I think a huge part of every person's religious viewpoint is where they came from, the culmination of their experiences, and their personality. If you were born in Iraq and raised by a Muslim family, then there is a VERY high likelihood that you will end up being a Muslim. Much higher than if you were born in India to a Buddhist family. Unless of course you have a terrible experience within your family or environment that turns you off to the religion entirely and makes you think outside the box. Even then, many people don't change too far from what they were taught as children. Also, if you are more of a free spirit in personality, then you could tend to shift your beliefs over time a little more than someone else. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out they could predict with 90% accuracy your religious beliefs based on your background and personality tests.
Of course this tells you a bit about my personality just thinking like that. I'm very much a math guy. I deal with statistical analysis in my head all the time. I see a story about how a guy had almost no chance to live and by some miracle he survived and beat cancer. Most people would call it a miracle. I would call it a statistical outlier from the standard deviation. And in that sentence alone, I realize I've outed myself as a complete nerd, and I understand if you never read another blog post of mine. ;)
I'm also a free spirit. One of my favorite classes in college was philosophy. I LOVED the movie The Matrix because it made me think outside the box. Not that I think we are all being controlled by computers, but it makes you think the world may not be everything we perceive with our senses. Rene Descartes actually formulated the same questions several hundred years ago. He was unsure if the world we perceived actually existed or if we even existed. That's when he formulated the famous response we know of today, "I think, therefore I am." When I was kid I used to wonder if I was just a giant science experiment and the rest of the world was in on it. Sort of like Jim Carey in The Truman Show, except I was a lab rat.
That's the cliff notes on my personality. Now here is my back story. I grew up in a very Christian home. My parents were former hippies, surfers, and part time drug dealers at one point. But they converted to Evangelical Christianity when I was a young child and that's how I was raised. As a child my mom tells me I talked a lot about heaven, so much so that at times it scared her. I read a lot when I was a kid. I read all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia books, and most of the Bible by the time I was 10.
I was an extremely shy kid, and as I started to like girls I was so shy that my hands would shake just to go up and talk to most of them, in particular if I liked them. This led to a lot of confusion as I entered middle school. I wanted girls to like me and didn't know how to approach them, so eventually I found other ways to get noticed.
In elementary school I was picked on a lot. So in middle school I became the defender of the little guy. I got in a lot of fights and was afraid of no one. I was generally feared or respected by everyone, and that's how I liked it. I once had an entire high school wrestling team threaten me, and I told them where to meet me after school and said I would be there alone. I showed up with a couple of knives and a pair of brass knuckles. No one ever showed up (lucky for me). I refer to these as my rebellious years. Those are the years I had begun to make my own path and discover things for myself, and being the free spirit I am, I ended up lucky to live through middle school.
By high school I had my own conversion experience. During a Spring break retreat I felt the Holy Spirit tugging at my heart so strongly that I could no longer resist and I devoted my life to Christ. I made a 180 degree turn and it wasn't long before I was preaching in front of youth groups and churches. It was a needed experience. I was going in the wrong direction way too quickly.
I found a Christian girlfriend not too long after that and we dated through most of high school. I attended an ultra conservative Christian college. I was a football player, which I suppose also plays into my upbringing. There is a certain mentality that only other great athletes can understand. To this day I struggle if I'm late to an event even though no one ever shows up on time. My girlfriend and I spent a year apart while she went to school in a different state. Half way through my freshman year I asked her to marry me and she transferred to my school so we could make it work. The rest of my college experience was as a married man who was also the star of the football team, and a semi good student. I graduated a semester early to save money, and started my career.
But I have to go back a little because it doesn't tell the whole story. My wife and I dated for 3 years before we got married. We waited until marriage before we had sex just like the Bible tells us to. I struggled a lot after my conversion because I was constantly tempted and many times gave into my own sinful thoughts in my head. Just like most teenage boys I masturbated. A LOT! And every time I did I felt shame and disgust. Why couldn't I stop myself from having these thoughts? God says no temptation is too great, and God doesn't lie, so how could this be?? These were my first struggles with religion as a religious person. And I know many young Christian boys have the same struggles.
