My view of religion and politics

I have been asked, "do I believe in God?"

Here's some history; I was born and raised Catholic. As I have aged I have come to odds with the Catholic church especially when they basically said a few years ago that if you didn't believe exactly everything that the church said they didn't want any part of you; I reconsidered my thoughts on religion.

So where does that leave me now? Basically, I believe in God and I'm pretty sure that Jesus was the son of God but I don't believe in a religion. I feel that my relationship with God is personal and it is up to me what I think it means to live a good, just life. What basically turned me in this direction is that I don't think tradition and dogma should be the only direction I will have to Him.

I appreciate that a lot of people don't see it that way, but I do. I promised a comment on politics, so here it is. I think if you ask a politician to tell you how religion drives his or her life you are just asking them to lie. I think for most of us our religion is the underlying way we make decisions even if we don't actually think of it that way. So, we should cut our politicians some slack if they can't verbalize it that way, it's a hard question that doesn't really have a good answer.

Religion should not be a test to get into government, but it can be in the discussion.