Ultimately, however, I believe that religious faith is an inherently personal thing—not something to be taken as rote from someone else and simply accepted.

You cover a lot of ground in your comment, and unfortunately most of it relates to things that you really need to work out for yourself. If someone gives you these answers, then you’re just falling back into the trap in which you’re already finding yourself.

If you feel that you can’t escape Christianity (and I wouldn’t try to suggest that you should), you should study the Bible, and read as much as you can from the most highly regarded theologians. Thomas Merton comes to mind as a fairly modern example. In my experience, I’ve found that pastors are generally great, even-headed, open-minded people to approach with questions. Certainly this isn’t always the case, but I think you can probably make a judgment pretty quickly.

As for sin, certainly there are some “sins” that are more or less in name only (some of the Old Testament food restrictions come to mind… well, unless you’re Jewish, I suppose.) But still, pretty much every major religion has, at its core, some form of rules or recommendations regarding morality or social conduct. Obviously, murder isn’t a sin in name only—that one’s pretty well accepted even in secular society.

If you’re struggling with questions of what, if anything, you should believe in, well, the only person who can answer those questions is you.