happyhollergal
I think you make some valid observations and ask a good question:
Why do people lead others to believe things that are written about God/Jesus as truth, when they themselves do not know this to be factual?
I'll take a crack at an answer:
1) They are under the mistaken impression that if they convince you of what they believe then it means that it is true and they are saved. If enough people believe what they believe, then it must be right and therefore God must surely let them into heaven.
2) People naturally have an urge to help shine the light on the darkness and help others awaken to a higher reality. Unfortunately, very few of us, if any truly follow the advice, seek first the kingdom of heaven and all will be given unto you, and take the stick out of your own eye before trying to take the sliver out of another. In other words, we may find a morsel of truth, but instead of keeping on searching until we are truly free and can now help others, we turn around and start 'proselytizing' our belief, which more than likely contains only a small piece of truth and a lot of error and illusion.
3) There is a collective ego which has taken on a life of it's own, a beast actually, behind each earthly religion, it grows when people feed it their light by worshipping the God outside of themselves and buying into false beliefs that the power lies outside of us rather than inside of us. This beast is more than capable of working through those who are most controlled within the various religions to try and convert others to the same false beliefs.
That is not to say there is no higher truth, it is also not to say that it is not our job here to shine the light on the darkness and help spread the truth, however, it is to say that until we ourselves have found the truth that will set us free and are no longer limited in this world, then we ourselves are not ready to be teachers, we are still students because we are also still caught in illusion.
With my last post as a response to Ortho, I can see that I partially fell into this trap. It is kind of 'salesy' right? Well that is not the Way and I thank you for sharing that perspective.
Each of us has a piece of the the grand puzzle of truth, and together we are More. I believe though, it is up to each one of us to keep uncovering our own piece by searching for the inner truth that will set us free
