I don’t reject faith at all. I can’t. Jesus Christ saved my life when I prayed to him and asked Him to. Since that time, He has been visibly active in my life in a number of ways and many times. For whatever reason, a reason I cannot figure out, He cares about me and wants me here for some purpose, because I should have been gone many times now.
Unfortunately, as far as religion goes, all of my experiences with it have been quite negative in as much as almost every overtly religious person that I have met has been evil. And they purposely veil themselves behind religion to gain access to good and trusting people for the purpose of getting whatever they can get from them. They literally used it as a disguise, and it worked.
I’m not saying that religion serves no purpose in society though, because it does. if I did not have the blessings of parents who took me to church as a child, I may not have known whom to pray to when the time for praying came, and I would have died.
But seeing this pattern with overtly religious people being evil occur fairly frequently jaded me on religion, and it seemed to me that it is a tool of man used to control other men. And it’s secondary purpose is money. I don’t think churches would exist if money didn’t exist, at least not today.
For me personally, I met Jesus at the bottom of a deep, dark pit that I dug with my own hands. There was no one else down there but me, and I asked Him to give me the Strength to pull myself up out of it, and He did, so I did.
Because of that circumstance, it became clear to me that I need no other person in order to love Jesus, and in order to be loved by Jesus. If I was the last person on this earth, I would not be alone, because He is there, in me, because one day I finally let Him in.
I’m sure that many would disagree with my outlook on that, but these are what my experiences taught me, so I must go with that. I generally keep my beliefs to myself, but if someone asks me do I believe, I tell them yes, and if they query me further, I’ll tell them why. but I am not interested in converting or convincing people or anything like that. We come to these revelations when we come to them, and some never do. It wasn’t time for them yet.
You answered the most important question for each of us - your focus is on Christ who is far above the failures of those who publicly profess yet fail to live the light. Sadly, many people do use a public profession of faith to further their own selfish sins. That has happened throughout history to include the time prior to the gift of Christ. We are all sinful yet those who fraudulently wear the cloak to take advantage of others do the worst damage.
However, no matter how bad others may do us in his name or their own, we must all strive to follow his direction in Matthew 22. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love one another after that. People fail - it is what we do, but I hope you stay with the first directive and don’t give up on the second. Best wishes!
One good thing about keeping Christ on His throne in your life is that while no living Christian is perfect, our common love of Christ does create a bond. I have lived in many places and I look for Him in the lives of others. They know Him. I can go into any church and worship and meet eternal brothers and sisters. They are my family. (I don’t talk to my family much, but I can whenever I want.)
On the other hand, stay vigilant because Satan is the great deceiver and infiltrates. I like Paul’s way of exposing him.
I recently read “Let God Be God” and it gave me the right view of human righteousness. Research “total depravity” and then “God is our righteousness” to see that even when we live a holy life, it is still God who gives us our breath and all righteousness is Him. Which is why He had to become human.