Demi, It seems to me that most religions are race-specific, or at least were intended to be. It's not an accident that Jesus Christ appeared to the Jews 2,000 years ago - they needed his message! He didn't appear to northern Europeans or the aboriginals of any land, nor the Chinese. The Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) appeared to certain semitic peoples of the desert, also; and Buddha to the people of Asia (Nepal's mountains, caves & hills). OK, you see what I mean.

If there is a reason why I (or you) should glom onto an ancient religion of desert peoples, an ideology intended for people of a specific race at a certain time, I would like to know what that reason might be. It is easy to find the universal in all religions' teachings, but much of their teachings are not.

I agree that we can look at aspects of our own society or our own little lives or the world at large and see situations that match those of Biblical times, and marvel at the wise advice in the Bible that might give us perspective. However, there are also situations now, here, that are not helped by trying to graft Biblical teachings onto them. It is like forcing a square peg into a round hole, which some of us do because we have convinced ourselves that that one book MUST say something that is going to help us figure out issues and situations in our own locale and time. I don't think so. There is stuff in the bible that is so wise; but there is other ideology and advice that makes me cringe, and it can make you crazy for trying to match it to your own life.

I think it was wrong for white, gentile, western people to permit their leaders to force Christianity down their throats, or to at least allow themselves to be talked into it. Just as it was morally wrong for Moslem conquerors to give non-Arabic people the choice of "The Koran or the Sword!" And it was wrong for Christian missionaries to convert aboriginals, largely stone-age tribes, to a totally foreign religion.

Yes, religion is indeed being used to serve an agenda.