Without Faith...

"Without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." -Hebrews 11:6

As I wrote in an earlier post, my life was flipped around pretty drastically when my beliefs came into conflict with my relationship with a good friend. I won't go into detail with that situation again, but the long and short of it was that she was not a christian, and my beliefs about hell meant I thought she'd go there. 

Questioning my beliefs about hell pushed me out into the unknown. My family is very religious, and has always made certain to train me up to become a believer in Christ myself. My mother was especially interested in theology, and had me read and work on memorizing the Catechisms, and read up on theology books. Looking back on my childhood, Christ was the center of everything from work to play to education. Mom and Dad didn't perfectly follow this ideal, but they did their best. 

All I truly knew was Christ and his Word, at least when it came to how to live your life and find your purpose. Early on, I was taught not to question the "basics" of faith, although I could question everything outside of that. Now I ran into a major problem: hell was one of those unquestionable basics, and yet I was questioning it.

What on earth was I going to do?

Imagine for a moment that you were born blind. Somehow, for your entire life, no-one ever told you about sight, and you didn't realize it existed. Sight has never crossed your mind.

Now imagine someone comes up to you and tells you about this weird thing called sight. There are colors, shapes, light and dark. The world is WAAAAAAAY different than you think. At first you think they are nuts, maybe it's some weird myth. But whatever it is, sight isn't a part of how you "view" the world.

You get knocked unconscious one day, and are given surgery to give you the ability to see. When you wake up, BAM! Suddenly there are colors, shapes, light and dark. Your brain is shocked into overdrive with all the new sensory input, and you have no idea what the hell to do with it.

Now ramp that up a bit, and make it all philosophical, and you sorta get what happened to me.

I didn't learn anything new by that first experience, rather I began questioning everything. I really mean everything. My life, my religion, my entire world. Nothing was beyond questioning. And nothing was making sense.

Desperation began to kick in as my need for a solid foundation and understanding of the world deepened.

Problem was, I had no idea where to start.

Understandably, my parents wanted me to be a believer, so they never taught me to be a proper skeptic. I was taught faith, not doubt. Belief, not questioning. So paradoxically, I started with what I was taught.

Prayer.

The greatest cure for doubt that I had been told was to pray. Beg God for forgiveness, plead for him to give you faith and to get rid of your doubt. 

In spite of my anger, hurt, and doubt, I still wanted to believe. My belief in Christ may have been on the chopping block, but I didn't want to part with it.

So I prayed night after night. I still remember several times breaking down and bawling, asking for him to help my unbelief.

Nothing happened.

So, I went and read Christian books that were written to prove that God was real, and that the Bible was absolutely true (and no, I didn't stop reading the Bible or praying either). I kept on trying to have faith, but the answers that were being given to my questions just seemed...off. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't quite tell what. Not to mention, many of the questions I had just weren't being addressed. 

Again, what was I supposed to do now? I hadn't been given any process for questioning the Bible or God. In fact,  the act of believing and searching the Bible and praying to God for answers was the very process I had used to question anything before this.

My first thought was to then expand out to different religions. Maybe one of them had the answers to my questions. 

Since I knew my Mormon friend would be happy to talk with me, I asked her about it. She arranged for me to meet with her family (her mother was a teacher at their church, and loved working with young people), and be able to ask them. I will say, they were very accepting and kind, and listened to all of my questions and thoughts. The discussions were very deep and thought-provoking, but...something just wasn't right. Honestly, at the end, I was left with more questions than answers.

You have to understand, I was getting insanely depressed now. My life was built around my religion. Hope, purpose, fulfillment, happiness, peace, everything came from it. But now, I didn't know what to believe or who to trust. What I had been taught wasn't working, and the pieces of the puzzle just weren't matching up.