I think you missed my reply...I am looking for belief, and while scientific evidence may not be the route, it does reduce the number of questions we don't know answers to. For instance we don't need to believe in a sun god with a chariot to pull the sun across the sky..we know how that works.
But there are remaining open questions as I mentioned. How do we go from accepting that to finding faith in the Christian God? Don't we need something akin to evidence to at least discern the right set of beliefs to hold to faithfully?
I think I understand what you are trying to say.
What I have seen, and this is only my opinion, is that when people go out searching for God among the different religions of the world, most of the time they fall into great confusion, because after a while it is hard to distinguish what is a belief of Judaism, or Christianity or Hinduism, ect. and in that search or research that the different beliefs tend to mesh together in that what is learned about one thing, blends into the next.
What I can testify to is that I have been studying the Bible for more than 35 years with times of great study and times of less study, but I find that I have been able to come to a good understanding of who God is in the Bible. Now that may sound weird from the offset, because one thinks well why would I or do I really need to know who God is, because it's all about what I believe and what I have faith in, but that is one of the great fallicies about God that people believe. Most people or should I say many Christians themselves define God, meaning that they have faith in a God that they have created in their minds, an example would be that God would not let anyone go through pain, so they create themselves a God of the Bible who would not allow pain. However, those who really know the Bible, not by reading it once because the Bible is very detailed and cross references itself in many ways, knows that God created us in His image and by that it means that God has angels that praise His name already, but we were created with the freedom to choose between good and evil. And because God created us not to blindly follow Him by force or by creating us without choice, that he did and does allow man to choose evil, just like He did and does allow man to choose good. This is in the Bible and the point that I am trying to make is that when one learns WHO God is and why God DID things the way He did, then we can see the beauty in what He has given us, which is a great gift in being able to determine and create our own lives through choices that we make each and every moment that allows us to create (as God created us) in a sense our own creation by creating our lives through what we have chosen in the past as well as the choices we will make today and many more choices we will each make tomorrow. Many see God as sitting up there in heaven 'directing' and 'orchestrating' our lives, but in reality God gives us the choice and allows us to make hundreds of choices each day to live out a life of our own creation in a kind of way.
A Christian walks with God (or should according to the Bible) in prayer and understanding, not so God can micro-manage their lives or tell them what decisions to make, but so God touches their hearts and through prayer GUIDES the Christian through making the RIGHT choices for themselves to live a life like our Savior, Christ Jesus lived as He is our example of what the perfect life is that was lived on this earth by being fully human AND fully God and making the RIGHT choices that led to a life with no sin.
The point that I am trying to make is that in the Christian life, the idea is not that God 'tells' us how to live our lives, but through our relationship with God 'we' decide to make our life choices each day to reflect the love of God in our lives.
Now, we Christians do a terrible job at this. Which is why most people say that Christians say do as I say, not as I do. But then, many Christians limit the amount of God that they want in their lives. Some choose prayer and guidance daily, some not much at all, so there is a great vastness of belief and where people fit on a scale of how they apply or are willing to apply their faith in God into their lives (as you can tell by the world around us).
The major thing of being a Christian is to get to know who God is (I'm trying to tie what I've already said together now, I guess in closing) because God has a personality. God is not some image that we create deciding how we want God to be. God IS and to really know God is why people study the Bible. Because God tells us in the Bible His whole story of who He is related to who we are and why we were created and how that all relates to each other.
