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Maggie?s Story | godless in dixie
Maggies Story
Posted on September 20, 2013
Id like to tell you a story about a woman named Maggie. Maggie is a very warm-hearted, loving, self-giving woman who poured herself into her faith, her family, and her church for many years. Maggies marriage was the envy of her church friends because she and her husband Josh made an excellent team, and they often led by inspirational example. Her career as an addiction therapist didnt make them rich by any stretch, nor did Joshs part-time maintenance job. But they were happy, and they shared a common vision for their place in the world according to Gods plan, as best as they understood it. Together they had three beautiful children who were already well on their way to following in their parents spiritual footsteps.
But Maggie was also a curious woman. She always loved to ask how and whyquestions and no answer ever seemed completely off the table to her. Josh could only identify with this hunger for understanding up to a point, after which he always encouraged Maggie to trust that some things will simply always be beyond our understanding and to simply trust that God is good and that he is ultimately in control. She wanted to accept these things, and she wanted to be as free from concern as Josh seemed to be, but she couldnt override or suppress her own curiosity. About the time their youngest son reached school age, she began to rekindle her childhood interest in science: biology, astronomy, physics, psychology and sociology. She dove into reading books and articles about the deluge of new discoveries which modern science has yielded, and she began to question some of the beliefs which she and Josh had always accepted and had already begun passing on to their children.
This presented a major problem in Maggies marriage. The deeper Maggie got into her quest for knowledge, the more uneasy Josh became. They had always believed that spiritual pursuits were more valuable than intellectual ones, but now Maggie was becoming more enamored with the latter than with the former. She began to lose interest in church activities, and the preachers sermons were beginning to upset her for reasons that she couldnt always articulate. Josh offered to pray with her about her concerns but somehow this only made matters worse. What Maggie couldnt articulate and Josh couldnt conceive was that Maggie was beginning to lose her faith in God completely. So much of what she was taught to expect from him had turned out at last to be a pipe dream, and reading the Bible only made her doubts more severe. She tried to find people around her to sympathize with her questions but everyone she turned to seemed to see her situation as a problem to fix, as if the real problem were with her and not with the religion into which she had been indoctrinated. After months of searching, studying, thinking, and praying, Maggie finally realized that she no longer believed in supernatural things at all. She tried telling Josh this one night but the subject upset him so deeply that she decided she couldnt talk to him about it anymore for fear that her marriage might not survive this revelation. She clammed up and determined to keep this development from him in hopes that some day in the future they would be able to revisit the subject and have a more calm, sympathetic discussion of her new-found skepticism.
But that day never came. Maggie retreated into a double life in which she went through the motions of her religious duties and traditions on the outside while secretly hating the whole enterprise and longing to be free of it. She found friends online with whom she could vent and discuss her questions, using them as both sounding boards and confidants in her quest for intellectual understanding and authenticity. Josh and Maggie continued to be intimate but for Maggie the deeper connection was beginning to fade. Fear for the future of their relationship hounded her because she knew that what Josh wanted most was a spiritual partner, and she knew that she would no longer be able to walk alongside him in that endeavor. She was headed in a very different direction from him and she knew it would only be a matter of time before the truth would come out: She had become an atheist. Even the word itself made her shudder because decades of indoctrination had taught her to despise the word and what it stood for. Nothing good can come of atheismor so she had been taught. And while she had begun to question the validity of that notion, she knew good and well that her friends and family would never be able to accept her or trust her if she became one of those.
Finally, one day the truth did come out when Maggie let it slip out during a session with one of her clients. Her client wanted a list of Bible verses dealing with addiction and Maggie sarcastically laughed out loud, quickly covering her mouth with her hand, unable to hide the look of sudden alarm on her own face. When asked about her response, she admitted honestly that she didnt think a list of Bible verses would really help with anything. Her client was horrified and after she left Maggies little office she began telling everyone that Maggie no longer believed in Jesus. It was true that she didnt, but Maggie had no intention of publicizing that because where she lived you had to be a Christian to be trusted. Anyone who wasnt one kept that to herself for fear of ostracism or even professional ruin. She hoped the rumor would die down quickly, but it didnt. Before long she found herself in her supervisors office, answering prying questions about her personal beliefs. Technically speaking, this kind of interrogation was against the law, but then again all the law enforcers and judges in Maggies vicinity are devout Christians, and theyve never felt that enforcing this particular rule matters as much as spreading their faith to their community in every way they can. God first; country second. So Maggie lost her job................................
