I see that there is a trend where many people are not going to church, especially the 'young' generation, not allowing themselves to have that influence in their lives, and making it less likely  in the lives of their children. It appears to me and to many others that this fact is harmful to each person and to society as well. There is much value to our lives in relating to our Creator and endeavoring to live our lives according to the highest principles that we have for eons gotten almost exclusively from the Church, or from what was perceived over the eons as our God-given sense of right and wrong . . . something IN us.

The loss is real. What are the reasons for so many people turning away from incorporating the Church in their lives? Well, there ARE reasons, and I can even understand them and identify with them myself. Yet I don't tune out my creator in my life, but instead I chose to find new ways to relate to God even as I felt the inadequacy of the organized religions.

While there is enormous value in many of the rituals and traditions offered by the organized religions, there is something wrong with how they relate to modern people and how they fail to attract larger flocks, and failing to keep the youngest generation of their existing flocks.

One can have many criticisms of the major religions in this regard, and one that fascinates me is that they are simply OLD and outdated. The foundations and beliefs of all the major religions were written 'in stone' eons ago. Many hundreds or even thousands of years ago. By people who lived many hundreds or thousands of years ago. They did well for what they knew back then, and then they 'locked it in', presumably for all time. How can that possibly work for people far into the future whose cultures have evolved far, far beyond the imaginations of those long-ago people who provided the foundations for 'religion'.

Judaism developed the Old Testament, the rules for life and the foundation for two major religions. It was written over many centuries and was pure genius in it's time. It got 'locked in' and has remained pretty much the same since then.

Those Galilean reformers, their followers . . . and those who followed them and morphed their belief system, took a new direction, (to say the least) and evolved, and wound up constructing the Gospels and the New Testament, some seventeen hundred to two thousand years ago; and then it was 'locked in', presumably for all time. It worked, more or less, for nearly two thousand years. But in all honesty it isn't attracting or keeping many new followers now. The flock is looking for something that the very old New Testament doesn't provide. It is just stagnant. It didn't evolve with the cultures on the planet today. The sophistication of societies today, in their literacy and general learning, in their technology, their view of the universe we live in, so many things have changed the people on this planet from their ancestors two thousand years ago . . . they need something else. Something born of OUR time. Helping us to relate to our Creator in the Third Millennium . . . it's got to be a better fit to us than what those long-ago people could construct at the beginning of the First Millennium!

I think we need a newer Testament . . . literally. The First Testament of the Third Millennium. From The Old Testament to that old New Testament, to the New Testament of the Third Millennium. I wonder how many are ready to open up their Christian Bible to testaments from our time? Testaments from our world that will be valid in our lives. Testaments that will once again guide the lives of God's children.