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[quote=Anonymous]Love this thread and I'm glad (and surprised) that it's remained rather civil.

Here's where I am.  And I am the previous poster encouraging people simply to seek.  I was raised in an ultra conservative Southern Baptist family.  Not dysfunctional, just religious.  I learned very early that the Baptist God is a very smitey God.  And a very judgmental and punishing God.  Nothing about that made sense to me when compared to the words of Jesus.

Whether you believe Jesus to be the Son of God, or simply a very spiritually enlightened person, he seemed to truly know God.  So how do you reconcile a loving God with the smitey God of the Old Testament?  I've read the Bible.  I've studied the religion.  And I've decided that the stories of the Old Testament have much to offer.  Lessons of faith, perseverance,  honor, and strength are all over the Bible.  Do I believe the world was flooded and God saved Noah and his family by telling him to build a boat?  It doesn't really matter.  What matters is that Noah was a man of faith.  Do I believe the world was created in 7 days, 6,000 years ago?  Of course not.  But the Genesis poetry is a beautiful story of creation.  And the message is simple:  God created the world.  How He did it doesn't mater.  Do I believe that God sent boils and locusts to torture Job?  No.  People used God as a way to explain bad things all the time in those days.  But I do believe that God created the world and allows suffering.  We have free will.  And we have to take the good and the bad.  Job's suffering isn't the point.  It's a story of faith, hope, and perseverance under seemingly impossible circumstances.  No one would argue that those lessons are very important even today in our every day lives.

Jesus was pretty clear in his message as was the Siddh?rtha Gautama (Buddha) and countless other spiritual leaders:  Love others.  Don't cause each other pain.  Suffering is part of life.  Attachment causes suffering.  We grow spiritually through trials.  Live your life morally and ethically, work hard,  be careful with your words and thought, seek spiritual enlightenment through prayer and/or meditation, we are more than our physical bodies....

Those are timeless lessons.  Guidelines for human life on earth.  And if everyone followed those simple guidelines, the world would be a very different place.  Some might say, heaven.

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