I’m Leaving My Marriage For A Coffee Date
Guilty. That’s the verdict my conscience delivers on the mornings I skip devotion. Having been raised a Seventh-Day Adventist christian, starting any day without worship is an infraction. So, I often police my alleged missteps and tell myself, “just make sure you do it tomorrow morning.” Most times I’m just trying to check a box, literally. But if morning worship has become a ritual of accomplishment, why am I doing it? Simon Sinek is somewhere, jubilant that I may go on a tangential refrain of his book, Start with Why, though it is so relevant. At some point, I have to take my religious practice off of autopilot and manually transmit or trace meaning. A growing disdain for mandatory meetings with God, I was placed on the precipice of my why.
Like many, I was born into my religion; not the kind that prioritizes relationship and intimacy, but the kind that scares you into obedience. It was a form of groupthink disguised as individualism, akin to what Psychologist, Jefferson M. Fish, refers to in Psychology Today as one of the common rationales of arranged marriages: that young people are too immature to make sound decisions; thus, experienced elders are likely to do better at facilitating a primary responsibility to the group — to one’s parents, kin group, ancestors, and others — all of whom have contributed to making one’s current life possible and to whom one is obligated. I hardly think we could debate the need for childhood guidance, but, for me, the obligation of religious obedience in my formative years far supersedes a subjective threshold. By the time I was five, I could recite the ten commandments, condemn sin, and anticipate when I would get in trouble for disobeying God (or more accurately, “the group”). That was my introduction to Christ — rules and regulations, reward and punishment, pseudo-autonomy. I can’t recall any conversation that emphasized cultivating an honest relationship with the Creator. I can, however, recall the scolding for wearing jewelry and nail polish, the removal of drums from the church because the musical instrument was deemed irreverent, and being scared into bible study because if I didn’t read, I was doomed pursuant to Matthew 24 and Revelation. Beginnings matter and my arranged marriage to religion has made for a spiritually discombobulated adulthood.
In a 2016 article published by the Daily Mail, couples shared candid sentiments of their arranged marriages. Unsurprisingly, some were pleasant, but the majority echoed choruses of uncertainty, duress, fear, and disconnection. Here are a few examples from the feature:
· I’m a victim of an arranged marriage and my husband hates me… I feel so lonely and desperate
· I’m scared as to what my potential husband will think about my tattoos and my American lifestyle
· Even though it’s arranged… I’m so in love with my fiancé, I just hope the feeling is mutual
· I regret my arranged marriage; sparkless, loveless, dead end. My life is just so empty
· Arranged marriage, abusive husband, not being able to leave
I have been experiencing similar unrest with my religion. Almost every action is becoming involuntary and contrived, I feel alone in my objection, and I am terrified that the people who are supposed to comfort me will push me further into the abyss of pietous warfare. I wish there was some big sin I could point to for culpability, but there isn’t one. It’s the seemingly little things like going to church every sabbath and being surrounded by supposed life-long christians who appear spiritually dead to me, claiming to know God. What does that even mean? For some, it’s following the rules and condemning anything contrarian, whether reasonable or otherwise. It is to fear shame and judgment, thereby guilting one’s self into obedience. It is total disregard for agencies like psychologists who can assist in resolving deep wounds and generational burdens such as religion; instead, advising that if you just pray, everything will be fine. It is a transactional relationship wherein one exchanges sacrifice for servitude, cowardly. It is the performance of a role. It is being the wife or husband to God whether you feel an emotional connection or not, because as long as you’re in a posture of praise you will eventually praise. Never mind if you don’t understand things, just conform in faith.To know God religiously is to be held hostage by the beliefs and practices of your ancestors — passed down like a family heirloom — never questioned or challenged… just supernatural subserviance.
