I was deeply saddened this week by the story of a particular person, I will call her Mary (A name often joined with this woman’s real name), whom I corresponded with briefly on a forum I frequent. Mary, who was once, I presume, evangelical herself, is married to an equally evangelical man. Mary’s husband recently caught her perusing a book on evolution, which raised his suspicions (Heaven forbid anyone try to learn any real, non-fanciful discoveries about the world!).

Anyway, on Friday, Mary’s evangelical husband texted her asking if she was doubting (meaning, doubting God) and that if she was, in Mary’s words, “it would lower his opinion of me and that he would probably want a divorce.” He wrote this, coldy, in a text message.

Mary later wrote:

We messaged back and forth and I admitted my doubts and I sent him a letter explaining the changes in my beliefs.

My husband just called me on the phone and said basically the same thing, “If I’d have known that you weren’t going to believe I never would have married you.�

Then he said, “I love you but you’re a different person now and you’ve been lying to me about who you are. I don’t respect you anymore. I don’t feel I can trust you with the kids. What attracted me to you was your faith in God and now I’m not attracted to you anymore. You might as well have slept with somebody else because you broke my heart today.�

I’m shattered and speechless. What am I going to do?

Presumably, as a fellow reader said, something must have attracted this person to Mary other than her belief in God. Her smile. Her smarts. Her quick wits. Something. But the hurtful words: ”What attracted me to you was your faith in God and now I’m not attracted to you anymore.” fills me with despair, and filled Mary with the words “shattered and speechless.” Such is the power of religion to destroy relationships and most everything else, as one commenter noted, including, specifically:

honesty, respect, love for one’s neighbor, patience, the search for truth, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, and every other fruit of the Holy Spirit.

One sympathetic poster referenced I Corinthians 7:13-16, and it is, indeed, poignant :

13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. 15 But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. ^F18 16 For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how ^F19 knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?

If her faith in God truly attracted this person to Mary, then why didn’t he bypass this woman and marry God, one can’t help but ask?