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I was raised in a devout Baptist family and rebelled against the religion and it's effects since age 15;

Along the way, I struggled with my own conflicts of "faith",
until I learned to separate the idea of god completely away from the idea of religion,
and learned to accept that god MIGHT exist,
but that doesn't mean, by any stretch,
that his parameters and nature are what humanity thinks they are.

But even long after I made these distinctions,
I continued to struggle with personal issues and family issues,
and my depression deepened and deepened and deepened....for decades.

One night I hit rock bottom.

In my utter despair, tapped-out of all emotional and mental strenth,
I, now an Agnostic of many years,
wept on the concrete floor of the basement I was in,
ready to hang myself with an extension cord from the wooden joists in the ceiling,
and took a leap of faith:

I cried till I was sick,

I confessed my lack of faith and begged His pardon,
I confessed my wretchedness and unworthiness,
and begged for His mercy, for faith, for guidance:
I want to believe in You, I want to find You;
I put myself into Thine Hands, work Thou Thine Will with me.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, I dragged myself up to my bed,
and cried myself to sleep.

I slept long and well.

I dreamed my normal, nonsensical dreams, along no particular path.

But just before waking,
my dreams took a very sudden and seemingly deliberate turn:

I still slept,
but I was dreaming in real time:
it was morning, and the sun creeping in around the edges of the window-blinds;
I dreamt I was in my own bed, in my own room.

Suddenly I felt a cutting sensation in my chest, both hot and cold at the same time,
and I looked at my own chest, in my dream, and saw it opening up,
a blue-white light emanating from within.

A steam-like wraith rose quickly out of the fissure, toward the ceiling,
and it seemed illuminated from within, as well,
and there was the definite scheme of a face visible:

I knew instantly it was Jesus.

He looked right at me, conscious, knowing, but emotionless and cold.

He looked me in the eye....and was gone.  In an instant.

My chest was cold, empty, open and dark.

There was no light left, save what came in around my bedroom window.

I woke up.

My hand flew to my chest, which, of course, was sound and normal,
and my room looked exactly as it had in my dream...it was morning, light was creeping in.

I sat up to consider.

I recalled the events of the previous evening;
I recalled my despair, that I had cracked and called out to god,
that I had Asked, Seeked, Knocked....

...and for the first time in my life, I seemed to have received a definite and real answer;
for the first time in my life, having taken a true leap of faith,
having prostrated myself before Jesus, having asked His mercy...

...and Jesus had replied by looking me in the eye and turning his back on me.

No comfort, no mercy, no illumination, no guidance.

He cut himself out of my heart, where perhaps he had resided since I was a little girl and invited Him there,
and left me an empty shell.

That was my own religious experience.

Now, I'm not as upset as you might think.

Certainly, having been raised all your life to believe something, even if you have walked away from it,
it is disquieting to have your only religious experience being one of being rejected by God, Himself,
when you flung yourself at His mercy.

But several things occurred to me, immediately:

1.  I didn't have a religious experience.
What I had was a lucid dream in which my own subconscious was telling me
that I had outgrown the need for this gobbledegook.

2.  I DID have an authentic experience of Jesus...but that's NOT to say it was also of GOD.
As I have previously hypothesized,
Jesus is no more the "son of god" than any of us are;
and indeed, may be nothing more than a demon or lower-echelon spirit,
(of which there may be many, the fallen old Greek and Roman and Egyptian gods also among them, for all we know)
trying to trick humanity, with a mix of truth and lies,
into paying attention to him and believing that he is something he isn't,
which gives him, as a demon, strength.

3.  Jesus IS the Son of God, God DID turn His back on me,
and I am either beyond redemption, or simply not worth redeeming.
(Which means God can't be as merciful and loving as the Bible says He is).

4.  I didn't have a religious experience.
What I had was a lucid dream in which my own subconscious was telling me
that I had outgrown the need for this gobbledegook.


So my question to the Christians is this:

Why would a truly loving, forgiving God shut His ears to such an earnest plea?
Does the Bible lie when it says Ask, Seek, Knock?

If it was the Devil deceiving me,
why oh why would God allow Satan to deceive me
at the point where I had made a leap of faith?

If God does, in fact, exist,
but this was merely the work of my own skeptical subconscious,
why again would God not overrule my subconscious and silence it,
and accept my previous night's confession of a lack of faith,
and plea for forgiveness, mercy, and for subsequent illumination?

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