My awakening has been gradual, primarily prompted by travel. Jamaican Adventist christians residing in Jamaica have one set of rules that govern one’s devotion to the faith. In Canada, those rules differ provincially. For example, in some churches in Toronto (heavily populated with Caribbean immigrants), women cannot wear pants to church, especially not on the pulpit. On the west coast on the other hand, clothing attire seldom comes up in conversation (unless a skirt is too short or cleavage, too exposed). By the time I moved to the United Kingdom in 2013, I had witnessed several different and contradictory versions of Adventism: Howcome that pastor can wear rings on his fingers, why does this church allow a female pastor, but that one won’t? I started questioning the rules I was victimized into believing were rigid. And now that they were flexible, was that a people problem, a religion problem or a God problem? I think it’s an individual problem, but that’s the forbidden conversation because, again, religion is about collectivism.
I have been conditioned to view my experience of Adventism through the lens of law, not love. And if there is love, it does not lead; it is second place, the first to lose, and the afterthought. Some arranged marriages succeed on this formula. Maybe mine has. But the the type of love that I have for God is not one that is intimate, it is one of respect. It reminds me of one of the responses from the Daily Mail article: “I’ve been in my arranged marriage for two years now. I don’t love him in the romantic way, but we are good friends and I have profound respect for him. I just hope that we do eventually find the love we were promised.” Yeah, that’s what I want, too! I want to have a zeal for God likened to the one observed from my friend when I first questioned what it truly meant to have a relationship with God. He was in church wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, and he had a few tattoos, but God was oozing out of him. I wanted so badly to grab my tank and fill up on whatever was fueling him. You cannot fake intimacy. No matter how many scriptures you read, how perfect your pew attendance is, or how faithfully you return your tithe, true conviction is deeply rooted in love. It is not enough for me to perform religion hoping one day the connection will come. I’ve been married to adventism for over 30 years and I’m still waiting on that “love we were promised”. An Adventist fundamentalist might say I am an omen, that questioning my religion is a sign that I am pulling away from God as expected in the last days. But I argue that it is quite the opposite. I am taking a stand against compliance and complacency. “Good friends and profound respect” aren’t the qualities I’m looking for in God. I have to decipher whether my guilt about missing morning worship derives from true wrongdoing or a fear of spiritual punishment. I want a love marriage.
I want a love marriage, so I’m divorcing my religion. It is getting in the way of my spirituality and this relationship has become abusive. I have been mobilized to inhibit the consequences of defiance, flinching at the raised arm of my own condemnation. I spend more time justifying why I have stayed this long and less time investing in true longevity and sincerity. I don’t even know how to talk to God anymore. Our conversations used to sound like poetry, but when I have recited one too many psalms, they begin to lose their meaning. My words are stale. The sermons: they watered down my prayers. The average bible has over 1500 pages, but I’ve heard the same five stories almost my whole life. All this time and I am still wanting for a deeper connection. Nothing has changed, not because I don’t want it to, but because my why is not rooted in anything that comes from within me. As Sinek articulates in his book, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
I want my why to be rooted in love. I want to have morning worship solely because I crave solitude with God. I want to get to know Him slowly, for myself, without the imposition of the law. The hard part of christianity shouldn’t be showing up. I don’t believe that is what God intended when He said it would get hard sometimes. I think He meant once you made the choice to love Him, the badlands would feel lighter on your feet because love would walk you through it.
Arranged marriages are not all bad. I’m fortunate to know of the Creator and experience His love even where mine has seemingly been unrequited. I just believe that when you lead with love, rules stop feeling like rules and your actions are premised on what you want to do, not what you have to do. I am making a choice to unlearn, unhinge, and be completely transparent with God. Some days, that will look like long prayers, others, it might be journaling with Job-like anger. On a Saturday, I might bring groceries to an elder after spending all day on the phone listening and crying with a friend. God is love, so I know He’ll show up in my effort and my service and, through that, we’ll get to know each other better, deeper, and more intently.
I cannot wade in confusion expecting clarity. Thus, here’s to coffee dates and small conversations that will hopefully lead to a lifetime of spiritual intimacy.
