I was afraid of reading The Bible, or more accurately, of being witnessed reading the Bible for being categorised as a bible-basher, Jesus-lover, church-going-type, praise-the-lord-type or any other derogatory word, that basically meant that if you were into Christianity, The Bible or Church, you were weird. I suppose years back, such a brave step would have involved a ceremonial burning of some description, whereas today, I’m lucky enough to say that I might have to fight to get near the heat, as a result of being pushed to the back of the queue when lining up for that community barbecued sausage.

The nature of being afraid, just got me interested in why that was so. I was going away and was looking to take a ‘good read’, and my current question was whether ‘God’ would really reveal himself through the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. My personal view is that whilst God may have been speaking, man was doing the interpretation so I was wondering whether the message would have got lost in translation. Would he still get through to me? On my book shelf, I had a copy of the Bible I was given as a child (funny how it managed to stay with me). I decided to take it with me and as I was re ading, my fear became real. I wasn’t able to sit quietly and privately find out what was in this book, instead, I was asked:

“Are you getting religious?”

to which I defensively replied:

“No!”

What’s that all about? This dilemma isn’t limited to The Bible, or Christianity - it’s a dilemma about our relationship with God.

I know that people say there have been wars, and people have died in protest or proclamation, all because of the Bible (and however many other spiritual texts). I know that terrible things have happened. But I won’t be so fickle to suggest that has made any difference to my decision of whether to ‘get involved’.

I do believe in a higher-power – and the New Age word today, to basically let people know that you are a believer, but just not one of ‘those’ believers – is to say that you are spiritual, not religious. What is really behind our fear?

I had got to the point in my life where I was wondering what this is all for. I’d ask myself, Who am I? Why am I here? Does anyone have the rules, or is it a free-for-all game of poker on a Saturday night?  I’ve mentally and emotionally beaten myself up for asking myself these questions. Why do they plague me?

My current thinking is that there is only one God, ‘and the only way to the kingdom of heaven is through me’ as in, the only way to personal salvation (in my mind finding truth, love, forgiveness) is through the fall and rejection of the ego . I believe ‘God’ can speak through every spiritual text, as well as every single living thing. I believe that the very substance of life IS God, the intelligence and order of life IS God, the wisdom of each and every one of us IS God. As far as I’m concerned, where there are human beings involved (whether they have been involved in writing any kind of spiritual text) there is room for misinterpretation and misinformation, for we all have our strengths/weaknesses, light/dark, positive negative - it cannot be any other way.

In today’s world there is a still a lot of negativity around the word God and maybe it’s because it assumes we’ve taken sides of some sort. I think it’s time for a change.