Trivial Differences, Common Values
Andrew and Lewis
Lewis was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1985, the only child of two nonreligious parents. He describes his mother as disinterested in religious questions—“aside from a nebulous belief in ‘something out there,’” he says—“and unless it specifically comes up, she never talks about it.”
His father’s another matter. “He’s much more antireligious in nature. But he wasn’t nearly as strident then as he is now in terms of his political and religious beliefs. He was a good father.”
Lewis’s parents separated when he was 14, and he mostly lost touch with his father’s side of the family. His mother and her family became a greater influence, including some “pretty intense Holy-Roller types,” he says. “My mother’s always been a bit of a black sheep of the family in terms of her nonreligious beliefs, really.”
Due to his parents’ nonbelief, he never attended Sunday school or church as a child. “The only exception would be when I visited my aunt and uncle in Toronto when I was around age ten or so. My cousins went to Sunday school, so I went along with them. I found it a very annoying and spiritually unrewarding experience. The primary subject of discussion of one Sunday’s class was to go over movies that were current at that time, and to show how all of those movies violated the Ten Commandments. They said Simba’s disobedience toward his parents in The Lion King breaks the commandment to honor your mother and father. I found it depressing and symptomatic of a broader problem in mainstream religion—a tendency to cling to specific instructions while ignoring the broader themes and ideas behind the spirit of the message.”
He remained troubled by the exclusivity and division he saw in modern religion—“especially the notion that all humanity except a small group of saved individuals will be tormented and will suffer for all eternity, with no hope whatsoever of any mercy or salvation”—so he considered himself a nonbeliever. “Unless something changed my thinking about these doctrines, I was never going to become religious.”
A few years ago, when he was in his mid-20s, something did change Lewis’s thinking. “I came across a website for Tentmaker Ministries. They preach universalism—the idea that the true message in the New Testament is that all of humanity will eventually become saved, and that eternal damnation for even a single human is a myth. The God of mainstream Christianity, the God who sits idly by while most of humanity falls into eternal torment when they die, had suddenly disappeared, and was replaced by a God whom I honestly could call kind, loving, and worthy of praise. The single largest stumbling block between me and religion had been suddenly removed.” Further research confirmed for Lewis that this was the correct reading of the New Testament. “It was a very easy process from that point to become religious.”
He gives ironic credit for his religious awakening to his nonreligious upbringing. “I think it was a big help for my emotional and spiritual development to be in a family that didn’t force me to have a particular set of beliefs. It probably would’ve made me less likely to be free to have religious beliefs had I been raised in a stifling environment like that. I tend to react very poorly to attempts to pressure me into agreeing with something, and have always tended to need time and space to come to my own conclusions before I can be satisfied with where my head is at.”
Lewis’s partner, Andrew, was born to a Christian mother and atheist father in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1981. His parents divorced when he was an infant, and he was mostly raised by his father. But he saw his mother often. “She is the sort of Christian who wants to be seen at church. She has always been more concerned with public displays of Christianity than private acts of faith.” Nonetheless, Andrew says, “She tried to raise me as a Christian during the times she had custody. She even had me baptized. It didn’t work, even when I was a child. Most of what I learned in Sunday school seemed absurd to me from a young age. I was the kid who was always asking awkward questions, like ‘How could two of every animal fit on the ark?’ and ‘If Eve was the only woman, who did Cain and Seth marry and have kids with?’ My mother eventually took me out of Sunday school—I think that’s why.”
His father was inclined to let Andrew work things out for himself. “He raised me agnostic, never telling me that he was completely atheistic until I was an adult,” Andrew recalls. “He says that he wanted me to come to my own conclusions. He never went out of his way to counter the religious things that my mother tried to teach me unless I came to him with questions.” His father had himself grown up in a religious environment, the son of a Congregational minister and a mother with a divinity degree. “But my father can’t remember a time when he was ever religious, even as a child,” says Andrew.
Andrew went through what he calls “a phase” in his late teens and early 20s, “trying various religious ideas on for size. I never had an iota of interest in the Abrahamic religions, but I toyed with Buddhism and neo-paganism. I wanted very much to believe in something, though I ultimately admitted to myself that I didn’t believe a single damned thing of the metaphysical or spiritual ideas I was toying with. I took a lot from it, though, and as an atheist I still draw inspiration from some ideas that I encountered during that time, even if in a totally secular way.”
