I often waver in my faith. If I am being honest with myself I feel pretty much like you do, that it is one sided. Faith is all about believing when there is no logical or material evidence. If you align yourself with God and seriously pursue His will the universe will be twisted in your favor. After a while you stop believing it is merely coincidence. I know anecdotes don't sway people very much - but I went from having a massive depressive episode 3 years ago in which I - a full grown adult - moved back in with my mom and constantly struggled to just be, fantasizing of suicide often and one day almost carrying it out and adding everything up and coming to the conclusion I was hopeless would always be hopeless and there was no point, but I had an infinitesimally small ammount of hope. And with that and that alone I am here three years later, a home owner with a full time job doing what I wanted to do since I graduated college almost 15 years ago and other than my mortgage I am almost debt free. But even despite that I still have my doubts. I can't percieve God with any of my 5 senses and often I still feel lost. But like Peterson says, you have to look low for God. Like I want to get in shape - I am a total fatass. And I want to start doing pushups but I am weak and struggle even doing one proper pushup. So I allow myself to do many weak ass sissy push ups to work myself up to being able to do real pushups and then go from there. Once you reach an aim - like owning a house - there is always something more you can do. And I truly believe if you start out with enough humility you can do anything.
I had a whole long deal written up, but it's too tl;dr for her other than this is really on point with my experience. Only that so far I haven't really had my faith really shaken lately though I did fall out of it from highschool all the way through college. Had and saw plenty of bad experiences with Christians (ranging from seeing friends get disowned, to friends' suicide attempts, etc), got into more occult things for a bit, had experiences that I couldn't chalk up to temporal, logical, things, etc.
The thing that actually got me back to Christianity was Jordan Peterson, as plenty of others have said elsewhere. I had discounted Christianity entirely by that point, but seeing his lectures (this was back when he first gained notoriety on kia1 and elsewhere) is what opened my eyes to the Bible being just an old dusty book. For w/e reason, this led me back away from a nihilistic worldview/philosophy, it essentially made Christianity "click" for me.
I guess I'd say I've always had more of an 'intellectual' relation with the faith though. That is, I'd see these people freaking out or going on and on about how they felt Jesus with them, were filled with joy, the sort of people who go into fits, unconsciously lift their arms up in church. It always seemed like if you weren't acting like that then you weren't a "real" Christian. Not to say I don't believe in the divine or simply act as if Christianity is 'true' as Peterson does, though. Just I've never really had that "emotional"/feeling-based relation to the divine that (imho) is unhealthy played-up Evangelical/Charismatic Christian spaces. Idk how to best explain it. I wouldn't say I "feel" Jesus, the Holy Spirit, what have you, but I see their influence on my life, throughout my life. That and I somehow managed to internalize into actual belief the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. Ie, I 'know' those things are true in much the same way I know 2+2=4 (and only 4), that there are little subatomic particles called quarks, they simply are. It's hard to explain
Maybe I took Kierkegaard's leap of faith somewhere along the way and I didn't even realize it. Regardless, I'm definitely 100% better off now than I was when I didn't consider myself Christian.
It was largely the hypocricy I saw too that led me astray. I have been developing in my head better retorts for those atheists that avoid christianity due to christian hypothesy. It goes like this: If I point out a couple of poorly made video games and say "see videogames are all shite", you(speaking to the hypothetical atheist, not you personally) would just say "yeah, but games can be better". That is sort of like the atheist view of christians. And videogames could be replaced with many other things - movies, books, music. I think it may have been Peterson who had a better articulation for the commandment "don't use the lord's name in vain", that you shouldn't use Christianity as a tool of opression or merely for your own vanity or self pride. Many Christians especially if the more Evangelical sort don't seem to realize this.
I often waver in my faith. If I am being honest with myself I feel pretty much like you do, that it is one sided. Faith is all about believing when there is no logical or material evidence. If you align yourself with God and seriously pursue His will the universe will be twisted in your favor. After a while you stop believing it is merely coincidence. I know anecdotes don't sway people very much - but I went from having a massive depressive episode 3 years ago in which I - a full grown adult - moved back in with my mom and constantly struggled to just be, fantasizing of suicide often and one day almost carrying it out and adding everything up and coming to the conclusion I was hopeless would always be hopeless and there was no point, but I had an infinitesimally small ammount of hope. And with that and that alone I am here three years later, a home owner with a full time job doing what I wanted to do since I graduated college almost 15 years ago and other than my mortgage I am almost debt free. But even despite that I still have my doubts. I can't percieve God with any of my 5 senses and often I still feel lost. But like Peterson says, you have to look low for God. Like I want to get in shape - I am a total fatass. And I want to start doing pushups but I am weak and struggle even doing one proper pushup. So I allow myself to do many weak ass sissy push ups to work myself up to being able to do real pushups and then go from there. Once you reach an aim - like owning a house - there is always something more you can do. And I truly believe if you start out with enough humility you can do anything.
I had a whole long deal written up, but it's too tl;dr for her other than this is really on point with my experience. Only that so far I haven't really had my faith really shaken lately though I did fall out of it from highschool all the way through college. Had and saw plenty of bad experiences with Christians (ranging from seeing friends get disowned, to friends' suicide attempts, etc), got into more occult things for a bit, had experiences that I couldn't chalk up to temporal, logical, things, etc.
The thing that actually got me back to Christianity was Jordan Peterson, as plenty of others have said elsewhere. I had discounted Christianity entirely by that point, but seeing his lectures (this was back when he first gained notoriety on kia1 and elsewhere) is what opened my eyes to the Bible being just an old dusty book. For w/e reason, this led me back away from a nihilistic worldview/philosophy, it essentially made Christianity "click" for me.
I guess I'd say I've always had more of an 'intellectual' relation with the faith though. That is, I'd see these people freaking out or going on and on about how they felt Jesus with them, were filled with joy, the sort of people who go into fits, unconsciously lift their arms up in church. It always seemed like if you weren't acting like that then you weren't a "real" Christian. Not to say I don't believe in the divine or simply act as if Christianity is 'true' as Peterson does, though. Just I've never really had that "emotional"/feeling-based relation to the divine that (imho) is unhealthy played-up Evangelical/Charismatic Christian spaces. Idk how to best explain it. I wouldn't say I "feel" Jesus, the Holy Spirit, what have you, but I see their influence on my life, throughout my life. That and I somehow managed to internalize into actual belief the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. Ie, I 'know' those things are true in much the same way I know 2+2=4 (and only 4), that there are little subatomic particles called quarks, they simply are. It's hard to explain
Maybe I took Kierkegaard's leap of faith somewhere along the way and I didn't even realize it. Regardless, I'm definitely 100% better off now than I was when I didn't consider myself Christian.
It was largely the hypocricy I saw too that led me astray. I have been developing in my head better retorts for those atheists that avoid christianity due to christian hypothesy. It goes like this: If I point out a couple of poorly made video games and say "see videogames are all shite", you(speaking to the hypothetical atheist, not you personally) would just say "yeah, but games can be better". That is sort of like the atheist view of christians. And videogames could be replaced with many other things - movies, books, music. I think it may have been Peterson who had a better articulation for the commandment "don't use the lord's name in vain", that you shouldn't use Christianity as a tool of opression or merely for your own vanity or self pride. Many Christians especially if the more Evangelical sort don't seem to realize this.