God versus religion: it’s not about “religion(s). It’s about a relationship with God. The difference is important. God tells us who He is, and yet it’s estimated that we gave tens of thousands of Christian denominations worldwide and 12,000 in the U.S. alone. What ever happened to C.S. Lewis’ concept of Mere Christianity” in his book of the same title?
My goal is clarity, not conflict. I invite readers to think deeply about what the Bible says about allegiance, worship, and trust — especially in a world full of competing religions.
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What is God versus religion about?
The adjacent image gives you an idea of what this site’s about.
As usual, it was done by MS Copilot. I gave it the following explanation of what I wanted:
I’m thinking a watercolor image with God looking down from the clouds over 2 churches. One church is in bright sun and blue skies indicating His approval. The other is under cloudy skies, indicating they’ve strayed from His message in the Bible.
Copilot also has “knowledge” of what’s going to be on the site, since it helped me put together the structure, the behind-the-scenes code for assistive visual technology, and uses this site for part od it’s “learning” process, the explanations that come back for the image are fascinating. It’s mostly about pattern matching, but sometimes it’s encouraging that it comes up with things like its response on this one. Why? Because while it learns from here, it also learns from everything else it was given in training and as is scours the web for more information.
So, here’s how it described the image it made for te God versus religion home page:
The watercolor shows God gently watching from the clouds, His presence serene and encompassing. Below, two churches stand in stark contrast: one bathed in warm sunlight and vibrant skies, symbolizing divine favor; the other cloaked in somber clouds, evoking a sense of spiritual drift. The brushwork is expressive yet reverent, and the color palette reinforces the theological tension without being heavy-handed.
What does that mean in terms of what you’ll find here? It means some of us will be in a church like the one on the left – and our challenge is to keep it that way. Others will be in a church like the one on the right – and they have a couple challenges. (1) recognize it’s strayed from God and then (2) ask God for help fixing it. But then, it’s also true that church #1 cannot stay where it is and church #2 cannot get better unless they know what God actually says to us about Himself.
And therein lies the key. Too often, we “learn” about God from the wrong places. God’s word comes to us from the Bible. A Bible written by people, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 2,000 years ago (or more), in a different culture, with a Jewish background, and not in English. Given that plus the fact that we too often listen to people who twist the Bible to meet their own agenda, there can be a huge difference between what we think God said and what He really said.
My goal here, by getting into the history, culture, religion, and language(s) of the time the Bible was written, is to be able to better extrapolate the things God wanted us to learn from His word into present times. No hidden agenda. Just a desire to know Him as best as we can by trying to figure out what He really said.
We can’t do it with only English or translations in any other modern language. The Hebrew and Greek words in the original text have so much more nuanced meaning that our words do today. The culture was so different from today. They were Jewish and therefore had an understanding of what we call the Old Testament. They also knew their scripture (our Old Testament) much better than so many people know the Bible today.
So, ultimately, my goal here on God versus religion is to help you with the question at the very top of the page:
Do your beliefs about God match what He says about Himself?
What can you read on God versus religion?
What kind of topics will be included on God versus religion?
The light gray categories are planned and/or in progress.
If you previously subscribed to godversusreligion.com, your subscription has been moved over to here. It’ll take time, since I’m only one person, but many of the articles over there will be updated and moved here. At some point, the expense of maintaining that site won’t be worth the $$ anymore. Until then that site will be left intact and is still available at https://godversusreligioin.com
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The goal is to get readers to think and reflect. It is not to incite anger in any flavor or form.