Irregardless of some of the seemingly screwy things Jesus is said to have said, I yet prefer Christianity over islam or buddhism and even over judaism. To elaborate, even though the Bible states that Jesus apparently wanted people to eat His flesh and drink His blood (John 6:54-56), to eat with dirty defiling hands (Matthew 15:20), to consider Him the Good Cowboy (John 10:11-14), the True Garden Plant they should abide in (John 15:1), the Candlelight of the World (John 8:12, 9:5), called dead people "sleeping," (Matthew 9:24, Mark 5:39, Luke 8:52), and alleged that "God so loved the world that....if anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him," (John 3:16, I John 2:15), His other words combined with the record of His miracles and resurrection make Him The Compelling Figure of religious importance......in contrast to islam and the moslems/muslims who practice such.

I do not at all mind the rather extreme and consistent public modesty of veiled, shawled, and robed islamic-fundamentalist women (see RSV's/NASB's Numbers 5:18, II Samuel 13:18, Proverbs 5:19, Song of Solomon 7:5, Isaiah 47:1-4, Jeremiah 2:25, and I Timothy 2:8-9) compared to the particularly-during-warm-weather lurid and obscene, nonsolicited and sexually-harrassive mopheaded, sleevesless, slacksless, socksless, porn-like indecency of many american and european women. However, the nonresponsive lovelessness on the faces of islamic women when one looks at them bespeak an internal unfriendliness and perhaps even tempered hostility.

That is no wonder, considering the false god (allah), fake prophet (Mohammed), and non-sacred hateful pseudo-scriptures (Qu'ran) they worship.

I am not so ecumenical that I - in all good conscience - could tolerate associating with a worshipping moslem in a mosque. I could neither bow down toward Mecca (especially barefooted) nor say any Amen to prayers to an "allah" which (and not who) does not exist as concocted by some renagade heretic called Mohammed who lived five centuries or so after Christ and who fabricated the satanic verses of the Koran.

Having said that, I also do not want to succomb to the strange religious jargon of talmudic orthodox jews, somewhat akin to the weird terms cultic catholics have made up.

John 1:17 ("The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ"), however, was in the past a bit irritating to me, being that I not only respected Hebraic law of both the Pentateuch and prophets, but believe that the True Trinitarian God (i.e. The LORD) of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (not Ishmael) inspired the complete contents of the non-apocryphal Old Testament books.

But getting into some of the details of that Mosaic law revealed the reason for Saint John stating the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

For example, Leviticus 19:20 states that if a man lies with a slave engaged to another man, no one shall be put to death (for adultery) simply because she was a slave. How unfair(?).

Leviticus 12:6 states that if a woman has a menstual period or bears a child, she has sinned and has to be atoned for. How absurd(?).

Matthew 22:24 and Mark 12:19 record that a brother-in-law must copulate with his brother's wife so as to cause her to bear children in the brother's name (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). In the Old-Testament history of Genesis 38:8-10, Onan was commanded to do that very act, but instead "spilled his semen on the ground" rather than making his brother's wife pregnant. God slew him thereafter, perhaps not for polluting the floor with sperm nor even being unwilling to impregnate his brother's wife, but for engaging in coitus interruptus at all without letting her instead simply spit in his face and pull off his sandal.

Such mandated bigamy(?) on the part of a widow is even reflected in Paul's writings of Romans 7:2-3 and I Corinthians 7:39 about widows remarrying. That is contrasted with Christ's monogamous words in Matthew 19:3-12 and Mark 10:2-12 in light of the multiple-wives-allowed polygamous inference of I Timothy 3:2,12 and Titus 1:6. KJV's I Timothy 5:14 instructs young women (NOT "widows") to marry, and that young widows should not violate their first pledge by not re-marrying (I Timothy 5:11).