Re: God with Religion(Approach with extreme caution)

Mark 12:28-31 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?  And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:  And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.  And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

This is one of my favorite passages in the New Testament.  It says that loving god and loving your neighbor are identical.  It also says to love yourself which is the part that most people over look.  It is impossible to love your neighbor until you love yourself first.  When you watch people abuse other folks it's because they don't love themselves.  It's that simple.  A parallel teaching of Jesus is "Judge not lest ye be judged."  When you judge someone else you aren't judging them, you're judging yourself.  The very "faults" you find in other people are the "faults" that lie within yourself that you are learning to heal.

Jesus' message was simple.  Spirit is simple and easy.  His message was one of spirit.  When I hear anyone tell me "...this is what he meant" then I know that they have no understanding of his teachings whatsoever.  Those who say they believe in a literal interpretation of the bible are the biggest liars on the planet.

Rudi I've had a lot of similar feelings regarding Christianity that you have.  My Pentecostal origins were very painful and I rebelled in many ways.  Yet I now value those lessons and instead of hating the evangelicals as I have in the past, I accept them as the brothers and sisters that they are, just like everyone else on the planet.  They do believe in god and in their own way they are paying homage to her.