(Note: Before you get TOO upset, read the subtitle).

This is not addressed to anyone in particular. This is addressed to a trend that I find very disturbing.

The trend is to "custom fit" one's religion into a box of one's choosing. The theory seems to revolve around the idea that, by cutting and pasting ideas one likes and removing ideas one dislikes, one can come up with a religion that's a custom "fit"...without having to worry about concrete beliefs or anything stupid like that.

Not surprisingly, though, there is "nothing new under the sun", and this trend seems suspiciously like the trend in ancient Greek of making statues to EVERY God, to ensure noone gets left out.

The flaw in this is, either God is or He isn't. If He isn't, there's no problem with custom making a religion, but there's also no point in it. If He is, however, there are GRAVE implications (pun kinda intended) in this philosophy. If there are moral absolutes, and if there is truth, it stands to reason we should be in quest of that truth, not justifying our abandonment of it through a variety of "loopholes" we have built ourselves. God isn't likely to appreciate our feeble attempts to bargain our way into heaven through weak rationalizations and human thinking.

I KNOW that God is who He is. I will not debate that point, I will not even consider an alternative. I know because He has proven Himself over the years. I invite other readers to explore, to ask, and to consider, but to be very wary of the "fence sitting" of the cut and paste theologian and assure themselves of their standing before God.

There's a lot riding on it.

Respectfully submitted,

Gideon MacLeish