I need help from people who deconverted from Christianity while married. (scrutiny, Kingdom)
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Therefore, it seems that you are admitting that, if it remains a requirement that we re-align ideologically, the only two ways to do so are the two I have already mentioned.
If it was my own marriage perhaps I'd try much harder to try to figure out a solution but generally, compromise would be involved in any solution.
That doesn't appear to be anything you're interested in so, no, I do not see any other solutions.
It is said that when one issues an ultimatum one has to be prepared to live with the consequences if the answer is no.
When it comes to religion, the only alignment needs to be that of mutual respect. It really sounds as if you don't respect her, and therein lays the problem. I'm not saying I've got it all figured out, but I fully support my husband following his beliefs because I know it's important to him. I proofread the devotionals he posts, plug his book, accompany him when he has to do a wedding or funeral, and politely bow my head when he prays for the meal. I don't believe a lick of it, but I appreciate the good he brings to other people. It's no different than the way he always checks if a restaurant has vegan options for me, even though he will most certainly be tucking into a steak.
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Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy
Again I ask - since it has been stated by both of us that we wish to be ideologically aligned - if you say it cannot happen via the two methods I have already posited, what is your suggestion for "option C"?
... I fully support my husband following his beliefs because I know it's important to him. I proofread the devotionals he posts, plug his book, accompany him when he has to do a wedding or funeral, and politely bow my head when he prays for the meal. I don't believe a lick of it, but I appreciate the good he brings to other people. It's no different than the way he always checks if a restaurant has vegan options for me, even though he will most certainly be tucking into a steak.
Good for you two! My late wife and I had the same sort of relationship. Neither of us was threatened or disgusted by the other's differing beliefs. I loved her for who she was, not what she believed. I recall in particular, she was enamored of the notion that because most people believe in an afterlife, there "must" be "something" to it. I found that stance baffling, and told her why I don't buy arguments from popularity, that it's only evidence that a lot of people have the same confirmation bias / desires / fears, etc. And she simply chose to believe it anyway, and so what. She was still the woman I married. And I simply chose to disbelieve it and so what, I was still the same man she had married. Our debates were uniformly friendly and respectful.
When your beliefs change, you are not transmuted into someone your spouse wouldn't recognize. And your spouse certainly isn't transformed into something different. Your perspective and understanding is all that has shifted. You can't punish someone else for that.
What is particularly baffling to me about the OP is that he once believed such things himself, so surely he would be understanding and compassionate about that -- of all people. I certainly could be understanding on that basis. I still haven't forgotten the magic of compartmentalization and how I could cordon things off from objective consideration in order to protect my faith.
What I think ends up happening for some personality types is that to have someone disagree with their (un)beliefs equates to personal annihilation to some degree or other. If you're sufficiently competitive or narcissistic or both, you treat these disagreements as zero sum games that can only have winners or losers, and you can't stand being the loser -- or the notion of leaving things alone -- or the concept of being happy rather than right.
It's okay. People do what they gotta do. Sometimes good advice comes back to mind much later, when they get tired of being right.
What you really mean is 100% Christian according to YOUR definition of Christianity, which is Bible inerrancy. You are well aware that only a certain subset of Christians believe the Bible is the infallible, direct Word Of God.
You no longer believe, but yet fundamentalist Christianity is still dictating the terms of whether you find SOMEONE ELSE'S faith acceptable or not?
If you want to end your marriage, man up and say so with the same pair with which you declared that you don't believe in God. What you're doing is dishonest and everyone can see right through it.
What you really mean is 100% Christian according to YOUR definition of Christianity, which is Bible inerrancy. You are well aware that only a certain subset of Christians believe the Bible is the infallible, direct Word Of God.
You no longer believe, but yet fundamentalist Christianity is still dictating the terms of whether you find SOMEONE ELSE'S faith acceptable or not?
While I don't agree with much of his approach, I do sympathize with the OP about this. This attitude was in itself a large part of why I broke away from the faith. As a funadmentalist, a biblical literalist I was taught and firmly believed that there are no "liberal Christians" or "open minded believers", just weak or immature Christians and imposters.This in or out, black or white mentality was so ingrained in me that when I realized I could no longer be a fundamentalist, my only option was leaving the faith all together. I tried to find a home in a less literal version of Christianity, but I just couldn't do it.
