With crooked churches, hypocrisy, and ignorance, how do you restore faith in God after you've reasoned Him away?

Let the Gospel guide you to a church. It is good that you can see that some church is not right for you but it is not a reason to give up. Church is only to reinforce your faith. The main goal is to have a personal relationship with God. Love God with all your strength and spirit. Love others how Jesus love the church and you should be heading in the right direction.

The Gate of the Year – Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957)

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

Well Moe! Some take your path and a few take mine. I found all churches, denominations wanting, and they are. No church teaches simple Bible truths; neither do they permit anyone to point out to them their shortcomings by means of the Bible so that these may be rectified.

Having said that, I never lost faith in God, or in his inspired word, the Bible. I find the Bible my comfort in my daily life; I am comforted in prayer, and in thinking about the spiritual truths found in scripture. Perhaps this is a path you should try. For sure, I can never return to become a member of some church; I simply belong to Christ.

It is true that some things in the Bible need the assistance of others to understand. Ask if you have questions and make sure for yourself that what I say is from scripture.

Do not - be a fault finder with scripture but try to understand why, why not. Some issues are hard to understand from a human perspective. It can be fun to try to look with what kind of perspective God most likely has.

Try use sound logic and reasoning! Do things really make themselves. Is this universe we live in a cause and effect one? if Yes, then what caused it! Avoid empty reasoning.

If you have rejected God based on the flaws of humans, then you have not "reasoned Him away". You have rejected Him on the basis of a false and inconsistent premise.

The Bible is very, very clear that people are corrupted and fundamentally flawed and subject to weaknesses of character. That is the basis of our inherent need for a Savior. And that is why the Bible is further unambiguous that you can only trust Him, as humans are inherently unreliable. If your faith was shaken by "crooked churches, hypocrisy, and ignorance", then you had previously misapplied your faith to the wrong entities. Rather than restoring your trust in corrupted humans, you should redirect your trust to God alone.

Moe, how do you lose faith in God when you are the one who has reasoned Him away because of man-made scenarios like 'crooked churches, hypocrisy, and ignorance'? Looks like your 'faith' in God is built on very shaky ground indeed, and not on the solid Rock of Christ.

Your right, we let corrupt businesses take it over in some places, we let celebrities turn it into a joke and the powerful in Hollywood turn it into a corruption, we let academia reason away God's gift of The Lamb of Jesus Christ, and morals, and we let clergy and priest abuse the talented and run to the devil, when they should be winning people over for Christ and creating homes and jobs for people of every ilk, and we let the church judge people with mental illness when God taught us not to. But yes, there is a "Great Falling Away" and the church did it to itself, but it is also because soon King Lord Jesus Christ will be back soon. Just because there are bad Christians or Jews out there or any faith really, you make the person accountable and atone or compensate for their actions, words, and deeds, you don't punish the whole church and teach lies. God loves all of us. But you have to think of sin, as something God is deathly allergic to. That is why we have to be redeemed of Christ. That is why Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, then resurrected to find his people and to help us. Soon, someday he will be back to make things right, so much is happening so fast now, people need to become weary of what is happening and that he will return soon.

You cannot reason away what is there, but I suppose in your own mind you think that is how the world is. I feel for you in your state of self-rationalization, and I am sorry to think you have lived your life in such a way as not to know Christians, a true church, or even properly interpret Scriptures. Your question reads like a person who has been deserted and has responded reflexively in kind. I am not going to question your past dedication, or your knowledge of the Scriptures. Just know that the sovereignty of God is such that He chooses you, not you Him, and I truly hope for your sake that this will be revealed to you, as well as his loving grace.

I totally understand what you are saying. With all the hypocrisy in religion how can anyone have faith in God when you see what they do. Even Jesus called those religious leaders in his day Hypocrites because they were saying one thing but doing another. But Jesus did teach one true religion and that was from the Bible. There are people out there who follow what the Bible teaches. They are not hypocrites. They are not perfect but they try to do their best to follow what the Bible teaches. Email me and I'll tell you more.

