Losing Your Religion: When A Devout Couple Questions God
A viral video on fundies reveals a very strong truth about religion and cults.
So, has anyone been watching the Fundie world lately? One of the biggest influencer couples in the scene, Bethany and Dav Beal, recently had a bombshell of a video.
In it, they spent 24 hours with fellow Fundies, Paul and Morgan Olliges. The entire thing was pretty well-documented, and they both spoke about being a Christian couple.
There were several bombshells that were dropped, including:
The Beals are actually open to talking to people who have differing beliefs than them. This shocked me. I’m oddly happy about this.
Bethany has started to realize that there’s a side to deconstruction that involves rethinking a lot of the toxic beliefs they held. It is not, as she assumed, the choice of going away from God entirely.
Dav openly admitted he’s deconstructing. Bethany seems to be devastated, but at the same time, she’s still with him. She loves that man — something very apparent in the videos.
This is one of the many, many couples you can witness dealing with a deconstructing partner.
When you get married to someone, you expect to marry the person you dated or courted. You want to see them have the same beliefs — or at least, that’s what healthy people do.
Now, imagine what happens when you are in a high-demand religion that you both believed in, then marry your Mr/Ms. Right. You got into a relationship with a person with the understanding that you will both live and act according to the religion.
Unfortunately, you or your partner are starting to question things. Maybe one party started to realize that the people in the religion didn’t care. Maybe they can’t ignore the hypocrisy they saw, or the shady ethics that seem to be the norm.
Or, maybe it just doesn’t vibe with that person anymore.
Regardless of what the reason may be, one party has started to deconstruct their religion and they are not okay with living the way they did before. When this happens, that marriage is at a crossroads.
I’ll be honest, I think that religion is up there with politics when it comes to reasons why couples split.
Aside from abuse, cheating, and finances, personal beliefs are high up on the list of causes (or contributing factors) to divorce. Religion and politics are both part of that clause — as they should be.
If my husband came out as anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ, I would divorce him because he’d literally be jockeying to take my rights away. It’s not unreasonable to walk away from someone whose morals and ethics no longer match yours.
In most cases, if one person is very devout in their beliefs while the other isn’t, they may consider divorce. In high-demand religions, divorcing that deconstructing person may actually be a requirement to remain in that religion.
However, those who make it are often stronger because of the deconstruction — and they often deconstruct together. While I cannot be certain, I think that’s what is happening to Bethany and Dav.
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