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Bumped into Ian (the guy who has the allotment behind us) today at Middlesbrough and sat with him on the train home. We got talking about Religion (as you do), he stated he has a "very strong faith, very strong" that is based on Jesus Christ, not on any religion. I explained I didn't know where I stood at the moment, that I had more hope than Faith. We talked about religions putting up fences between people, he agreed, and about how Life wasn't as black and white as some religions seem to present it. Ian compared it to a computer that uses just noughts and ones (or rights and wrongs?) yet with this limited vocabulary can build colourful images, and much more. I paraphrased Bertrand Russell, who said something like (I wish I could find the Quote) "A man works in Africa helping leprous people and does a lot of good in making their lives better, and occasionally sleeps with one or other of the nurses; another man, being perhaps quite harsh (not "nice") remains married to the same woman all his life and doesn't contribute much, if anything, to his community: Who is the better man? Many Christians would say that the man married to one woman, who was not "immoral", was the better man".
All this is very much along the lines of what a lot of people (myself included) believe Jesus would be in agreement with if he came back. Isn't faith in anyone other than Jesus a weakening of Christianity? And yet many put their Faith in organizations (men) on a par with (equating them with) Jesus. I think (at the moment) only God can say who's right and who's wrong, and no man can presume to say this for him, or to be the "ones" who can accurately understand or interpret his "word". Despite claims to the contrary, it is NOT obvious (at least to me) that God is "using" any person or organization on Earth today above all others.