What's wrong with my belief in God and/or religion?

[John21]

A few years back, I was having a very hard time making any sense of religion, the various doctrines, dogmas, and belief systems, so I'd tried to do the best I could at approaching the issue with an open mind.

Since most of the "experts" on theology seemed to be in accordance in saying that the only way to really get to know God was by first believing in Him, I concluded I'd have to make that proverbial, "leap of faith," at some point. But the first problem I ran into was the difficulty in believing in "three letters" with a vague definition of what they might mean. At first going through the Bible wasn't much help, there seemed to be as many definitions of God as there were pages. But then I started wondering if all the definitions weren't hinting at the same thing and just giving different examples and definitions, so depending on what particular perspective you happened to be coming from, you could find one you could embrace and believe in.

I eventually found a definition of God I felt I could believe in, without giving way to intellectual credulity, near the end of the Bible in the Letters of Saint John. The particular definition is in 1 John 4:16:

God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

I decided "I could believe" that sentence, and I just made the decision "to believe it" - and now I feel I know it's true. God is love… the rest is commentary. God = Love - Love's not a person or being, and it doesn't exist outside of us, therefore God isn't a person or being that exists outside of us. To me it's all an internal, subjective process.

After internalizing that belief, I found when I read "stories" in the Bible, that's all they were - stories. But they were stories with a meaning. And more often than not, those stories when read from my new perspective and read as stories and not literal facts would elicit an emotion in me and quite often that emotion was love.

The story that's one of the central pillars of Christianity; of Christ dying on the Cross for all our sins, whether literally true or not didn't seem relevant. What mattered was the story, and the internal emotions that story is capable of generating. In my mind I can see a Marine holding a laser tag on a target; a blur; an explosion; and a body without a head falling to the ground. But in my heart I see a Marine throwing his body in the line of a sniper's bullet and without a moment's hesitation sacrificing his life for a fellow Marine's and the mission. And I simply cannot escape the emotional impact of one person sacrificing their life for another - whether you witness it or read about it - it's as real as anything I know.

So if I ever seem overly or irrationally defensive of religion and/or God I feel I know why I am. But I would be interested in hearing why I shouldn't be. It sure seems "real" to me.