It seems to me that the only way to start is to determine just what or who "God" is. If this cannot be done, then it's time to move on, since there's really nothing to have faith in, except perhaps for your own imagined concept. If something eventually presents itself along that line, you can always come back to that later.

There is more here that goes beyond your or my ego-minded concept of "God."

No one here seems to have any idea of what religion is. The way to restore faith in God is through the ancient practices. In the Bible (in the Book of Revelation), it mentions something significant. It says that the evidence (it uses the word, "witness") exists. Look at Chapter 3, verse 14. It refers to "the Amen." What does that mean? It's in fact a reference to the sound of "AUM" which is heard in very deep levels of meditation. Priests, ministers, monks, and nuns are not experts in religion. And modern-day Christianity has given religion a very bad name, so much so that there are now countless intellectuals who believe that "religion is bull____" as George Carlin used to say. He may have been "the thinking man's comic," but he knew nothing about religion. The way you get your faith back and achieve a degree of actual knowledge about religion and God is through the ancient practices of meditation and "pranayama" (life-force control). The Christian churches no longer know about these things. They've forgotten them so completely that some of them actually believe such practices to be "evil." That is how deeply their amnesia runs. Do you remember Oral Roberts? All he basically did was take money from his congregations. He lived like a king, but was NOT a "man of God." Far from it. He was a con artist. So with people like him, Jimmy Swaggart (who was caught going to hookers), and all the others who've been caught "red-handed," we can see why so many people lost interest in religion. But that was non-sensical. Just because those men were crooked doesn't mean that religion is invalid. I would strong suggest the book, "Autobiography Of A Yogi," by Paramhansa Yogananda. He was sent here from India in 1920 to restore religion to the American people. Their churches were no longer teaching as they should have been. He brought the ancient practices I've mentioned above. Religion is actually about achieving high altered states through which one can perceive the higher spiritual realms. No one knows this anymore, however. People in the USA think religion means going to church on Sunday and listening to a man in a costume preach. No. Real religion is far more than that. And it's up to each individual to find their way back to real religious practice. Because you won't find it in the Christian churches anymore. In fact, the ancient knowledge hasn't been in those churches for many centuries, thanks to the tampering of the Vatican. They changed and deleted much in the ancient scriptures. In the year 553, for example, they removed reincarnation ("transmigration of the soul") from the scriptures. Did they have the right or the authority to do that? NO! So a person has to find their way back because much of what Jesus taught is no longer in the Bible. That's because 18 years of His life are now missing, once again thanks to the Vatican theologians who didn't want it known that He had spent all of those years in India, Tibet, and Nepal studying with the yogis over there. Today, of course, there is an incredible amount of prejudice against meditation and the other teachings of those countries, but a few of us have found our way back to the ancient ways. Read that book I mentioned. Used copies can be found on Amazon.com ...

There is a scripture that comes to mind. James 4:8 where it says, "draw close to God, and he will draw close to you." Acts 17:27 notes that God wants people to look for Him and to search all around for him so that people can find Him. God is not far off from any of us. 2 Chronicles 16:9 is a very encouraging scripture it says, "The eyes of God go around looking in all the earth for people who are faithful to him so that he can make them strong." You can restore your faith with God by doing things such as praying. God invites us to draw close to Him through prayer. This is a way we can communicate with him. (Psalm 65:2)

Meditating and reading Gods word is another way we can strengthen our faith in God. This is a way that you can prove to yourself that God is real and that he cares about you. Prayerful meditation will help us to build an appreciation for Gods love and wisdom. (Joshua 1:8) Psalms 1:2,3 mentions that the love of Gods teaching makes us strong like a tree planted by streams of water. The tree produces fruit when it should, and the leaves never fall. Everything they do is successful. You can be like this tree. Don't give up.