Usually I don’t write about religion or martial relationships, but usually stick with more mundane topics, diet, exercise, type-2- diabetes, and Internet marketing since these involve my personal and professional passions. This week I visited an old friend, and we started talking about family holiday traditions. I told her about how our family goes shopping together on December 24 at a local mall, come home, wrap presents, and then open them on December 25 as a family. This year though my wife added a Chanukah dinner to the mix, as over the years my religious belief has shifted and while I am not Jewish I consider my beliefs and thoughts about God do fit with Judaism. If you were to press me on “what I am” in regards to religion I would describe myself as a Noahide (Google it.)
As the conversation evolved my friend went to say that she isn’t religious having never been exposed to it growing-up, but her husband is Roman Catholic and attends church weekly bringing their kids while she stays home. The thing that bothers her is that her husband thinks that she is going to HELL because of her lack of faith. I know from previous conversations that my wife is concerned about my eternal salvation since I no longer consider myself a Christian, and she has had to wrestle with this issue but recently she did say to me that she does not believe I am going to HELL, and that we will be together in the world to come even though this flies in the face of Christian belief.
Since my religious journey began in 2006 the thought of my wife thinking I was going to HELL bothered me, but I was able to reconcile that with my learning, new beliefs, and finally came to the spiritual knowledge that God sent me on my journey, and I am willing to accept my learning’s as they come to me. However, in speaking with my friend this week and other friends who no longer share the same beliefs as their spouse this is a real issue when one spouse thinks the other is going to HELL.
Personally I know at some level for the non-believing spouse it does bother them that their spouse thinks they are going to HELL, and at some level the believing spouse is bothered that their spouse does not believe like they used to or maybe never did believe. In the beginning of my journey my wife and I had very personal arguments about religion, and while it will never be 100% solved we have found our relationship is more important than religious belief. Now the conversations are much more from a position of understanding and concern since we are raising two daughters in a religious belief that Daddy no longer believes. While the older child remembers Daddy at church the younger will grow-up as this being her normal.
The way I see it is how do we as parents demonstrate to our children tolerance for each other’s beliefs while at the same time allowing our girls to have their religious journey? And most importantly let their journey be their own just like their parents’ journey was? Because now as our daughter learns about salvation she worries about her Dad, so how do we reassure her that I will be alright but not ruin her faith in the process? I only wish there was a guide on such matters, but there isn’t and we are left to chart our own course. While the journey is not without incident, I think as a spousal team and parents we are doing a pretty good job explaining these issues to our family.
Written by Brad Heutmaker. You can follow Brad's Mission to Help America Overcome Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes on his website http://www.bradheutmaker.com/
Peace Love and Gumbo~
Marvin LeBlanc
