Narrative Religious groups differentiate themselves from each other by choosing some take on religious beliefs that are different from everyone else.
Opinion Despite claims to the contrary, Scientific assumption is often closer to that of opinion than cast in the stone of fact.
Leadership Tapping the gifts God provides.
We human beings have a long way to go to reach where we are meant to be.
I don't have a crystal ball, so I won't predict where that will be.
What I do know is that all the purported relationships with God dictated in scripture are more opinion about who God is than anything God has written on our hearts.
Using one water world as the means of how to have a relationship with God when the observable universe is estimated to have a radius is 46 billion light years is downright arrogant.
That is equivalent to relying on a particular virus prophet to tell us about God rather tap our human intellect.
Let's admit the obvious: we have barely begun to figure out what our proper relationship with God should be.
It has recently been suggested that the Adam & Eve myth (no historical evidence) is really a conflict between our primate instincts and the homo species emerging intellect.
Frankly, I don't think we know enough about our instincts or our intellect whether that idea has any relevance to our spiritual needs.
About literal interpretation of scripture versus the diverse collective interpretation of scholars: reading the label off a jar versus face-to-face conversation with a nutritionist about the contents in the jar.
There is no single interpretation of Christian scripture although there is agreement about some shared content.
So, the assertion from one particular religious group that they have the answers and everyone else is wrong is untenable since many religious groups make the similar claims.
If the same words of God were written on everyone's hearts, then claiming one religious group was right and everyone else is wrong would be ridiculous.
It is more likely that only some of God's words are written on the hearts of the members of any religious group and not all the words written on the heart of any given religious group is the same as other religious groups.
An indirect effect of global matters on individual religious groups.
It is a lot easier to compile or rewrite scripture than it is to write God's words on anyone's heart - our global culture sees to that.
There is a political myth that the wealth of a nation is created by the wealthy of that nation and the elite, and the social hierarchy make wealth creation possible.
The American version of this myth is the special hero with a fantastic idea tapping only the hero's bootstraps raises the hero from poverty to great wealth.
The lie, of course, is that anyone can be that hero.
In some cases, new immigrants to America, time-after-time did achieve success, but the actual details often vary significantly to the framed myth.
The very fact that wasn't larger numbers of successes for native born Americans at the same time suggests something is going on the background.
I suspect the desire to build a wall around America is really about protecting those who've already got theirs from such successes.
Just a few thoughts about how I see things for those interested in knowing.
