I am you as you are me and we are all together?

That is until you bring up the subject of religion. There are so many beliefs, studies, branches, churches, bibles, and the list goes on and on and on. If I had a dime for every religion out there, I could pay off the deficit. But my question is this, who is right?

This leaves me baffled to absolutely no end. Yes, I realize that religion if based on faith, and without that faith it is literally impossible to truly believe. How can you believe in something that happened thousands of years before you were born without having the faith needed to believe that it actually happened. Faith. George Michaels had it, albeit not of the religious kind. But it doesn't actually end there, does it? Who is right?

Touchy subject. Who is right? This is an almost impossible question to answer. If you follow the teachings of the New Testament, you're going to hell. If you don't follow the teachings of the New Testament, you're going to hell. If you don't go door to door teaching the doctrine of your church, you're going to sleep forever and ever when you die. If you don't confess your sins to your local priest every Sunday, follow his instructions on absolution, and die before being able to confess your sins again, you're going to hell. Pray to saints, don't pray to saints, kneel before the cross, don't put up images, have images, don't add to the bible, follow the changes made by the head of the church even if it was in the bible years and years ago, pray to saints, don't pray to saints just pray to God. Don't allow women to preach and teach in your church, women preachers and teachers. Homosexuality is evil, no it's not, yes it is, it can't be helped, yes it can, pray to be straight, be gay and abstinent. WHAT???

If that isn't confusing, I don't know what is. I am having a hard time choosing the direction in which to go.

My sister is gay. Is she going to hell because of this? I don't believe so. She is who she is because that is who she is. My grandmother was Catholic. She prayed the rosary faithfully, prayed to saints, knelt before idols in her church. These were her beliefs. Were they the right ones? My sister is Baptist. She goes to church on Sundays, participates in bible study, follows the bible to the exact. Is she right? That's scary, because if she's right, then our grandmother was a major sinner and may not be in the arms of her maker. My best friend believes that in addition to everything the bible says, you must also do works in order to meet the maker. She believes that hell does not exist, and that when you die, you just sleep forever. Which one is right?

Are they all right? Is faith in your beliefs the force that makes what you believe the right one? We all believe that the one we choose is the right choice to make. We pray for those that have made the wrong choice because we know the one we are following is the one that is right, right? And what about all of those other books that were written, but not included when the bible was put together. What about those?

This is frustrating. I have children. I want them to know God, but I want them to make their choices on their own. I don't want them forced into this decision based on what I push at them. But right now, I have yet to find the place where I want to go in order to do this. I don't want them going somewhere that teaches them that men have the ultimate authority, and that what they teach is okay, as long as they know that they can't teach/preach to men because they are women. I don't want them going to a place that condemns those for loving someone built just like themselves. I don't want them going to a place that up until 2o or so years ago, Native Americans and African Americans were considered soulless because they weren't white.

In a world of so much information, sometimes there is just too much information.

:sigh: