One thing I keep in the back of my head is something I read about how God reached out to man but religion is man's attempt to reach out to God; it's a two-way street and the Man-to-God one is human all the way.

All the rules, regulations, preaching, etc. is a human attempt to interpret that human's faith/ideas of what they see/believe to be true about God. But we all have to look at everything and see what we see and decide what we want to believe.

Some people are raised in "the" Church and accept/believe it because that's pretty much all they have known and others come from outside and look at what is there at any given church accept its message or a modified message, whatever.

I do not want to believe in a God that thinks I'm worthless or that did not give me my "Self", my originality and personality and attributes I have genetically inherited, etc. I don't want a "simple" god who is so easy to know (how many people do you get to know by reading a book? :-) or one who I take someone else's word for what he is like; kind of like a middle manager telling his employees what the "big boss"/owner is like?

I do not want a paternalistic god who thinks women are secondary and not equal in the scheme of things; women are over half of earth's population but not anywhere near that in esteem, self or otherwise!