Slag, stemming from Bill's comment, it seems clear that y9ouare quite happy as a 21st Century interpreteive Christian. Yet had you declared those beliefs in the past, the mainstream church would have adminished you at best and had you killed as a dangerous feretic at worst. A church which would have done so in the name of the same god and using the same texts as bases for its actions. And even today there are people using those texts to justify manifest injustice - think of the far right and their views on welfare, back by the bible, or the views of racists and slavery supporters, backed by the bible. Or literal fundies, denying science with the backing of the bible. Thay can't all be right!
The problen is one of hermeneutics, and to those of us outside the church it would appear to be as such to be an exercise in semantics; trying to shoehorn rational, enlightened thought and blind faith into the one mind with a series of increasingly desperate interpretations of what god actually meant.
I'm afraid that, were religion not such a serious threat, the process would be laughable.