I think we have peace in America ,now start here also

Why I need God? because I can blame everything on him and dodge from responsibility. (God is the creation of men to cheat the fellow beings)

Vested interests manipulate others by taking their faith in God away. Once faith in a supreme being is gone, a person can be manipulated to do anything. It is the fear of God or fear of consequences that prevent a person from crime and other illegal behaviour. If there is nothing to fear, and this life the end of it, why a person bother to do good or not act bad? So it is very important to bring our children up with a belief in God. If not they can easily get into trouble. Some religion is better than no religion. Bible says that the  fools think in their heart that there is no God.

I am neither representing any religion nor in the business of selling the God in different form to the poor and oppressed. So, there is no vested interest here to take away the faith of anyone rather I am trying to clarify the truth based on the teaching of the person, Jesus, you worship as son of God. I would like to draw your attention to the conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well in the village of Sychar, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (John 4- 24). Here Jesus tells the woman that she grossly misunderstood God and Truth. He further explains that the Truth is that the Spirit is God and the Spirit dwells in everyone despite the color and race on which people divide people. He is asking the Samaritan woman to worship the God Spirit with in her rather than going to churches and temples and wasting time. But unfortunately she didn’t understand what he was talking about because her mind was clouded with all kind of confusion and fear instilled by the religion and its masters. Religious phonies inject fear into the mind of people by quoting, ‘The wages of Sin is death.” But the New Testament writer Timothy says that “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1-7). If we can groom our generation in love and self-discipline then we can create a selfless and fearless society. But I don’t think religion and it’s spoke person’s like you will ever let it happen. If you have doubt look around the world and see what religion and their teaching doing to the humanity. Sorry Matthulla, I don’t want to be a part of it.

