How Religions are Born
I am an ex Christian. But I believe that there is a God. Or at least somebody who is engaged in our lives, watching, observing, guiding. I believe that this God is far more complicated (or different) than what we are used to (in human existence). And I believe that He talks to us. But when He sends us messages, they have to go through our brain and that's where the problem lies. Our brain does not correctly transmit the message. Our brain is not capable of understanding what exactly He is saying. And so our brain develops its own picture of what was said. Then this person tells others. Then the others add a whole bunch of their own conclusions and thoughts and ideas, and thus a religion is born.
Once a person receives a message from God, he claims that he has THE truth. When in fact it's the truth filtered through that person's brain. So it's just a glimpse of the truth. And since there is LOTS And LOTS of the truth to know, but this person knows only 1% of it, the religion which develops from it has only 1% of the truth. And as different people receive different messages, their supposedly "WHOLE TRUTHs" are different from each other. Once they know the 1% of the truth, they claim that this is ALL the truth. They claim they know the beginning, the end, and the in-between. When in fact they are only holding one small piece of the truth.
For myself, I have decided that all religions are: rumors about God (or a Being we perceive as God or gods). They are just rumors. These heard this, and those heard that, and these think this and those think that.... Some say there is only one God, some say there is three, some say there are many. Some say the gods are males and females....
People do find God through religions because rumors about Him get them interested in Him and get them to come close. Except that they don't have a correct view of Him. For example, Christians think they are talking to Jesus, Muslims think that it's Allah that the communications come from. Chrisha followers think it's God Vishnu....and so on.... Buddists believe in inner self stuff.
And as far as I can tell, there are tiny bits and pieces of some sort of truth in all of these (to some degree). People in their own religions have contradictory ideas of what they believe and don't understand why that is. For example, Christians have been arguing for centuries whether one is saved by free will, or whether God chooses people to save, or whether one can lose one's salvation or not. And why do they argue? Well, turns out that BOTH contradictory ideas seem to be covered in the Bible. So that one group takes one set of verses and brings out their theory. And the other group takes their own set of verses and brings their own.
I personally believe that the truth is somewhere in between, some kind of a mix of these ideas.
Some Indians (I think) believe in God the Brahman. And they teach (some of them) that we are trying to connect with Brahman outside of us. But then they go and say that we are trying to connect with Brahman inside of us. Well, which is it?
I think it's partially both. And that's why it's confusing. But the truth is complicated and cannot be expressed in simple story or simple terms.
If people came together and "compared notes", maybe they would have a better picture of reality. But as it is, it's just scattered bits and pieces everywhere.
Once a religion is born (a tiny bit of truth plus a bunch of man's ideas added to it), it branches out into yet more different variations. And it's doing it because it's simply human nature to have opinions on stuff. And people simply cannot come to the same conclusion. And perhaps this is because people live under a certain law, a certain principle that governs all life on earth. And so I wanted to mention those principles below. To me, they explain why there is so much variety as far as religions are concerned.
MUTATION:
DNA studies show that mutation occurs in humans as a normal part of life. In other words, it keep happening, like a clock. (But I think it happens at the moment of birth, not during a person’s life). I thought that mutation was an exception, a freak of nature. But as it turns out, It’s NORMAL for life. It’s how things change, become different. It’s how variety is increasing (besides what is done by the combining principle). The mutations were discovered in plants as well. It is my assumption (without further proof) that deformed children (physically and psychologically) are born because of the mutation principle. It is my assumption that also gifted people are born because of it. Mutation effects could be positive or negative.
So for discoveries to occur, there has to occur a mutation, which would produce a really exceptionally smart person. And that person will be able to some day accidentally discover something (through combining of ideas and thoughts). And even the smart person might have to wait a while until time and chance take its course. But at least the smart person will have the capacity/ability to handle the task of processing the perfect combining of thoughts/ideas which would bring about a great discovery.
We use those principles manually as well. We breed different types of dogs and food by combining different varieties. It’s like we learned from life itsef, about how it works, and now we can imitate its principles and make things work.
