“The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development.” —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
When it comes to reading the Bible, I am a literalist when the text is meant to be taken literally. Of course, much of the Bible is not meant to be taken literally.
Does your church have someone in authority—some person or group (now or in the past) that makes decisions about the order of worship and the music and the translations and the doctrines, etc? Well then, you’re following “man-made rules”, even if you say you’re not. If you don’t want to follow man-made rules, you’ll just have to stop going to church.
“Praying puts us at risk of getting involved in God’s conditions. Be slow to pray. Praying most often doesn’t get us what we want but what God wants, something quite at variance with what we conceive to be in our best interests.” —Eugene Peterson
I’m still a Catholic. Why? Because Catholics believe that Jesus Christ becomes sacramentally present on Catholic altars. We call it The Blessed Sacrament. We’re not required to understand it. We’re just required to want it. And I do.