Stuck in limbo

[aiki]

Firstly, as you may guess from my sign-up date, I've debated whether to post something on this here for quite a while! Sorry in advance for the long rambling post.

As an intro to my current situation - a few years back I was given some literature on Christianity aimed at non-believers. While I dismissed it (and even found it funny that someone thought it would change my mind), it did end up sparking an interest into doing some more research into what precisely it was that I, as an agnostic with only a tenuous grasp on Christianity, was actually disagreeing with. While nothing I've found since has led me to a belief that God is real, I also just don't seem to be satisfied with the conclusion that he isn't and I keep feeling an urge to keep looking - like an itch I can't scratch.

Well, this is a rather late reply to this thread, but on the chance that you're still reading responses to your OP, I'll offer a few thoughts.

At its heart, Christianity is about a Person: God. All that Christianity espouses and promotes is aimed at a personal knowledge and experience of Him. But the doctrines and practices of the faith can supplant a direct, personal experience of God. Many "Christians" settle for adherence to rituals and religious/philosophic propositions, for membership in a faith community and/or a charitable organization, for living a moral and "spiritual" life rather than obtaining the personal fellowship with God the Bible says He wants with each of us. No amount of information about God, no amount of religious activity, can substitute for a direct, personal meeting with Him. When we "draw near to God" the Bible says, not just to all the stuff about Him, God draws near to us.

How do you "draw near"? Call out to Him. Tell God you want to know Him personally and directly. Ask Him to show Himself to you. And keep asking 'til He does. I will warn you: God does not show up in the way we imagine He will. He also has no illusions about our motives; He is not deceived by false words or actions. He will deal with us according to our heart. He will not play games with us, nor respond to those who think to do so with Him.

I've tried experimenting with prayer - 'God, I don't really believe in you but if you are real I'd like to know' - and I've actually started to do this more frequently in the last couple of months as for whatever reason it seems to help me sleep better at night (I'm a bit of an insomniac). It's hard to discern if this is having any genuine effect but I've come to the conclusion that I can't stop looking into this is because some part of me wants it to be true, despite no outwardly obvious reason for me to feel this way. I've also felt a strange sense of longing when reading about receiving a new heart in Ezekiel.

God has made each of us to know Him and to live in joyful fellowship with Him. As we do, we naturally praise and worship Him and this fulfills us in a unique and profound way. A person who has not met with God, who has replaced serving God with serving Self, will not ever taste of the joy and fulfillment walking rightly with God produces. In quiet moments, in the rare lulls in the storm of distractions and preoccupations that keep people from thinking on the Big Questions of life, this knowledge - often just a visceral and vague unease or dissatisfaction with life - may surface and provoke the experimentation you describe above. We each of us have a God-shaped hole at our core that can be filled only by Him. This "hole" makes us hungry for fulfillment, thirsty for peace and contentment. But, filling that God-shaped vacuum with anything other than Him ultimately never satisfies; we hunger and thirst again, and again, and again. But Jesus says to all:

John 4:13
13...whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

John 7:37-38
37...Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."

John 6:35
35 And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst."

Despite this conclusion, I've not said a sinner's prayer or decided to follow Jesus or anything - if this is actually real, I don't think I'm 'there' in terms of saving faith and I don't want to do anything half-heartedly. I don't wholeheartedly believe that Jesus is who he says he was and while I'm OK with the idea that by the bible's standards I'm a sinner, I don't feel a great sense of repentance. There's also ideas related to Christianity that are in direct conflict with my deeply-ingrained liberal world view, and I can't shake my trust in evolution.

Well, one could grant everything the ToE asserts and it would not prove that God does not exist. Evolution is not a defeater of theism. Evolution is a teleological matter; God is an ontological one.

In any event, the Big Problem between Man and God is that Man wants to call the shots, to be the Boss, to be God. We want our own way, to have our own ideas about stuff, to be as autonomous as possible. We sure don't want God telling us our thinking and behaviour is wrong and that we're answerable to Him for our thoughts and actions.

John 3:19-20
19 And this is that condemnation, that light is come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

No one, though, can come to God as an equal, or near-equal. God has not co-pilot. We must all come to God in humility, repenting of our lives lived apart from, and in rebellion to, Him. We must come to God on our knees, keenly aware of our deep need of Him, of our desperate need of His forgiveness and mercy. Human pride resists such a dynamic of relationship, however, keeping many from knowing and enjoying God as they were made to do.

John 7:14
14...narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."

I hope and pray you will be among the few.

As the itch to keep looking into this isn't going away and my understanding is that if Christianity is true then saving faith is not something I am capable of generating myself, I feel trapped in a frustrating limbo between belief and unbelief. Any thoughts or advice - no matter how blunt - welcomed!

God has given to every man a measure of faith. You exercise that faith nearly all the time. You place faith in your doctor, your dentist, other drivers on the road, the restaurant cook whose food you eat, your barber; you exert faith in the chair you sit on, the car you drive, the postal service, your local power grid, and so on. No one can live without exercising faith in something. So, the issue isn't that you don't have faith to believe, but that you will not exert it in God. And this is why God holds you accountable for your unwillingness to trust in Him. It's not that you can't believe, that you have no faith, but that you won't believe.