COMBINING: In its simplest form, the combining principle takes a few numbers and keeps putting them together in different ways. Kind of like kaleidoscope puts together the different bids in different order to create a different picture. Except, in this case, sometimes what you get is nonsense. And sometimes, there comes out some useful combination.
Combining is not necessarily an intelligent process. Random combining produces nonsense most of the time. I have realized that dreams are a product of a combining principle at work. In dreams, various images, thoughts and ideas are put together in various ways to form some sort of a picture. Sometimes this picture it too bizzare and doesn’t make any sense. And sometimes there are stories in dreams…
I had this one dream which opened my eyes more as far as the combining principle is concerned. Before going to sleep, I saw two movies right before going to sleep. And so the story of my dream consisted of these two movies. There was a bad guy from one movie, and there was a boss and wife (work related) from another movie. So the combination principle combined these and I saw that the boss was the bad guy and he was with his wife. Then there was a musician guy in one movie. And then there was some boyfriend who was supposed to impress the boss in another movie. And so in my dream I saw this boy who was a musician who was trying to impress the boss….
But the combining principle can be used by people in some intelligent way to produce results. The computer program which guesses a password, by taking all kinds of letters and numbers and puts them into all kinds of combinations to guess a password.
The ant colony finds the path by the combining principle. They search for different paths (they go here, and nothing, they go there, and nothing, they go here and finally they find something. When they find the right combination, they leave a scent and others follow. So the ant colony appears smart, but they found the way by random chance (or by searching and searching until they stumbled across the right way).
The fact that the cooks and chefs are able to come up with different foods, is due to the fact that our life is governed by the “combining principle”. New salads are created by combining certain vegetables and fruits in different proportions and varieties. The more combinations of them, the more salads people come up with. Some cooks somehow know which ingredients would go together to combine in a tasty salad. But other people do it randomly: and sometimes the salad tastes awful, and sometimes it tastes good. So they change the ingredients. And whenever some cook lands on a perfect combination, it’s considered the best recipe. In other words, they have found the best combination.
Choosing a mate is governed by this same principle. People date a lot. Try different combinations. Some of them are pretty bad. And some are pretty good. And whenever they find the right combination, they merge. (Marry).
Combination doesn’t bring only positive results. It also brings negative. Combination goes up and down. Things combine into good things and bad things. It’s a matter of trying. And the more time passes, the more chance to run into something good. People have been divorced and said: third time is a charm. They went through two previous combinations which did not work out. But the third one did work out.
Scientific discoveries are based on a combination principle (partly). Smart people sometimes by random chance stumble across a discovery (when something happens to trigger something). Or their thoughts randomly form a perfect combination and an idea is born. Or they are like a computer trying to guess a password, would go through many different combinations of thoughts until finally they would come up with an idea that works. Which, if it’s a significant one, triggers many other discoveries. I wanted to add here that sometimes certain things cannot be accomplished until a certain discovery is made which enables us to do it. For example, there are some things yet to discover before we can fly in space. For now, all we can do is dream about it and make tiny steps towards the goal, working with the discoveries that we do have. But some day, we might stumble across one that would make it possible in practical terms.
Human code of conduct, fashion, philosophy, ideas, beliefs – it all changes overtime being subject to the combining principle.
So the combining principle is the one that takes objects and combines them in different number of ways. The mutation principle changes the object itself.
So if you combine the two: the making of new objects by mutation and the combinations of different objects in different order and different ways – these are responsible for variety. These are the two principles which guide all life.
Religion is a part of life on earth. And like everything else, it is governed and is subject to the principles of mutations and combining. The mutation would be – a new idea. Combining would be – combining of new and old ideas.
So this is the reason why there are so many denominations. And this is the reason why religions have similarities. And this is the reason why they also have differences. And if you note, some religions who come from the same geographical location, have more common with each other, then the ones which come from a totally different location. The combining principle takes old ideas and beliefs of the people and adds a few new elements, and the religion is born (or a denomination.)
