Renewing spirituality

I agree. Often it's fake, and if you feel in your heart it's fake, you can't give your heart, for you are faking it yourself.
Don't be a mommy's boy and listen to her just because she wants it too.
I don't mean for you to disrespect in her any way, you could with all respect reject her invitation to go her Church.

You say you don't know much about the Bible.
What I would suggest is you read the Bible every day, but just a bit.
Let the material sink in, absorb it, but don't rush it.
Take your time.

And if you feel attraction when reading the bible, you can always explore other Churches, one that does align with your heart.

 

Hi. First off I want to say I appreciate your honesty. You are actually in probably one of the best places you can be spiritually that you can be even though it feels uncomfortable. What it sounds like to me when I read your post is not that you are having a tough time believing in God but are having a very tough time mentally ascending to a very narrow set of beliefs about God. I was in a very similar place. I went to church for 25 years just kinda going through the motions all the time asking questions like “well if God is love like it says in John why does he send the vast majority of his creation to suffer eternally for a finite set of sins.” I also had the one about people who die before Christ. Or one of my favorites is why did Paul wait 10 years after Christ revealed himself to him to spread the Gospel to the gentiles. That’s 10 years worth of people going to hell. What kind of plan is that.

Here’s where I’m at. And believe me I have a closer relationship to Christ now than I ever did before. There are a ton of different ways of looking at this stuff. Hence all the denominations you asked about. A huge percentage of the early Christians didn’t believe that hell was eternal. Look at the works of Origen or Gregory of Nysa first and second century thinkers who were absolutely brilliant. Gregory of Nysa was the guy who formulate the doctrine of the trinity. He’s kinda a big deal. The whole idea of salvation from an eternal hell wasn’t even that popular of an idea until Augustine of Hipo came on the scene in the 4th century and was a great way for the Roman Empire to control its population. The modern church puts such an emphasis on that doctrine but hell is only mentioned a handful of times and the one place where it says that it’s forever has a huge debate on weather that area is translated correctly.
Believing a bunch of facts about God and having a relationship with God are two completely different things. I can tell you all about my dad and you could have all the facts about him and never actually meet him. If God is real and believe me I think he’s more real than anything, you can ask him to show you that he’s real and see what happens. I believe God put us here to have a relationship with his actual being not a set of facts that people say you should believe about him. It’s kinda hard to have a relationship with something you have no experience of. If you are interested ask for the experience. All the doctrine stuff will sort itself out if it’s even that important to you.
I really believe that the modern church has it backwards. “Believe this stuff and God will come to you”. I kinda think it’s the other way around. Ask for a relationship see what happens and watch your life change.
Personally I think the idea of sending my family to church without God behind it sounds more awful than that hell you are so concerned about. It’s like going to Disneyland and telling everyone they can’t ride the rides. What’s the point, morality for morality’s sake? Nothing could seem more pointless. If there is no God why be moral? Why is morality even important if we are just biological creatures with all the intrinsic worth of a fart in the wind.
There are a lot of really great thinkers out there with the same questions you have had and still land on the idea of Christ as God. You are just looking in the butcher section of the supermarket saying that Bread doesn’t exist. There are tons of answers to these questions within the realm of Christendom. They might not be answers that line up with what you ex believes but chances are she probably doesn’t know why she believes what she believes. I’ve afound most Christians are simply willing to accept a set of beliefs wholesale because the guy who they got them from was a smart guy. I say you are in a great place because the minute I decided to give up on what I was given and let God move in my life how he wanted to, was when things started to get really interesting.

 

You're having a crisis of faith. This means it's time for you to look beneath the surface of your own religion. If you look into esoteric Christianity, the list of your questions will be answered. It could be a wild ride, but if you don't go on it, you'll never find the answers you're looking for. Ultimately, all religions meet in God. This is blasphemy to people who read Christianity on a literal level, but Scripture's designed to be read on 4 levels. When you start noticing irreconcilable inconsistencies in the outermost level, it's time to start digging deeper.

 

I was thinking about your OP yesterday, and there's somewhere in the Bible that says that there are uncircumcised people who follow the law naturally, and circumcised people who don't follow the law. I know Jews are physically circumcised, but in this context, I think the author meant spiritually separated from the Gentiles. Which means there are Gentiles whose character and actions are naturally pleasing to God. People draw the distinction between the tribal, terrestrial Yahweh and the One God that's behind all religions, but again it's just different perspectives on the same Law. Abstract intellectual vs. literal everyday, versus first-hand mystical experience of God, which is what Christ and Paul and the prophets were relating. Hesychasm's one form of Christian mysticism you might like to look into (the original Naval Gazers!) if you're looking to find God, but it's not a path to be taken lightly, as Christ says somewhere in the Gospel ('Let the dead carry out their own dead', etc).

 

I found the passage:

Romans 2:14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness... etc.

Then he talkes about the circumcision of the spirit. Some people are just naturally pleasing to God and live their lives right as human beings, regardless of whether or not they've received Scripture.