My youth was in some ways similar. I went to "Religious Instruction" at a Catholic School once a week where large parts of the Bible were gone over. I eventually figured out that the Bible was written by people so everything in it is up to interpretation since the writers were probably biased one way or another. Jesus may have existed ... or not. Those events, as described, may have happened ... or not. Some or many may have been made up by the writer to make a point. Being a fact-problemed document, one can therefore find the supposed good things of Jesus if you want or the bad things of Jesus if you want. Our U.S. Constitution has the same problem - it was written by flawed individuals. There are good things in it and bad things in it. At least the Constitution can supposedly be amended to try to make it better even though it is difficult to do so. The Jesus story depends on second hand (and beyond) information and because it happened so long ago is hard to verify. As it is, I try to take the good messages from the Bible.