am not sure I agree with you CC- That Christ came down to deliver us from our sins, might recognize that we are flawed. That we have the ability to achieve a stage or grace, to worship as a community suggests that we are all the children of God.... if you want to go to the Christian ideal. I seriously doubt that most of us are capable of any long-term "unconditional love" that Christians consider divine or even to achieve a permanent sense of enlighenment. That doesn't mean we can't strive for it. And perhaps that's why, if you go with the Christian view, God sends down his only son to us.
That said, I remember Harlan Ellison’s story of the Deathbird, with its premise that maybe the serpent was the good guy, and that God is in insane dictator, and only at the end does man make peace.
Personally I have always had some questions- Book of Job, seems like a nasty test to pull on a man’s faith. And Judas was condemned to die by God? Those bits never sat well with me.
Fireblade- no one said this is easy. Fair enough, some folks might engage in this intellectual pursuit of ethics is difficult and often disappointing. But you didn't think it would be easy, did you. The reason why Maugham's book on an individual striving for enlightenment is called "the Razor's Edge" or why Christians use the "like a camel through the eye of needle"- suggests how difficult it is to pursue an ethical life.
Your sense of melancholia may have to do, as Bradylama sense, with an arrogant intellectualism (but then better an arrogant intellectualism than arrogantly stupidity?). Maybe the problem is arrogance. Or it could be an expectation of perfection for that which the world is not. My wife gets a bit of this from time to time.
You may want the world to fit your ideal. But you can't superimpose your vision of the world on what the world is. You can ask yourself the question "is this the best of all possible worlds" If you don't think so, maybe you have reason to be disappointed.
But that goes back to the question- are you responding to your circumstances or making changes in yourself?
Does everyone think about this stuff? Probably not. People are too busy, to concerned, have their lives to live. I don't think about this stuff as much as I used to- just to busy. People find habits, faiths, blueprints, whatever to make their lives more liveable. You can't blame for that. The right of people to live their lives as they see fit means that you may get disappointed (strangely that's the same basic rule that if you want to have a society where people can organize and speak or think freely, you have to live with the chance they may organize to put a bomb in your bus).
As for your own self-doubts about your motivation. The world is full of self-possessed and single minded leaders or would-be leaders who want to change the world. Some become extremists, others get defeated, some grow tired and fade away.
But ask yourself- are you better for having these doubts, fears, questions? Don't they put a check on your blind faith in a vision. Isn't the process of questioning not only your world but your own motivations also healthy and might prevent you from doing some stupid. Doubt, guilt, fears- are human emotions driven in by genetic change, perhaps to ensure our survival.
This reminds me of reading the Japanese documents about the high command and it's plans for war, when the Emperor says, essentially, "Wait, you're taking us to war and you're pretty sure we're going to lose? Are you all nuts?" And the rest of the staff ignores him because they are sure they are doing the right thing. What if the staff members had stepped back and said, "Wait this is going to lead to our own destruction. Maybe we need to reconsider this?"
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