you are assuming that the bible that you read today was the same bible that jesus had. the bible suffered countless translations, adaptations, and many councils (like Trento), that helped the church to gain power through the scriptures, erasing all ideas of power and goverment from it. there were man, in the 4th century specially in greece and western part of turkey, that abandoned church, because they no longer belived in it. they could see what was about to happen. i don't know the names of those man that rebelled in english, but i can tell in portuguese: santo antão from egypt and são simeão estilita, that spent 40 years on a 18m pole. many monasteries in greece, like Meteora, were built by these rebelious men.the church morphed from a free belif, the direct connection between man and god, to an instituition that deposited all the faith in the middle man, priests, holy man, and so on.
that "free interpretation" of the bible is the biggest shit that i have ever listened. how can you interpret freely one text that has been adultered, and it is NOT free from the root ? why don't we interpret freely mein kampf, or the black & decker drill manual ?
who cares that jesus had a beard ? these are details that don't matter. i have a beard and that doesn't mean squat.
the problem with jesus is that politics got in the way of faith. we can never reach the root of christianity, because the original faith, and people that lived truly that religion are long gone, and their ideas have been masked to support wars, killing, making people ignorant, and specially to make people think that beliving in jesus is going to save us. if you don't belive, you go to hell and you are going to burn forever. that is mind-bending terror. shouldn't religion be supported by love ?
we, as psychonauts, should belive in that. all the biggest trips end up with eternal love and caring. comfort. that's what we seek from the moment when we are born in our mother's breast, until the moment we die.
i wish you all a good 2008.