I don't really go on this board, but I figured I need help because I'm desperate. I don't need a specific denomination to help me, so whether ur Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or whatever feel free to reply. I am an Atheist but I don't want to be. I've prayed to God almost everyday, I go to Mass on Sunday, and I study Christian philosophy. I have tried various churches in my area and have settled on one I like. And I still cannot believe in God.
I'm not here to be smug about it, I desire with all my heart to believe in God but I just can't. The idea of God is just so alien to me I can't fathom how his existence could be possible, which is weird because when I was a kid I DID believe in God, in fact the idea of my God not existing wasn't even an option for me until I turned around 13 (I was raised Southern Baptist). Around when I turned 16 I became an angry Atheist but after not even a year I mellowed out and was just chill about it. I thought it was silly that people believed in God and that I was a big brain for not but even then I acknowledged there were smart and kind people who were religious. Everything was normal and routine for me
It wasn't until around 2017 that I became sympathetic to the ideas of religion again. I looked at religion not as a spiritual good but as good for communities and how I see churches help the poor, sick and starving, how I agreed with much of Catholic Social teaching and how for thousands of years the Church has been the bastion of Art and Education not just in the west but the entire Christian world. Eventually I tried dabbling into religion thinking it was neat. In 2018 I started going to various Churches in my city, Orthodox, Baptist, Catholic and a few others, to experiment and after a while I even identified as Christian despite not believing in God. I don't think the word I should use is LARPing, I didn't feel 'cool' doing this and I find Crusader twitter quite cringey. I wasn't becoming a Christian as a fashion statement I just wanted to be apart of the faith.
I believe what drew me to wanting religion is my current life, I'm in the military and hate it I feel like its holding back my life, I've given up wanting a gf, I feel as though I wasted my teenage years staying in my room all the time and I'm depressed that my life isn't exciting or interesting. But at the same time I don't think religion was purely an escape from my shitty life, I saw religion as a genuine good. But I can still not believe in God. Because so I continue to sin but I rarely feel guilty about it because God isn't real in my eyes. I want to be Christian, I want that feeling of comfort and nostalgia that I had as a child, I want to feel like I'm apart of a grand plan and that there is objective truth in this world. But I can't.
How can I believe in God? I don't care if you're Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, all of you believe in the same God that's all that matters to me for this particular crises I'm having. I don't think going to the correct church will help my retarded brain click to the idea of a deity that created everything.