I could say some of us have been brave enough to ask the truly difficult, soul-shattering questions...and kept asking them...and kept asking them while our lifelong world-view turned upside down and inside out. At the end we stood alone and shivering in an entirely different Universe than what we were taught about as children. But then took a step. All on our own. And another. Then another. Then we ran, and learned. And found ourselves truly free in a wild and magnificent world.
This is clearly from the point of view of someone starting out in a Christian family though. Some of us who weren't all that immersed in the Christian worldview, if at all, also did some heavy thinking and question-asking, but we were already in the upside-down world and already explored it and at least some of us would have liked to find an alternative. I myself didn't know I was looking for an alternative but I do remember the sense of discovering that the world I was living in was upside-down so it's interesting you chose that metaphor.
Anyway I wasn't looking for God. Oh off and on I'd wondered but came up against a blank wall. I was aware of the psychobabble notions of God but there's no reality there. It never would have occurred to me to consider traditional Christianity as a source of answers. The question couldn't even occur to me. I was imbued with modern secularist sometimes pseudospiritualized concepts that were all dead ends. I don't think I had a coherent worldview, except maybe some pieces of Christianized western civilization stuck in odd places in my head, among the atheist bits and the pagan bits and the totally inchoate bits. That all came together for me eventually, after God found me.
I gather you were about as deep as one can get into traditional Christianity, but it makes me wonder, questions like Do you know you were born again? How do you know? Did you have one image of God for some period of time and then a completely other image of God? Did you go from loving God to hating him when your image changed, or how would you put that? I find it hard to understand going from belief to disbelief based on your apprehension that God was different than you'd thought.
I know I can't lose my belief/faith. I think it has something to do with having come to it from the other direction than you did, but I don't think I could exactly say why.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.