What do you do if you and your partner were both Christian when you got married… but you no longer believe in God?

It’s a really difficult situation. Not just because it’s unforeseen, but because you’re no longer the same person your partner married when it comes to a really important issue. You can’t blame your partner for being upset about it; if you were both atheists and your partner suddenly became a born again Christian, you might not know how to handle it either. And if young children are involved, it’s even more complicated.

Seth Andrews recently met an atheist in that very situation — he and his wife were both Christians when they got married — so he “wrote a letter” to the Christian spouse:

Seth, who became an atheist later in life, makes the case that the husband wasn’t trying to ruin their relationship by becoming an atheist.

I didn’t decide to have doubts. I simply decided not to ignore the doubts that were already there. I didn’t decide that the Bible was problematic. I simply was honest with myself when I finally read the Bible objectively. I wasn’t angry at God. I was angry and frustrated that I was being blamed for the crime of simply asking hard questions and not being satisfied with the catch-all answer of “just take it on faith.” … If we wanna live truthful lives, what do we do at this point? Do we lie to our life partners, to our loved ones, and tell them what they want to hear? If you felt strongly about something, how would you feel if your family and culture threatened to cut you off for just being honest about it? Is it fair to expect your husband to constantly silence his own voice while everybody else in the room gets to speak as loudly as they want?

Seth eventually asks the wife point-blank: “Do you love your husband because he believes in God or do you love your husband because of who he is as a person?”

There’s so much from this video I could quote, but it’s all really good. Watch it.

(Thanks to Melissa for the link)

