Yes, wonderment at indecipherable mystery! So retreat into scripture and worry not if the whole thing has been repeatedly rewritten and revised to fit a narrative, that confers control!

Interpreted to decide who shall go to heaven and hell and who can sin with impunity? As all their sins have already been paid for.

It's a real mystery indeed that anyone with a still functioning cerebral cortex, can swallow any of this patent bunkum, let alone embrace it, as advocated by Paul, the way a mind conditioned slave embraces their lord and master?

A cannot err master, the very foundation of a cult!

Followers? A manifestation of the stockholm syndrome?

If there is a trinity? Then it is us as mind, body and spirit?

And born of water?

we are around 50% water and we are flushed in this world on a stream of water when the waters break!

To reach unto the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again and again and again until you get it! Literally!

Allegedly, here was a plain speaking man who not only didn't mince words, nor speak in riddles, but went to some pains with homespun homilies,[parables,] to make his meaning plain!

And just did not need folk/control freaks, conferring hidden meaning to plain speech, and given his audience, was almost to a man, illiterate, needed to be!
Alan B.

*...To have an experience of the Spirit is to have an experience of God. Without the Spirit we are left with theory, there is present for us no "God with us"...*

This is where the theory breaks down…in physics there is no “present moment”.
We live in this physical world in the echo of the past. From the point of view of philosophy, we can only hope for the future!

Christian religion extracts us from the physical realm, and plants us in another realm not yet experienced: A realm or dimension, without physical boundaries of time. Eternity.
The spirit bridges the gap between the two realms.

Alan B.
I do wonder whether you read my essays since your comments seem not to relate to their content. Instead, you give us your old worn out objections to anything theological. I think you should put them aside and engage more.

Thank you Peter, this is the best article of yours which I read, may God bless you.

There you go again Sells trying to tell others what and how to think!?

As for endless regurgitation of a timeworn phantasmagorical and very obviously unquestioned belief system? That's clearly your particular forte!?

It's written, an unexamined life is hardly worth living? Nor should one blindly accept all that is written in scriptures as gospel? And also unquestioned!?

Not for nothing is it writ large, know the truth and the truth will set you free! And anybody searching for it in dogma and ideology Sells, needs to examine their belief system and the often fact free, conclusions that underpin that!

Otherwise, the flat earth society/fantasy land and real magic beckon!

And not a problem, always providing you don't fill young impressionable heads with your fantasy, before they develop critical thinking.

None of which seems to trouble you or any of your endlessly asinine unquestioned, he said she said, scholars of mythology, essays!?

And these same folk remained silent, many of them, when Rome tried to have Galileo excommunicated for the heresy for claiming we revolve around the sun as did all the other planets in the then known solar system!

Read as many obviously misguided scholars as you like, it won't set you free from inculcated fantasy?
Alan B.

Just where does the Trinity come from originally? The original or Base for a Monistic Religion is in Aten in Egypt. A singular God. The life giving Sun. In the Worship of the God Ba-al is the reincarnation of the Apis Bull, or the Son of God. In the Exodus a number of possibly persecuted Religions left Egypt & in 40 years Wandering these Religion melded. In Judaism there is an underlying notion of an unknown Spirit that guides people. Later the multitude of Gods were amalgamated into one God by King Ahab. If I remember correctly. Although not all Israelites gave up their "Other Gods."

Along comes Emmanuel or Yeshua ben Miryam/ben Pandrea/ben Mamzer/ha- Notzri, (aka Jesus). (That's; Son of Mary/ Son of a Roman Soldier, possibly Augustus Caesar/ A Bastard Son, (raped by a Gentile)/ the Nazarene.) The Legend has it that He went to Southern India & studied Hinduism, had a disagreement with his Teachers & went to Northern India to study Buddhism, before returning to Israel bringing with him some of the things he learnt while he was away. Medicine, Trinity, Peacefulness/Calmness/Meditation, which he taught to his Disciples.

Hinduism has a Trinity. (Brahma, Vishnu & Siva) How convenient & look haw closely they resemble the Christian Trinity in essence.