That is, an atheist who tries to live by the Judeo-Christian rules of a commendable life. Apart from the Ten Commandments, the core messages of Jesus the ‘bastard’, and rebel of antiquity that I value, are love (or at least care) for others, forgiveness and respect.

The great wonder is that ‘love your enemy’ was not the teaching of a divine being, an all loving god, but that it was the teaching of a man surrounded by hate, ritualistic exclusion, and superstition. The wonder is that the man known to us as Jesus Christ remains the most potent symbol of compassion and brotherly love, 2,000-odd years after his death.

‘Turn the other cheek’ and forgive, he taught his followers, people who often had reason to hate and to never forgive.

His contrarian messages amongst the Jews and the Gentiles under the rule of Roman Emperor Tiberius were not only audacious and ridiculous by both pagan and Jewish standards but radically disruptive within his own sect of Jews, who lived with strict adherence to the ways of the Old Testament, a rigid life strictly codified in every way. Down to the correct time to defecate…

Among those contrarian messages was one that opened the door to the god of the Jews to women. That was really revolutionary.

Standing in direct philosophical, moral, and humanistic contrast to Islam, Christianity is the moral system you can have when you do not have a faith. Atheists can readily accept its basic moral propositions, for instance, without believing in any god or in Jesus as god, or even in Christianity as a moral framework. It is essentially summed up in that one simple formula: do to others as you would have them do to you.

Being a journalist all my working life has given me many opportunities to explore fascinating stories and meet extraordinary people. One of them was the late Dr Barbara Thiering, Sydney-based theologian and author of (controversial) books on Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

My path leading to Dr Thiering began with a coloured A4 flyer on a salesman’s desk at a screen industry trade fair. It proclaimed the then newly produced TV documentary, provocatively titled The Wicked Priest, based on her book, The Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I jumped to the same conclusion as I suspect you might have done. It is a perfect example of how contemporary usage and understanding can betray and distort language of a distant past – translated from a foreign language; how words can have more than one meaning, a notion at the very heart of her work. A 30-year immersion in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which she claims to have found submerged meanings through the pecher technique: effectively a way to read the coded text. This isn’t the place to explore the scrolls and Thiering, fascinating though her studies are; I mention her to put my argument in context, that atheists – anyone – can live life according to the principles of Christianity as can devout Christians, like Dr Thiering.

Dr Thiering saw her work as bringing a mature vision of the story of this physically and spiritually robust character, who enforced all the positive moral values that we have come to associate with his church. Him being a man didn’t prevent Dr Thiering from believing in god. Nor does a disbelief in god prevent acceptance of the sentiments behind the commandments.

It doesn’t matter that he was not the Son of God. If anything, seeing Jesus as a mortal man accentuates him as an important historical figure whose influence has reverberated through time and enabled the flowering of Western civilisation. Happy birthday, Jesus.

And happy 13th anniversary to perhaps my favourite Christmas movie, the dark 2010 Finnish fantasy, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, an astringent alternative to standard Christmas cinema fare. Like a clever thriller, the film plays with your mind and writer/director Jalmari Helander keeps taking us into unexpected corners. You giggle and suck in air – but it’s not a raucous comedy; more like a forbidden film noir under the Christmas tree. The sensibilities on display are certainly not Hollywood – nor anything else familiar to Australian audiences, for that matter. Except the music. Juri and Miska Seppa’s score is as big and majestic as any Hollywood Christmas epic might want, adding to the film’s mood of (not so) classic holiday fare.

Some 486 metres deep in the Korvatunturi mountains, in the Finnish Arctic, lies a closely guarded secret… Young Pietari (Onni Tommila) lives with his widowed father, Rauno (Jorma Tommila), at an economically depressed reindeer slaughterhouse. Nearby, a mysterious American science expedition has stumbled upon a great find, apparently connected to the legend that Santa is buried here: the malevolent character of local folklore. The day before Christmas, Rauno and his neighbours stumble on a field of dead and mutilated reindeer. The adults assume some large, savage wolf is to blame, but Pietari and his friend Juuso (Ilmari Jarvenpaa) know there’s a more sinister force at work, and the following day they realise all the local children are missing.

Young Tommila is the undisputed star of the film, his puckish face a joy to watch whether thinking, talking or scheming. He carries the film’s heart and is the hero who learns just what is happening in this remote neck of the Finnish woods and knows what to do about it. Indeed, it is something of a coming-of-age story.

There’s nothing cute or sweet to distract us from the bleak version of the Santa legend, in which a bit of gory horror creeps in and in which there is not a single female in sight. No token damsel in this story, folks! Best of all, everything is played for drama; there is nothing to suggest that the filmmakers aren’t deadly serious, which only adds to the razor-sharp fun.

There are scenes of almost absurd abandon, including those with dozens of naked and bearded old Santa’s helpers seemingly oblivious to the snow and ice. But that’s the very least of it. At the Jussis (Finnish film awards) it was nominated for Best Film and won six other categories including cinematography, music, and costume design … and my beating atheist heart.

Andrew L. Urban is a journalist and author of six non-fiction books and one novel.