So people are born and they live and are raised in certain types of beliefs. Those beliefs become a part of them. Then somebody discovers something new (by some way) and brings this idea to the people. His followers, while still believing what they used to believe, now also believe this new idea. And sometimes, some leave some of the old ideas behind, but keep some of them with them.
And this happens just because. Just because behind the scenes there are these two principles which produce life. Without mutation, the variety would stop being produced because there are only a limited number of ways in which the objects could be combined. And without combining, objects would be just by themselves, always the same, always in the same order. There couldn’t be discoveries then. Imagine the time when there was just one object. Even the combining principle couldn’t help it until a mutation has occurred and produced another object. But you can’t very well keep combining two objects in many ways. Another mutation needs to occur. And so on…
Each person is unique because new people are made through the combining and mutation principle. Mutation occurs in genes and it produces something different in a newly born person. Also the combining of his parents’ genes in him (inherited traits) plays a role in producing a person who is different from their parents, and yet has similarities.
Religions are subject to mutation and combining principles just like everything else in life. And therefore, you can be sure that the beliefs which Paul had are different from the beliefs which current Christians have.
For example, Paul was a Jew. He believed some of the things the Jewish people believed. Paul did NOT believe in eternal hell. In fact, Paul believed in death. He said that sin’s punishment is death. But now Christians believe in hell. Why? Because those Christians were born and raised among greek mythology which believed in hell. So they believed in it too. And when Paul brought some new idea to their beliefs, some of them still believed in hell. Remember, not everybody thought that Paul was an authority and a unquestionable leader. Many doubted him and questioned him. Many might have accepted his ideas without actually giving up their own. And when Paul died, and these people were in charge in their own circles, they spread their own tint of religion. And as time went, different people have yet different ideas, which were added to the mix. For example, the catholic church has decided that they need to do rituals (even though Paul preached against obeying the law). The rituals could have come from them going back to the law. OR they could have simply come from pagan religions where the people were raised. And this is most likely. There are holidays in our Christianity which came from pagan religions. The worship of Virgin Mary is often seen as a parallel of a worship of pagans of some feminine deity. The idea of demons and satan and other evil beings (male and female) came from pagan religions of that day. And perhaps that's why they got mixed into Christianity as well.
I believe that Christians think that pagans simply worship all kinds of gods with all kinds of idols and all kinds of silly rituals. But it’s not quite true. Some of the pagan religions also have a Savior, A Son of God (or rather a manifestation of the 2nd person of Godhead) and dying for sins. They have a Savior who does miracles like Jesus did. And who teaches good things like Jesus did. In some, they believe in a sweet communion with God (like some of the Christians believe.)
And another interesting thing to note is that some statements, stories and books from the old testament are found in pagan religions which came before old testament. So that means the people who later wrote the old testament have at first believed like those pagans around them, and brought the old stuff with them into the new way.
Christians argue that the Bible is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the 100% inspired Word of God. And they base that claim partially on the fact that the old testament contains modern scientific discoveries which could have been only God inspired. But a careful analysis shows that it does NOT contain up-to-date scientific facts. The old testament’s facts about life were the same as what the ancient people of their time believed. For example, in Jer 40:22 it talks about a flat (circle) earth with a dome like sky. This is the same thing that pagans believed then. And ask yourself: if you lived during that time and there were no scientific discoveries and you are walking on a flat earth and you see that the sky is raised above you, wouldn’t you conclude the same thing? Yes. People draw their conclusions on their observations. And they also observed the sun going up and down. So instead of saying that the earth is going around the sun, they said that the sun is the one running back and forth- strictly based on their observation. And in Genesis it says that God has hanged the stars on the sky, but is it so? Our sky is not full of stars. Our sky is just an athmosphere through which we can see other suns (stars) and so people, not knowing that, said that the stars are hanging on our sky. Which is a reasonable assumption if you don’t know any better.
