Dear Xelios,
I am sorry that you haven't found what you are looking for.
This may help: think of yourself as soil in which something - truth - can grow. You seem to be earnest in your searching, so you'll agree with me this is a nice and neutral position to start from. No you aren't looking for God per se anymore (from a Christian perspective, God has chosen you and Jesus has found you - you need to nothing more than ask). What you are doing now is asking. If God doesn't answer, no problems ... you are still workable soil, nothing's changed.
Now remember: you can also choose who works your soil. What gets planted there, what doesn't. Jesus used the parable of the sower. Sometimes the soil is hard and unwielding, so nothing grows there for long. It's like sitting in science class at 3pm - you know Newton had discovered something, but you just aren't receptive to whatever it was. So you don't learn anything
If you let people plant there Nietsche, Bonhoeffer, Kant, whoever, you will either water their words, or weed them out. You are what you cling to. What did science provide that God couldn't? Evidence, because that is what you were looking for, not God. God knows this.
The law is there so that people have something to go by even if they don't know the judge. It's a good starting point, but won't take you far on its own merit (it will actually only mean anything after you have discovered the spirit of it - but we'll leave that for later). The law is inherent to humanity. Murder is bad, love is good, to oversimplify. There is no inbetween, because you have to deal with either or both every day of your life. This is what the Bible metaphorically calls "light" and "darkness". Everybody are aware of these concepts. Just watch Star Wars or read any fairy tale. Children grow up with them. But like you said, up until this point there is no 'need' for God.
You can judge for yourself what is good or bad and even when you don't, someone else has or will. Wherever you go, someone has authority. The president, for instance. Even if a democracy made the laws, someone has to enforce them. We have police because not everyone can be trusted to be a policeman. If everybody had the spirit (agenda) of a policeman, where would crime be? But now we have people who judge for us, and under them our actions are judged. Still with me?
It's no different in God's kingdom. We live in the world, we have a democratic right to choose and to make our own laws, but they are subject to God's will. Israel needed laws to guide their actions, so God gave them the ten commandments. In God's eyes, everybody are sinners, but through Jesus' eyes, everybody is saved. Therefore we can only be justified through Jesus. Jesus did all the work, there is nothing we can do more to save ourselves. So we don't do good works for our own sake anymore, but in Jesus' name.
We can do nothing more than what Jesus has already done for us.
Jesus said that the laws aren't enough. Nobody can ever follow them sufficiently. There will always be temptation to disobey them.
Romans 3:19Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
Does doing a crime make a country's law less valid? If the laws are corrupt, does that mean the people are corrupt? Only if they made the laws themselves. The ten commandments serve no man. It wasn't in anybody's interest to create them. The laws of Hammurabi already existed. Plato and Socrates had already envisioned ethics. Why more laws? The ten commandment tailored to ensure that love prevailed - they were the letter of the law, but love was the spirit of it.
Even the ten commandments can be used as a substitute for love, or for God. What happens then? People interpret it to justify their actions. The law is dead. Only the spirit of it gives it life. When Jesus died, the Holy Spirit was sent to earth to give us life. "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
Gal.2:17"If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! 18If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. 19For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
You can find everyhting you seek somewhere else. Except one thing. God said that we have been judged by our own laws. People murder, steal and destroy and at the same time ask why God lets it happen. How hypocritical can you be? God "let people happen", and Jesus saved our immortal souls. People choose to look at their bodies as the law, that which they can see. Jesus said our bodies were already dead. The life we lead now is one of spirit, and the implication is that we need to apply the spirit of the law, not stare ourselves blind against the law anymore. The visible world is decaying...
We can't bring God down to our level in order to understand Him, and we can't lift ourselves up to His level by our good works.
It is by grace alone that we were saved. Our faith and hope is in Jesus, not ourselves. Anything we try do to on our own merit only discredits the grace we have received, even though it can't reduce it. If you rely completely on yourself, you are left to the law, and if you reject the law, you also reject the lawgiver. If you reject a country's laws, you're an outlaw. You cannot be loved if you reject love. The law of the world is selfishness and power. The norm is lawlessness and hate. All of this I reject, and will reject even under penalty of death. That is what i call living. I am at God's mercy, and am glad He is invisible, because I don't want to be judged by the visible. Anything visible has flaws - either in its appearance or in its application. An invisible God has no flaws, cannot grow old or die.
"... faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?" Faith without deeds is useless, and deeds without faith have no meaning. It is empty because it has no love outside yourself, and no hope beyond yourself. That's when you reject the message of the Bible and instead try to be "good" on your own. Good for what, for what reason other than selfishness? Nothing wrong with selfishness - if you want to die alone. Nothing wrong with empty love - if you can live with it.
"James 2:26As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." Faith is the spirit, deeds are the body. Both are necessary, but only one gains immortality.