It has taken me years, and a lot of exposure to believers who are not literalists, who are not fundamentalists, to change this prejudice on my part. I still am not a believer, and not likely to become one, even a theologically liberal one, but I no longer have the same sense of confusion and incredulity when presented with that kind of belief.
In my case, there were no consequences to this blind spot. I could take my time and get used to the idea, but the OP is at a disadvantage here. He need to figure out how to make this adaptation quickly, or he will likely sacrifice his marriage to fundamentalism, even as he disbelieves. But I do sympathize, getting rid of that mindset is very, very hard.
I could take my time and get used to the idea, but the OP is at a disadvantage here. He need to figure out how to make this adaptation quickly, or he will likely sacrifice his marriage to fundamentalism, even as he disbelieves. But I do sympathize, getting rid of that mindset is very, very hard.
Very insightful post. I'll try to rep you, but you know how that goes around here.
I can testify to the same thing. To this day I don't see, other than intellectually and abstractly, what the appeal of liberal theism is. Either the Bible is the actual word of god or it's a bunch of bunk. It's true that I spent a year or two after leaving the faith, taking a look at other religions, looking for something to salvage out of the mess. But everything I encountered either was equally out of touch, or just, to me, "wish-washy" half-measures willing to regard, for instance, the Ten Commandments and the Ten Suggestions, the Bible as inspiring metaphor, god as a Distinct Possibility or perhaps an avuncular and slightly senile indulgent grandpa.
It may be that fundamentalism attracts and holds a certain kind of mentality, the kind that says, as the song goes, "with me it's all nor nuthin' / no half-way romance will do". I'm just as disillusioned with marriage, fatherhood, and apple pie as I am with theism. I am an idealist about these things. Looking at it from another angle: in order for these things to be compelling to me, they have to really live up to what I regard as their potential, and not mess around. Put up or shut up.
Of course at this distance from fundamentalism I have a lot better reasons to reject it than being personally disappointed in the whole thing, and life has largely beaten the idealism out of me. But I certainly can understand what you're talking about here, and I can empathize with the OP on the same basis.
When it comes to religion, the only alignment needs to be that of mutual respect. It really sounds as if you don't respect her, and therein lays the problem.
Right now we do indeed have a problem with mutual respect. I don't respect her thought processes because we have been over everything to the point where she has been unable to come up with a rational rebuttal to what I've been saying, she has been unable to develop her own argument FOR Christianity apart from what I've been saying, and she hasn't even been trying. I've spent the last three years researching this exhaustively. The number of nights I stayed up well past when I should have gone to bed, simply researching Christianity and theology and the like, is quite large. She, on the other hand, has never done any research of any kind that I have ever seen. So no, I do not respect her thoughts on this matter, due to her failing to meet any of those three conditions. If even ONE of them were met, I would most likely respect her thought process a lot more, even if I disagreed with it, because then at least it would be evident to me that she was doing her best to put her own mind behind what she's saying. Honestly, when I say I don't respect her thoughts on this matter, it's largely because she has very few thoughts on this matter. She has handled this like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Intentional ignorance is not worthy of respect.
And she doesn't respect my thoughts either. This has been evinced by the following two demonstrations:
1) Very often she takes the words I've said, and twists them into something they're not. For example, I have spent literally HOURS talking about the logical problems I have with Christianity, and how the scenarios which initially troubled me were so troubling because they violated what the Bible said. I've gone on and on and on about this. Yet she still thinks I left Christianity because I was mad at God. I have told her in no uncertain terms over the past year that I was only mad at God for a very short time until I recognized that the circumstances demonstrated that this god actually didn't exist. At that time my anger vanished, because one cannot be angry at something unreal. Yet the last time we got into this discussion, she vehemently insisted that it was because I was mad at God that I left Christianity.
