God has no religion.

Religions can be defined as organized belief systems.

All authentic religions recognize and proclaim the Golden Rule as a core principle, because the Golden Rule is the fundamental spiritual law of morality and ethics.

The Golden Rule tells us that we should treat others the way that we would like to be treated. In the Judeo-Christian tradition this is expressed in terms of loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. This kind of love is expressed as unconditional love.

Religions are valuable and successful when they teach people to grow spiritually by learning to love unconditionally.

You are not necessarily serving God if you are religious. You serve God if your religion teaches you to evolve through developing your capacity to love others unconditionally.

It does not matter if you are spiritual but not religious. What matters is that you grow spiritually through unconditional love.

Spirituality is not a belief, it is a behavior. It takes time, effort, and practice.

No religion has exclusive access rights to God! All religions and belief systems which practice the Golden Rule as an integral element of their doctrine recognize our one and only God. Choose the religion or belief system which resonates in your heart and leads you to love.

It is not surprising that religions have different ways of explaining the same God. As souls, we are all at different levels of soul growth, and therefore we need different ways of understanding the love that God asks of us.

Those souls who authentically understand God focus on the spiritual commonality between religions, rather than the differences in doctrine and creed. Diverse religious beliefs are valuable as long as they share the Golden Rule and love as core elements of their practices.

If you follow a religion, and you practice the Golden Rule because of the love within you, then you are a spiritual person, and you have everything you need for your growth.

We are all eternal souls who transition to the spirit world on the death of our bodies, regardless of the impact of religion on our lives. However, where we end up in the spirit world depends on the love in our heart, and in this respect religions can be very helpful.

If religion is to have a positive impact in your life, you must feel the love rather than fear the teacher. Your religion should teach you kindly and with love.

It is quite possible to find God without following a religion, but this cannot be done without following the Golden Rule, whether this is done consciously or unconsciously.

Religion is not the only source of spiritual guidance. Spiritual guidance and education is available from many diverse sources. Whatever guidance you choose to follow in order to develop your capacity to give unconditional love, you need to listen to the inner voice of your conscience, intuition, and intellect. You already know the difference between right and wrong, which is the difference between loving and unloving behavior.

Never let anyone dictate what your religious or spiritual beliefs should be. If you routinely accept your religion and its associated doctrine without critical thought, it may be difficult for you to achieve genuine spiritual growth. In order for your beliefs to translate into genuine loving behavior, you must think for yourself. If you do not understand the importance of the Golden Rule and unconditional love, it is unlikely that you will change your behavior.

God did not create religion. Religions were originally created and organized as a way of structuring society around God (or Gods), but they are not synonymous with God. God and religions are independent of each other.

If all the people who claim to belong to mainstream religions actually understood and followed the Golden Rule, the world would be a very different place.

Religions are made up of people, and people are not perfect. So, while the success of religions can be debated, it is important to understand that people, as souls, agreed to incarnate in order to grow closer to God. Most people who claim religious affiliations have a genuine and conscious desire to do this.

Throughout history, religions have often become political institutions that can be used to control society in ways that are not congruent with the Golden Rule. The separation of religion (church) and state is a relatively modern concept, and many religions still do not view the separation of religion and state as being beneficial for society.

It is easy to say that you belong to a religion, and that you believe something. It is difficult to obey the Golden Rule and behave with love in your heart. Many people do not attempt to behave as if they were trying to follow the Golden Rule, because they use mis-aligned and unloving religious teachings to rationalize away the need to do this.

You do not need an intermediary between yourself and God, but God does hear righteous souls who petition God on your behalf, and you can petition God on behalf of others.

In the 21st century there seems to be an awakening and move towards spirituality other than through the religious path. This is not a trend or fashion. This awakening may represent a recognition that religions have not practiced or focused their attention on the love that God asks of us.

Authentic religion is not about going to church once a week for an hour, it is about how you learn to behave and what you do outside of your religious activities. This is much more difficult than merely participating in religious activities.

You may not understand some religious doctrine, creeds, or other beliefs because they might not make sense.

Many people reject God because their exposure to religion in childhood was not a positive experience. However, in their adult years they are driven by instinct and intuition to try to find God, either within or outside of traditional religion.

Jesus did not limit himself to preaching his message to the world from within the confines of the Judaic practices of his time. His message was a universal message to humankind instructing us to love God, ourselves, and each other.

Any trend towards universal religion for all humankind, especially through force and coercion, is a very unloving thing.

Belief

There are many paths that lead to God, and some of them do not require you "believe" something.

You do not need to “believe” anything if you naturally behave with love in your heart.

Beliefs are only important if they help you change your behavior into that of a more loving soul.

The specific doctrines of your beliefs are not important, as long as they cause you to grow the love within you.

If you truly believe God, you will do as He commands, and your beliefs will be congruent with the Golden Rule. Your beliefs are empty and worthless if they do not cause you to behave in accordance with the Golden Rule.

Nobody can tell you what to think or believe. You need to think for yourself in order to genuinely believe something, and for that belief to affect your behavior.

It is easy to say that you believe something, and it takes no effort. However, what you truly believe is made clear by your behavior. You do not have authentic beliefs if they are not reflected in your behavior.

How you behave identifies or reflects the state of your soul.

Beliefs inhibit soul growth if they result in selfish or egotistical behavior.