When I got married I knew my wife had a bad past when it came to sex. I knew she had been abused by her mom's boyfriend, but I had no idea how deeply it would affect her and our relationship. I had this idea in my head that we had waited this long and now it was going to be on! The waiting was over and the fun was about to begin. I couldn't have been more wrong!
I would say on our honeymoon that lasted a week we maybe had sex 3 or 4 times? And most of the time it appeared forced and she seemed more like she was doing it for me and because she was supposed to now than because she wanted to. But I was steadfast. I wanted to give her time. We prayed together. I assumed if I gave her enough time, and loved on her, and doted on her, telling her every day how beautiful and wonderful she was then eventually she would believe it. Despite my best efforts our first year of marriage consisted of her being completely depressed and we may have had sex once a month after our honeymoon. Again, almost every time it was awkward and felt forced.
And of course through all of this I was steadfast in my support of her, but eventually I found myself giving into temptation again, fantasizing about being with other women. I really started beating myself up, and feeling like I was a terrible Christian, a terrible husband, and just a terrible person in general.
As our marriage progressed our sex life continued to struggle. I had been turned down more times than Steve Urkel on Family Matters. Eventually, I struggled to muster the energy to try any more. I began to think I must be terrible at this romance thing. I must be the worst sex partner ever if she never wanted it.
A couple of times she caught me watching porn on the computer's history, and she practically had mental breakdowns and made me swear I would never do it again. This only added to my shame. But the shame was slowly turning from within myself to anger towards my wife. How could she be so cruel as to deny me a healthy sex life with her, and yet deny me from resolving those urges on my own? To me this seemed like some sort of sick slavery. To this day I still resent women at times beyond what is rational. Because of this, you will find later that some of my beliefs on sex and relationships might sway a little too far on the side of what I call men's rights. (In direct reaction to the idea of woman's rights, which I feel has done way more good than bad, but as with anything has done some damage too)
I was mad at God too. I had done everything right. I waited until marriage and the one thing that was supposed to remain sacred and beautiful because of it turned out to be my achilles heal. Time and again I think to myself, if I had just not followed that principle, I never would have married her. I would have known we were completely incompatible in one of the most import areas of a relationship to me and turned and run. But by following what the church said, I had allowed myself to fall completely in love with a woman who would torment me for the rest of my life.
It wasn't until 10 years into my marriage that my wife finally admitted that she usually feels depressed after we have sex. While I did feel a little sorry for her given her past, this was 10 years into my marriage. I was angry. Why would she wait 10 years to tell me this? It was the one thing that was tearing me apart inside. She knew this and yet still refused to deal with it. To this day 5 years later, she has still done little to resolve it. She finally saw a counselor after she found out I had cheated on her, but that only lasted a few sessions.
Yup, that's what ended up happening. Eventually, especially after hearing that, I pretty much gave up and did the cowardly thing of cheating on my wife. Surprisingly, I didn't feel as much guilt as I thought I would. Instead, I almost felt a reawakening of myself. This caused me to dive into what I like to think of as my second rebellious stage. A second time to figure out who I was and what I really believed. As with many strong Christian believers, when we fall, we fall hard, because we have no safety net. I cheated a lot, with a lot of different women. Turns out over a decade of trying anything and everything to pleasure a wife who struggled to get turned on, made me a pretty good lover. I wasn't near as bad at this as I thought I was! And for once I was getting positive reinforcement from something that was so important to me.
So why didn't I just leave her? Well, by this time we had two children, and one of them had recently been diagnosed with having autism. Besides, I still loved her and always will. And somehow I still held out hope that she would change.
This all leads me to the next chapter of my life which I will go into further detail on Part 2...
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