2) She doesn't spend much, if any, time thinking about this. She'll categorically write me off as being wrong about it, but she won't produce any evidence, logic, nor even an attempt at reason, to convince me of why she finds me to be wrong. It boils down to "I don't know. You just are". (If that doesn't qualify as disrespect, taking everything I've said and disagreeing with it because she chooses to, not because she has any logical reason to disagree, I don't know what does!) That line of reasoning would not even win an elementary school level debate. To state another example, a week or so ago when last we got into this, I asked her a question which she said she was not prepared to answer at that time, and she had to think about it. I told her she could have all of the time she needed, as long as she didn't just sweep the question under the rug. That's the last I have heard from her about it. Just yesterday I caught her playing video games. She isn't thinking about that question I asked. She has totally forgotten about it. She hasn't even told me "I haven't forgotten about the question you asked me - I am actually still thinking about my answer".
And this problem of mutual respect is probably what's going to tear us apart, if anything does. Because, you see, the question I asked, which she claimed not to be able to answer right away, had to do with how she is going to handle me not wanting to raise our children in an environment where they will be indoctrinated with a belief system that I find illogical and untenable. Put simply, "how will you handle me not wanting the kids raised in church?". Now, I'm almost 35 and she is 30. In spite of... ahem... doing nothing to retard nor hinder the process of having children, she has not gotten pregnant in the whole four years we've been together. So it does seem likely that we won't have kids. But, I know my wife well enough to know that if she becomes convinced that we will not have kids naturally, she will want to try something else such as in-vitro fertilization or adoption. She has a very strong desire to have children, and in fact she dumped the guy she was dating prior to me because he told her he didn't want to have more kids (after initially hooking her by telling her he did).
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Originally Posted by Ms.Mathlete
I'm not saying I've got it all figured out, but I fully support my husband following his beliefs because I know it's important to him.
From what you said, it sounds to me like you're married to a minister. Naturally his beliefs are important to him - they underpin his livelihood! In my wife's case, not so much. She is a fair-weather Christian. She'll cuss with the best of 'em when she gets angry, I never hear nor see her pray, she never reads the Bible nor does any sort of visible devotional, etc. I really do think that her #1 fear is disappointing her family, as she has said in the past. That fear has played a leading role in many other situations in her life, and in spite of all of the efforts I have put forth to demonstrate to her that it is without foundation, the fear still exists. I've made her confront this fear multiple times and each time the outcome has been much more positive than she ever thought it would be. (It wasn't more positive than I thought it would be. I knew what'd happen.) But she clings to the fear anyway. Honestly I blame her family for this... they're not bad people but they do gossip a lot (she has said that she doesn't want to become a subject of their gossip) and some of them have demonstrated that they really don't know how to love.
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Originally Posted by mordant
Good for you two! My late wife and I had the same sort of relationship. Neither of us was threatened or disgusted by the other's differing beliefs. I loved her for who she was, not what she believed.
A person's religious beliefs often affect who they are and how they act. There's a reason why it's called a "worldview". I could see this being the case if there were no effect on the person's actions, but that's a rare case indeed.
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Originally Posted by mordant
When your beliefs change, you are not transmuted into someone your spouse wouldn't recognize. And your spouse certainly isn't transformed into something different. Your perspective and understanding is all that has shifted. You can't punish someone else for that.
We may be able to go through the rest of our lives like this if we never have children. But I do question her level of love for me when the following things hold true:
1) She didn't do anything to help me through my faith crisis. (In fact, she made it clear while I was in the midst of it that she didn't want to talk about these things because it'd likely damage her own faith.)
2) She defines "love" in an entirely baffling way. I don't even know how she defines it. She once said that "I love you" means "I would do anything for you", but that has proven untrue in practice. This, when compounded by how she still thinks God is loving even through what He permits or causes to befall people, makes me completely uncertain of what she means when she says she loves me.
3) She doesn't give me anywhere near the respect I would like to have, for my intelligence as well as the effort I have put forth on this particular issue. (In fact, she often falls short on respecting my intelligence in other ways and at other times too. I've lost count of how many times I've told her things like 'you must think I'm as dumb as a pile of bricks!". And that bothers me more than a little bit because it is written, on paper, as a report from a psychologist, that I have a genius-level IQ! She has no such report - neither of us knows what her IQ is - but I have never proven myself to be an idiot nor an ignoramus, and yet she does treat me that way more often than I deserve.)
