We broke up over our faith but our doubts helped us reconcile | Creator Network

I don’t know our story is kind of complicated because I think so much of our marriage story has been like a journey of healing it was just so fear and shame and guilt based you know I think we felt misled in Canada Christianity stands as one of the dominant religions

Characterized by its diverse branches called denomination ations these denominations often differ in their interpretations of the Bible shaping their distinct practices and beliefs Caroline and I were raised Evangelical and we were taught to take the Bible literally and we were in favor of a one

True theology when I look back I guess I was a fundamentalist it taught me at a very young age that the only way to be a good Christian was to die for my faith the scariest part was that there were no other Alternatives and I couldn’t be

Myself I couldn’t follow my own passions and because that was such a big part of who I was I brought that into our relationship when we started dating in high school grew up in in the Ottawa Valley and grew up Christian my mom was Evangelical but my dad was Catholic and

Then what I felt like was in Conflict was in grade three I realized what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and it was to become a filmmaker but then I remember when when we started dating in high school I I guess I started to feel like this desire was

Incompatible with my faith during University I was really worried that your passion for film making was bigger than your passion for this idea of going overseas and potentially dying and that didn’t work for me and so I broke up with you and I ran away and then I gave

Up film making because maybe it was the problem this whole time and I feel like our story would have been completely different if we hadn’t started asking questions I I think people have a lot of different ideas about what deconstruction is I think for us it simply means rethinking the beliefs that

We grew up with I know that when we were starting our deconstruction it was a very lonely and isolating experience well like the more you ask questions the more you lose your community they view you as uncertain and those are dangerous things to be when you’re in the faith it

Was a very isolating experience there’s a lot at stake and we don’t know who’s a safe space we had no idea that other people were talking about this to discover a podcast like Josiah it was just really comforting to know that we weren’t alone welcome to

The slow train to heck a podcast about people sharing their stories of deconstruction leaving behind toxic religious systems and what happen next I’m your host Josiah Mahan So Sol train to hack is a podcast about belief change um and people going through that for a lot of people who are

Going through that it’s very isolating and and there’s not a lot of places where they are safe to talk about that and so these kind of stories are not heard so I wanted to create a place where people in Canada could tell those [Applause] stories I grew up uh oldest son of a

Pastor of a pretty large church here in Ontario and there was a lot of pressures that came with that the general attitude about deconstruction was to be in good standing a good member of Christian Community you should not be public about your questions there’s so many of us out

There that are in authoritarian churches where you can’t be your authentic self you can’t ask honest questions these are kind of like churches that we grew up with so to discover a podcast like Josiah’s was really we found a community almost yeah this is a story that many

People have because it’s beyond just a belief system it’s it’s a culture cuz this isn’t all of Christianity we like to think Canada is better we don’t have the problems the Americans have but that’s just not true and that can cause people questioning those systems to feel even more

Alone I think American Evangelical culture is very part of the public Consciousness Canada not quite as much media attention on evangelicalism here you know I still feel compelled to the church but also there’s so much hurt is there someone who re-examined their faith but despite that has decided to stay in the Church I you know Faith played a huge role my whole life like I grew up in a small town where the church was kind of the Cent Place dad was a pastor my grandparents were pastors my great-grandparents were pastors and so faith has always kind of been really

Central in my life you know I was the kid who kind of grew up um during a lot of the the Purity culture era you know that was a period in the 9s where you know sexual Purity was really the most important thing right and I really

Experienced a lot of pain because of that and I realized you know I still you know I still am a part of this church here but it was that that culture that I needed to sort of mentally distance myself from which you know for me meant sort of rethinking a lot of the

Evangelical teachings that I was that I was raised with this was so important to us because freethinking our faith was the key to reconciling our relationship 2 years since we broke up we reunited and then we got married and I felt less of a desire to go and die overseas and I

Felt more of a desire to do film making again but I also think it was the key to saving our faith because it let us ask the questions that fundamentalism told us we couldn’t ask especially in the Evangelical culture you’re so much emphasis on what we know and we have to

Know you’re torn between wanting to be honest and authentic but certainty is how you do Faith where the more certain you are were of your beliefs the more celebrated you were I’m tackling these these questions and these doubts with sincere honesty and openness to um you

Know we could be wrong about this some of my favorite films are ones that have an element of mystery to them that encourage like questions that they don’t have the answer to that don’t come to a conclusion and to me that’s sort of a faith thing you can have watched the

Same movie have had basically the same experience but come to a completely different conclusion one of my favorite filmmakers says like the best movies aren’t the ones that play out in the theater they play out the walkway home these big questions I think are just like so human right like it’s like

Just this Human Experience of like why why why why why why why well like a kid like we’ve been through this mystery of Faith this mystery of marriage now we have this mystery of Parenthood raising kids with like the idea that faith is a mystery and there is a lot of unanswered

Questions that there is a lot of things that we’re just not going to know in this lifetime asking God questions and struggling with the world if you’re if we’re as children and he’s our father is most Perfectly Natural thing to have happen so questions are bad and

Dangerous and evil kind of father do you have Dwayne Parsons was my former Pastor for like 10 years and he was the guy that I always considered to be a safe space to have very challenging conversations with and I guess it’s weird because it’s only now I’m

Realizing what it is that Fosters these safe spaces to ask these questions these are like the deepest some of the deepest questions that we ask as people is like is God real or is there life after death wow people are mortal and time is finite and what’s going to happen you know a

Family a church a relationship can be an incredibly liberating place to work through those things and at the end of the day if you can communicate to someone that you’re going to love them regard regardless how much more can you and communicate the love of God than to say

You actually are more important to me than the label you have the faith that you have and I’m going to put your well-being first and Foremost

Josh Murphy and Caroline Rex broke up over the evangelical faith they’d been raised in. But questioning what they’d been taught as children brought them back together as adults. They created the documentary short Those Who Wrestle With God about their path through doubt and rediscovery — topics that became more urgent as they prepared to welcome a child.

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