Two years ago, around the time Lewis became a Christian believer and Andrew had reconfirmed his atheism, they met online, in a forum for fans of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.1
“I know, I know, that sounds pretty bad,” Lewis says, laughing, “but we were both drawn to it because it was a high-quality, compelling production, and because it provided a jolt of much-needed optimism and happiness in a world that isn’t always happy or easy to get through.”
“I was living with my girlfriend, Angela, and her son at the time,” Andrew says, “and we’d become fans of the show and joined the forum. My relationship with Angela was already nonfunctional when she informed me that she was Internet-dating another fellow from that forum—Lewis’s then Internet-boyfriend.”
“Nicholas,” says Lewis. “That relationship wasn’t going well either.”
“So Angela got Nicholas to leave Lewis, and she left me for Nicholas, eventually moving in with him and getting married.” Andrew smiles. “How’s that for a soap opera?”
But it didn’t end there. “Shortly after the breakup, Angela prodded me a lot to talk with Lewis, to get to know him, because she felt we would get on well. She was clearly right, because Lewis and I are now living together and are getting married next spring.”
Lewis’s liberal approach to his faith made the religious issue irrelevant to Andrew. “He was intelligent, funny, kind, and a kindred spirit with me. He wore down my desire to be single for a while with relentless kindness. It was a red flag when I learned that he identified as Christian, but I quickly found out that he was a progressive sort of Christian. He didn’t believe that the Bible was literally true, didn’t believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and so on. Once it was clear that I was dealing with someone who lived in the same real rational universe as I did, religion was not an issue, except as a fun conversation starter. We have the same moral framework, the same scientific worldview, so the ‘religious difference’ has never been much of a difference. It could be summed up with the following: I am of the opinion that the universe probably started with the Big Bang for unknown reasons. Lewis is of the opinion that the universe probably started with the Big Bang because God did it, for unknown reasons. We long ago came to the conclusion that our different opinions on the existence of God were about as relevant as if we had differences on the validity of string theory.”
Despite the fact that I’m a Christian and Andrew is an atheist, we basically have the same answers to the fundamental questions in life. We agree that it’s important to be a kind, happy, and friendly person, to be genuinely there for others with no ulterior motives, to not be a jerk to those who disagree with your religious views, and to live and let live when someone isn’t hurting you. —Lewis
Lewis agrees. “Far from being an impediment to our relationship, the differences have been a great way for both of us to challenge our thoughts and ideas in life, to become more solid in our thoughts on the world, and to become closer to each other. Far too many Christians, I feel, tend to shy away from allowing their beliefs to be challenged—though I understand why, given that many of them believe that they will literally be tormented forever if they stray from those beliefs. But it’s unfortunate, as the Bible rather clearly instructs followers to allow ideas to be tested by fire and to only hold on to that which survives those tests.
“We disagree on factual matters, but largely agree on value matters, and I think that that’s really a difference that many people miss in life. Far too often, it’s asserted that if you hold a certain factual belief—that God exists, for example—then you must also hold a certain value judgment, like you think homosexuality is immoral. That’s clearly wrong. I think that our relationship is as solid as it is largely because we’ve allowed each other to see that the only things on which we really disagree are those matters that have very little relevance when it comes to our actual selves and our identities as human beings.”
Andrew agrees immediately. “You just can’t assume someone’s values from their religiosity. My grandfather the Congregationalist minister, and my grandmother with the divinity degree, both in their 80s, both obviously religious. But when I came out to them as bisexual, telling them that I was moving in with my boyfriend, neither one batted an eye. They were just happy for me, and the fact that my partner was another man was completely irrelevant to them. My mother, on the other hand….” He pauses. “Well, when I came out to her as a teenager, she said my bisexuality was ‘just a phase.’ Recently she told me, ‘I am a Christian and don’t believe in same-sex marriages’—as if one clearly follows from the other.”
“Clearly not,” Lewis says with a laugh.
“But it wasn’t all bad,” Andrew continues. “She also said, ‘If you do get married, I’ll come and wish you the best.’ That’s something.”
(Learn about Andrew and Lewis’s wedding plans in Chapter 14—look for the dotted arrows with the couple’s names.)