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Originally Posted by mordant
What is particularly baffling to me about the OP is that he once believed such things himself, so surely he would be understanding and compassionate about that -- of all people.
There is one mitigating issue. My wife was there throughout the entirety of the issues that decimated my faith. She was a major player in the first one and she was right there with me the entire time, physically, during the second one.
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Originally Posted by mordant
I certainly could be understanding on that basis. I still haven't forgotten the magic of compartmentalization and how I could cordon things off from objective consideration in order to protect my faith.
Maybe, but for me it is "You were there, you saw the exact same things I saw, how in the heck do you still believe this?!"
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Originally Posted by mordant
What I think ends up happening for some personality types is that to have someone disagree with their (un)beliefs equates to personal annihilation to some degree or other. If you're sufficiently competitive or narcissistic or both, you treat these disagreements as zero sum games that can only have winners or losers, and you can't stand being the loser -- or the notion of leaving things alone -- or the concept of being happy rather than right.
Bingo. That's me. I've always been competitive and the report from the psychologist who diagnosed me with Asperger's also noted "narcissistic personality tendencies", though there was no diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. Of course I have narcissistic personality tendencies - I think this world would be a lot better off if everyone thought highly enough of themselves not to get into self-deprecating moods. We'd have far less suicides, far less crime, far less substance abuse, etc, because people would think "I am BETTER than this!". So I will readily agree with "narcissistic personality tendencies" on the grounds that they have quite a few positives.
I don't mind when someone disagrees with me. What I mind is a scenario like this: I state my case thoroughly, logically, and in detail, so as to produce what I consider to be an iron-clad case for whatever I am arguing for. The other person produces no evidence, logic, reason, etc... he/she merely says "you're wrong". Look - if you're going to disagree with me, especially when I have researched my standpoint and have buttressed my argument with all kinds of evidence and reasoning, I expect that you will present an equivalently researched and/or logically thought-out point of view. Whether we ultimately come to agreement or not may or may not matter... but at least I will give you respect no matter what, for having done what you can to bring an intelligent and lucid viewpoint to the table.
It was an intelligent and lucid viewpoint that started me on the way to becoming non-Christian. This friend of mine certainly disagreed with me on what I said... and oh, did I ever throw the Book at him, as well as logical reasoning. He calmly rebutted that with logical reasoning of his own. Each time one of us wrote an e-mail to the other, it was the length of a small book. He didn't write me off as being an ignorant fundie or anything like that - he presented his case intelligently and logically, just as I did. That's the way I like to disagree, and I never had anything but respect for him no matter how far apart our viewpoints were for a while.
This type of disagreement can only have a winner and a loser because there's really no good way to live and let live. If we have kids, she and I will fight constantly about how they're being raised. Mommy will tell Junior to say his prayers before going to bed and when Junior asks Daddy why Daddy doesn't pray, Daddy will say "because prayer never works and it is a waste of time". Then Junior will tell Mommy that Daddy said that and another big fight will ensue. Even if we don't have kids... she comes from a religious family. Should it ever happen that we are in charge of something which could be religious, such as a funeral, there we have another potential for argument. Situations are likely to come around, through which one of us gets really down. If it's me, and she tries to comfort me saying "God this" and "God that", I'm going to be repelled. If it's her, I won't be saying "God this" and "God that". No, it'll be all I can do to keep my mouth shut while thinking "this is happening to you because there is no god up there giving a crap about you". I don't even know what other possibilities there are. This is uncharted territory for me. That's why I was asking about what other people's experiences were.
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Originally Posted by mordant
It's okay. People do what they gotta do. Sometimes good advice comes back to mind much later, when they get tired of being right.
I don't know if that'll ever happen, because the only alternative to being right is being wrong. I hate being wrong far more than I like being right. Most of the time, I try to be right only because I hate being wrong - it's not because my ego needs the constant stroking of me looking in the mirror and seeing a dude who is always right.
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Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
Re this statement:
I want her to deconvert or be 100% Christian.
What you really mean is 100% Christian according to YOUR definition of Christianity, which is Bible inerrancy. You are well aware that only a certain subset of Christians believe the Bible is the infallible, direct Word Of God.
