Dartboard

My head has been swarming with ideas and I want to share them. My major problems with Christianity are:

1a. the idea that God is a man.
1b. the visual of a long white bearded man.
1c. the fact that we can't get around calling God "he" because there is no better pronoun in the English language.
1d. calling God "she" is not an acceptable alternative.
1e. the fact that our language cannot accurately describe what Christians say should be the most important part of our lives.

2. the hypocrisy of people who call themselves Christians.

3a. evangelism
3b. evangelism by hypocrites.

4a. the idea that Jesus Christ was more than just a great prophet
4b. who was born from a virgin.
4c. who rose from the dead.

5. the fact that I have tried with all my heart to understand and talk to God and I never "felt" anything. That despite doing my best to open myself up, this God never showed itself to me.

There are plenty of other problems I have like the Adam and Eve story---sorry, I just can't find enough wool to cover my eyes to that little lie.

Prayer is essentially two things:
1. thanking God for something that happened in your life and
2. more commonly, asking God to give you something.

I much prefer the Buddhist way of meditating and clearing your mind to the Christian method of thanking and asking for things. I know that Christians actually do use the word meditation, as in "silent meditation," but I guess I don't believe that they ever really shut up. I enjoy conversations about religion, and I enjoy learning what other people think, but any relationship I have with my God is extremely personal and I don't really want to argue about it with others. My spirituality is neither right nor wrong. And neither is yours.

I agree that we should live by a code. And it's really hard to determine what that code might be unless we can tie it to a post of commonality. The Bible appears to be the perfect code, except it was written by (or perhaps through) humans and therefore has fallacy, so that too must not be taken for word for word. The Bible is an amazing historical document without a doubt, but almost no one takes the whole thing literally all the time, which opens the flood doors of interpretation, which is why even Christians can't agree with one another.

So those are a few of my problems with organized religion. I am neither an atheist nor nihilist. I am a spiritual person who wants to form her own thoughts about the meaning of life and the presence of a creator and ruler of the universe. I am willing to accept that some questions must remain unanswered, so is the nature of philosophy and religion. Nevertheless, I am not willing to stop searching.