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To the ones who have gone before

Pastor T____,

I'm so upset. I'm all grown up now. But I am separated from God. I can't believe the things I used to believe. I don't want to be near a God who condones what I see.

I've been there too. And my mother. You know, she and M____ are divorced now. You know, everyone believed in their love. I remember once I asked you about marriage and divorce. God's messages about that were frighteningly clear to me when I studied the catechism. I was upset, and I asked you, what about my mother's divorce and remarriage? You said that was different. You never explained why.

It isn't something I mentioned after that. It was a sort of puzzle in my mind I knew I had no hope of solving.

However, now I believe you were wrong. There was nothing different. There was absolutely nothing different.

God's messages about marriage and divorce have always been clear. No one has ever tried to argue about that. Divorce is legal, but divorce is divorce, and everyone knows what it is.

So many things have opposites. They are made legitimate by their opposite. There is no life without death, light without darkness. But the same is not true for marriage and divorce. Divorce delegitimizes marriage. Subsequent marriages are ever less likely to survive after divorce. I have never seen anyone try to argue about this. Everyone knows it's true. Why doesn't anyone care?

I don't want to be near a God who sets down his word in stone, leaves me in the cold to understand him without the ones who have gone before, and surrounds others with his love and the comfort of affirmative friends, while they play games.

I lose my religion. I don't want to pray. I want to go as far away from God as possible. I don't want to see His face or hear His voice. I want to find a different religion.

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