When it comes to my spiritual life I will admit to the fact that I am learning and seeking as I go. Faith and prayer have such an important role in my life today and good thing to, I rely on those two things to help me learn and grow. I am quite new to Christian teaching and it would be easy for me to get way off track. This is an area where my natural scepticism and suspicion probably conspire to actually work to my advantage...to PROTECT me from mis-quoted scripture, self-appointed messiah's, Cults, nut jobs and the like. If a philosophy, message or statement comes directly from man (a human being) and it can't be confirmed by scripture or true biblical teaching, I tend to avoid it....like the plague.
This kind of situation also makes me grateful for my close friends and mentors who I can bounce stuff off of. Believe me I can come up with some wild stuff all on my own. I need help. This is another reason that you really don't ever see me writing that you, the reader should think, do and believe what I do. No...I live and do what I have to do in my life today...if that by some chance appeals to someone else after reading this blog and they are interested in more information, they can email and ask me about it.
Religion has always frightened me. I was always mistrustful of what one charismatic person had the power to do...see Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple if you want an example of what I'm talking about. This fear of Religion kept me away from even considering God for a long long time. I could not separate in my mind a personal, relationship with my Creator from Religion. In reality they have nothing naturally to do with one another. Man created religion and often uses it to to achieve negative ends of greed, power, etc., frequently using the the Bible to justify their intentions.
This is a hugely complex subject and I am not an expert on any of it. I know that...I am but one believer in Christ but I want to do and believe the correct things so I read the Word of God in the Bible and listen in prayer to my heart, not to an evangelist on TV for guidance. So many people want to tell me their way is the right way...no, I look to the Bible and so far that guidance as been more then sufficient.
I won't shy away from writing about my fears and concerns about religion here. Because I often write about my spiritual beliefs I think it's important that there is a hard distinction between my belief in God and religion. I have a personal relationship with God, I will write about what that relationship has done for me in great detail. I am not ashamed of it what so ever but you will not see me tell you that i think you should believe like I do. That is a decision each individual person has to make for themselves...
I know this is heavy stuff this morning but I felt because of circumstances in my life at the moment that I should probably post on this subject. It is complex as I said and a lot of people get very emotional and angry about such things. It isn't my intention to stir things up just to state my belief so there isn't any confusion.
Now I'll get back to posting about more light-hearted subjects like alcoholism and addiction....I jest, of course!
