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What a great post!
I went through a similar thing in University when I fell in love, love, love with a Buddhist and found out one of my profs, a âpracticingâ lesbian, was an ex priest.
My boyfriend wasnât particularly religious; usually if he felt particularly concerned about anything, heâd ask ME to pray to MY God, because he felt like I must have some specail favor with Him because I liked to go to church. (His logic used to astound me.) But he wouldnât ask to go to church with me, and I never felt like asking him to.
The Bible tells us not to be unequally yokedâor to marry only other believers. But this guy treated me like gold. He was extremely respectful, he valued my thoughts and opinions and saught them out, he listened to what I said and remembered it later. If I needed anythingâand he knew about itâI had it. Basically, he treated me so much better than any Christian boyfriend Iâd ever had. (Still true today, BTW.) I couldnât see ending our relationship because he was a barely religious Buddhist. He was a wonderful person.
About the same time, I found out about my professor. I wanted so badly to talk to her about this because of my relationship and because Iâd never met anyone else whoâd left any kind of Christian faith. I felt like she could give me some insights on this matter that no one else could/would. But it was so tough to talk to her!
We were right in the buckle of the Bible belt, after all, and she was already living openly as a lesbian. But she made a remark one day in the office about giving up the priesthood for lent.
She was really angry and hostile when I first approached her because she assumed I was going to try to tell her how to live her life. I canât blame her, I guess, because apparently so many others had already done that. But when she stopped yelling long enough to hear me out, she was more than willing to talk with me.
It was odd, in a way, because it was like counceling with a priest/pasotrâbut in reverse, kinda! Anyway, talking to her really helped a lot. Basically, she left because she couldnât reconcile her own feelings with church prescriptions. She wanted to be with a woman, kind of like I wanted to be with a Buddhist. Of course, it wasnât as simple as all that, but she had her reasons.
In the end, I had my reasons for not leaving my faith. And I felt like my relationship with my boyfriend was between the two of us. My relationship with God was between the two of us. That relationship ended eventually, but it had nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, a few years after our relationship ended he became Christian.
But these things helped me to take stock, to realize what, and who, was important to me. I remembered why I believe as I believe, and I realized that itâs okay. My professor didnât leave the church because she felt that faith was a product of a humble mind. (I had assumed, at first, that was part of itâit was none of it at all.) That was also important to me, because as many here have shown, thatâs usually one of the first arguments any Athiest makes. That my professor, a very intelligent woman, didnât think faith was feeble minded actually helped to give me confidence, in a way, about being who I am.