@Scoobes:
We're going to have to agree to disagree (as always happens in these debates, lol).
What I will say though, is like Vlad pointed out earlier, you seem to use a circular logic to describe god and the viewpoints of followers. Everything you know of god comes from what you're taught by your religion (people in positions of power). Yet you can't truly "know" anything about god, yet you make claims that he deems x,y,z based on teaching given to you by humans.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that faith and spirituality isn't and shouldn't be about following rules set by religion X, but is entirely personal to each individual. I think it's odd and somewhat arrogant (no offence to you intended- this is a general view of people preaching/lecturing) for anyone to make claims as to what a higher power says you should do or think. Finding what works for you in terms of spirituality should be a personal journey of discovery.
Yes we will! :D
Knowing God by religion is one frame of the big picture. But the thing is that God has throughout the times reached humanity through apparitions, for example, and those apparitions had messages that the institution did not have and were embraced from that point onward.
Still, even just considering what the institution says doesn`t make your faith and that same faith does add value to what is said about God and what He is in all It`s significance. Faith is also a source of knowledge.
Faith, “rules”, institution... everything is connected because it has God at it`s center. I could agree that faith is a personnal experience, but when saying that one can´t forget that the belief brings a individual connection to God and with that, people live their lives the best way they can as God connects with every single person aswell. But this is a very simplistic explanation of what faith means to every single person.
With Jesus commandment: “love one another like I loved thee”, you have the basis of God Himself and life in general and of course that in your life you will live it differently than me because our lives are different but doesn`t mean there isn`t a common ground in that personal experience. God may want something from you that He doesn`t want from me, like helping a specific person. But in overall, what He wants from us, is for us to love, we will just live it with differences.
There`s room for a personnal experience and a common ground.
No offence taken!
