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Well, these are my thoughts on the matter, take them or leave them...
Personally, I am a spritiualist. I believe in a higher power, but I refuse to associate with any organized religion, Christian or otherwise, because they all impose something upon me. I don't believe that spirituality should include impositions. Whether it be how you dress, with whom you make love, or when you die, even by your own choice... those are YOUR choices to make, and if there are consequences, they will be yours to face.
I grew up with Baptist parents and an Orthodox family on one side. Neither suited me well, even as a child. The papacy and Catholicism is too self-contradictory. This is not a flame, it's a truth. Friends who practiced other religions would talk about church and such and it just gave me the willies. I don't want a man to tell me how to talk to my god, what prayers to say, when to say them, what days I should say them more often. It's crap, in my book. Just like a physical church. If god is everywhere, which I believe as I think the diety(ies) are omnipotent, then the world is it's church. I think going out into the woods or out on the lake and talking to god, even silently, is multitudes more powerful than sitting in (or falling asleep in) church, sitting on a rock hard pew, listening to someone judge you and or tell you what is right or wrong.
Also note that I don't believe in "tests" from god. God is not there to test you. God has other things, I'm sure, to do. Misfortune is just that... misfortune. Bad things have happened to people LONG before Christ. Long before Judaism. Long before "The Word" existed. You don't think prehistoric ancestors had sickness? Got eaten by wolves? Had stillborn babies? What terrible thing do you think happens now as a result of sin that didn't happen 50,000 years ago? Or does your god simply forsake all of those that existed before the word? What about aboriginals? They don't know about Christ... or god the way Jews and Christians (or any other religion, per se) do. Are they damned? If life is sacred, how can a child be damned for being born to the wrong parents in the wrong culture? None of it makes sense. The doctrine of organized religion is set down to bring law and order to humans, who are naturally chaotic. That's it. End of story. I don't discount the existance of god... I discount mankinds belief that we can understand him. That he authored a book through the hands of mortals. Or that he or she comforts or forsakes people at random. We can't ALL have it right... but we can ALL have it wrong. Think about it...
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