Dear John,
Sorry to hear about your loss of your father when you were earlier in life than happens to many. Was your monotheist background Christian or some other? Was your father's the same as yours? We both share something that I have found to be very common among those who either leave or distance themselves from God. It usually happens due to some traumatic or very negative experience. In my case I went to a parochial school that taught about God, but did not actually have the students read the scriptures. As a result I had been told that if I had a need, I should pray to God and he would help me. I assumed that meant he would give me what I asked for. I was only about 9 or 10 years old at that time, so I didn't think to try to read the scriptures by myself. When my parents got separated it was a very traumatic experience to me, so I prayed to God and asked him to bring them back together again. They actually did come back together for about a year during which my youngest brother was born, but then they got divorced, and even though I asked God to bring them together again he didn't do it. This caused me to doubt whether he existed or not. Looking back it seems like it would have been best to go to the scriptures and read them for evidence of God's existence, but that did not come to my mind at that time. Instead I went to science because I had always wanted to know how the world worked and I thought that I could look for evidence of God's existence there. In science it was the time of the steady state universe belief and living cells were considered to be bags containing protoplasm and cytoplasm and some strange unknown life force. If the universe always existed and life was that simple, it seemed that evolution (which was then as is now the popular belief of how all living creatures came into existence) made sense, so I tended to believe it.
As science advanced over the years and it became apparent that the universe had a beginning and was, therefore, created and living creatures were extremely complicated in structure, evolution made much less sense. During that time I gained access to scientific information that was not known by man that explains things like the causes for the various outcomes that are generated by matter particle interactions and explains the specific cause for the specific probability that each outcome will occur as it does, etc. This required that the universe would be structured in certain ways. By that time there had been adequate advancement in particle physics so that when I looked to see if that structure was evident I found that the available observational data supported that structure as existing. I found it interesting that man had completely ignored it.
That brings me to the second thing we share. I have noticed that the age range of 30 to 35 seems to be a period when people either leave or come to God in larger numbers than at other ages, at least in my experience. I was about 33 years old when I decided one night that it would be interesting to read some of the scriptures to see if they made any sense. I opened them to the last book because I had found that the end of a book often gives a good idea of what the book is about. I read the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ and to my surprise the structure of the universe that I had found to be necessary to explain things was already recorded in the scriptures. Next I started to read them from the beginning and found the same thing in the beginning of the book of Genesis. I could have considered it just a coincidence, but it looked too much like God had slowly prepared me over the years and gave me the information just at the time that the experimental observational data was there to support it and then he led me to open and read the scriptures just at the right time when I had gained and confirmed the information that would allow me to see and understand these things to show me that he exists and has the power and ability to make all these things work together with perfect timing. That plus the fact that the scriptures had been written over 2 thousand years earlier proved to me that they could not have been created by man because at that time man had none of the scientific information to allow anyone to be able to know of these structural details of the universe. Since then as I have read the complete scriptures, I have found much other information about things in this world and our lives in it about which science has only recently found the confirmation of their positive aspects, such as the use of olive oil, which has been recently found to have a good cholesterol balance of HDL to LDL compared to most of the oils that are currently most used by man for food production. Another example is the mention that in the beginning man was given to eat the fruits of tress and their nuts and again recent scientific findings show many benefits of eating these foods, etc. God tells us how we should live our lives in respect to him and others and recent scientific findings have shown that those who follow these ways tend to live longer, healthier, and happier lives than those who don't.
Although all of these things and others make for many confirmations that the scriptures were not created by man because man did not possess the supporting information at the time they were written, what I find most interesting is that in them God tells us why he made the universe and what part we have in his creation. It turns out that God is a Spirit and he is making a body for himself to live in. He made this creation to be the place where he is making his body. It is his body manufacturing plant, so to speak. His body is to fulfill all that he desires of it and is being made to last without end, so it is important to him that it be made to be perfect in all aspects. We have been given by him the ability to choose one of two possible overall choices that determines our place in his creation. We can either chose him in the way that he has provided for us to do in which case we are made to be members or parts of his body or choose someone or something else in which case he uses those who make this choice as part of the machinery he uses to produce his body members. Of course, once his body members have all been made, he will have no more need or use for this creation or the machinery that is part of it that was used to produce that body, so all of his motion that he used to make it will be reclaimed by him and it will thus be destroyed in the process. His body members, on the other hand, will be transferred to a new and better permanent creation and he will eternally live in them there.
Most other religions that I have looked at treat God as an impersonal and usually unintelligent force, as a vindictive dictator for whom man must continually sacrifice, or as a weak and desperate being who created us only so he could become man's servant or slave to give man anything that he desires and expects nothing from man in return. I find these concepts of God unrealistic and based on man's weaknesses and imperfections. Those who believe in a force type of God usually think that man will somehow learn to use that force and that man will essentially then become God. These people actually think of the one who created the universe as something less than a man to be controlled and used by man. Those who think of God as an evil dictator also think of God as if he was just a man and they realize that if a man had the power to create the universe and them, he would surely use that power to mistreat those under him in power. Those who think of God as their servant also desire to Be God themselves. They desire to completely reverse the relationship that God as our creator actually deserves. Only in the Christian scriptures is God shown to be an intelligent being who made this universe and us in it for his own reasonable and rational purpose, but his purpose shows that he loves man enough to create him and take the long period of time with man that is necessary to prepare him to become his perfect eternal body. Although it is not a perfect image because we are not perfect, the closest image that we have to this is the relationship that our spirit has with our own body. Our spirit generates all of our intents or purposes that we desire to fulfill. It will generally not have an intent that would be harmful to our body, but those that will be good for and pleasurable to both our spirit and our body. When our body members have needs they either send out signals to other body parts to directly fulfill them or send them out to our spirit through our soul which generates thoughts that our spirit can understand and then our spirit generates an intent to fulfill that need and sends it to our soul where thoughts are generated that our body members can understand. These thoughts are sent to our body members that can generate that which is necessary to fulfill the needs and those that can transport that which is needed to the member(s) that need it. Those body members then take care of the need. The body members give to each other according to the needs of each part and according to the thoughts sent to them by the soul. The soul sits in the middle as the mediator between the body and the spirit. It translates the messages from the body and sends the result to the spirit and it translates the messages from the spirit and sends them to the body. This is an image in the world that God has given us of our relationship with him. God is the Spirit, Christ Jesus is the mediator between God and man and man is his body. The reason that we are not perfect images of God is that in this world where God is teaching us how we are to behave so that we can all live together without end and not destroy one another and so that our lives can be joyful and fulfilling for all of us and also for God, he gives us examples of what happens when we behave contrary to what he teaches us. We, therefor, have examples like cancer, etc. that show what happens when body members either don't do what they need to do or try to take more than they need for themselves at the expense of other members, etc. He also gives us examples of what it would be like if he were to not love us as he does and instead would treat us badly or destroy us, such as body mutilations and suicide, etc. These examples generally are not pleasant to us, but are necessary in this life so we can see and learn why God asks us to do the things that he does and so we can fully realize just how bad the result would be if we don't do according to his will, since his will is what will work to allow us all to have life and have it more abundantly in continual love for one another without end in the world to come after this world is destroyed. This is just a short summary and there is so much to understand and I would like to keep going, but I don't want to give too much at a time because I have found in my life that if I receive too much all at once, I tend to lose concentration and then miss much of what is given, so I will stop for now. If there are any special questions or things that you need answered let me know and I will try to answer them. I don't claim to know everything myself yet though.
Sincerely,
Paul B.