Hi Gracilyn,

Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, this is nothing new for me, as I was always raised with the exact rhetoric you describe here about salvation being a relationship with Christ and not a legalistic, ritualistic thing.

I simply don't think that idea holds water.

I did seek Jesus with all my heart, and I never found anything.

I know it is a convenient argument to make, because you can always say "God never fails, so you must have sought wrong / given up too easily / been deceived" or any number of other justifications. I know I can never convince you that I did seek earnestly and my search was fruitless.

However, I'd like you to think about what you'd say to a Muslim who has sought a relationship with Allah for 15 years and never experienced anything. Is it something along the lines of: "that's because what you're seeking isn't true and you need to look elsewhere"? At what point do we follow our intuition, when the spiritual thing we're seeking is simply not working out? Or how many years do we stubbornly keep trying and trying, based on the belief that it *should* work? Where did we get that belief in the first place if we haven't seen firsthand evidence of it?

There is no way to know about Christ apart from religion. The Bible you trust is the product of thousands of years of a human, religious process. It was humans who wrote it and decided what parts of it should be considered true. It's been translated to suit political motivations. And at the end of the day, millions have taken the time to try to understand what the Bible actually says, and after years of giving it their best effort, they still come to wildly different conclusions.

I think the fruits of the Spirit are traits found in good people everywhere, regardless of their spiritual beliefs.

Well, if Jesus is real and hasn't given up on me, it's not like I'm closed off to hearing something from him. But it's been silence for 12 years so far.