Followup to: Crisis of Faith
I thought this comment from "Jo" deserved a bump to the front page:
"So here I am having been raised in the Christian faith and trying not to freak out over the past few weeks because I've finally begun to wonder whether I believe things just because I was raised with them. Our family is surrounded by genuinely wonderful people who have poured their talents into us since we were teenagers, and our social structure and business rests on the tenets of what we believe. I've been trying to work out how I can 'clear the decks' and then rebuild with whatever is worth keeping, yet it's so foundational that it will affect my marriage (to a pretty special man) and my daughters who, of course, have also been raised to walk the Christian path.
Is there anyone who's been in this position - really, really invested in a faith and then walked away?"
Maybe this is fodder for another post:
A few people here said: "If that person was really special, there would be no problem with you telling him."
But are things really that simple? Not so long ago, Jo would probably have reacted badly if her special person had told her that he didn't believe anymore in what she believed. Loving someone and getting along well with them doesn't mean that you will accept anything they do without problem and vice versa.
Think about the people that you find "special" in your life and imagine telling them that your beliefs have changed about something very important that you both believe in (used to be libertarian, now you have strong authoritarian beliefs/ used to be vegan, now eating ribs every night/ strongly partisan for one political party, switching to another/ etc) and imagine how they would react. Does that make them not "special" anymore?