One can not claim to be aligned with Jesus if they are homogenizing his teachings with diametrically opposed teachings.
Exactly my point. You can't simply assume that a collection of books written in a dozen different languages and translated by scribes, priests and kings each with their own motives over the course of thousands of years, then compounded into a single book, could possibly represent the truth. Especially when they maintain so many internal inconsistencies in their narrative.
So exactly what you said. It cannot claim to be aligned with Jesus if it's homogenizing his teachings with diametrically opposed teachings.
How do I know this?
Because I can literally justify anything, using the same book you're using. There is no consistency in the narrative.
For example if you want to play games about a personal relationship with God...
That's the problem with "Gnostic" type personal interpretations. (i.e."No one speaks for God. God speaks to each of us individually, in the way we need to be spoken to.")
Jeremiah 31:13
The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Psalms 84:11
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
Philippians 2:13
For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
And my favorite of all of them...
Ezekiel 18:4
Behold, all souls are mine;
Ok so each of those is telling the opposite story you just told.
Both of our narratives cannot be correct because they are mutually exclusive.
You either do, or you do not, have a personal relationship with God.
You make the assumption that the specific and narrow Christian narrative you have been taught is correct. Perhaps that is correct for you, I'm not your judge.
I believe that if God wants to tell us something, he's intelligent enough to tell us in a way we will understand in no uncertain terms. Because when I read the same book you're reading, that's the truth I see. I figure if he wanted me to see something else, it would catch my eye.
Clearly you were taught to believe in authority even when authority does not remain consistent. I was taught that being inconsistent is a sign that what you are being told is not truthful. Regardless of the authority it may have or supposedly came from.
Personally, I refuse to worship a God who can lie. I refuse to worship a God who plays petty games with the souls of creations. I refuse to worship a God of injustice. A God who would create a thing and then allow it to endure eternal anything, whether it is eternal salvation or eternal damnation. A just God cannot give eternity in exchange for the mayfly lives we are given, especially given the absolute lack of clarity and direction in this life.
This to me is no God.
A God that would damn people seems to me merely to be an artifice of a sadistic imagination.
You dream that those who oppose you will be tortured all eternity and yet...
Luke 15:11-32 Teaches a completely different story doesn't it?
Did the prodigal son return to find a place of torture and damnation? Was the father even upset with him?
But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found
Did the older brother have to save the younger brother?
Or do you claim Jesus's own words, contained some falsehood here?
The younger son returned on his own, did he not?
The older brother was jealous of this and could find no cause to celebrate.
I pity the older brother who wasted his life. He traded his one chance he had to explore the world. In order to remain contentedly at home. I feel even more pity because felt resentment for the love his father extended to his brother.
Ok but maybe the prodigal son isn't the correct narrative since it teaches us that we are to find our own path. Literally there are only a few gems hidden in the heap of history like that. Somehow that one managed to survive 2,000 years of redaction, edits and putting words in the mouth of Jesus and even God himself, in order to secure power for the elite.
So help me out here. Which parts of the bible are true and which parts are false. And more importantly by who's authority are these words to be deemed true or false? My pastor, yours? The local Catholic bishop down the road? The Pope?
I really want to know this, by who's authority is the bible to picked apart so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff? If God doesn't have the authority to speak to each of us as we read and tell us truth from falsehood, then who does?
As for the Gods of Hinduism. Hinduism doesn't posit 3,000,000 Gods in the same sense that you or I might define Gods. These are beings called Diva, which is where we get the word Divine from. It is literally the entire host of heaven. They just enumerated each one.
Your statement is the equivalent of saying that all Christians believe in tens of thousands of Gods because they have the father (in some traditions the mother also), the son, the holy ghost, the twelve apostles, Mary, all of the saints, the entire host of angels.
All of these are venerated to some degree or another by some flavor or another of Christianity, whether or not your particular flavor supports this or not.
There is no single flavor of Hinduism, just as there is no true Christian church.
Each has it's own set of beliefs and each believes the other is going to suffer eternal torment.
All of these sound like sadist when they say it.
Did you know that according to the Quran, you will be tortured by Shaitan in the depths of hell for 10,000 years, because you accept Jesus as your God? Yet Islam teaches of Jesus. They believe he was a prophet. Teachings aren't actually that different, the life and times are similar too.
Literally I'm more scared of God's fans than God himself.
All religions are equally valid and equally worthy of my respect. I don't fear that someone can manipulate me into believing something false because here is what I believe.
We exist in a world which is ultimately knowable.
Everything about it is quantifiable and measurable.
At all times we are to seek out knowledge and wisdom, wherever they may be found and regardless of their source using whatever tools we can muster.
We do this so that we may preserve what wisdom we can find, so that future generations may build upon what we learn and discover.
I believe that IF there is a God who created us, then he must have done so for a purpose.
I imagine that IF this God exists he is a father figure.
Speaking as a father I know that my children learn best, when they learn to ask questions and seek answers where ever those answers may be found. As a father I teach my children to respect truth but not authority. I teach them that people have motives and will lie. It is up to them to find the truth hidden behind the lie.
Thus if I am to worship, I will worship a God, not a book.
Here are some postings you may enjoy
https://steemit.com/religion/@jacor/why-does-god-create-or-make-people-to-go-to-hell
https://steemit.com/religion/@stan/dissing-god
https://steemit.com/religion/@stan/why-my-god-is-only-true-god
Enjoy!