Sorry to write so much--but about this whole REDEMPTION business--just look at what Christians did with it when they attributed it to Jesus. Yuck--without "Jesus died for our sins" Christianity might be a teneble religion.

I'm pretty sure that I'm out of element here, but it almost seems to me as though you're Christianizing/internalizing the whole thing.  It's been my understanding that what Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount is to switch the focus away from the law and in the direction of intent--i.e, you're guilty of adultery even if you just think abt doing it.  This, I thought, changed things radically from the sense that anyone might have the urge to commit adultery, but the main issue is whether or not you give in to that urge.  That's the test, not the thought themselves.  Therefore, if you do a good deed (give to charity, help a person, pray, etc.) it's less important why you did it--and more important that you did it. 

I think you're very wrong when you say that this list is neither religious or spiritual.  That's exactly what it is!  Sure it eliminates or avoids a lot of the mystical trappings of religion--but I would bet--and I am far from expert--that everyone of these 52 tips connects to the Torah or Talmud.

I'll miss your posts.

Apart from the fact that Kirk C's winning boyish smile covers up the fact that he can't wait until the time when all non-Jesus accepting Jews will suffer a holocaust worse than the recent one--what about banana threads.  Or maybe it's not that the banana was designed for humans but rather that humans were designed for the banana--isn't that what "Day-oh" (the song we rear our kids on) is all about?  I won't link to the Raffi version, though it is one of the sacred tunes of my kids' lives.

I don't know how much relevance this has, but I teach several sections of World Religions at a community college--and with the exception of a tiny handful of Muslims in class (and one ever Orthodox Jew who was afraid to wear his yarmulke to campus) I would guess that at least 9 out of 10 of my students are either evangeilicals, pentecostals, Catholics, or other various non-denominationals.  I know this because they have to write something of their own spiritual autobiography for the class.  And,  at the end of class, I would bet that 9 out of the 10 active and professed Christians in the class still think that Allah is a false God and that the Jews killed Christ and that Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism are even worth studying because they're not really religions.  And yet, obviously, they are all (well not all) eager to  plagiarize their essays, virulently homophobic, anti-feminist, binge-drinkers and eerily angry (the males at least.)

I hope I'm not conflating your post  with the mild anti-atheist rant that precedes your post on charity.  So I'll avoid those of the 613 like "Not to intermarry with the Gentiles (which I have done) Deut 7.3 or "Not to inquire of ghosts or the dead" (which is what writers do) Deut 18:11 and add something that deals with the other side of charity--those business practices which create poverty--"Not to demand from a poor man repayment of debt, when the creditor knows he cannot repay.  Not to press him."  Ex 22:24