I've read the Bible for myself, and personally, I love it!  The world's great religious texts contain wonderful philosophical, psychological and spiritual wisdom, not to mention absolutely beautiful language that is as perfect as any literature humans have created.

Religious texts can be inspiring, but we aren't supposed to interpret them through a material lens, as Christians almost invariably do. Anyone who thinks Jesus was here to tell us how to run government or politics missed the most important points in the entire book, starting with the first words. Neither are we all supposed to convene together every week and decide how Christians or anyone else should act.   

If religion doesn't foster an individual's understanding and connection to their own spirituality - Paul's "Christ within" - so they can know from inside themselves how to see the world and conduct themselves morally, with or without a church, then religion is just social control and nothing more, as it usually is.