That's been my motto since, I don't know, 1997...and it's paid off. Essentially, it differentiates between a god of fear and a GoD of Love...and accepts no mixing of these two opposites. The only way there can be a GoD of Love is if the world is something we do to ourselves as we wish...imaginatively. Why we would wish it is something to consider. But that we do wish it can be evidenced by how we clutch to and hang on to aspects of it. We even have a horror movie industry. Almost everyone in the world fancies storytelling. And that is all the world really is, a story of epic proportions we tell to ourselves regardless of the truth. The question is, do we want to continue telling and retelling old worn out stories? When it is percieved that the theme is the same, and the scenes are redundant, we may decide we don't want it anymore...valuing it as nothing. And the minute we do that, we can go home. To me, this describes a God of Love...despite appearances to the contrary. Christ!
Well, people are shopping for the "right" god anyway! I say shop according to some core values. People are finding god(s) that reflect their current value system...a superficial value system. I'm saying, don't waste time with any god that has even a tinge of fear associated with it. For me, fear is unacceptable...and invalidates fear based, or love-and-fear based systems. What happened was I found what appeared to be a love based god system. And then, after a while, i realized it was not...and I moved on when I found the ultimate thought system, reflecting an entirely fair, just, and loving god. In this system, there is no heirarchy, no spiritual evolution, no limits...and it is all available NOW but for an ajustment in the way one thinks. To me, that is fair. It's fair that I am experiencing personhood according to my own choosing. That to me is fair. If personhood had been forced on me, i would not respect any such god. So, yah, shop around for the right god. Vet whatever god by the highest standards of fairness. Don't just sit there and be interviewed by a god for acceptance within his realm. Interview a god for acceptance within your realm as well. With this attitude, the ways and means to find such a god will make themselves available sooner or later. And don't stop shopping until you find. And when you find, don't stop until you experience yourself as an equal to such god...direct experience. Any god not willing or able to share everything it has is not worth anyone's time. One last word of advice: Do not settle (for less)! Christ!
When I googled "when was the old testament written - every single site said it was written between 1400 and 400 b.c. How did I know you were going to come up with the least favorable date possible. The thing you must have missed is that it may have been written down then but oral tradition tooks at least parts of the old testament back many years before that. Perhaps a back to 2100 B.C. or all the way back to Moses and Abraham.
Take into consideration the Old Testament of the Christian Bible is the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). The Hebrew Bible is dated at best 500 years give or take a few, BC. Well, the Old Testament wasn't written down before the Hebrew Bible, simply because it is for all intents and purposes the Hebrew Bible. Any oral traditions before the Old Testatment must have been based on other stories, as the Old Testament was not there. Other documents which were written down from which Hebrew and Christianity plagiarized both the story line and the plot as vhehn pointed out with the Mithra connection were existent. The Bibles Hebrew and Old and New testament are ancient novels , as are the far more ancient Mithra and quite a few other major discovered texts and non christian scripture. You should appreciate Moses and Abraham are fictional figures featured by those names in the Old Testament story . So if the Hebrew Bible and or the Old Testament says the characters Moses or Abraham are 2500 years old, it doesn't actually make the fiction that they existed or thier age any more real.
================== SmileS ; perhaps he mean nonexistant, in the hebrew/true prophet sense.[In other words as a true prophet, he simply does not exist] That makes sense, not that the false god Allah makes sense; but the logic now written. Christ is risen indeed. Jesus Christ likes Solomon also. Proverbs of King Solomon is a favorite book/trader king of mine..................................................