I feel compelled today to make a distinction between, what I think are two entirely different things that are sometimes confused to be the same. Religion, as defined by Dictionary.com is: a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects. In other words, it is the setting up of a list of rules around a belief we set up to follow. All organized religions do this. Some are more strict than others but for the most part they are typically rules used to control those involved. It makes it easy to lord over others and to beat people up over trivial things. Faith on the other hand is defined as: confidence or trust in a person or thing. As a young man I threw away what I saw as a boring stale religion believing It offered me nothing. What I learned later was that thou I had walked away from that I had never lost my Faith! We have to stop seeing these two things as the same. I hear the connection from those who say they the don’t believe in God a lot, and I think that what they really don’t believe in is religion. The sad part is I am so inadequate in explaining it that most walk away still holding to that notion. I pray we can all figure that out!