religiosity (a rant)

I don't usually do this, but people have got my panties in a bunch today. I have a million questions for the religious nutters, ones that will never be answered but only danced around. You see, I left 'the church' about four years ago. This was a conscious choice. My needs for spiritual growth were seriously being pushed aside in favor of politics and hen-pecking. It wasn't just my needs being pushed aside, but God. God is supposed to be the cornerstone of church, right? After all, isn't the entire reason we congregate is to share our faith in worshiping the Lord? Well, I want to know why is it that my faith is to be made light of because I don't go to some shitty building to hear other people's bickering once a week? Why is it that my salvation isn't valid because I don't hold a stern, literal translation of the holy texts? And people, I'm not saying that I don't have faults, because I do. I thought that was the point of Christ?!? We ALL have faults, many of them that we're going to have to learn to live with the rest of our lives. God made man; man made God. These are true statements. HA! Now lets delve into some less pretty matters, like what constitutes truth? Is there absolute truth an how does an imperfect individual arrive at such a discovery? Is it lawful (in a spiritual sense) to judge and condemn your fellow man because they aren't living as you see fit, in your standard of spirituality? I won't even go into what defines spiritual law, because that leads us back to Deuteronomy and a list longer than Santa's. Some one recently told me that Christ came to fulfill the law, not to do away with it. Then why the hell did he go around breaking the law so consistently right in front of the Pharisees? Christ fulfilled the law by encompassing it in love and compassion. He created a way to do away with the years of dogma built upon by the Jewish priests over centuries, thus trapping the ordinary person from any chance at eternal life. The same way he can still break away the dogma of 'the church.' And when I refer to this I don't want people to think that I'm dogging on the Holy Roman Church. I think Catholicism has it's faults right along with Pentecostalism. They're two different sects suffering from the same loss of heart. God has never been a bureaucracy to me. He never will be either. God made man, perfect and in his own image. But then we sinned. You see, we had the choice, and we chose a way that wasn't God's intended path. That's all sin is, a derivation from the path of God. You will never be able to avoid this. And now man has built up religion (and therefore God) in his own image. Using the sacred to wage political and social wars on people not of the same cookie-cutter mold. I'm sick of the thumpers and their new crusade.

. . . .

I'm not sure if that at all made sense, but I feel loads better now! Thanks!

-dan.