I grew up in a firmly "independent evangelical" household. What that meant is we believed Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, etc, were all various flavors of Sinner, Idolater, and False Prophet. The bible was 100% true, every word protected by god through the ages. Sunday and Wednesday's were filled with hours and hours of listening to overweight preachers struggle to draw a correlation to 3 out-of-context verses and whatever mortal sin they were railing against that day (it was never, ever Gluttony. Usually some sex thing)

In my experience the Bible is only hard to understand when you're frantically, desperately trying to extract a per-determined result for your modern day problems out of what are fundamentally the oral traditions of dirt farmers.

When read as a historical piece of combined fable, family history, nation history, and oral tradition, it's an interesting if hard to follow book. It's obviously written by dozens of writers at different times. Reading different translations reveals obvious bias of previous translators, making it more interesting when viewed as one of the worlds longest-lasting games of Telephone.

If you're going to take it as advice for life, well, look around you. Dozens of different religious, many fighting for centuries because their interpretation of dirt farmer words is better than yours. And they'll kill you for it too.

Revelation. It seems hard to know which of it was a message for those times and what was intended as a message or description of times yet to come.

Edit: I actually love downvotes because there is usually an opportunity for improvement or clarification. I always appreciate when a down-voter engages and shares why they think my post is in err.

Also, submitted this by itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31414822

All of it, the stories and content are far fetched and rich. Not saying you can't learn anything from it, but there are better ways to level up your spirituality than eating the animal corn feed that is organized religion.

One thing the Internet has done beautifully is level the playing field with regard to information.

Today it's easier than ever before to do your own research and de-program yourself from the man-made shackles that are most organized religions. It's all a thinly veiled scheme to hijack human minds for the clergy's own power and agendas.

If you really want to love your fellow man, don't draw exclusive group boundaries and then focus primarily on helping only "the members". This tribalism mostly succeeds at generating us vs. them mentalities and attitudes.

The Unitarian organization is okay (I have zero personal affiliation but have met a few). The exception is because they leave most of the structure up to each individual to choose for themselves, and don't pressure others to conform. The result is a group of genuinely curious folks.