You no longer believe, but yet fundamentalist Christianity is still dictating the terms of whether you find SOMEONE ELSE'S faith acceptable or not?
The issue at hand is that Christianity cannot be defined in certain terms without assuming Bible inerrancy. If you do not make that assumption, now it becomes more of what I have termed "Myselfianity". When a person cherry-picks certain Bible passages to accept as word-for-word accurate as though it came straight from the mouth of God, and other Bible passages to reject as archaic, mistranslated, or in any other way no longer relevant, now it's not a standardized belief system anymore and it cannot be accurately termed "Christianity". Just as a class could not accurately be called "World History" if the teacher taught that half of the textbook was accurate and the other half was totally wrong (while the next teacher down the hall taught that a different set of pages in the textbook were right and the rest were wrong, and the next teacher had a third different set of pages that were right and wrong, etc), so can a belief system not accurately be called "Christianity" if it does not accept the Bible as being inerrant.
I can live with someone thinking that the Bible has errors and/or should not be taken literally. But at least call a spade a spade. When you alter a belief system, change its name. I am reminded of a lawsuit that caused a business name to be changed, in the town where my parents live. There is a type of yoga called Bikram Yoga, which was invented by a guy whose name I don't know. Anyway, a business opened up that was calling itself Bikram Yoga but yet was not teaching yoga exactly as the Bikram Yoga method prescribed. The representatives of the Bikram Yoga guy had no problem with the business remaining open and teaching yoga in its own way - just don't call it "Bikram Yoga"! To this day the business remains open, under a different name.
Without Bible inerrancy as a concrete standard for Christianity, a person's belief system cannot be called Christianity. Call it by its denominational name if you want - but don't call it Christianity!
And as for "MY" definition of Christianity, you should know that my wife doesn't have a definition of Christianity. I've tried that with her. Here's how it went, in perhaps paraphrased terminology which accurately reproduces the heart of the conversation:
Me: "What is Christianity, to you?"
Her: "Belief that Jesus died for your sins, and having accepted Him as your Lord and Savior."
Me: "Who is Jesus?"
Her: "The Son of God!"
Me: "How do you know?"
Her: "...........(silence for quite a while)............... okay, I DON'T know."
If you don't know something that basic to what is often termed "Christianity", you can't say what Christianity truly is. All you can do is say what you believe it is, and belief does not equal knowledge nor does it equal truth. Given that she said "I don't know" to my third question, her statement that Jesus is the Son of God is mere parroting back of what she has been told for her entire life by any of many different teachers and people... and it then follows that the same is true of what she said about the definition of Christianity.
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Originally Posted by mordant
If you want to end your marriage, man up and say so with the same pair with which you declared that you don't believe in God. What you're doing is dishonest and everyone can see right through it.
And you speak for everyone. If I weren't such a nice guy, I'd throw a few sarcastic remarks around right now because you just opened yourself up to a quantity of them numbering in the hundreds.
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Originally Posted by mordant
Very insightful post. I'll try to rep you, but you know how that goes around here.
I can testify to the same thing. To this day I don't see, other than intellectually and abstractly, what the appeal of liberal theism is. Either the Bible is the actual word of god or it's a bunch of bunk.
Exactly. This is the crux of the issue.
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Originally Posted by mordant
It's true that I spent a year or two after leaving the faith, taking a look at other religions, looking for something to salvage out of the mess. But everything I encountered either was equally out of touch, or just, to me, "wish-washy" half-measures willing to regard, for instance, the Ten Commandments and the Ten Suggestions, the Bible as inspiring metaphor, god as a Distinct Possibility or perhaps an avuncular and slightly senile indulgent grandpa.
"Avuncular" - ooo, a new word for me! I like it. Anyway, I still agree with this. It goes along with what I said before about "Myselfianity". People like to claim Christianity in America because we're sort of conditioned to believe, at least in this country, that a "Christian" is a "good person". So people will make up their own belief systems and then call them Christianity for that reason. No, not quite!