When I was a Christian, I always wondered: why the old testament and the new testament describe God so differently? In the Old Testament, He is not very loving. But in the New Testament, He is pretty loving. I believed in the loving God and so the old testament was always a puzzle to me. Why does the old testament say that God will be vengeaful against his enemies and that he will crash them all, while the new testament said that God loves and forgives his enemies and that we should do likewise? These seem to be contradictory ideas. Christians say that it's because God has two sides. (a holy side and a loving side). But in truth, CAN a person have two sides? Can He be considered a loving person if on the other side he is cruel? I don't think so. Mafia leaders can be loving to their family and cruel to the rest of the people and they are considered bad (not bad and good). So in Christianity there are contradictory ideas about God.
From observation, it seems that God talks to people in different religions IN ACCORDANCE with their religion. It’s because He needs to reach them. And if He starts to say something that contradicts their beliefs, they won’t believe Him. So He has to adapt His dreams, His messages, His conversations to that person’s specific religion's view of Him.
That's how God has taught me. (I am not sure whether I should call Him GOD though. I am not sure if this is the same idea as what people assume when they say God. I would probably be better off saying: "the Somebody out there", it would be more accurate. Because this somebody is not the kind that seeks knee bowed worship of Himself as a deity. According to what I know, this Somebody seeks companionship.)
At first, He was teaching me about Himself in accordance with my religion. I did see that He was different than how He was described in the Bible. And yet, those differences were not major enough for me not to accept. For example, He was teaching me that He is LOVE. And that He is not cruel as described in the Old Testament. He said that He did not create hell as some people believe (and as some of the Bible verses seem to claim). Turns out God doesn't sit and judge us constantly as we are led to believe. Turns out He adores us. (Well, I am talking about those who at least try to be good. As far as the bad people, the evil ones, I think He understands about their nature. I think that He understands that they are who and what they are and they can't act otherwise and He probably thinks that they are simply a negative side-effect of creation and will need to be taken care of appropriately. But I do not believe that He hates them.) Some of the Bible verses in the old testament claim that God hates sinners. And so if people are to follow God, then they will hate sinners too and become racists. And we observe that happening. It's easy for people to be racist naturally. We have to teach each other to not do that. So if you take people's negative side of racist inclinations and add religion to that, you get a deadly combination. And violence comes forth. (But of course, there are many other ways when violence comes from people, but religion is also one of them.)
Once a person receives a message from God, he claims that he has THE truth. When in fact it's the truth filtered through that person's brain. So it's just a glimpse of the truth. And since there is LOTS And LOTS of the truth to know, but this person knows only 1% of it, the religion which develops from it has only 1% of the truth. And as different people receive different messages, their supposedly "WHOLE TRUTHs" are different from each other. Once they know the 1% of the truth, they claim that this is ALL the truth. They claim they know the beginning, the end, and the in-between. When in fact they are only holding one small piece of the truth.
For myself, I have decided that all religions are: rumors about God (or a Being we perceive as God or gods). They are just rumors. These heard this, and those heard that, and these think this and those think that.... Some say there is only one God, some say there is three, some say there are many. Some say the gods are males and females....
People do find God through religions because rumors about Him get them interested in Him and get them to come close. Except that they don't have a correct view of Him. For example, Christians think they are talking to Jesus, Muslims think that it's Allah that the communications come from. Chrisha followers think it's God Vishnu....and so on.... Buddists believe in inner self stuff.
And as far as I can tell, there are tiny bits and pieces of some sort of truth in all of these (to some degree). People in their own religions have contradictory ideas of what they believe and don't understand why that is. For example, Christians have been arguing for centuries whether one is saved by free will, or whether God chooses people to save, or whether one can lose one's salvation or not. And why do they argue? Well, turns out that BOTH contradictory ideas seem to be covered in the Bible. So that one group takes one set of verses and brings out their theory. And the other group takes their own set of verses and brings their own.
I personally believe that the truth is somewhere in between, some kind of a mix of these ideas.
Some Indians (I think) believe in God the Brahman. And they teach (some of them) that we are trying to connect with Brahman outside of us. But then they go and say that we are trying to connect with Brahman inside of us. Well, which is it?
