I used to consider my faith to be fairly strong. But I have begun to question how it is even possible to have life after death. As in where does the matter come from. And that leads to questioning everything. I have asked for God's forgiveness for my lack of faith. I realize that the very definition of faith means to not have to be given scientific evidence. And I realize that if God can create the universe then anything is possible with him. Don't like feeling this way. And am confused. I'm sure I am not the only one who has experienced this. So any advice is welcome
Hello,
Doubts can be a good thing, so you should not be ashamed of having them, or feel like you need to ignore them, or seek forgiveness for having them. Doubts lead us to investigate our beliefs and can lead us to find stronger reasons to reinforce our beliefs, which can lead to us to have a stronger faith than we would have had if we had never doubted or if we had ignored our doubts. Investigating our beliefs can also lead is to dismiss false beliefs, which is also a good thing, though the problem comes if we wrong reinforce false beliefs or wrongly dismiss true beliefs, but such is the risk inherent in learning. However, ignoring our doubts can allow them to fester unresolved, which can pose an even greater risk, so it is good to harness your doubts as motivation to dig deeper.
In my teens, I started having questions about things like how I could know that God existed or about whether I could trust the Bible, so I was in a similar situation as you are now. I figured that if what I believed was true, then it could stand up to criticism, so I joined various forums, got heavily into apologetics, and it has been an interest ever since, though my focus has since shifted to Messianic apologetics. So many of my beliefs have withstood criticism, though there are a number of beliefs that I've changed of the years, even about a major issue.
Science is a very useful tool, but it is a tool that can only tell is information about things that are observable, measurable, and repeatable, so we should not seek scientific evidence in areas where science is the wrong tool for the job. Scientists axiomatically assume that the future will continue to be like what we have observed in the past, so they are not without faith. If someone promised that they would do something in the future, then you can have evidence based on their past performance to determine whether you should trust them, but you can't observe, measure, or repeat the future, so science is the wrong tool for the job. Science can help if to discern the ways in which matter acts, but it can't explain why there is matter instead of nothing.