Some prayers would be appreciated for the salvation of my soul. I fear that I am slowly spiraling downward in regards to my faith. I feel like every day I am constantly wrestling with different heresies; hatred toward God, or disbelieve in His entire existence, anger at Him, desire and passions etc. Even worse, for some reason I always allow these doubts/heresies/struggles to keep me from God. Instead of going to Him for a solution, I just give up on Him, like by not praying, not reading the Scriptures, blowing off going to Church etc. Every day I say that I am going to try to make a serious effort to fix this, but then I just go on blowing God off again and living it like every other day.
I don't understand how I can 'come to God' when I have issues with Him. People always tell me that during these times it's best to stay closer to God, go to Church more, read more Scriptures etc. But I'm not like that. If I have problems with God then I don't come to God, I isolate myself, try to find a logical answer, and if that succeeds, then I will return back to Him. And if it doesn't, then it usually just becomes a doubt that plagues me forever and reoccures whenever I feel comfortable with God again. Doesn't make sense to me to come to God when I have a problem with God. Why would I serve God when many of my questions relate to why I should serve Him at all?
No matter how I look at the problem of evil, I just can't justify it. Maybe I don't want to be a god if it involves suffering. Maybe I would rather have been made without freedom, at least then we would not have any suffering. I don't have the faith to believe that all of this will really pay off someday. And how are we supposed to have the faith? God hasn't done anything to assure us of justice. Likewise, how am I supposed to 'have a relationship' with
someone who isn't there? No matter how you put it, God does NOT interact with us. You CANNOT develop a 'relationship with' someone who won't interact with you and anyone who thinks so is probably mistaken. I don't know how I can get myself to love someone who I feel isn't there. Likewise, I don't understand why I should thank Him for anything when I just do not honestly understand how He was responsible for it at all. Take dinner for example, people always say I should pray before I eat, but I never do. I tell myself I should, but I don't do it. I just don't understand what the purpose is. He didn't buy or give me the food, we bought and prepared it ourselves without Him, or at least it seems that way.
Even in cases where I do believe that God maybe has done something good for us, I still don't understand how people can go around saying that 'God is good' or act like He is so great for working one act of kindness. Does one act of kindness really make up for the lifetime of suffering He allows most people to endure? That's like thanking an absent parent (s) who throughout your entire life never interacted with you and allowed bad things to happen to you just because he/she decided for some reason to buy you one lousy Christmas or birthday gift. Big deal. Does one present really compare or make up for all the bad they allowed to happen?
I ALWAYS have thoughts like this whenever I feel like praying or doing something Holy. They just come back to me constantly and I don't know how to answer them or deal with them. I also don't understand how the world could be guilty of anything when God is the one who created us with the potential to be bad and allowed us to become bad. I like to use this one a lot whenever I do something bad. I don't understand why I should adhere to a boring, somewhat outdated system of Christian ethics that will make my life on Earth boring and miserable when I could live a fun, non-Christian life and have an amazing life on Earth. Everyone tells me it is because of our 'soul' or that it will be worth it in the end because 'our afterlife will be full of greatness' but how am I supposed to believe any of these promises? God hasn't given me any assurance. I don't even know if there is an afterlife or a Resurrection so why am I going to take a chance and waste away possibly my only life?
nothing makes sense to me anymore. And I probably do not make any of this better by always refusing to pray or read the Scriptures and blowing off God all the time as irrelevant.
Prayers would be appreciated.