I think it's partially both. And that's why it's confusing. But the truth is complicated and cannot be expressed in simple story or simple terms.
If people came together and "compared notes", maybe they would have a better picture of reality. But as it is, it's just scattered bits and pieces everywhere.
Once a religion is born (a tiny bit of truth plus a bunch of man's ideas added to it), it branches out into yet more different variations. And it's doing it because it's simply human nature to have opinions on stuff. And people simply cannot come to the same conclusion. And perhaps this is because people live under a certain law, a certain principle that governs all life on earth. And so I wanted to mention those principles below. To me, they explain why there is so much variety as far as religions are concerned.
MUTATION:
DNA studies show that mutation occurs in humans as a normal part of life. In other words, it keep happening, like a clock. (But I think it happens at the moment of birth, not during a person’s life). I thought that mutation was an exception, a freak of nature. But as it turns out, It’s NORMAL for life. It’s how things change, become different. It’s how variety is increasing (besides what is done by the combining principle). The mutations were discovered in plants as well. It is my assumption (without further proof) that deformed children (physically and psychologically) are born because of the mutation principle. It is my assumption that also gifted people are born because of it. Mutation effects could be positive or negative.
So for discoveries to occur, there has to occur a mutation, which would produce a really exceptionally smart person. And that person will be able to some day accidentally discover something (through combining of ideas and thoughts). And even the smart person might have to wait a while until time and chance take its course. But at least the smart person will have the capacity/ability to handle the task of processing the perfect combining of thoughts/ideas which would bring about a great discovery.
We use those principles manually as well. We breed different types of dogs and food by combining different varieties. It’s like we learned from life itsef, about how it works, and now we can imitate its principles and make things work.
COMBINING: In its simplest form, the combining principle takes a few numbers and keeps putting them together in different ways. Kind of like kaleidoscope puts together the different bids in different order to create a different picture. Except, in this case, sometimes what you get is nonsense. And sometimes, there comes out some useful combination.
Combining is not necessarily an intelligent process. Random combining produces nonsense most of the time. I have realized that dreams are a product of a combining principle at work. In dreams, various images, thoughts and ideas are put together in various ways to form some sort of a picture. Sometimes this picture it too bizzare and doesn’t make any sense. And sometimes there are stories in dreams…
I had this one dream which opened my eyes more as far as the combining principle is concerned. Before going to sleep, I saw two movies right before going to sleep. And so the story of my dream consisted of these two movies. There was a bad guy from one movie, and there was a boss and wife (work related) from another movie. So the combination principle combined these and I saw that the boss was the bad guy and he was with his wife. Then there was a musician guy in one movie. And then there was some boyfriend who was supposed to impress the boss in another movie. And so in my dream I saw this boy who was a musician who was trying to impress the boss….
But the combining principle can be used by people in some intelligent way to produce results. The computer program which guesses a password, by taking all kinds of letters and numbers and puts them into all kinds of combinations to guess a password.
The ant colony finds the path by the combining principle. They search for different paths (they go here, and nothing, they go there, and nothing, they go here and finally they find something. When they find the right combination, they leave a scent and others follow. So the ant colony appears smart, but they found the way by random chance (or by searching and searching until they stumbled across the right way).
The fact that the cooks and chefs are able to come up with different foods, is due to the fact that our life is governed by the “combining principle”. New salads are created by combining certain vegetables and fruits in different proportions and varieties. The more combinations of them, the more salads people come up with. Some cooks somehow know which ingredients would go together to combine in a tasty salad. But other people do it randomly: and sometimes the salad tastes awful, and sometimes it tastes good. So they change the ingredients. And whenever some cook lands on a perfect combination, it’s considered the best recipe. In other words, they have found the best combination.
Choosing a mate is governed by this same principle. People date a lot. Try different combinations. Some of them are pretty bad. And some are pretty good. And whenever they find the right combination, they merge. (Marry).