06:00 PM ET Share this on: Facebook Twitter Digg del.icio.us reddit MySpace StumbleUpon 5 ways America changed God Opinion by Matthew Paul Turner, special to CNN Follow @JesusNeedsNewPR (CNN) – The majority of America’s churches teach that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. But considering our country’s near-400-year history, can we honestly say that our concepts and perceptions about God haven’t evolved? Is our contemporary American God the same as in 1629, when the Puritans began organizing a mass exodus toward their “Promised Land”? Is our modern God the same as in 1801, when Christians at a revival in Kentucky became so filled up with God’s spirit that they got down on all-fours and barked and howled like wild dogs? More recently, is our God the same as in 2000, when born again Republican George W. Bush won (sort of) the presidential election by rallying America’s then thriving evangelical electorate with a Jesus-tinged GOP rhetoric he called “compassionate conservatism.” The truth is, no. God is likely not exactly the same as God was yesterday, not here in the United States, not among America’s faithful. Here, God changes. Our making God into our own image isn’t a new trend. We’ve been changing God since Anglo Saxons first stepped foot onto these shores. Here are five examples. 1. The Puritans’delusions. Even before leaving England, the Puritans started reimagining God’s divine plan. And it just so happened that plan revolved around them. Giving God’s narrative a Puritan focus may have been the only way that John Cotton, a priest in the Church of England and a somewhat closeted Puritan, was able to convince his fellow renegades that starting afresh in Boston was a good idea. Despite the Puritans being disgusted, stifled and persecuted by England’s church, the majority of them weren’t all that excited at the thought of joining John Winthrop’s adventure to the New World. That is, until Cotton refashioned Winthrop’s crazy idea for the Puritans into God’s ordained destiny for his new chosen people. In a sermon called “God’s Promise To His Plantation,” Cotton used Old Testament story, imagery and prophesy and created a God narrative that put the Puritans squarely in the middle of heaven’s divine blueprint. According to Cotton, God had not only prepared a place (America!) for his new people (the Puritans!), but God also was betting his entire future on the Puritan people becoming a religious, economic and social success in the New World. No doubt Cotton’s holy foretelling was, at the very least, inspiration for Winthrop when he repurposed Jesus’ words as the unofficial Puritan tagline: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” The Puritans arrived in Boston intoxicated by Manifest Destiny: the idea that God had chosen them and ordained their prosperity before the foundations of the Earth. 2. God creates evangelicals. Within two generations, the American people - including many Puritans - had lost a good bit of their piety, which sparked revivalists to inspire a spiritual revival. One of the biggest influences of the Great Awakening was how God altered the way he interacted with America’s people. Rather than engaging humanity through communal covenants—holy connections usually reserved for large groups —according to the Anglican evangelist George Whitefield, God was now interested in making personal relationships with individuals. Though Americans were a century or two away from asking Jesus into their hearts, Whitefield and others began preaching that God was ready and willing to bypass the church and interact with people one on one. Whitefield became so popular—some historians suggest 80% of America’s population heard him preach—that his core message, one centering around a spiritual relationship that he called “new birth,” became popular, too, especially among Baptists and Presbyterians. His revivals spearheaded a shift in how Americans would interact with the God of the universe, that the spiritual drama was happening inside us. Moreover, Whitefield’s evangelical message of liberty—a spiritual liberty that many Americans equated to also mean a national liberty—became a unifying ideal that helped ready a much divided colonial population into becoming “one nation under God.” 3. America falls in love with Jesus. Amid America’s campaign for independence, people began gravitating toward more evangelical churches, like Baptist and Methodist. These congregations boasted a more laid-back approach to worship and faith as opposed to the stuffy religiosity of Congregational and Anglican gatherings. Then, in 1801, that rather strange spiritual gathering of more than 20,000 happened in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, a revival that sparked, among many things, a spiritual revolt against Calvinism’s God. In America, with the help of preachers like Charles Grandison Finney, Peter Cartwright and Barton Stone, the God that the people favored was one who let individuals choose their own spiritual destiny. As Methodists and Baptists led America away from the reformed doctrine, they also directed worshipers’ focus away from God the Father and toward Jesus, eventually making God’s only son the “face” of Christian spirituality. While America’s followers had always believed that Jesus paid the price for their sins, Jesus wasn’t the core topic of discussion, at least, nowhere close to how Christians uplift, debate, and theologize Jesus today. In the early 1800s, Jesus was much easier to relate to among everyday Americans. Jesus seemed to offer a more practical spirituality, one that celebrated Jesus’ humanity—his “manliness,” his suffering, his flesh and blood, his father/son relationship with God, his ability to understand the human plight. The simpler approach to Christianity that Methodists and Baptists offered would eventually be tested by the nation’s debate over slavery, a conflict that divided America’s churches long before it divided a nation. 4. America’s apocalyptic obsession In the decades after the Civil War, America’s Jesus-focused Christianity led to John Nelson Darby’s apocalyptic-heavy theology, dispensationalism. Darby’s thoughts about the End Times only garnered moderate attention in his home country of England. But here, thanks to Darby apologists like James Brookes, D.L. Moody and Cyrus I. Scofield, America fell in love with his Rapture-ready Jesus. Dispensationalism changed everything about America’s faith, specifically how evangelicals applied their beliefs to a variety of areas of life, including supporting Prohibition, war, fighting against the teaching of evolution, and Christianizing new immigrants as well as other nations. Among evangelicals, dispensationalism also cultivated a culture of fear, defensiveness and carelessness about helping a “doomed world.” 5. The Billy Graham effect As the country sought healing after World War II, Americans began searching for hope in the God-smorgasbord that Christianity had laid out, from Bible-believing fundamentalism to Holy Ghost-inspired Pentecostalism, from education-minded Roman Catholicism to progressive-leaning high church spiritualism. One man seemed capable of connecting across church and denominational lines: Billy Graham. Unrestrained by the limitations of a home church, Graham’s God evolved into a deity that a variety of Americans wanted to know. Graham’s God wooed conservative and charismatic believers alike, and didn’t offend most Catholic and Episcopalian believers. Amid the large and varied buffet, Graham’s God was like a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, a divine brand delivered using books, television, radio, magazine publishing and live events. In many ways, Graham was the first to unleash the power of GOD®. And that changed everything. Today, most Christians can’t distinguish between God and GOD®, which has made America’s deity into a superpower, an almighty deity that can be mixed with just about anything, from enterprise to politics, from hate campaigns to promises of prosperity. Here in America, God is constantly changing. It’s a divine story that we edit and manipulate—sometimes innocently and sometimes intentionally—into our own narratives. We create a most powerful God who serves our own agendas, whether they be cities built on hills or presidential elections

