In spite of all my questions there are some things I believe, some things that I am finally convinced of.
I believe in God, even when I question his existence. I find myself praying, my heart turning towards God without conscious thought. God is part of my existence even on those days when he seems distant, silent, illogical, or unreal. I believe in God because he is there.
I believe God loves us all. And by that I don’t mean in a catch all, loves all of humanity 
sort of way. I mean he loves you and me, as individuals, as we are, as we were, as we will be. Loves us more than we understand because love is who he is.
I believe in God’s grace. That somehow, some way, something to do with Jesus, means we get to live a life with God, walking with him in garden in the cool of the day, working in his kingdom – which is here and now (or so Jesus said, and I believe in him as well.)I also believe this somehow effects eternity, but that the life we are living now is not just a waiting room, or a place where we practice for heaven. This is the place where we live life, in all its abundance.
I don’t know how it all works though. Oh yes, I know lots of theories about original sin, eternal conscious torment, justification by faith, predestination, double predestination, punishment, forgiveness, scapegoats, sacrifice, ransom, Christus Victor, appeasement of God’s wrath, rescue from the devil, universalism, limited atonement, annihilation, purgatory, and of course penal substitutionary atonement, which in one form or another tends to be the predominant view. The more I look, the more my questions grow and the more I am convinced that only God knows how it all works.
Here is just one of the questions I have about the classic view…
Adam sinned, and because of that we are all by nature sinners. We don’t have a choice, we don’t opt in. We are born with a propensity to sin.
Jesus is presented in the Bible as the second Adam, through whom we are all, or can all be, saved.
However, salvation requires an ‘opt in’.
Adam’s sin brings death and separation from God and is effective without the need for an opt in.
Jesus’s death brings salvation but is only effective when we opt in.
This makes out Adam’s sin to be stronger than Jesus’s death and resurrection.
How can that be?
I can’t answer that to my satisfaction, or not yet anyway. I know the answer is “it isn’t”, but obviously that doesn’t answer the real question.
I can’t explain how it all works, but I do believe in God’s love and grace, and I believe we will all be surprised by how wide, and how deep, and how long, and how high that love and grace are.