Truth.

Why so much introspection lately Elyse, dagnabbit?

It seems incredibly self-centered for you to  be so inner-directed. As if your thoughts and feelings are in any way ground-breaking.

I know they're not. And that these observations and internal dialogue have been felt by millions of others on various levels.

In speaking with my friend, let's call her Jo, I found that she had been experiencing serious life-altering changes in this past year. Physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Her level of introspection rivaled my own.

Jo had been raised as a very strict Christian 
She had a solid foundation, a core set of beliefs.
A spiritual family.
And a twinkling of doubt with each passing year.

Each flicker of doubt was then followed by intense guilt.
A dull nagging right at the rear parietal ridge.
It begged the question, "do I look deeper into my imperfect, doubt riddled brain? Or keep the status quo?"

What's going to happen if I find out information that potentially changes my entire view of life? 
It'd be like a gargantuan tear in a well constructed, thoughtfully crafted painting that had taken decades to create. With tender hands and a sentimental, open heart, these beliefs had been coddled and watered.
Delicately pruned.
Carefully protected like chicks under a hens wing.
Layers of thick, vibrant oil paint on canvas.
Now peeling. Ruined. Devastated.

I truly believe you can justify anything.
You can find support for almost any belief.
If you WANT to believe in something, you can coil carefully selected facts and figures, undulate ideas, curlicue and convolute until something that from a logical, black and white standpoint churns into a gray, soupy mess.

Pol Pot was able to convolute ideals to such an extent that he truly in his heart was able to justify the genocide of Khmer Rouge.
Adolf Hitler was able to take an obvious injustice: wrong:sin, that of torture and murder of innocent men, women and children, and helix these obviously horrific thoughts and then actions into something that was actually accepted by society.
There are people who believe in every fiber of their being that the earth is flat. Flat-Earthers. They use "science", "logic" and most importantly, they use their heavy, saturated hope that what they're preaching is in fact, fact.

So yes, people can very easily use scripture to support ideas of heaven, hell, the immortality of the soul, the trinity, and worse, the inferiority of women, judgment of others, slavery etc.

This is because when someone wants to believe in something desperately, they can easily research out of context information, compile it into a nice package, organized and manipulated beyond recognition if needed, to support what they hope to be true.

But what is truth?
Can intangible truth even be found?

That's not for me to say.