Ask500

Okay, I concede that I could have worded my earlier comment a little better; however, I am sure you understood my point.

People throughout history have interpreted the Bible to serve their personal needs, and have done so at every opportunity, and have done so at every chance they have gotten to exploit some weak-minded person to serve their personal agendas.

In the Middle Ages they used belief in the Bible (as they interpreted it) as a way of fulfilling their personal self-serving agendas, just as they do in the modern era. There has been more than one TV evangelist that has begged for money on TV and at revival type events who has used at least part of the take to finance their own personal high life which has included the frequent use of the services of prostitutes, and not once but multiple times, and as one who has been to prostitutes multiple times myself (a religious leader in the making?) it is more than a surmised guess that if they got caught twice they probably performed the "dirty deed" dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times, with monies hard-working people like you gave thinking the money was going somewhere else.

With the kind of history the Church has had for misdirecting funds that people are always told is going for some greater good, later to learn this is not always true, how can we ever know whom to believe?

Isn't it best for each person to maintain a personal relationship with their Creator and not place any faith whatsoever in the proselytizing of organized religions? Such is what I believe. When someone quotes chapter and verse from a book that is so often misquoted to serve personal agendas, I think two things, first is the person only citing words learned by rote memorization the way a parrot learns to talk, and are they "preaching" because they seriously believe they know God or because they are following the historical traditions of generations of family members and community members and doing so only because they have been raised to behave this way without ever asking "Why?"

I do not for a moment believe the fact that the use of "sheep" or "lambs" as synonyms for "followers" was just accidental. I think anyone who follows blindly without asking why is a "sheep" and that is the kind of person the Inquisitors and people other religious leaders have always wanted in their "flock," people who will accept the established order without ever asking why, without questioning authority, who are willing to die for the cause, and who always believe the "greater good" is whatever their religious mentors have told them to believe, whether it was kill heretic Muslims during the Crusades, or kill anyone who doesn't believe the sun revolves around the earth during the Middle Ages, or that all the money in the collection plate is going to help the needy and not the merely greedy as sometimes turns out to be the case.

Not burned at the stake for not believing the Bible? It's ridiculous to think people weren't put to death for not believing in the Bible. Ever hear of the early Crusades?