Combination doesn’t bring only positive results. It also brings negative. Combination goes up and down. Things combine into good things and bad things. It’s a matter of trying. And the more time passes, the more chance to run into something good. People have been divorced and said: third time is a charm. They went through two previous combinations which did not work out. But the third one did work out.
Scientific discoveries are based on a combination principle (partly). Smart people sometimes by random chance stumble across a discovery (when something happens to trigger something). Or their thoughts randomly form a perfect combination and an idea is born. Or they are like a computer trying to guess a password, would go through many different combinations of thoughts until finally they would come up with an idea that works. Which, if it’s a significant one, triggers many other discoveries. I wanted to add here that sometimes certain things cannot be accomplished until a certain discovery is made which enables us to do it. For example, there are some things yet to discover before we can fly in space. For now, all we can do is dream about it and make tiny steps towards the goal, working with the discoveries that we do have. But some day, we might stumble across one that would make it possible in practical terms.
Human code of conduct, fashion, philosophy, ideas, beliefs – it all changes overtime being subject to the combining principle.
So the combining principle is the one that takes objects and combines them in different number of ways. The mutation principle changes the object itself.
So if you combine the two: the making of new objects by mutation and the combinations of different objects in different order and different ways – these are responsible for variety. These are the two principles which guide all life.
Religion is a part of life on earth. And like everything else, it is governed and is subject to the principles of mutations and combining. The mutation would be – a new idea. Combining would be – combining of new and old ideas.
So this is the reason why there are so many denominations. And this is the reason why religions have similarities. And this is the reason why they also have differences. And if you note, some religions who come from the same geographical location, have more common with each other, then the ones which come from a totally different location. The combining principle takes old ideas and beliefs of the people and adds a few new elements, and the religion is born (or a denomination.)
So people are born and they live and are raised in certain types of beliefs. Those beliefs become a part of them. Then somebody discovers something new (by some way) and brings this idea to the people. His followers, while still believing what they used to believe, now also believe this new idea. And sometimes, some leave some of the old ideas behind, but keep some of them with them.
And this happens just because. Just because behind the scenes there are these two principles which produce life. Without mutation, the variety would stop being produced because there are only a limited number of ways in which the objects could be combined. And without combining, objects would be just by themselves, always the same, always in the same order. There couldn’t be discoveries then. Imagine the time when there was just one object. Even the combining principle couldn’t help it until a mutation has occurred and produced another object. But you can’t very well keep combining two objects in many ways. Another mutation needs to occur. And so on…
Each person is unique because new people are made through the combining and mutation principle. Mutation occurs in genes and it produces something different in a newly born person. Also the combining of his parents’ genes in him (inherited traits) plays a role in producing a person who is different from their parents, and yet has similarities.
Religions are subject to mutation and combining principles just like everything else in life. And therefore, you can be sure that the beliefs which Paul had are different from the beliefs which current Christians have.
For example, Paul was a Jew. He believed some of the things the Jewish people believed. Paul did NOT believe in eternal hell. In fact, Paul believed in death. He said that sin’s punishment is death. But now Christians believe in hell. Why? Because those Christians were born and raised among greek mythology which believed in hell. So they believed in it too. And when Paul brought some new idea to their beliefs, some of them still believed in hell. Remember, not everybody thought that Paul was an authority and a unquestionable leader. Many doubted him and questioned him. Many might have accepted his ideas without actually giving up their own. And when Paul died, and these people were in charge in their own circles, they spread their own tint of religion. And as time went, different people have yet different ideas, which were added to the mix. For example, the catholic church has decided that they need to do rituals (even though Paul preached against obeying the law). The rituals could have come from them going back to the law. OR they could have simply come from pagan religions where the people were raised. And this is most likely. There are holidays in our Christianity which came from pagan religions. The worship of Virgin Mary is often seen as a parallel of a worship of pagans of some feminine deity. The idea of demons and satan and other evil beings (male and female) came from pagan religions of that day. And perhaps that's why they got mixed into Christianity as well.