Reading Anthppan’s responses, I conclude that he doesn’t believe in God. Bible ask such souls when they take Bible verses from here and there to propagate their own hidden agenda. “What right you have to take my words in your mouth” We do not know who he is, and hiding behind a veil he is misleading lots of people. Bible is given to those who believe in it. Those who do not believe in it have no right to quote from it. If they have questions, they can ask. It is the right of the Church to interpret it right and defend the faith when attack comes against it. Apostle Paul defended his faith. I do not know where the established churches and their leaders are. If they do not defend the faith, on the Judgment day they will be held accountable. People like Anthappan’s quotes are misleading people. He takes verses from Bible out of context, and twists it to suit his needs. Mathew Varghese also talks of this in his response. Jesus frequently attended Jerusalem temple, and its festivals. He entrusted the Apostles to teach the church after His resurrection. Apostles emphasized the importance of fellowship with other believers, and the Holy Communion. Anthappan says religion inject fear into people. I can’t talk for all religions. Bible does not inject fear. It fills souls with peace and comfort. Bible ask not to fear but give due respect to those who deserve respect. Children need to respect parents. If not they must know there will be consequences. We need to have respect of the laws of the country. Our religious leaders need respected. Anybody who deserves respect needs to be respected. Our political leaders need to be respected. It is not the same as fear. We need to bring children up with such values and good character. Religion helps a lot in shaping a person’s character. All religions are from God, though some misused it for their own selfish purpose. Following what Anthappan suggests hiding behind his veil will cause only anarchy. He needs to be accountable for his words.

Mr. Matthulla- If you are not comfortable with name call me Anthappan, Anthappan . My first name and last name is same just like ‘Malayalam ‘spelled; both ways it is the same. I don’t believe in a God which is not revealed through the human beings. Bible, Quran, or any other books are written by human beings and can be used as a reference book for guidance in life. Because, it talks about, politics, cheating, murder, rehabilitation and so forth and so on. The characters like, Moses, David, and Paul (Saul) have all blood on their hand. People who want to have comfort and peace can also be found in these books. And, for that reason, Quran, Mahabharata, Bhagavat Geetha, and Ramayana are all have the same value. If anyone claim that their Book is the only book which is genuine with God’s signature then it is absurd to me. The failure of Christianity, Islam or Hinduism or any religion can be seen in the turmoil unfolding around the globe on a daily basis. The people those who are trying to establish Caliph, Hindus trying to establish a Hindu India, or Christian those who are converting people to their religion are all contributing into the turmoil taking place in the world. As you stated in one of your comments, if war is inevitable, then the reason for the war in this world is stemming from the religion. I definitely don’t want to follow your God which is jealous, Judgmental, revengeful , and deceitful. Find your God in your pure heart with full of love towards the fellow being without prejudice and discrimination and shine that God for the outside world. “Let your light so shine before the man so that others will see your good work and Glorify your God.” And, when you do that; it is good enough to shape up the new generation.

Those who are in the helm of the church don’t agree and that is a characteristic of devil. What I understand from this article is that the leaders don’t like each other and one is trying to divide the church without the knowledge of the other. Mr. Anthappan is making some good arguments relevant to the current attitude towards the religion in the world. Church is fertile land for Devil and he is harvesting ten and hundred times more than he sowed