Don't you think there's quite a big conjencture at the heart of your view that this life we can at present percieve is the "actual" one?
Those with a belief in the immaterial or the eternity of the human soul (and this isn't limited to the Christian faith) may in fact view our presence in this material world as a transitory state, and whatever takes place outside it, freed from the constraints of material existence, as the "true life".
Unfortunately, we all need a frame of reference... so we pick one.
I have no illusions about the fact that moment-by-moment I make a choice about what is true. There is nothing that is provable. It's all a choice on the part of the observer, and we all make it based on whatever criteria we personally value. While there might potentially be some "ultimate reality" out there and some of us might be more right than others, we have no way to confirm or know what that truth is; like the tagline for the movie "Solaris" suggests, "There are no answers... just choices."
Anyway, there's something interesting that strikes me about your view of a potential deity, which is that you seek to impose your own terms of reference and values upon her/him/it and think that the deity needs to be amenable to your definition of what it "should" be about to be worthy of your belief. It makes you seem very distant, speculative, essentially unconvinced and quite skeptical.
We all do that, sweetie.
... just like I said above.
Except we sometimes have different criteria.
Note that I started out believing a particular faith (conservative/Baptist Christianity) but over the years used my intellect to widen my vision further until finally I saw that having a particular belief was just another choice since there's nothing that can be conclusive to prove its veracity over something else.
At that point, there IS nothing left except trying to figure out what your values are and then embracing life through your values.
I can certainly choose to buy into someone ELSE'S priorities and view of existence... but why the hell would I want to do that? If nothing can be proven to be true, at least now I'm a coherent person, a congruent person, with my inner and outer aligned. Before I was living a fractured existence, with an incongruent identity; I was a fake even by my own standards.
I think it would be different if we could conclusively say that a particular deity was provable and true, vs another. But we can't.
This puts you in a very different position from one who has a deep-rooted faith, because even the process of questioning it would in this case mean more that they sought to understand the true meaning behind the apparently contradictory information they had about that deity - to try to discern the will and purpose of God and make them more comprehensible.
Like I said, that's how I spent the first 20-25 years of my life. I was very devout, very sincere, very faithful... but very tormented by the inconsistencies.
At some point, where you're faced with increasing cognitive dissonance, you have to reevaluate and decide if your initial framework is actually wrong and you have to start from scratch.
So that is what I did. The old model was no longer salvageable IMO and at that point it takes an act of courage to scrap it, take shit from all the other people who now label you as an apostate, and start over.
In view of what you've said here, and a lot of other stuff I've seen you say elsewhere, I'm a little unsure why you bother holding on to the "Christian" part of your identity. You might be culturally and by background a Christian (perhaps this is why you hold on to it) but your own beliefs seem pretty much wholly agnostic at this stage. You haven't exactly rejected faith outright, but appear largely dismissive of its relevance to how you live now.
You're totally right in that the two can be at war at each other. I'm only human and I tend to flip around and around within them, back and forth. I think it's also pretty evident in my personality even on this forum, where I probably seem to swing between social compassion and detached self-reliance; people can't tell whether I'm T or F sometimes, it's hard to get a bead on me, I suppose. I think life can be viewed through both lenses simultaneously, although there might seem to be a radical difference between both views.
I can only suggest that you should read Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" series and see what you can glean from it. I read it for the first time when I was about twelve, but I reread the books every few years and they seem to open up more and more to me when I do so. It's the story about a leper who can't accept his fantasy world actually exists because his very life depends on retaining his coherence and sanity, yet he values the things in the Land and they grow to have meaning for him.
Anything of value in his life exists NOT in the world where he is a diseased and rejected leper, where his life is continuously at risk due to inadvertent physical harm he might cause to himself (since he can no longer feel things), where he is constantly judged by his peers for being diseased, it exists in this fantasy world that leaves him feeling alive and whole and connected.
In the end, he learns to walk between the poles of Belief and Unbelief and embrace both realities at once. Both are real; neither are real; but he can't abandon either. Ironically, there is also a Creator who is involved, but Covenant seems to become the Creator's proxy in the Land in a sense... he's autonomous and has power that can save or damn the earth.
Needless to say, the series had a profound impact on me. When all else fails, walk through the eye of the paradox...
