Vicar Philip

The proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan last night. My wife took my 13-year old son to a buddy's house to spend the night, and whether she drilled him or it just came up, he told her that I had spoken to him about my beliefs. When she got home, before she came in the house she asked my 10-year old son if I had spoken to him, which I had. I haven't told him everything, but I did say to think what he wants to, not what he's told. So she marched me up to the bedroom and we had it out.

During this "conversation," I reiterated that I was their father too, and that my opinions should count for something. Apparently, since her Christian opinion is the only "right" one, I am prohibited from expressing what I think. I think that is utter bullshit, and I'm quite confident that any counselor we go to will tell her the same thing.

Towards the end I'd had enough, and said, "So this must be how the Indian girl felt, that her opinion didn't matter." That blew a fuse. She told me she hated me several times, and couldn't believe how evil I was. Yeah, yeah. She had to go to work, so we didn't speak again until this morning.

I did some "soul"-searching last night, and decided I really don't want to lose my wife and kids. Divorce is a very messy proposition with four kids the ages mine are, not to mention the financial implications. So I told her that I would agree to go to this church if she would drop the divorce threats. I told her not to expect me to believe, or to keep my mouth shut. If there is something I don't agree with or that I question, I will damn well say something. She seems OK with that.

So we're at a tentative truce right now. I hope to hell so, I can't take all this stress. It's starting to affect my job performance. I hope you guys don't think I've totally sold out, because I still don't believe, and I have not agreed to not tell the kids. However, I do agree with Intensity that it might not be real appropriate to discuss this stuff with them right now. Let them research what Christianity has to offer, consider how I think, and let them decide.

Regardless of what happens, I want to thank each and everyone of you who have taken the time to respond to me. It says a lot about your character. One thing that tremendously impresses me about "Atheists" in general is our open-mindedness and willingness to discuss anything out in the open. Thank you for opening my eyes.

Darren

Darwin's Finch

Darren: I've been following this thread for a few days and can't believe how quickly your situation deteriorated. I'm glad that you have reached some kind of truce, but I'm far from sanguine that this will be the end of it, even if you regularly attend this church. It sounds like your wife intends to indoctrinate your kids at all costs, and you will have no choice but to stand up for your views.

Just a thought, but why not give her what she wants? Thoroughly expose your children to the Bible. Not just the feel-good shit that Hallmark Christians like to talk about but also the monstrous cruelty, the irrationality and anti-intellectualism, the unbelievable tales of talking asses and resurrected men, etc. It sounds like you have bright kids; they will be able to sort out for themselves how much nonsense they are prepared to accept. Your willingness to dispassionately examine with them something you personally don't believe will go far toward teaching them respect for tolerance, ideas, reason and the importance of independently weighing evidence -- things for which your wife seems to have little regard.

I'm sure that many people at II deconverted precisely because they took the Bible seriously and found it wanting.

AbbyNormal

I've been following this thread with interest and have left the counseling to those more insightful than I. My concern here is the word tentative. You'll be at church now, great, but the division in your beliefs and how those beliefs affect how you raise your children, etc, are still there. They haven't been adequately addressed. You've cured a symptom, but not the problem.
Another post suggested marriage counselling. That may be an excellent idea. A third party with no emotional stake in the relationship and no bias can be a tremendous help. The counsellor can act as an unbiased mediator, helping to keep a civilized and constructive discussion on course.
Just my thoughts. Keep us posted.

BadBadBad

Helen, you did say it's not the end of the world for him to go to church. What you didn't say, again, is that it's not the end of the world for her miss going to church. It's certainly not the end of the world for her to go without her husband.

For the wife, I think you have some good theistic and wifely advice, for example, divorce shouldn't be an option. For example, I think it was you that gave the verses about wives setting the good christian example for the atheist husband and not divorcing him if he will accept her. For the husband, you have some good marriage advice, but bad theistic advice. Go to the church for marriage counselling? Go to church? Absolutely, let the wife take the kids for some good Baptist brainwashing? No thanks.

You continue to put out an idealistic viewpoint that I bet everyone else here chokes on when they read it. You're doing it with exactly the same kind of righteous authority that we are here venting about. Where do you go to church? What christians have you met? What ministers have you dealt with? I don't think many people here have had the same type of experiences. You're looking at christianity through rosy glasses.

X-xian, I can tell you first hand how this discussion goes over via e-mail. Boooom!!! I wish I could pull back a couple that really stirred the flames, even though that wasn't my intention.

