In the Bible it says, "we have the mind of Christ."

What is Christ? What does that mean? How does that practically work out? If Jesus "christ" as the son of God, and if God is love (as we are told), then could it be that the term "christ" is what refers to our motivation, our desire, our wanting to do what is right?

True religion is helping the widows and orphans in their distress. True religion is not true religion because it is call by a particular name. Just because a building or a group of people are called "christian" doesn't mean that they are true followers of God.

When you call something "THE".... then that negates the possibility that there are any others. You are in effect saying that it is THE only one. When you attach "THE" to an object, then you are, by implication, saying that there is only one. There is no other, and there is no other way. Conversely, if you call something "A" Something, then you, by implication, indicate that it could be only one of many.
Now let us attach "THE" to an object, more specifically a book that many call "THE" Word of God.

Grace is like having a savings account. None of us lives this life perfectly. We all make mistakes. Graces us a measure of a cushion to get up and try again.

I'm sixty years old and have went to numerous Bible studies over many years. Quite frankly, I don't like bible studies. All I ever found there has been an endless studying, for knowledge, the same book over and over again. It seems to me that, in general, many Christians don't know what to do with one another except to have a Bible study.

God said, "I AM." If God is the "I AM", then he is .... He doesn't "have" love, but he is love.
"I AM love"
"I AM truth"
"I AM life"
"I AM the way"
"I AM spirit"

God is one
God is all and in all

There is only one God,
Who created the universe
who is the god of all mankind. Whether the people be Christians, or Islam, or ... There is only one God, who is the God of all peoples, religions, languages. The main difference is that each person or each religions sees God differently.

Much of theology seems so complex and hard to understand. Is God supposed to be hard to understand? Is there a way to make it simple?

"I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

For much of my life I've heard and read John 1:1, which says:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

When many religious people quote this verse "In the beginning was the "word,", they refer to the "word" as Jesus. Look at the definition of the word "word", we get this:

G3056 λόγος logos (log'-os) n.

What do you truly believe? Have you ever heard these following quotations?

"Don't believe everything that you think"

"Don't believe everything that you  (think that you) believe"

These remind us that just because we have a thought or an opinion doesn't make it true. Examine everything to see if it is true. Most important, examine your own thoughts and beliefs to see if there are true.

Since I've let go of the idea of "the bible is God's Word",  it seems that the whole world is opening up. For example

"God Word is true(th)" and conversely, "(that which is) truth is God's Word." To put it plainly, anything that is true is God's Word, because God's word is Truth."

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."

When we accept something into us, we stop fighting it

When we accept something into us, it becomes normal to us.

When something becomes normal to us, then we put our defensed down when it comes to us.

When something becomes normal to us, we  open ourselves up to doing it.

Whatever you put into your mind is what you get out of it. This is merely one of the laws of science. If you put peaches into a basket, you will have peaches come out of the basket when you are ready to eat them.

That's the way I was raised.

I think it's OK OR, I like it.: This says, I long as I like something (it ) then it's OK.

These are values that put onself as God. "I" think that it is OK, so it must be OK.

But what are our guidelines? "Let every man (woman & child) examine himself  to see if he is in the truth." Take a minute to look at that verse and what it is saying.

"Out of the heart of man springs

Faith is not like a single cube-shaped building block sitting on a shelf by itself. Faith is more like a cloud that has a vague shape and almost imperceptable edges. When you try to define concepts like faith, integrity, perseverence, truth you will find that they all overlap one another Each one is a part of the others. Instead of being able to clearly define each one separetly (like setting up building blocks), it's more like trying to stack clouds on top of each other.

Faith is:

1. the thought, the determination, the umption that there has to be more to life than the way things are or appear to be.
2. the action, the moving force that keeps us on track to keep going, to keep our eyes on the goal, as we persevere, to keep going through the most severe difficulty, to keep us pressing on when it seems impossible.
   
3. perseverence. Faith keeps going until the end. Faith helps us to move mountains, to do the impossible because we never quit, we never give up. Every time we fall down and get discouraged, we get up and go again. 
4. is our inspiration and motivation to see ourselves as we really are and to be willing to change., and to keep going through the difficult things of life that God uses to change us.
   

"If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" To answer that, we need to define, "What is sound?"

True life, godly living, or Christianity, or whatever you want to call it is not in the form and structure of religion, and it is also not in the absences of those things. Rather, it is in how we live our lives and treat other people in the midst of where we are and what we do. Unless what we do is evil, we can do all the religious things that we do, OR we can abstain from all those things. It doesn't matter so much what we do as it does matter how and why we do what we do.