Crisis of Faith

If you know me, you probably know I was raised Methodist and Jewish. My husband? Hindu and, in his teenaged years, half of his family decided to become Buddhist. The result of these mixed marriages were one somewhat spiritual agnostic (me) and a very staunch atheist (my husband).

This has never been a problem, until my son started elementary school. As my son has come home with questions spawned from a friend's visit to church, we've covered a smattering of religion and God with our eldest, though probably not as much as we should have. In my defense, do you have any idea what a pain in the ass it is to cover four religions? It's tough enough during winter holidays (which reminds me that I haven't given as many details about why Christmas is Christmas and Hanukkah isn't). Then when you get to explaining Easter and Passover, then move on to Diwali, Holi and a few of the other ones, the point gets kind of lost. And that doesn't even cover the more minor Hindu holidays and rituals.

Sometimes I wish I were devout about something if only to give him more comforting information than, "Well, some people believe..." or "Here's what I think." I wish I knew and could tell him with absolute certainty what was or wasn't out there and if it mattered. On the reverse, I wish my husband weren't so convinced there was nothing out there, because that would make my job a lot easier sometimes, though possibly less entertaining.

Yes, it's all about me.

But did you know that it once took me an hour to convince my husband to let our son go to day camp at the YMCA because he was certain he'd be converted to Christianity? Or that I had to prep him in advance on Cub Scout materials so he wouldn't decide that membership was a heinous ploy to foist religion on young boys? If I didn't love the man so much and he weren't so damn cute, I'd smack him upside the head with a Bible. Thankfully, even though he's a tad unreasonable he can be talked down.

Ah, the joys of living in a multi-cultural, mixed-race marriage. What's funny is that, over and above the obvious (diversity, cultural awareness, etc.), one of the many benefits to living in our family is that it makes demonstrating genetic variation really easy.