Theists- do you believe without evidence?

[Godscreated]

Well worry right on, I'm not close minded, you've decided that Ryantology believed in the same way as I do, just exactly how can you possibly know this. I know Christ in a way that will keep me from ever rejecting Him. Ryan reject Christ, so how does this make his belief the same as mine. The One Truth of the universe is where my knowledge of Christ comes from, so I've designated nothing, and if you had read all I stated you would have seen that I believe there is no hierarchy in Christianity unless God places one higher than another, and as far as I know i'm on a level or maybe lower with many others.
Tell me, why do you worry so much about how those who rejected Christ believed? I would think it would make you happy that their faith was not strong enough to hold to Christ.

I don't think I did believe in quite the same way as you did. I never took the Bible for literal fact. I treated much of it as metaphor. But, the way in which I believed made me certain, ten years ago, that I would never reject Christ. To see myself at 30 would have horrified me at 20.

The reason why I was Christian for as long as I was, was that I had never had my faith sufficiently challenged by the real world and real life. I never thought much about what sort of character God was, for those who mentored me in my church made a point not to focus much on that. It could just boil down you being indoctrinated more thoroughly and for much longer than I was. In any case, my exposure to reality brought all of my religious beliefs into question, and once that happened, I no longer feared analyzing my faith critically. It came to pass that I discovered a vast emptiness in the entire Christian message underneath the theology and apologetics I had accepted more or less without question. These are questions you have either never asked about your faith, out of ingrained devotion and fear of retribution from your god, or you might just be so convinced that you have the right answer that you feel it is a waste of time to find out for sure.

Either way, you are right. You believe in a mindless, robotic way, executing your programming no matter what, saying, thinking and doing exactly what you think God wants. I believed in a naive, accepting way, because people I respected told me this was the truth, but that could only last as long as my naivety held out. As reason is the enemy of faith, perhaps I was doomed all along while your faith would never be endangered.

But, you cannot say that you did it right and I did it wrong, just because you got the result you wanted, because I was looking for the right answer, more than the answer I wanted to be right (though, I did want that answer to be right). From God, I got no answer. So, either God refuses to answer anybody who might ask critical questions (even before those questions are asked), or he's just not there to answer anything. It's pretty obvious to me, now, which of those is the correct answer.

Ryan, thanks for sharing this, I was wondering why you changed your mind, would have asked but my asking would have brought out more distractions from others.
Your belief system and mine at a younger age were the same, after I turned 18 I left the church to explore the world and did for a very long time. I never found satisfaction in the world, every turn seemed self defeating, so I returned to church and was mentored by Christians that actually taught me to question. I did and at the end of it found God to be exactly who He says He is, my prayer life grew and I saw answers to prayer, things only God could answer. These answers were not what I had or was learning in church, they came because I was studying God's word for my relationship with God. My experiences with God have gone past what one could even imagine, the peace and joy that comes from God's love, answers to prayer on very specific questions, an understanding of scriptures and ect. it's be amazing to actually walk with God and experience reality through Him. So yes our development in Christianity took different directions, I finial choose to ask God and not always people, though God has worked through many of them to help my growth.