By Dirk Wierenga, Director of Publishing Services for Principia Media.

Principia owner Vern Jones’ excellent new book titled The Non Religious Christian – Finding Faith Outside the Church is due to be released in a couple weeks (reserve your autographed copy now). Vern is fond of saying that people need to find a faith that they can own—rather than relying on the religion of their upbringing.

Now in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan along a busy highway is a new billboard that says: “You don’t need God—to hope, to care, to love, to live” placed there by The Center for Inquiry, an atheist organization.

While Vern was raised in a conservative Baptist household that force fed him a dogmatic religion, I grew up in a Presbyterian family that provided myself and my siblings with the basic Christian message but then emphasized that we each determine our own beliefs.

The point is that every great belief system stresses love in its message (which is exactly the message the great religious figures from Jesus to Mohammed to Gandhi taught). It is us humans who have messed up religion by placing our own set of rules and beliefs on top of the fundamental message of love.

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