i'm new to IA and have been reading through these forums...i gotta comment on this one...

now i grew up as a christian and i still accept the Bible as a valuable spiritual guide. but the idea that the bible is the ONLY way to 'salvation', when you honestly look at it with a critical mind, is a pretty ridiculous notion. how can one honestly believe something as boundless and infinite as God would have to be can be described in ONLY one way?

look at how many languages and cultures the world has. i'm black...so looking at it from an african perspective, for example, there are some things that some african tribes experience in their cosmology/spirituality that can't even be described correctly with English words. stuff that we can't even understand or relate to about what they believe, simply because we grew up in a Western society built upon western philosophical ideas (this is another topic by itself). and vice versa. the idea of Jesus seems as ludicrous to them as voodoo and ancestor worship might seem to us. but talk to a christian about prayer to God or these ppl about prayer to an ancestor, and they'll believe in it same way, and have experiences to back up their belief. honestly speaking...it's mad close-minded and ignorant to feel like your view is right and they are wrong.

that's like being in your house and thinking you can describe all of outside by just looking out of one window. You might see trees, someone looking elsewhere might see mountains, someone else with a different view might see a lake. But each of these 'views' are just pieces of the entire picture...we'll never get to see or understand it entirely from our frame of reference (being inside the house).

the thing to do is use the tools that work best for you in your context...and not to be afraid to use new ones if the need arises...all while keeping true to yourself.