My spiritual journey: A dim enlightenment

As I got into reading more and studying more about religion, and Christianity in particular, I saw a dichotomy in the religious world. This was when I was in college, and just starting to see the whole wide world out there, and all the things that could be studied.
That included the Bible and religious literature.
It seemed to me the scriptures were about love and peace, about having a relationship with God. It seemed like religion - Christianity - was more about following rules.
By rules, I mean the rules of religion, not rules found in the bible. The scriptural rules are pretty clear. Don't steal, hurt others, avoid sexual sins and such. The church rules were different. Things like length of hair, whether you drank alcohol or smoked, seemed to be a big deal in a lot of the churches. There were also rules about music that some followed.
And then I read in the New Testament, in the gospels, about how Jesus was always getting on the religious people for making religion about rules and not about following God.
What really didn't make sense to me was what actually happened when you bought into the rules scenario. On one side you had those that were fairly blatant hypocrites who claimed to follow the rules but really didn't. On the other hand, were a more graceful bunch, who said you just had to try as hard as you could, and while you would fail that would be good enough.
There were those that claimed they did follow the rules and if you missed just one you lost your salvation and would go to hell immediately. I never took the third group very seriously. I did not approve of the first group so by my default was that second group. Just try hard as you can and that will be enough. Well it wasn't enough and I didn't like it, but it was the least objectionable of the options I was aware of at the time.
Not believing in God was not an option. I knew people that did not. But I remembered the dreams of my youth. I remembered a rainbow river where I met with God before I had even heard of god. As I have said, I knew about God before I ever saw a book or knew how to read.
But figuring out just what that meant, and what I should do about it, was hard.  I found very few people who even understood my questions.
Those things became a distant memory, and I think I was actually distracted by academia. Learning about God, the bible, theology and such, was very interesting. It was also fun to "defend" the faith
and my theology. It became a convenient place to hide. I put my questions away and went with the flow for many years.