Religion, Dating, and Bachelor #4
Yesterday I posted a blase little post that was basically random musings and in it dropped the news that there appeared to be a Bachelor #4. Well, indeed there is.
This latest candidate, Bachelor #4, is a 42 year old divorcee. He has partial custody of his son, and lives in the next suburb over from me. (Hey, in a sprawling metro area like this, that's kind of a big deal!) 5'11", blonde and blue, and labels himself "slender." He works as a business analyst for an online shipping facilitation company, which leads me to a tangent.
What is it with guys in the shipping industry coming to me? Bachelor #4 works for a website that supplies shipping quotes to companies that, well, need to ship stuff. Bachelor #2 owns a shipping company. Seriously, what is up with this?
Back to Bachelor #4. He has a degree from a local Baptist college. Uh oh.
I was raised Baptist. My dad is a (mostly) retired Baptist minister. I left the Baptist church with some intentionality well over a decade ago, primarily over theological reasons. In a nutshell, I'm theologically liberal. Most Baptist theological interpretation is conservative, even to the point of literal. As in, God literally took 6 days to create the world, and separating light from dark is not a metaphor for what we call the "Big Bang Theory." (The scientific theory, not the TV show. You know, in case there was any confusion.)
However, Bachelor #4, in his "about me" stuff, left "faith" blank. He also listed "some other viewpoint" for his political leanings. Hmm. Maybe there's hope.
Emailing predictably went to texting, and unlike most early texting conversations this one went rather deep and philosophical fast. Subject: religion. Like me, he was raised Baptist. Similar to me, he's the child of missionaries. (Bonus: he's relatively fluent in German.) Like me, his childhood molded his views on organized religion and the Baptist church in ways our parents did not expect. In his case, it made him a non-believer.
It is not an unusual phenomenon, people raised in very strict religious households growing up and deciding that religion is silly or wrong or otherwise negative because you only see one angle, one perspective. I was fortunate enough to have parents, who while setting their chosen examples of ethics and morality, also encouraged me to question, explore, and come to my own informed decisions. To this day, my father and I will go tit-for-tat on theology; while I don't have his education (he now has a doctorate in theology) I come at the discussions from a more practical and historical context standpoint. Sometimes we agree to disagree, but one thing we do agree upon is that there is no one correct interpretation.
In Bachelor #4's case, he watched his parents work in futility to convert German Catholics and Lutherans to being Baptists. Talk about an example of one religion thinking it is somehow superior to another! It left him with a very bitter taste when it came to organized religion. Even the most devout Christians question and stray. I left the church for almost 3 years, only darkening the doors because I was either paid to be there as a musician, or I felt the need to go because it was, say, Easter. I returned, somewhat begrudgingly, because of a job opportunity. It turned out, it was my time to return to the church. We are now learning that Mother Teresa, one of the greatest examples of Christian love and service to ever walk this earth, frequently and deeply questioned the existence of God. How could she not, living amongst people who redefined poverty, living in squalor, shunned by the world? How could God really exist if s/he allowed that?
However, Bachelor #4 is not, in my opinion, a truly devout atheist. Not any more. Now, I don't question that he doesn't believe. However, he says he despises so much of what the church represents, but that he is slowly coming back around. In many ways, I can't blame him. So much of the public Christianity is coming from skewed interpretations, political factions seemingly wanting to turn our country into a theocracy, preachers inserting themselves quite publicly into issues such as women's fertility where they arguably have no business. It's a double-edged sword for the Church Universal: people looking for something solid tend to return to the church during times of uncertainty (e.g., economic troubles, wars, anti-government sentiments, etc.), yet this quite conservative public slant is also turning people away in droves. He was one of those.
One reason Bachelor #4 wanted to reach out to me, to see if I'd give him a chance, was because he's actually interested in getting to know someone who is a self-described "liberal Christian." More accurately, I say in my profile that I am a worship director/pastor for a liberal church. By liberal, we don't preach politics. We teach and practice service to others as Christ did. We actually cook food and feed the homeless and indigent. We gather clothing for various shelters. We donate hundreds upon hundreds of man hours to food pantries, Micah ministry (feeding & clothing those down on their luck), Uplift (taking hot meals and supplies to the homeless, wherever they are), Back Snack (packing backpacks of food for kids of hungry families to take home for the weekend). We seek mercy and justice, with humility and love. We don't judge or condemn for your race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, single parenthood, employment (or lack thereof), financial standing, immigration status, or views on guns, abortion, or capital punishment. Any and all are welcome in our doors.
As Bachelor #4 said, it's the kind of church he'd consider visiting when he felt ready to go back. If he felt ready to go back. I told him that he'd know when it was time.
There are a lot of other reasons he wants to get to know me, and likewise, me him. He did a music major in undergrad, which may be just right for me: someone who is knowledgeable about my field, but whose career ended up going in a different direction. We have similar interests in history and other intellectual endeavors. And we are both people of words; he often sends longer emails and texts than I do. Truth.
He had hoped to be able to free up his evening tonight to meet, but that couldn't happen. So we will meet for coffee or a drink sometime this weekend, and until then we will continue to text and whatever. Will there be sparks? No way to know until we meet. I'm admittedly at that point where I don't get very excited over a new guy. I don't know if its cynicism, or just being jaded, or the fatigue that happens when you are meeting someone new almost every week, wondering if he might be Mr. Right - or at least Mr. Right Now.
