This is not to say that I am now secular or renouncing Christianity. I am also not going to start signing people up for the Deists or Atheists club. Instead, I have forced myself to look critically at my life (which includes the drinking), and am starting to think that if I choose to be a Christian, it is an act of faith, and can be justified in no other way.
But, that's how it's always been. As a matter of fast, the salvation clause never goes beyond belief. "Whosoever believes in him..."
I have also found more comfort in the concept that this is it, one life, and then nada, versus the torn and conflicted person I had been. Between Biblical parables and the concepts of Heaven and Hell, the "afterlife" is a potentially scary and unknown place. When one already suffers from temporal crises, this can be a source of great stress.
That's something I don't understand. If a person is secure in their faith, why are they scared of the afterlife? (Notice how that question answers itself?)
In particular, IF you had secure faith, and IF you lived your life in accordance with that faith, how would it differ from a life lived as if there were no afterlife?