Amos, the "good fruit" is not always agreement.

bb, I dunno that I have anything terribly useful on each of your points. Let me see if I can address them singly.

My objection is to those people who tell me how to act, what to think, and what to feel because "God" told them to.

Well, my first thought was, what are you doing listening to people who tell you how to act? My second thought was, Ouch! It sounds like you ran into small people with yet smaller concepts of God.

If I do not agree that the Bible is more than the tribal myths and history of one group in one place, with large amounts of editing over the years by those in power in the attempt to control peoples actions and thoughts, why does that make me less moral?

It does not make ME see you as less moral; I can't speak for folks who would say that it does; and since I don't care to spend a lot of time with folks who make that kind of assumption about people, I can't say I really know what they are thinking or how their thought process got that way. Except for seeing that something must have hurt them into that narrowness of thinking, all I see from that attitude is that they are not yet what they say they mean to be.

WHy can't I be judged by others on my actions, my treatment of others, and the goals that I work for?

The paradigm of judgment here is not necessary.... neither self-judgment, judgment by others based on your beliefs, nor judgment by others based on your goals and actions.... you have complete flexibility of viewpoint. If you take your attention away from the judgmental aspects of an interaction, including whatever is judgmental within yourself, and inner fear of same--- be the bigger person, to use the language I used-- what might be possible?

I do not know if there is a "God"- Can you define what that term means? An old Caucasian man on a throne, watching each of us, and punishing "sin"? The entire Universe, as a single, living entity? The aliens who have a higher technology?

What (Who) I can say that I know will be of no use to you, absent the openness TO know... the openness to being completely surprised by someone else on the other end of a line that has only been dead or full of static. My own path to that openness may be of no value to you, but what I did was simply allow myself to contemplate who and what God said he was, Biblically. The rest flowed out of that. I was highly resistant, myself. Nobody was gonna talk ME into all that hooey!

My major objection is the deification of a book, written, edited, altered, translated and interpreted by humans as being "Holy".

I can't agree that deification of the book makes sense either, and that's not at all how I see it. I would have to think some more about a good answer for this one, but it wold be about seeing how God works in and through all of his creation, including people as individuals and people as groups.

If one chooses to believe that, just try reading what is in it...

I would have to spend some serious time studying all that I could know about these passages, to speak to your point on them. But not having done that, my instinct would be that their context should shed some light and lead to a different understanding.

A thought I heard recently that took root but which has not yet resulted in an articulable meditation is: God is not the author of confusion, and that whatever confuses me might resolve if I start from that basis.

The more I get to hear what others think and feel, the more I appreciate the Anglican heritage that encourages me to really think about my spiritual life and all it entails. I'm not much of a fan of organized religion as an institution, but I'm lucky to benefit from the institution's efforts to participate in the revealing of truth, over time.

So it works for me-- really well, with much good fruit along the way. It CAN work, and without that judgement thing taking up too much attention or energy.   

YMMV. YPMV. (pronouns)

I'm enjoying talking with you anyhow! :~)

~Susan