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Well, you are definately in the right place! Enjoy exploring and sharing.
Most of the threads I visit are the, I guess you could call them, ex-religious, maybe ex-Christian would be more appropriate, as these religions don't usualy have classes on mediumship or channeling and talking to angels and spirit guides :).
There is nothing wrong with Christianity in itself. My problem with it is when it is taken to extremes, or the Bible read literally when it is a document written thousands of years ago by people from that generation. And then taken as gospel today. It is inclusive and exclusive and basically a modern day rule book - you can do this, you can't do that. And the Church made up the rules as they went.
As more and more people explore their own spirituality and what that means to them is where the rubber meets the road for me, because the religions really don't allow too much of that. Free thinking is really not allowed. Free speech, frowned upon. Gay relationships, belittled and ridiculed.
To me, some of the religions of today have not kept up with what is going on in the world, and are based on beliefs that no longer apply (if they ever did) to mankind.
Original sin, guilt, the devil (can you tell I was raised Catholic?) were sticks that the pious reigned down upon the non-believers to get them to believe.
Since God, nor Jesus, wrote the original Bible, everything in it is subject to debate. One translation of a document changes immensely the original intent of the document. Two or three translations later, and you get people inserting ideas that were never there.
I believe everyone is entitled to believe whatever they want, including the Bible. I say whatever brings you closer to God (or whoever that is to you) is a good thing.
But it is not heresay to state that I don't believe in the Bible. That is just my growth and expansion as a human being allowing me to say that without guilt. I believe in other things, just not in that Book. I've never been called to read it, havng had it read to me for so many years from the pulpit, it lost it's appeal.
When my parents were excommunicated for getting a divorce, yet they had to bring their children to church every week and sit in the parking lot because they were nolonger allowed to go inside the church, thats really incredible when you think about it. I was not told this until many years later, after I had left the church.
I had a 90 year old priest tell me, at Engaged Encounter (where you have to go before you can get married) that I was not ready to get married - he had never talked to me before, in fact I had yet to utter a sentence before he made that annoucement to the entire class.
So, I am also connected to God, I am trying to come to a place where I welcome all peoples of every religion into my life and loving them as people and not focusing on what religion they might be and what bias they might have because of it, and I am apparently not quite there yet :)
It's strange, because I see the Catholic religion as being beautiful for some people (I have relatives that are devote and that is how they get to God and that is a beautiful thing to see) but for me, its just I don't believe in it anymore and its okay.
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