God just wants to give us "tests" for his sake

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I am having these feelings that God just created this earth as a "test", so this sort of makes us like his slaves. Then we will be taken up to Heaven after we die if we have followed him exclusively, and torture and torment of Hell as the only alternative option if we don't choose to follow him. Hell is supposed to be a fiery place. I know Hell has been interpreted in different ways, but I'm not going to play speculation of/what. Heaven doesn't sound appealing either. I don't want this to look like I'm obsessing over one thing, but the church really teaches that we will live under the jealousy of God (king) and all exclusive relationships will be split apart and people who were single here for most or all of their lives will not be able to experience finding somebody special or any physical/romantic relationships for the rest of eternity. I hate having them twist and spin it into things like "we'll not miss anything we didn't experience up there". I just wish it would all go away, it is making me suffer and not giving me any hope.

I believe God is like a universal-wide dictator, and worse is that I don't know what to say at times. I just desire to be heard. I could never talk to God as if he is an all-benevolent creator-being anymore. I made up my belief about it because I got so sick of Christians wanting to spin my anxiety and despair into something all-"positive", and it doesn't appeal to me anymore and to some extent I am called heretic or idolator. I believe that God exists, but I don't see him as all good, he is malevolent, or still even more likely, he doesn't care either way.

I just want to give up, because I can't reason with it anymore. I think that the things people may say to appeal to my hope is only speculation anyway.

I have an INTJ personality type. Because of that I never accept anything as set in stone but look for the ultimate truth, test everything, consider everything and not accept anything at face value. So why shouldn't God apply the same standards to me. Why should he not test me to determine what kind of metal I am made from.

If mankind was cast out of paradise to toil on this planet with blood, sweat and tears; then I am not worried about heaven because I already got a taste of hell in the way I have been treated in this world.

So have I in the way, but neither really appeal to me.

I'm not saying this to be flippant, but why don't you investigate other theories as to the nature of God?

What you've written above I have heard before as a staple of mainstream religion. There are other theories outside of that scope.

If you could step away from what you've always been told and look at God without the concept of heaven and hell what would you write him as?

Well if we're being tested wouldn't that mean we made it into the sample group on our own merits?

Then, won't I be sort of telling myself things I don't actually believe in?

Without testing what you believe how are you sure you believe it? Some time ago I realized I don't believe in hell. I'm pretty agnostic about most religious thought but moreso where I see systems of negative reinforcement.

I genuinely believe that questioning one's faith can strengthen it. I like looking at things from different angles and asking, what if?

I may have misread your op. I seems you do believe in God, but you're not fond of his methods (as you've been taught them).

I'll tell you bit about my perspective. I don't think God micro-manage our lives. I was brought up by parents who never micro-manage my life. They would explain things to me or show me how to do them and expect me to learn and do the thing myself. I'm good at doing odd jobs around the house for this reason.

So I believe God is like that too. He gives us guidance, but allows us to do what we want with that advice. We make our own decisions and learn from them. I don't see them as tests. I see them as just dumb luck. Yes I'll accept responsibiliy for my own mistakes too. But some things happen just because I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Edit... you need to bear in mind here my family are mostly atheists so I have had to regularly question my faith because they would literally question it to my face. I think that was good. It keeps me on my toes and helps me really think about why I believe what I do. I've also developed my faith over time as I've grown up. I see things as less black and white in some areas now. I am more compassionate. And km more definite in others.

We don't know anything about God or heaven.....people who say they do are on something......

Heaven as the NT describes it sounds dreary. Full of NT centric activities.

Why does anyone even want to believe in such a god?

A god who loves everyone - but only if they're white, hetero, and Christian.

A god who covered most of the planet with water, but made it undrinkable to humans.

A god who punished a woman by making her experience the excruciating agony of childbirth... all because she just wanted some fruit!

And committed mass genocide with a global flood. But that's okay, because only one human and his family was good, the rest all deserved to die, including infants and small children and their parents.

And ruined a man's life by taking everything from him and giving him horrible diseases just to prove to Satan that the man wouldn't lose his faith.

AND... raped a married woman so she could give birth to his b@st@rd son, who would then later be horribly tortured and crucified.

Yeah, that just fills me with warm, fuzzy feelings... like hairy spiders are crawling around inside my heart.

Other that I don't know what poster above is getting at, it's besides my own point here. Why would shaking it off be really necessary? It's not "enough" to continue to believe in him, but still be mad at him? It's been driving me mad and is a source of my anxiety. Not all things I am anxious or fear right now have to do with religion per se.

I don't believe in God but I am spiritual so I believe in a something, a positive force, and sure it tests us but it's for OUR sake. I don't think that any God control us, WE control ourselves and I think that it's awful how church threatens with "hell" if you don't do this and that.

Whenever i'm in a bad place in life Ithank for the lesson it's teaching me and it might take years sometimes but I can ALWAYS look back later on and see that whatever I was going through it did indeed teach me SOMETHING. That's how we learn, life can't just be ups all the time as we'd take everything for granted and become very shallow people. I don't think that life is meant to be easy for anyone but we just need to find how to be satisfied anyway with what we have. No one has an easy life but it might just look like it from the outside.

I believe our souls live on after we die and we are reborn and with each life our souls grow wiser from the lessons we learn in each life and it's sort of like that movie where it keeps repeating the same day until he stops being selfish and does good for others -we need to find a way to live and feel pleased even with the downs everyone endures before we can get eternal peace and our souls can move on.

That's just my point of view though, but regardless of what you believe I think that it's important to take difficult times as lessons and see the bright side of them that way. You might need to look twice but you'll be able to see in what ways you've grown etc. from what you've gone through once you do. Use the hardships you've endured as strenghts because they are and a lot of people do exactly this that is why many successful people tell stories of hardship.