Forgive me, but SOL is my community, and this is what this community member is thinking about. Skip it if you don't want to hear stuff about God, but our Webmaster has said we can post anything on our blog, so with apologies, here goes:
"Jesus" has become a distraction.
There is ONE God. Nope, I don't mean that there are hundreds, thousands, millions of other Gods and MY god is better. No, I mean there is one pervading energy source throughout the universe, and everything exists within it. So, all gods, all of us, all matter and anti-matter are God.
This trinity thing, the father the son and the holy ghost, are simply different ways to describe the same essence. They are each useful because they provide a way to describe and relate to God. Everyone is different, and everyone needs their own individual road to God. However, you could expand the list of three to include every other conceivable way there exists, or could exist, to relate to the Holy (universal energy), such as Buddhism, Satanism, the Red Road, Communism, Idolatry, and the list would remain valid. The problem is none of them are the End All of a game of life. They are all just tools. They are not the ONE thing we need to do to get to God.
The focus is GOD: how to let go of self and merge with the universal. It's gonna happen when we die anyway, and we feel the pull within us throughout our lives to reunite with God. It makes us feel insecure and lonely to be so divided. We have self awareness, and if we didn't have self awareness, we'd just live in accord with our holy selves as do animals. Unfortunately, our consciousness divides us from the divine that we carry around inside ourselves, and we come to believe the myths about all this external claptrap called religion and morals and the law saving us. Self awareness is a wonderful gift and a horrible demon upon our backs.
Our molecules are animated by the spaces between them. That's where God lives. We are far more the open spaces than we are matter. Our matter is God, too, but we don't feel as if we are God, we feel like somehow we have to appease some overarching controlling force in order to please God and be redeemed by God. No, we're already "alright." We just have to allow ourselves, the material conscious self, to fall back into the soup of the universality of all things, matter and anti-matter, to become "chosen," i.e., a holy part of the whole holy. (That was fun to write.)
Is the Bible true? Oh yes. Is it the Word of God? Indubitably. But it isn't exclusively the final word on anything. It's a beautiful, moving book of failures and successes and it is an internally inconsistent collection of paths to pursue God. Some people could get there by following whichever interpretation they have of the Bible, and some could get there by other methods having nothing to do with Christianity, but most will never, never get there in their lives. Why?
Because our consciousness, our self awareness, divides us from the Holy and makes people disassociate and cast about for the answers they no longer are aware they already have. Not only that, but they project that struggle onto others, and judge those others in their own frenzy to be "right" or more "powerful" or "rich," which are their ways to sooth the pain of the constant pull back to the Holy, and their current living isolation and separation from God. When they hurt others, when they are intolerant of others, they are projecting their feelings about their separation from God outwardly, whether they realize it or not. What happens inside you has NOTHING to do with what anyone else does, or in fact, anything external to you at all. Oh, hunger might, injury might, relations with others might cause very real joy or suffering, even enjoyment of being in your garden might, but not at the level of your essence, your deepest self, your Holy/God Within. That essence is yours, no one can take it away (you can't take away anyone else's either, but you sure can make their consciousness a living Hell). You need to be aware that it exists, and permit yourself to reside in that deep self to relieve your own suffering. Forget what others do! They have nothing to do with you, and what happens to your deepest self. Denying them anything doesn't make your path better or get you down it sooner.
God is everything. God is all things made possible. God has no limits, and is limitless. To say that God is this or that is to LIMIT GOD. To say that there is only one way to God, is to LIMIT GOD. To rely on what is appropriate to God by accepting what others have told us is appropriate, is to LIMIT GOD. Only by direct relationship to God can we figure out what we should do or not do, and only can we decide that for ourselves. Since God has no limits, since God has made us all different one from another, then almost certainly there are a limitless number of ways to be and exist and walk to Him. You should concern yourself with your own path, because there isn't a damn thing you can do about another person's path except to mess up their ability to walk it, and thereby massively damage your own path. However, look to see if something in their path resonates with your own. You should never walk someone else's path (even if your pastor/rabbi/imam/insert name of spiritual leader tells you to), but sometimes something about their path will lead you a realization about your own and provide the next step. But in all things, go to God yourself to test whether the step is sound for you and the path God would have you take.
Referral is made to Romans 9 in the NIV or KJV.
Now, what I've written here is true for this Universe. I have no idea if there are other universes. I have no idea if God powers those other universes, if they exist. How can a Universe exist without a unifying force to drive it? If something is infinite, how can something exist outside of it? Can there be more than one infinity? I don't have the ability to answer those questions. Probably their consideration would lead to a myriad of wonderful scifi, though. :)