You are evidently a thinking person. A person who has given thought to your religious/spiritual perspective on the world. You and I may disagree (not that that matters because I'm right and you're wrong - excuse me, I was channeling KFC there) but it's evident from your contributions that you exercise thought in relation to your ritual observance.
But being able to agree to disagree seems to show maturity (spiritual and emotional). I know there are areas that we disagree on but I respect your perspective because you didn't read about it and consider it your own. You've obviously thought about it and chewed on it for a good length of time.
I for one do not feel that I have 'arrived' and have more knowledge than anyone else nor righteous than any other. I have learned enough to know that I know SO VERY LITTLE! The one thing that seems to irk me the most is the revelation of implications in Scriptures. This, I find to be the most dangerous road to travel down. Especially when you point it out that it doesn't say that they say, but it implies it and references a non-relevant set of scriptures. I would be lying to everyone who reads this if I were to say I was innocent from doing the same. We all do it. And it irks me!
The God I know thinks genocide is funny. It invented Bubonic Plague, and Cholera. It invented us, the Great Exterminator, and set us to hate one another. It's as much at home in cellars where people are tortured to death as It is in Cathedrals. Maybe more so. And It doesn't give a shit whether I, or you, or anyone else, lives or dies. It regards us as we regard insects, or viruses, or the atoms that compose the air we breathe. With complete and utter indifference. If it possesses any kind of morality at all that morality is nothing but an exaggerated sense of irony.
While I will disagree with you here. I see this as more of the curses that were mentioned in scriptures. So many refuse to acknowledge that curses do exist (especially generational) but yet what is the first thing you fill out at a doctor's visit? They ask you if anyone in your family tree have xyz disease. Why? Because they see a pattern of them being passed from generation to generation. The era of Sterilization here in the US was based upon this same principle!
I ask you a question as one human being to another. Who is there that, knowing themselves to be in immediate peril of horrible death, wouldn't want someone to selflessly rescue them simply because they are loved? To rescue them at the cost of their own life? Simply because they are loved. There is not a soul alive that is immune to the attraction of that kind of imagery, that kind of appeal.
Very true!