jillian
Princess
You know, I grew up with a lot of different versions of Christianity when I was young. Because of what each and everyone of them did was to try to tell me that the way I beleived before moving in was wrong, and I had to believe as they did (orphaned at 8 and in foster care until 16).
Because of that, I turned my back on Christianity, but I never turned my back on God. Why? There were WAAAAAYYYYY too many instances in my life where a certain piece of synchronicity showed up in my life (that's what I call coincidences), and I knew that God was watching out for me and asking me what I wanted to do.
In 1994, I started to research Eastern philosophy, which led me to Zen, which in turn led me to Taoist philosophy. From then on, I was a Taoist, because when they refer to the Tao, they're actually talking about Father (which is what I call God, because that's what Yeshua taught when he told people how to pray). From then on, I started to look for where various sects of Christianity agreed, then I would compare their truth to Tao, and was able to sort though many of the various lies or simple untruths.
A few years back, I started to look into Jewish theology, and found out that it was remarkably similar to what Lao-Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching.
I also watch an obscene amount of History and Science channels, because I really like learning new things. Many of the programs I watched showed how the Bible had been disturbingly re-edited by the KJV and the Niecine councils, and lots of things that should have been included weren't. Check out the original Book of Daniel sometime on a scholar site called Sacred Texts Archive.
I also continued on seeing where various faiths were similar, and I noticed an interesting thing about Yeshua and Buddha. They both taught basically the same thing.
I also looked into various faiths and checked out how they handled sin. Interestingly enough, all 3 (Judaism, Christianity and Eastern Philosophy) have a pretty similar way of handling it.
If you sin in Judaic theology, you are supposed to take an offering to the Temple, where the priests would make the sacrifice for you and then you left. Know what they did with the offerings? They used them to feed the priests.
Yeshua was a good Jewish boy, that's why He was in Jerusalem during Passover. He'd come to celebrate the holiday and make the required offerings and prayers. But......here's the trick.........He didn't come necessarily for the whole world, He came for those who were Gentiles, so that they could have the same connection with Father that He has. And, because He understood that an offering had to be made to Father, He decided to take on the job of saving everyone who WASN'T Jewish (remember, the Jews already had a special connection to Father), and offered Himself up as an offering for the rest of the world.
Incidentally, it's kinda covered the same way in Eastern philosophy. Monks go into town, sit on a mat with a bowl in front of them and people come by and give them something to eat. In their beliefs, when you give a monk some food, he then eats the food and your sins are gone, although, they do still have temples where you can go and make offerings.
It's also been said (in the Bible), that he who saves one life, saves the whole world. Now, if we could all realize what Yeshua was actually doing, we'd all end up in Heaven (which is Father's original plan).
But, since there are so many similarities in the various religions, I don't think that God wants you to worship Him in one specific way.
And.......FWIW.........religion is kinda like spiritual kindergarten. It's still up to you to make the appropriate choices and act accordingly.
And Father's rules are kinda simple, if you need a refresher, check out the 7 Noahide commandments, or the 10 Commandments. There are only a few don'ts and a couple of reminders.
What do you do if you can't do those few things? Everything else.
I've always said that religion is different languages with which people can speak to G-d. He's multi-lingual and understands all of them. What you said is also interesting because many assert that the covenant was broken by jesus and a new covenant formed. I don't see anything in Jesus' teachings that said jews should stop observing their laws.