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Originally Posted by mordant
It may be that fundamentalism attracts and holds a certain kind of mentality, the kind that says, as the song goes, "with me it's all nor nuthin' / no half-way romance will do". I'm just as disillusioned with marriage, fatherhood, and apple pie as I am with theism. I am an idealist about these things. Looking at it from another angle: in order for these things to be compelling to me, they have to really live up to what I regard as their potential, and not mess around. Put up or shut up.
And it is for that reason that I left Christianity. If it couldn't live up to the Bible, then I would have to reduce my standards to "Myselfianity" in order to continue accepting it. That never works. You don't properly educate children by lowering the bar for success so far that nobody ever "FAILS" a test, an assignment, or a class.
Right now we do indeed have a problem with mutual respect. I don't respect her thought processes because we have been over everything to the point where she has been unable to come up with a rational rebuttal to what I've been saying, she has been unable to develop her own argument FOR Christianity apart from what I've been saying, and she hasn't even been trying. I've spent the last three years researching this exhaustively. The number of nights I stayed up well past when I should have gone to bed, simply researching Christianity and theology and the like, is quite large. She, on the other hand, has never done any research of any kind that I have ever seen. So no, I do not respect her thoughts on this matter, due to her failing to meet any of those three conditions. If even ONE of them were met, I would most likely respect her thought process a lot more, even if I disagreed with it, because then at least it would be evident to me that she was doing her best to put her own mind behind what she's saying. Honestly, when I say I don't respect her thoughts on this matter, it's largely because she has very few thoughts on this matter. She has handled this like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Intentional ignorance is not worthy of respect.
And she doesn't respect my thoughts either. This has been evinced by the following two demonstrations:
1) Very often she takes the words I've said, and twists them into something they're not. For example, I have spent literally HOURS talking about the logical problems I have with Christianity, and how the scenarios which initially troubled me were so troubling because they violated what the Bible said. I've gone on and on and on about this. Yet she still thinks I left Christianity because I was mad at God. I have told her in no uncertain terms over the past year that I was only mad at God for a very short time until I recognized that the circumstances demonstrated that this god actually didn't exist. At that time my anger vanished, because one cannot be angry at something unreal. Yet the last time we got into this discussion, she vehemently insisted that it was because I was mad at God that I left Christianity.
2) She doesn't spend much, if any, time thinking about this. She'll categorically write me off as being wrong about it, but she won't produce any evidence, logic, nor even an attempt at reason, to convince me of why she finds me to be wrong. It boils down to "I don't know. You just are". (If that doesn't qualify as disrespect, taking everything I've said and disagreeing with it because she chooses to, not because she has any logical reason to disagree, I don't know what does!) That line of reasoning would not even win an elementary school level debate. To state another example, a week or so ago when last we got into this, I asked her a question which she said she was not prepared to answer at that time, and she had to think about it. I told her she could have all of the time she needed, as long as she didn't just sweep the question under the rug. That's the last I have heard from her about it. Just yesterday I caught her playing video games. She isn't thinking about that question I asked. She has totally forgotten about it. She hasn't even told me "I haven't forgotten about the question you asked me - I am actually still thinking about my answer".
And this problem of mutual respect is probably what's going to tear us apart, if anything does. Because, you see, the question I asked, which she claimed not to be able to answer right away, had to do with how she is going to handle me not wanting to raise our children in an environment where they will be indoctrinated with a belief system that I find illogical and untenable. Put simply, "how will you handle me not wanting the kids raised in church?". Now, I'm almost 35 and she is 30. In spite of... ahem... doing nothing to retard nor hinder the process of having children, she has not gotten pregnant in the whole four years we've been together. So it does seem likely that we won't have kids. But, I know my wife well enough to know that if she becomes convinced that we will not have kids naturally, she will want to try something else such as in-vitro fertilization or adoption. She has a very strong desire to have children, and in fact she dumped the guy she was dating prior to me because he told her he didn't want to have more kids (after initially hooking her by telling her he did).
Aside from the potential conflict over raising children, what does any of this have to do with you? Her spirituality is something she needs to work out for herself, just as you did for yourself. There is no valid reason for trying to get her to believe as you do, especially when you are coming across as an angry atheist trying to prove christians wrong, and that's only going to push her further away. Drop it, live your life, and be a positive example of a non-believer.
