I see god as something in all of us. We choose whether to let the god side of our nature or the satan side of our nature shows. I also think a group of like minded people can truly work miracles if they want. Not the turning water into wine kind but the ability to accomplish things they never thought they could. That sounds very ooey, wooey which I don't care for but I don't know how else to express it.

Above all I think we have the ability to choose what we are like to a great extent. This doesn't mean we don't have distinct personalities that we have to work with. Things like ADD, personality types such as Meyers Briggs (I'm INTP) and whether we are introverts or extraverts are often (usually?) hardwired into us. Still, for instance, people who have a genetic tendency to get heart disease or diabetes, if they know what their tendencies are they can take counter measures.

There is an energy in churches that you don't find many other places. Too many special interest groups have tunnel vision, as do many churches, but the purpose of churches is to strive to be better people. To be loving, kind, generous, thoughtful, decent, self disciplined and all the other virtues. This is too often not observed but I think that just having this vision is better than giving up. These virtues are too often perverted into vices such as self-righteousness, nit-picking, hate against those who are "different", murder of those who aren't "like us" and wars. In fact, way too many of the wars are over religious differences, or at least that's the rallying cry and the excuse. Still, religions, Christianity in particular, have the goal of being better people and strive toward this goal.

The churches that are willing to try to go beyond the perversions, that try to differentiate between the myths, stories and truths that have come down to us as one and only truth, are walking a very difficult, yet very rewarding path. There isn't a religious group that I know of that isn't split, often into many splinters, over what to believe, but those that choose to think about what they believe, not just accept what's handed them are the ones that I want to be around. They are just so scattered and too often they aren't thinking like I am but at least they are thinking.

Unfortunately the atheists won't approve of my going to church or even suggesting something like "the god in us" and most of the christians won't like or understand where I'm coming from. This means that I don't feel comfortable talking to either group about this.