My own personal belief is a bit different than most Christians - I happen to think that accepting Christ as the Son of God has more to do with living in THIS life than the next.

I resisted for many years, because the implication is that God is some kind of monstrous, egotistical judge. "Worship me, or spend eternity in the fires of hell!"

What kind of Benevolence would ask us to subscribe to that?

Rather I think salvation is, and it is often translated so, about simply getting in touch with the atonement J.C. offers us when we accept him as the medium through which the Holy Spirit guides us in our daily living. The Holy Spirit is there anyway, whether we like it or not. The Holy Spirit, to me, is that moral conscious that directs people into Christ-like charitable living, and tries to nudge us when we don't.

"So why bother?" you may ask. If Christ is all accepting, then why pray to him? We get our trip to Heaven anyway. I do it because constant communion with God has changed my life.

He (it, more likely) is not the punishing God I grew up with. Jesus only really instructs us to love one another at the end of the day. The rest of the Bible is full of interpretation and cruft around that, scribed mostly by men with a patriarchal agenda.

When we seek out that small silent voice within, though, through prayer and meditation, amazing things happen, even when things seem to go bad.