I read a quote many years ago (I am that old) that sums up much of the mischief that is created in the name of Christianity, I am looking for the exact source, but I remember the man who said it was a Jew.
"Countless people kneel to Christ, very few rise and follow in His Steps."
I am very much a Christian, and I have danced with Jesus in my spirit as my true self which was known before my birth and accepted by Him long before I accepted myself.
That said, there are holes in our religion and religious history that too many others will use to avoid the exercise of poking their own holes. The "Church" does have a long and tumultuous history, but civilization has survived in ways that it is easy to show where and how it would have fallen apart and we would be even worse off than we are today had our current beliefs and social structure not been created. Too many of us do not accept the fact that while the Word of Personal responsibility, Love and honor for all creation is as important today as it was even before Jesus hit the scene, the world and its people have not remained static over the 2000+ years since the day at Golgotha. The concepts of Transgendered people or Gay or Lesbian people ARE NOT in the Bible since they are ideas of recent history, I for one can accept that with not even an eye twitch. (Someone is still on their knees -- look around and you will see it way back behind us.) Today, we know that we cannot be certain which human hand actually scratched out our first Gospels. Good thoughtful "Christian" scholars have agreed on that for over half of the Church's history. We also know that there were many books of gospel, epsitle, actae and others written by first through fourth century people who proclaimed THEY were the true followers of Jesus that were not brought into the Bible. We know enough about those books though to show that our current social landscape would have been terribly different were they part of the Bible. What we know from looking at that landscape though is that it would be worse than what we have got at the minute. (I get a chuckle out of this, and while I was laughing, I darn near tripped over someone kneeling in the street.)
Western Christianity happened, and we do have a world to live in. I am not always happy with how we got here, but we did (Some could day "By the Grace Of God" but He may have been flat on His Face from tripping over someone else who was kneeling in the church aisle.) "If you have a dispute with your neighbor when you come to make your offering to God, leave the offering untouched and go and make peace with your neighbor before presenting your offering to God." Never says that your neighbor has to worship God your way, only that YOU make peace with him. To me that is walking in Christ's steps as a child, friend or sibling.
I have a gentle irreverence for many things about my faith, at least I have a sense of humor, and a sense of reality that can make other Christians think of lion pits as my best reward, until I ask them what they have against the lions. The God and Christ I know have a sense of humor too.