I believe that Christians think that pagans simply worship all kinds of gods with all kinds of idols and all kinds of silly rituals. But it’s not quite true. Some of the pagan religions also have a Savior, A Son of God (or rather a manifestation of the 2nd person of Godhead) and dying for sins. They have a Savior who does miracles like Jesus did. And who teaches good things like Jesus did. In some, they believe in a sweet communion with God (like some of the Christians believe.)
And another interesting thing to note is that some statements, stories and books from the old testament are found in pagan religions which came before old testament. So that means the people who later wrote the old testament have at first believed like those pagans around them, and brought the old stuff with them into the new way.
Christians argue that the Bible is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the 100% inspired Word of God. And they base that claim partially on the fact that the old testament contains modern scientific discoveries which could have been only God inspired. But a careful analysis shows that it does NOT contain up-to-date scientific facts. The old testament’s facts about life were the same as what the ancient people of their time believed. For example, in Jer 40:22 it talks about a flat (circle) earth with a dome like sky. This is the same thing that pagans believed then. And ask yourself: if you lived during that time and there were no scientific discoveries and you are walking on a flat earth and you see that the sky is raised above you, wouldn’t you conclude the same thing? Yes. People draw their conclusions on their observations. And they also observed the sun going up and down. So instead of saying that the earth is going around the sun, they said that the sun is the one running back and forth- strictly based on their observation. And in Genesis it says that God has hanged the stars on the sky, but is it so? Our sky is not full of stars. Our sky is just an athmosphere through which we can see other suns (stars) and so people, not knowing that, said that the stars are hanging on our sky. Which is a reasonable assumption if you don’t know any better.
When I was a Christian, I always wondered: why the old testament and the new testament describe God so differently? In the Old Testament, He is not very loving. But in the New Testament, He is pretty loving. I believed in the loving God and so the old testament was always a puzzle to me. Why does the old testament say that God will be vengeaful against his enemies and that he will crash them all, while the new testament said that God loves and forgives his enemies and that we should do likewise? These seem to be contradictory ideas. Christians say that it's because God has two sides. (a holy side and a loving side). But in truth, CAN a person have two sides? Can He be considered a loving person if on the other side he is cruel? I don't think so. Mafia leaders can be loving to their family and cruel to the rest of the people and they are considered bad (not bad and good). So in Christianity there are contradictory ideas about God.
From observation, it seems that God talks to people in different religions IN ACCORDANCE with their religion. It’s because He needs to reach them. And if He starts to say something that contradicts their beliefs, they won’t believe Him. So He has to adapt His dreams, His messages, His conversations to that person’s specific religion's view of Him.
That's how God has taught me. (I am not sure whether I should call Him GOD though. I am not sure if this is the same idea as what people assume when they say God. I would probably be better off saying: "the Somebody out there", it would be more accurate. Because this somebody is not the kind that seeks knee bowed worship of Himself as a deity. According to what I know, this Somebody seeks companionship.)
At first, He was teaching me about Himself in accordance with my religion. I did see that He was different than how He was described in the Bible. And yet, those differences were not major enough for me not to accept. For example, He was teaching me that He is LOVE. And that He is not cruel as described in the Old Testament. He said that He did not create hell as some people believe (and as some of the Bible verses seem to claim). Turns out God doesn't sit and judge us constantly as we are led to believe. Turns out He adores us. (Well, I am talking about those who at least try to be good. As far as the bad people, the evil ones, I think He understands about their nature. I think that He understands that they are who and what they are and they can't act otherwise and He probably thinks that they are simply a negative side-effect of creation and will need to be taken care of appropriately. But I do not believe that He hates them.) Some of the Bible verses in the old testament claim that God hates sinners. And so if people are to follow God, then they will hate sinners too and become racists. And we observe that happening. It's easy for people to be racist naturally. We have to teach each other to not do that. So if you take people's negative side of racist inclinations and add religion to that, you get a deadly combination. And violence comes forth. (But of course, there are many other ways when violence comes from people, but religion is also one of them.)