If you are not careful, your beliefs can cause a destructive sense of separation between yourself and others. This is because we often use our beliefs to define and place ourselves into small groups which we defend against outsiders!

If you want to “believe” because doing so will help you to evolve, believe only those things that you accept and put into practice as being kind, wholesome, wise and beneficial to all, while judging nobody. This is the essence of Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry. (see quote)

There is danger in believing something simply because someone in authority tells you that it is true. Do not subvert your freewill and reason to authority and blind faith.

Authentic faith is not blind, and if you do not take the time and trouble to reason for yourself, you risk being led away from God rather than towards Him.

An authentic religion leads by loving example, not by the sword. A society or culture that is spiritually advanced will not try to interfere with, coerce, or unduly influence other cultures. In particular, a spiritually advanced society or culture will not interfere with or try to manipulate the belief systems of other cultures.

Beware of those who try to impose belief systems on others.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good.

Thomas Paine

It is love, not religion, which creates spiritual growth. Where religion teaches love, there is growth. Where religion impedes love, there is stagnation.

Nora Spurgin

The best religion is the religion that brings you closest to God.

Rev. Howard Storm

Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people's suffering. On these lines every religion had more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal.

The Dalai Lama

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

Albert Einstein

God requireth not a uniformity of religion.

Roger Williams

There are innumerable definitions of God because his manifestations are innumerable.

Mahatma Gandhi

Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.

Joshua Lieban

Since 9/11, there’s been more dissemination of information, so most Americans know that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians and share many scriptural stories.

Professor Malcolm Clark

Religion is doing. A man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he "lives" his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

As we dig deeper into our own religion, if we are lucky, we break through to someone else digging toward us from the core of their tradition… and we discover new patterns of faith that illumine our own journey.

T. S. Eliot

Buddhists have taught me about the delight of contemplation and ‘the infinite within.’ From Muslims, I have learned about the nature of surrender, from Jews about the power of the prophetic conscience, from Hindus about ‘realms of gold hidden in the depths of our hearts.’ From Confucians about the empathy necessary to sustain and fragile web of civilization. Nothing I take from them has come at the expense of the Christian story.

Bill Moyers

I do benefits for all religions -- I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.

Bob Hope

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22 , 37 - 40

I believe in the fundamental Truth of all the great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God given. I came to the conclusion long ago... that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them.

Mohandas Gandhi

It is love, not religion, that creates spiritual growth.

Sandra Rogers

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

George Bernard Shaw

Religion is not a popular error, it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

Ernest Renan

God is not a member of any church or religion. It is the churches and the religions that are members within the vastness and the glory that is God. There is no one religion just as there is no chosen people or person, nor any single way of regarding what cannot be fully comprehended.

P.M.H. Atwater

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do, the hard part is doing it.

General Norman Schwarzkopf

Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, in 2005 commencement address at Stanford University

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners.

Jonathon Miller

True religion is real living living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.

Albert Einstein

Not all teachings described as religious are beneficial. Religion which is judgmental, prejudicial, critical, and narrow may impede the spirit’s natural growth. Where religion teaches love, there is growth. Where religion impedes love, there is stagnation.

Nora Spurgin

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.

Ezra Pound

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

Seneca

I respect more the person who struggles with his faith than the person who is confident in his skepticism.

Robert Brault

Our state in the spirit realm is determined by our level of spiritual maturity. If not mature, we may find that an understanding of the knowledge available through the various religious traditions may help to begin the process.

Nora Spurgin

God has no religion.

Ghandi

When you do not take the time and trouble to check things out for yourself, to do the research, to compare, to network, to get a consensus, you have given away your power. You have failed in the creative act of learning.

Laura Knight-Jadczy

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

Ghandi

Preach the Gospel at all times ,and when necessary use words.

Quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.

Henry Ward Beecher

There is no one religion just as there is no "chosen" people or person. We are all children of God in the sense that we are all souls of God's creation. What counts is what comes from the heart, not what one professes to believe. The most difficult thing for a person who has been deeply steeped in a particular religious tradition is to realize that the form alone is not what elevates a person , it is the heart.

Dr. P M H Atwater

If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religion is a sacred duty.

Ghandi

There are a whole lot of religious people in America, including the majority of Democrats. When we abandon the field of religious discourse -- when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew , when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations toward one another , when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome -- others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

Barack Obama

Do not accept anything on mere hearsay (ie, thinking that thus have we heard it for a long time). Do not accept anything by mere tradition (ie, thinking that it has been handed down thus through many generations). Do not accept anything on account of rumours (ie, by believing what others say without any investigation). Do not accept anything just because it accords with your scriptures. Do not accept anything by mere supposition. Do not accept anything by mere inference. Do not accept anything by merely considering the appearances. Do not accept anything merely because it agrees with your preconceived notions. Do not accept anything merely because it seems acceptable (ie, should be accepted). Do not accept anything thinking that the ascetic is respected by us (and that therefore it is right to accept his word.) But when you know for yourselves - these things are immoral, these things are blameworthy, these things are censured by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to ruin and sorrow - then reject them. When you know for yourselves - these things are moral, these things are blameless, these things are praised by the wise, these things, when performed and undertaken, conduce to well-being and happiness - then live and act accordingly.

Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry from the The Kalama Sutta

God is love in all religions, so the more we live love the closer we are to God.

Betty Bethards

Religious beliefs...should never be an excuse to treat people badly.

Zach Wahls

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples ,my philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Lama