Losing My Religion

Thanks to all of you who commented on my last post. Obviously these have been a strange few months. My wife has returned and is better for what we have been through.

Her mother, as I suspected, was behind her leaving me. The woman never completely liked me and once it became known I was withdrawing from church activities she became more colder than ever. To her, an utter fundamentalist, church is everything. She has no time for those who have 'turned from the faith' - even to go to another church. We are right, we have the only true interpretation. If the Methodists had their doctrine right, they'd be with us, so they must be heretics.

It's people like her who make Christianity look so silly to outsiders. My wife eventually gave into the pressure she put on her. How I wish I had listed to the advice an older man in the church gave me when we married ("Move at least a hundred miles from your mother-in-law and block incoming calls"). Enough about her.
I asked my wife away for a weekend, in early July. We stayed at a beautiful cottage-turned-B&B and spent a long time talking. Her fears are of isolation in a small, fundamentalist community. What is worse - to be married in isolation or to leave your marriage but have company? Like me, she has doubts but hers are over the control-freakery in our church.

We enjoyed dinner in a restaurant where nobody knew us or could see the bottle of wine on the table. No worries about being disciplined by the elders (chief bullies) for something a lot of us do in our own homes.

And we went to church. Not a fundamentalist church but a group of ordinary decent people who love Christ, love their neighbours and want to live out his teachings without being a closed-off sect. They seemed so joyful! Maybe this is what we had been missing. I still have questions but sitting beside me was a Biomedical lecturer who, like us was on holiday. He was an interesting man to talk to and can accomodate evolution into his faith. To him, Genesis represents a parable - of man's creation and man's pride ruining it. Our knowledge, unchecked, is incomplete and greed wrecks it for everyone. He made sense.

We went home with a lot to think about. My wife seemed glad to be among people who could be ordinary decent Christians without long skirts or long hair. Her awakening when we returned home (to our home) was symbolised when she went to a hairdressers and returned with short, dyed hair. We have had no contact with her parents for weeks and both feel better for it!

I'm glad my decision to ask questions has moved something in her. We are going to church - a different church from the one we grew up in. Like the one on holiday, there is a genuine warmth to the people without legalism and rules being everything to them.

I still have questions, but everything is looking sunnier.

In the past couple of weeks, I have stepped down from my remaining church reponsibilities. Youth club has ended for the year and I have given them plenty of notice to replace me. Out of respect for people I still love dearly, I have partially fudged the issue and cited 'personal issues to do with my faith'. Those who know me better can work the rest out.

More worrying is my wife's decision to move in with her parents. Two weeks ago I arrived home to a house that is without the one person who made it a home. She feels totally betrayed - that everything that made me who I am and everything that defined her husband has gone. She wants a divorce.  For her, I have turned my back on everything important.

I still love her dearly and am sorry she has reacted this way and would gladly have her back if she came to her senses. I'm sorry she cannot see I am still the person she married, though eight years older and greyer. With hindsight, should I have kept quiet for a lifetime but have a secure place in our community and family?

Good grief - what a debate my last post sparked!

A question then:

The Universe is very complicated, therefore all the more need for God(s) as something as complicated as the Universe could not arise by chance.

By definition, God must be more complex than the Universe.

By definition, God must be far too complex to arise by chance or to simply 'exist'.  

Therefore, the Universe does not need God in order to exist and God is simply too complex to exist 'by chance'.

Therefore, God does not exist.  QED.

(apologies to, S. Harris, R. Dawkins, D.N. Adams, et al)

Your turn...

 

Thanks all for your comments.

My wife's anger towards my religious views increases - outwardly, anyway. I am a traitor and not the man she married. She can't understand why I didn't tell her of my doubts much sooner. I did try - only being from a traditional, we-are-right, everyone-else-is-wrong background, the conversation didn't go far. Imagine it like this:

"Do you think the world is around 3 Billion years old?"
"No - Bible says much younger."

"Isn't it amazing how all the species evolved?"
"They didn't - Bible says so."

A few things she has said make it seem like she is questioning things too - but is fundy-in-denial, like me once.

In this one thing, she is amazingly unquestioning. So many people around us are too. At work a few days ago we were discussing the age of the universe and stars, while supposedly programming. For mentioning Billions of years, I was accused without hesitation of being an Atheist. I said, God could have taken his time - but, of course, was reminded it all happened in 7 days.

There are two main types of religious people: those who accept whatever they were told since childhood, without questioning it and those who have thought about their religion in relaiton to other philosophies and have decided theirs is worth sticking with.

I have no problem with the second type - I count myself among them, sort of, when I'm feeling like I believe in God.

The first type - well, why would you base your life on something you have taken for granted?  What makes your priest/church any more right than mine?

I have caught myself wondering, do people who believe religion without question fall into the following groups:

• They believe in Santa for much longer than normal as children (and still hope to hear sleighbells, at 30 years of age);
• They accept the tooth fairy until much later than normal;
• They have difficulty accepting professional wrestling is fake (well, it looks real, doesn't it?).