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Goodbye Jesus

Changes In My Wife's Thinking


unsureaboutgod

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As I mentioned in my extimonial a few weeks ago, my wife has recently begun her own journey to discover the truth about the Bible and its god.

 

She's admitted to me recently that she now believes most everything in the Old Testament through the invasion of Canaan is myth, that much of the rest has, at least, been embellished, and that hell/the devil doesn't make any sense.

 

She also told me she thinks Jesus could not have been perfect because he clearly believed mythological things to be factual and that we probably cannot know what he actually said anyway since so much of the gospel narrative is obviously propaganda.

 

Huge steps that are, in my opinion, very positive for her.

 

Another strong indicator of how much has changed lately: when I first admitted my doubts to her, she expressed concern about what I would teach our kids about the Bible. Last night, she told me she wants me to study with them.

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That's wonderful news!  It's like pulling a thread, and the whole garment unravelling.

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You're very fortunate to have a spouse that supports you through your deconversion. This is very good news! Usually, we hear the complete opposite -- one person deconverts while the other moves deeper into the religion.

 

 

You should have a party! :-)

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I really feel for those here whose marriages are suffering. Deconversion is hard enough to experience on its own.

 

I've tried hard to reveal my loss of faith to her incrementally. I was so tempted to just blurt it all out at once, but I knew it would be much easier for her to digest in smaller portions.

 

Her resistance/discomfort varied depending on the nature of the doctrine. I had no expectation that she would completely agree with me about any of it, but I suspected and hoped she would come to similar conclusions in her own studies.

 

The tallest hurdle we've cleared is my belief that, if there is a "god", it cannot be the god of the Bible. I was ecstatic when she didn't attempt to argue that point, much more so when she actually offered agreement!

 

I'm so excited to share my life with her!

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  • Moderator

Wonderful!

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I am happy to hear things are going well for you.  Good luck to both of you.

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Great News. bill

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If someone leaves there husband or wife for jesus, are they not committing adultery.

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  • Super Moderator

Be gentle with her.  This may end up being much harder for her than it was for you.

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I agree with the last post.

I myself am treating the situation on the home front as the five stages of grief. While things are find right now, we had some emotional challenges for a little while, but I anticipate there could be more. She is not in a church right now, we were between when I came out. The daughter had moved out a year ago.

I have no real advice for you on this one: I started entertaining my most serious doubts when my daughter was a teenager. Though, you ask my daughter, she'll say I always talked to her like an atheist, when she was growing up. I confess, when push came to shove, and I realized I had to really figure some things out, like inerrancy of Scripture and other things brought home from the church, I put some of it off until I'd fulfilled my fatherly duty, according to the churches anyway, and went along with them through her high school.

But all through her growing up years, she learned about evolution from me. I was one of those defensive Christians who tried to say evolutionary biology was not unChristian. Of course I was not at all convincing on that score or many others. But you can teach your kids the tools of skepticism all the way through.

I always tried to make her think through why things were happening. Rather than spoon-feeding answers, I always had her dig a little. At 19, she maintains the faith of her mother. Though, interestingly enough, she and friends seem to reject all the political Christianity that came from the Fallwellian Explosion / Christian Coalition.

Perhaps it is because her mom was raised a Methodist and then found meaning in the more evangelical circles. She still considers herself somewhat evangelical, if not fundamentalist.

Anyway, it's a tough situation. From what I've read, there are far more male deconverted than there are female. According to Psychology Today, it has somewhat to do with risk taking between the genders, but I don't really know.

Anway, as the last poster says, be respectful and gentle. The cognitive dissonance is tough. And I don't know what kind of church you guys go to, or how political it gets. But the Daughter, having been to Assemblies of God when she was little and Foursquare during pre-teen / teens, claims they don't drum hell and apologetics into them anymore. She hadn't even heard of Pascal's Wager, for instance. Even when I explained it to her, she said they don't do that anymore. That assuaged my conscience a bit, to be honest.

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I am all for one more child that is not taught about Hell.

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That's great news. I wish you both all the best. :)

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