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Originally Posted by RomaniGypsy
From what you said, it sounds to me like you're married to a minister. Naturally his beliefs are important to him - they underpin his livelihood! In my wife's case, not so much. She is a fair-weather Christian. She'll cuss with the best of 'em when she gets angry, I never hear nor see her pray, she never reads the Bible nor does any sort of visible devotional, etc. I really do think that her #1 fear is disappointing her family, as she has said in the past. That fear has played a leading role in many other situations in her life, and in spite of all of the efforts I have put forth to demonstrate to her that it is without foundation, the fear still exists. I've made her confront this fear multiple times and each time the outcome has been much more positive than she ever thought it would be. (It wasn't more positive than I thought it would be. I knew what'd happen.) But she clings to the fear anyway. Honestly I blame her family for this... they're not bad people but they do gossip a lot (she has said that she doesn't want to become a subject of their gossip) and some of them have demonstrated that they really don't know how to love.
My husband is minister (although he chooses not to work for a church anymore), but at the end of the day he is just a regular guy. He swears, has a few too many drinks now and then, leaves his underwear and sweaty socks on the floor, and has a Hungarian temper. To expect a level of perfection from a human being, just because of their professed religion, is unfair and is setting a person up for failure. My husband will be the first to admit that he needs god to keep himself in line; that's his deal and there is no need for me to undermine that or attempt to make him the folly in his beliefs.
Romani: I missed it the first time around that you have Aspergers. Now I understand your situation better, as my son and mother-in-law are both Aspies.
While I don't agree with much of his approach, I do sympathize with the OP about this. This attitude was in itself a large part of why I broke away from the faith. As a funadmentalist, a biblical literalist I was taught and firmly believed that there are no "liberal Christians" or "open minded believers", just weak or immature Christians and imposters.This in or out, black or white mentality was so ingrained in me that when I realized I could no longer be a fundamentalist, my only option was leaving the faith all together. I tried to find a home in a less literal version of Christianity, but I just couldn't do it.
It has taken me years, and a lot of exposure to believers who are not literalists, who are not fundamentalists, to change this prejudice on my part. I still am not a believer, and not likely to become one, even a theologically liberal one, but I no longer have the same sense of confusion and incredulity when presented with that kind of belief.
In my case, there were no consequences to this blind spot. I could take my time and get used to the idea, but the OP is at a disadvantage here. He need to figure out how to make this adaptation quickly, or he will likely sacrifice his marriage to fundamentalism, even as he disbelieves. But I do sympathize, getting rid of that mindset is very, very hard.
-NoCapo
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Very insightful post. I'll try to rep you, but you know how that goes around here.
I can testify to the same thing. To this day I don't see, other than intellectually and abstractly, what the appeal of liberal theism is. Either the Bible is the actual word of god or it's a bunch of bunk. It's true that I spent a year or two after leaving the faith, taking a look at other religions, looking for something to salvage out of the mess. But everything I encountered either was equally out of touch, or just, to me, "wish-washy" half-measures willing to regard, for instance, the Ten Commandments and the Ten Suggestions, the Bible as inspiring metaphor, god as a Distinct Possibility or perhaps an avuncular and slightly senile indulgent grandpa.
It may be that fundamentalism attracts and holds a certain kind of mentality, the kind that says, as the song goes, "with me it's all nor nuthin' / no half-way romance will do". I'm just as disillusioned with marriage, fatherhood, and apple pie as I am with theism. I am an idealist about these things. Looking at it from another angle: in order for these things to be compelling to me, they have to really live up to what I regard as their potential, and not mess around. Put up or shut up.
Of course at this distance from fundamentalism I have a lot better reasons to reject it than being personally disappointed in the whole thing, and life has largely beaten the idealism out of me. But I certainly can understand what you're talking about here, and I can empathize with the OP on the same basis.
Thank you both for your input on this. To this liberal believer, they are very interesting points of view from the former fundamentalist side.
Mordant, your perceptions made me snicker a bit--they are not my experience, but certainly an amusing take. And now that song from Oklahoma! will be stuck in my head for a couple of hours. Thanks a lot!
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