Maggies Story
Posted on September 20, 2013
Id like to tell you a story about a woman named Maggie. Maggie is a very warm-hearted, loving, self-giving woman who poured herself into her faith, her family, and her church for many years. Maggies marriage was the envy of her church friends because she and her husband Josh made an excellent team, and they often led by inspirational example. Her career as an addiction therapist didnt make them rich by any stretch, nor did Joshs part-time maintenance job. But they were happy, and they shared a common vision for their place in the world according to Gods plan, as best as they understood it. Together they had three beautiful children who were already well on their way to following in their parents spiritual footsteps.
But Maggie was also a curious woman. She always loved to ask how and whyquestions and no answer ever seemed completely off the table to her. Josh could only identify with this hunger for understanding up to a point, after which he always encouraged Maggie to trust that some things will simply always be beyond our understanding and to simply trust that God is good and that he is ultimately in control. She wanted to accept these things, and she wanted to be as free from concern as Josh seemed to be, but she couldnt override or suppress her own curiosity. About the time their youngest son reached school age, she began to rekindle her childhood interest in science: biology, astronomy, physics, psychology and sociology. She dove into reading books and articles about the deluge of new discoveries which modern science has yielded, and she began to question some of the beliefs which she and Josh had always accepted and had already begun passing on to their children.
This presented a major problem in Maggies marriage. The deeper Maggie got into her quest for knowledge, the more uneasy Josh became. They had always believed that spiritual pursuits were more valuable than intellectual ones, but now Maggie was becoming more enamored with the latter than with the former. She began to lose interest in church activities, and the preachers sermons were beginning to upset her for reasons that she couldnt always articulate. Josh offered to pray with her about her concerns but somehow this only made matters worse. What Maggie couldnt articulate and Josh couldnt conceive was that Maggie was beginning to lose her faith in God completely. So much of what she was taught to expect from him had turned out at last to be a pipe dream, and reading the Bible only made her doubts more severe. She tried to find people around her to sympathize with her questions but everyone she turned to seemed to see her situation as a problem to fix, as if the real problem were with her and not with the religion into which she had been indoctrinated. After months of searching, studying, thinking, and praying, Maggie finally realized that she no longer believed in supernatural things at all. She tried telling Josh this one night but the subject upset him so deeply that she decided she couldnt talk to him about it anymore for fear that her marriage might not survive this revelation. She clammed up and determined to keep this development from him in hopes that some day in the future they would be able to revisit the subject and have a more calm, sympathetic discussion of her new-found skepticism.
But that day never came. Maggie retreated into a double life in which she went through the motions of her religious duties and traditions on the outside while secretly hating the whole enterprise and longing to be free of it. She found friends online with whom she could vent and discuss her questions, using them as both sounding boards and confidants in her quest for intellectual understanding and authenticity. Josh and Maggie continued to be intimate but for Maggie the deeper connection was beginning to fade. Fear for the future of their relationship hounded her because she knew that what Josh wanted most was a spiritual partner, and she knew that she would no longer be able to walk alongside him in that endeavor. She was headed in a very different direction from him and she knew it would only be a matter of time before the truth would come out: She had become an atheist. Even the word itself made her shudder because decades of indoctrination had taught her to despise the word and what it stood for. Nothing good can come of atheismor so she had been taught. And while she had begun to question the validity of that notion, she knew good and well that her friends and family would never be able to accept her or trust her if she became one of those.
Finally, one day the truth did come out when Maggie let it slip out during a session with one of her clients. Her client wanted a list of Bible verses dealing with addiction and Maggie sarcastically laughed out loud, quickly covering her mouth with her hand, unable to hide the look of sudden alarm on her own face. When asked about her response, she admitted honestly that she didnt think a list of Bible verses would really help with anything. Her client was horrified and after she left Maggies little office she began telling everyone that Maggie no longer believed in Jesus. It was true that she didnt, but Maggie had no intention of publicizing that because where she lived you had to be a Christian to be trusted. Anyone who wasnt one kept that to herself for fear of ostracism or even professional ruin. She hoped the rumor would die down quickly, but it didnt. Before long she found herself in her supervisors office, answering prying questions about her personal beliefs. Technically speaking, this kind of interrogation was against the law, but then again all the law enforcers and judges in Maggies vicinity are devout Christians, and theyve never felt that enforcing this particular rule matters as much as spreading their faith to their community in every way they can. God first; country second. So Maggie lost her job................................
