Might I ask elaboration on your attempt to embrace Christianity? What did you try to do, how did you try it, etc? If there are links to previously written explanations, that might be more expedient.
I would say I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong that was causing harm to the world and trying to figure out how the world could be headed towards good, because mostly all I was seeing around me was evil or failure (and this depressing perspective also contributed to my rigor mortis). But the rules didn't seem to help resolve any of that (and rendered even me more powerless and incapacitated). It was also to fulfill a love and respect for my beloved grandfather who said Jesus was the granite he stood on when everything else was sinking sand (myself being a product of familycide divorced hippie boomers and running away to the clusterfuck of severe poverty and feral disintegration into a brothel as JAD alludes, etc, etc). After his death in 1996, I taped that leaflet from his funeral on the wall above my computer screen, because I was knee deep in sinking sand all around me. But you know, I continued to sink and by January 2017, I was up to my lips in sinking sand and about to suffocate.
What I see now is that my grandfather actually failed miserably with his offspring (actually I knew that when I was 15 but nobody would let me say it and they always told me to understand my parents ... how many times are we supposed to understand people who are not even trying to change? which brings up back to the point of helping people who aren't trying to figure it out which is I am also sure is how they viewed me but it also how I viewed them!). So as much as I admire him, I now realize he failed. And as I told CoinCube in private several weeks ago, I don't want to end up a statistic (of how males fail in life, if they lacked a father around) so I am fighting back NOW with my mind.
Ignoring natural laws and reality wasn't working. Sorry. God and "love" was a way to become less detached with the hard realities and hard decisions that should have been made and instead were allowed to fester in this nebulous delusion.
When exploring the bible, the details are important for historicity. Egyptian chronology is undergoing upheaval due to inconsistencies in traditional dating compared with timelines in other regions of the world - see Donovan Courville and David Rohl. Should those revisions bear scrutiny and find acceptance, biblical accuracy will be profoundly vindicated.
Sorry but I now am ashamed (feeling remorse and regret) that I was expending (scarce resource) mental energy on these sort of elaborate attempts to justify God, as I alluded to in my comments to which you are replying. Regardless of the veracity of circumstantial support for superstition, God will remain unfalsifiable.
Experience is arguably the greatest educator. A youth trying everything but a proven successful method will, more often than not, eventually realize the optimal path was the one from the voice of experience. What happens then? Does the now experienced youth return to his father with new wisdom and make amends, or does he simply continue on his way and disregard family?
Assume God is real. He has a fatherly role, and keeps earth safe from destruction catastrophic enough to wipe out all of mankind. Similar to a game designer, he attends to every detail of the world - every character, every creature, every stone and all of the algorithms running the show; He lines up the living dominoes and sets them cascading on their way. He creates a human and esteems man as his own child. This human is given a choice between temptation and obedience. Man chooses temptation and is sent packing, not as unjustly cruel punishment but to become experienced in understanding.
Now what happens when man has gained wisdom and understanding? Does he acknowledge that not all in this world is knowable or falsifiable, or ignore family and wander the world looking for what he already has? The communication and relationship are what the bible is getting across. I would argue that the greatest lesson is not explicitly in the book: it comes from the experience of living as described in it.
This is not to scream "repent and believe" but to describe the message in the noise; your belief is your choice. In my view, there is far more to the bible than laws about behaviors and sage wisdom. The parts combine to make something greater than the whole. Not to mention that so many stories from Genesis onward point to Jesus, how his life and ministry were to unfold, especially Isaiah 53.
Well expressed. Thank you.
Why can't I believe we are all part of holistic system (obviously we are) without the necessity of believing that a fatherly figure has it all under management? Why does the unfalsiable God idol have to enter the picture? That fatherly God certainly didn't have it figured out in my case and I don't want to hear that BS again about how he was testing me and how all the stupid decisions were part of my destiny, etc.. That is encouraging me to continue to fail in some nebulous concept instead of using my brain to figure it out.
What specific experience do you feel I might ignore that is in the Bible if I don't submit to this supernatural, metaphysical father figure?