I have been applying this strategy to Christianity as of late, and I feel like I have hit a wall. I thought that I might as well cast a line out to the forum community and see if anyone here has any insight.
Briefly about me, I was raised a Christian but lost my faith as a young teen. As an adolescent, I transferred my old faith in Christ into the secular faith in "Revolution." While I still hold to the same basic political worldview, I have come to realize that political philosophy is no substitute for my spiritual needs. And so, I find myself straining towards the Faith of my youth.
I want to believe that Christ died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected so that we might know eternal life, but try as I might that phrase does not mean anything to me. And when I pray, or the read the bible, or go to church, I cannot honestly say that I feel anything. Instead, I find myself as lonely and adrift as ever.
It's not uncommon.
To be slightly 'edgy' here, faith because of a need for personal fulfillment is 'selfish'. That doesn't make it either
bad or suspect, but if you want to feel something, because you want personal benefit from that feeling then that's why you want to 'feel faith'. For some, that can overlap with treating people or situations differently than you otherwise would in order to maintain a certain...purity in that feeling. Even if it's conflicting.
What's harder is sustaining the personal or communal aesthetics and practice of faith when there's nothing in it, or trying to trick yourself that there is. I know because that's pretty much what I did until there was a point I thought 'no, this is nothing'. It got too tiring, too conflicting and too psychologically straining to pretend in my early twenties what I pretended after communion when I was seven.
Now it could be that there's an pull to 'try on' something familiar, but maybe you could find fulfillment from a different faith or spirituality?
