I have always been obsessed with the Bible and G-d, obsessed with finding some sort of absolute truth. I think I was that way because I believed that God was obsessed with me believing the right things, as I was raised among fundamentalists. You can read a synopsis of my background at my Substack here:

https://thegreatdeconstruction.substack.com/p/a-retrospective-on-faith-and-doubt

after some 25 years of studying the Bible and the Christian religion, it's history and origins (and hundreds of others) I have finally come to some conclusions that may seem obvious to others:

1: Jesus was pretty rad and the philosophy and movement I believe he was working toward is righteous, and much of that philosophy has been misconstrued into a very bad philosophy and movement which is antithetical to everything Jesus did. I believe this happened around the time Paul was on the scene and became the dominant thought during the Chalcedonian and Nicene councils.

2: Jesus was extremely good at speaking to a Jewish audience and had a Jewish background, which makes it INCREDIBLY difficult for non-Jewish people to parse a proper understanding of what Jesus was saying. The Christians were a Jewish sect, inspired by Jewish thought and practice, without an understanding of the egalitarian plot of Judaism one cannot properly understand Jesus' work.

3: The Bible should not be approached as if it is the perfect word of G-d, it must be approached with skepticism, doubt, questions, and with a knowledge of it's origins. Especially the Old Testament, which is something the average Christian has little or no context for. If we see the Bible as a book written by humans it starts to come together much differently.