Well, my beliefs are basically Buddhist, although I won't claim to BE a Buddhist - I just believe a lot of what they believe and their teachings make a lot of sense to me. However, I still believe in Christ, and, in a way I believe in God but not in the way the average christian believes in God. This is how I see it: We have one big 'life', beyond the physical plane. The object of this life is to learn all the lessons there are to learn and transcend to 'Nirvana', or whatever you want to call it, which I see as basically becoming one with the life force of the universe (we are actually already 'one' with it, but the illusion of individuality stops us from seeing that fact). So, we come back to Earth again and again to learn these lessons, and the situations we find ourselves in during life, the family we are born into, etc, are all tailored towards teaching us these lessons. I would even suggest that we choose the life we come into during the 'in between' stages.

Repenting for you sins is a lesson learnt - you realise the error of your ways and will, hopefully, not repeat them, in this life or another. And while we don't rememeber our past lives (although some people claim they do), we do remember the lessons, which is why people have different character traits, etc - they have overcome issues that others have not and are now working on different issues.

I'm sure I've explained this terribly.... The ultimate aim is to be like OT Yoda, then when you die you can become one with the force. Yeah, Star Wars philosophy, you just can't beat it.

As for Christ, I 100% believe he came to Earth and said what he said. However, I believe he was misinterpreted. I believe when he spoke of his Father, he didn't literally mean his daddy the guy with the beard up in the clouds - he was talking metaphorically about the single universal mass that we are all born from, and all linked to (again, the force is a good simplification of the concept I'm trying to explain). And the whole dying for our sins bit, well I was talking to a bible thumper the other day and he told me that Jesus died for my sins. I asked him what that actually meant and he didn't have an answer (well, he did answer me, but his answer didn't answer my question at all - he was just quoting dogma). What does it actually mean? How did Jesus dying on the cross save my soul? I don't get it. There's no denying his self sacrifice was a fanatastic example of compassion and if we all tried to live our lives like Jesus did the world would be fabulous, but I don't understand what 'died for our sins' ACTUALLY means.