Purpose of religion

The following is my opinion on the purpose of religion in today's world.

1) The purpose of religion is not to try and explain God.

2) The purpose of religion is not to please God.

3) The purpose of religion is to teach humans how to deal with life!

The following are comments from Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's book, "To Life."

Judaism stresses ethics and community, the effort to become fully human as you relate to the people around you, more than it stresses the nature of God.

Theology plans a minor role in Judasim. This is true because mostly the statements made about God are not really so much about God as they are about us.

Statements about God, then, do not describe God. They describe how we and our world are different because of God.

Jews say that they believe in God, it is not His existence but His reliability that we are affirming.

An atheist is a person who denies the ethical significance of human beings, saying, "People are just animals obeying instincts; it makes no moral differece what they do.

If we can not understand God's decisions, the limitations are ours, not His.

I would remind the reader of Maimonides' warning that when we use terms of human discourse to describe God, the words don't fit God the way they fit us.

We cannot understand God's ways because we cannot see things from God's point of view.