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cbayer

(146,218 posts)
Sat Dec 27, 2014, 11:29 AM Dec 2014

What It's Like To Marry An Atheist When You Believe In God

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yourtango/what-its-really-like-to-m_b_6373416.html

Posted: 12/26/2014 3:38 pm EST Updated: 12/26/2014 3:59 pm EST

By Cecily Kellogg for YourTango.

When I was a kid, my mother and I joined a very large "non-denominational" Christian Church, one of the earliest versions of the Mega Churches that exist today. It was a very happy place. I was in the children's choir, the community was lovely, and we sang from a song book with drawings of long-haired hippies.

Everything was great until politics began to creep in and the church began hosting speakers like Jerry Falwell, the ultraconservative pastor and political pundit. My liberal feminist mother couldn't take it and we switched to a progressive Methodist church instead, a return to her childhood religious roots. While I don't feel like I had a particularly religious upbringing, I clearly did. As an adult, I'd place my hand on the outside of the plane while boarding and pray that the "sacred blood of our Lord Jesus Christ" would protect the plane and passengers -- and I believed with my whole heart that it would work (since I haven't been involved in a plane crash, I guess it did).

Eventually, I stopped being a Christian. I flirted with Tarot Cards and Paganism. I dumped the idea of a male God and instead prayed to the pagan concept of the Goddess for years. I abandoned all thoughts of God in my twenties, until it became clear that I needed to be sober. Recovery meetings are spiritual (not religious) and at that point I settled on a God-centric but non-Christian spirituality that worked perfectly for me. Then some bad things happened in my life -- infertility and third trimester pregnancy loss -- and God and I broke up for a while. But in my grief I found myself drifting into another liberal Methodist Church, and I found solace there for many years.

This was a tough time for my husband. He grew up without much religious exposure, although his father was a "spiritual seeker," dabbling in everything before returning to the Catholic Church. When we got sober, my husband tried to find a spirituality that he could accept, but today he's quite happily a staunch agnostic or, as he calls himself, "aspiritual." Throughout our twenty-two year relationship, he's viewed most of my spiritual explorations kindly, supporting me as much as he could. But when I returned to my childhood church, he struggled -- just like I struggled when he gave up all attempts at spirituality around the same time. But we made it work.

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What It's Like To Marry An Atheist When You Believe In God (Original Post) cbayer Dec 2014 OP
A-typical. AtheistCrusader Dec 2014 #1
I can only imagine; but since each are religions it should not be impossible. Sweeney Dec 2014 #2

AtheistCrusader

(33,982 posts)
1. A-typical.
Sat Dec 27, 2014, 12:34 PM
Dec 2014

My wife and I have talked about it once. Just like politics, (I refuse to examine her ballot when she asks for political advice, because my father used to control my mother's vote) we don't talk about religion, she does her thing and I do mine.

Its one of those areas of a relationship that for us, requires no teamwork.

Sweeney

(505 posts)
2. I can only imagine; but since each are religions it should not be impossible.
Sat Dec 27, 2014, 02:28 PM
Dec 2014

The less you rely on faith, and the more you rely on fact the better off you will generally be. Belief by itself is harmless. When people feel faith- which is only a mask of ignorance- means more than knowledge, and that faith grants them certain knowledge when no knowledge is certain- there will be conflict. Look at what we are. We are like god's compared to people of the past; and yet, what do we know? Isn't knowledge our sole advantage in life, and what do we know? It is not knowledge that kills. But ignorance, in support of faith, certainly does kill.

Can we not judge the tree by its fruit? It is not that science is all that much better, but at least Oppenheimer could admit that he had blood on his hands while the president who ordered the bomb dropped banned him from the White House. Faith is not the problem, but no one believes in God who does not swallow some dogma and doctrine whole. Whoever eats a banana with the peel could be a true believer. Winnow the grain. Shuck the corn. before trying to find the cosmic God, one capable of making this vast illusion; first get beyond those who want to make God do their will, perform on command, and do parlor tricks.

My God is great, and greater still. I would sooner deny all of reality than deny some intelligence behind it. This life is simply too perfect. And even the people who make it dangerous with their petty jealous god are part of the wonder of it all.

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