As always, we shall see.
This latest candidate, Bachelor #4, is a 42 year old divorcee. He has partial custody of his son, and lives in the next suburb over from me. (Hey, in a sprawling metro area like this, that's kind of a big deal!) 5'11", blonde and blue, and labels himself "slender." He works as a business analyst for an online shipping facilitation company, which leads me to a tangent.
What is it with guys in the shipping industry coming to me? Bachelor #4 works for a website that supplies shipping quotes to companies that, well, need to ship stuff. Bachelor #2 owns a shipping company. Seriously, what is up with this?
Back to Bachelor #4. He has a degree from a local Baptist college. Uh oh.
I was raised Baptist. My dad is a (mostly) retired Baptist minister. I left the Baptist church with some intentionality well over a decade ago, primarily over theological reasons. In a nutshell, I'm theologically liberal. Most Baptist theological interpretation is conservative, even to the point of literal. As in, God literally took 6 days to create the world, and separating light from dark is not a metaphor for what we call the "Big Bang Theory." (The scientific theory, not the TV show. You know, in case there was any confusion.)
However, Bachelor #4, in his "about me" stuff, left "faith" blank. He also listed "some other viewpoint" for his political leanings. Hmm. Maybe there's hope.
Emailing predictably went to texting, and unlike most early texting conversations this one went rather deep and philosophical fast. Subject: religion. Like me, he was raised Baptist. Similar to me, he's the child of missionaries. (Bonus: he's relatively fluent in German.) Like me, his childhood molded his views on organized religion and the Baptist church in ways our parents did not expect. In his case, it made him a non-believer.
It is not an unusual phenomenon, people raised in very strict religious households growing up and deciding that religion is silly or wrong or otherwise negative because you only see one angle, one perspective. I was fortunate enough to have parents, who while setting their chosen examples of ethics and morality, also encouraged me to question, explore, and come to my own informed decisions. To this day, my father and I will go tit-for-tat on theology; while I don't have his education (he now has a doctorate in theology) I come at the discussions from a more practical and historical context standpoint. Sometimes we agree to disagree, but one thing we do agree upon is that there is no one correct interpretation.
In Bachelor #4's case, he watched his parents work in futility to convert German Catholics and Lutherans to being Baptists. Talk about an example of one religion thinking it is somehow superior to another! It left him with a very bitter taste when it came to organized religion. Even the most devout Christians question and stray. I left the church for almost 3 years, only darkening the doors because I was either paid to be there as a musician, or I felt the need to go because it was, say, Easter. I returned, somewhat begrudgingly, because of a job opportunity. It turned out, it was my time to return to the church. We are now learning that Mother Teresa, one of the greatest examples of Christian love and service to ever walk this earth, frequently and deeply questioned the existence of God. How could she not, living amongst people who redefined poverty, living in squalor, shunned by the world? How could God really exist if s/he allowed that?
However, Bachelor #4 is not, in my opinion, a truly devout atheist. Not any more. Now, I don't question that he doesn't believe. However, he says he despises so much of what the church represents, but that he is slowly coming back around. In many ways, I can't blame him. So much of the public Christianity is coming from skewed interpretations, political factions seemingly wanting to turn our country into a theocracy, preachers inserting themselves quite publicly into issues such as women's fertility where they arguably have no business. It's a double-edged sword for the Church Universal: people looking for something solid tend to return to the church during times of uncertainty (e.g., economic troubles, wars, anti-government sentiments, etc.), yet this quite conservative public slant is also turning people away in droves. He was one of those.
One reason Bachelor #4 wanted to reach out to me, to see if I'd give him a chance, was because he's actually interested in getting to know someone who is a self-described "liberal Christian." More accurately, I say in my profile that I am a worship director/pastor for a liberal church. By liberal, we don't preach politics. We teach and practice service to others as Christ did. We actually cook food and feed the homeless and indigent. We gather clothing for various shelters. We donate hundreds upon hundreds of man hours to food pantries, Micah ministry (feeding & clothing those down on their luck), Uplift (taking hot meals and supplies to the homeless, wherever they are), Back Snack (packing backpacks of food for kids of hungry families to take home for the weekend). We seek mercy and justice, with humility and love. We don't judge or condemn for your race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, single parenthood, employment (or lack thereof), financial standing, immigration status, or views on guns, abortion, or capital punishment. Any and all are welcome in our doors.
As Bachelor #4 said, it's the kind of church he'd consider visiting when he felt ready to go back. If he felt ready to go back. I told him that he'd know when it was time.
There are a lot of other reasons he wants to get to know me, and likewise, me him. He did a music major in undergrad, which may be just right for me: someone who is knowledgeable about my field, but whose career ended up going in a different direction. We have similar interests in history and other intellectual endeavors. And we are both people of words; he often sends longer emails and texts than I do. Truth.
He had hoped to be able to free up his evening tonight to meet, but that couldn't happen. So we will meet for coffee or a drink sometime this weekend, and until then we will continue to text and whatever. Will there be sparks? No way to know until we meet. I'm admittedly at that point where I don't get very excited over a new guy. I don't know if its cynicism, or just being jaded, or the fatigue that happens when you are meeting someone new almost every week, wondering if he might be Mr. Right - or at least Mr. Right Now.
As always, we shall see.
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