Don't give into the divorce threat. My wife and I had a big discussion about that last night. That divorce threat is totally unfair. It's not going to change anything by you going to church. You'll be be giving into the divorce threat and implicitly accepting the terms of the threat. Plus you'll be accepting her righteous position that you're obligated to go. When you stop going, she'll claim righteous justification to move on to the agreed consequences.

I had a very interesting discussion about the divorce threat. Basically, I demonstrated what a hypocrite she is being. She claims I should live up to bible doctrine and believe in God. Well, I will when you will. She's going to completely reject the volumes of verses that define her role in society and in a marriage. That's a rejection of almost everything the bible says about what her life here on earth is supposed to be about. I just reject a little more.

She says "well, I'm a sinner." Well, strike the euphemism "sinner" and replace with the no spin hypocrite! If you can reject what it says about being a woman and wife, why not reject what it says about going to church and being a parent. You're still a sinner. You're still saved. You're kids still get the same free choice you keep talking about. Plus, you'd be complying with the verses that compel you to sanctify marriage. Choose your sin/hypocracy. She had no defense to that.

She knows divorce is the wrong answer. I didn't enter our marriage and enter into raising kids only to get divorced a few years later and rip everyone's heart out mid-stream. It's just a cop out that she wouldn't banter around so flippantly if she wore the man's shoes in our legal system today. Rest assured she's relying on our legal system as her salvation from this not God!

The Other Michael

Darren,

Stop with the "sell out" nonsense.

You don't owe us anything - you owe yourself and your loved ones.

If this compromise keeps your family together and reduces your stress (at least a bit), then it sounds like it is in your best interests

Isn't there a Joe Jackson song with a line about "giving advice is very nice, but it's oh so hard to do" (if not there should be)?

It is easy for us to say "yep, you'd better get ready to divorce because you have no options that will let you hold your head high as a recent recruit to the Evil Atheist Conspiracy" but we don't have to live in your skin or worry, beyond a degree that we'd worry about any other human, about your wife and children.

I'd still think that it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to get some legal counseling, as I'm sceptical about how long this truce will last.

It looks to me that dealing with the children are going to be a BIG point of contention though. Even if you do work to the letter of the agreement and stick to giving them all the Bible-based Bible criticism they can stand, your wife probably isn't going to see that as anything other than an attempt to subvert her.

I hope you can work out something that everyone can live with.

regards,
Michael

BadBadBad

Been there done that. You should have seen the look on her face. She'll do almost anything to make sure I don't do that. You can't read it at face value. You have to have your handy bible decoder ring and 2000 years of apologetics. I opened her bible to her book mark. It was Joshua. I had just read it myself for the first time earlier that week. The first thing the intro did was to apologize for the atrocity the book represents. A shocking intro to the most shocking book I've ever read (just read the first five, can't say which is more shocking). Can't let an atheist read 'em that.

BadBadBad

I didn't see this post earlier. I don't fault you for going to church. Truce is a good thing. Spreading this confict out is a good thing. It's not over yet though, not by a long shot. You need acceptance right now about your deconversion. Once you get that, even to some degree, you still have all the issues I'm going through with my wife to deal with. I can see you're already dealing with them. That bit about the blow up over you expressing your beliefs to the kids is just the tip of another iceburg.

NFLP

Intensity :[profanity deleted] From where exactly does the music come from sir?

Don't know, but I didn't mean to imply anything supernatural; just that pushing aside ego makes music more accessible.

X-xian,
If you challenge things at church, you'll spend your personal energy fending off specious arguments with no end and nothing accomplished.

Be aware that wear-it-on-the-sleeve is an exercise-in-ego pathological pitfall for theist and non-theist alike.

"Button your lip and they'll all think you're hip"...Martin Mull

HelenM

I tried to explain on the other thread that my only reason for suggesting going to talk to someone at church about the marriage is that the church would support the continuation of the marriage and would therefore tell the Christian spouse who wanted to get out of the marriage that they were out of line.

You rejected that advice and so I dropped it. Since you brought it up here without giving the full context of what I was saying, I have tried to provide that.

I'm looking at the Christianity I know, that's all.

I'm not idealizing all Christians. What I object to is when other people vilify all Christians. If you consider any organization with a large number of people in it, some of them are going to be jerks, are going to be immature, are going to be obnoxious, etc. To infer from that that everyone in the organization is that way, or that the organization is to blame, might not be a fair assumption.

You are free to guess how other people feel about my posts. But I'm not going to assume anything unless/until I hear from them first-hand.

take care
Helen

HelenM

Darren I think people around here tend to have the attitude - if they disagree with you - "it's not what I would do, but I hope it works for you".

take care
Helen