>>“Look! The devil! Everywhere!”
And the devil, no doubt, loves religion.
Yup, we agree here.
Archer, are you willing to shoot arrows of love and not the devil’s burning arrows?
I mean, explain what God is to you. I don’t believe God’s highest thought toward us was to fulminate about how human glorifying faith systems are corrupting God’s message!
I believe the message has gotten expressed to its pinnacle in the Christian faith, IN SPITE OF, not BECAUSE OF, the way that men have continually sought to make any faith system to be about themselves (and hence all the denominations we know now). The Holy Bible is the core document here. Yes in theory it’s possible to multiply conspiracy theories. Looks like Pike has done a masterful job of that. But then where does that leave you at? How about giving the Christian God an actual serious test to see if He pans out. If He will not pan out then what, you only wasted a little time. But if He will pan out, you will gain a literal eternity — a reality that transcends our universe.
By the way, WHEN the Christian God pans out, you’ll find yourself in a position similar to mine. You will find yourself to be a universal Christian, a believer in what C. S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity” and yet able to affiliate with a real Christian congregation even if (WHEN!) it does not have everything perfect. The Lord Jesus Christ really does cut through the crap, pardon my French, but it’s true.