UF,

I guess it could be moved, I was specifically asking for WW so I thought it belonged here.

I think the original question can be analysed quite rationally.

The fact that the site attracts large numbers of professed Christians seems inevitable, given that it's a US site, and the vast majority of posters are American. Whatever the true nature of American spirituality, it's still a country where the President must swear his oath on a Christian bible, and where he's very unlikely to be elected at all if he professes atheism or is a practising Muslim.

So being seen to adhere to Christianity is still an important driver for many Americans, it would seem.

By definition, the majority of posters who arrive here are in marriages; statistically it seems more likely that religiously-oriented people will get together in marriages rather than just live together. Therefore there's an in-built bias towards religious couples, and that means Christian most of the time.

So it's not that surprising that a large proportion of WSs who arrive here on Marriagebuilders claim to be Christian and feel it important to state their religious credentials.

There are certainly some of them who claim to have received God's forgiveness, but by no means all, or even the majority. I don't think it's uncommon (although I haven't counted) for non-religious waywards to claim that they've forgiven themselves, which seems to me to be part of the same emotional drive to feel forgiveable.

For a Christian, God's forgiveness is predicated on absolute repentance - but I think the forgiveness is pretty much guaranteed if that repentance is there. For a wayward who considers themselves to be truly sorry and remorseful, I think it's reasonable to feel forgiven. If, from the outside, we're seeing behaviour that doesn't suggest real repentance, then all that tells us is that the person still has a lot of tough lessons to learn and is still not safe to be around. But they may, in their own minds, feel quite sincere.

What most waywards, religious or otherwise, display is a badly formed moral system. Whether you're 'religious' or 'atheist' is really irrelevant if you've never thought deeply about how you should conduct yourself in a world of competing needs, and how you discipline yourself to conform to those internalised principles when tempted not to. As I see it, any religion is a model for forming a set of personal principles and developing discipline, but the tendency is for people to adopt the practices and ignore the real work. That's about the laziness of people, not the evil of religion.

The idea that religion is an evil force has many adherents, but always seems to me a sloppy argument, poorly supported by fact. In any case, it seems a red herring to me. The brutal fact is that no two people are going to have identical moral codes or identical ideas of what's right and wrong. Even clerics from the same religion can fall out over details of their faith, after all! What we're not yet very good at is tolerating another's 'truth' and accepting his/her right to believe it absolutely, without feeling our own belief system threatened and becoming defensive/aggressive. And it seems to me that the reason we feel threatened is because we haven't really thought deeply enough about our personal moral position and we feel insecure.

Religion both offers the tools to explore our own position, and allows us to hang our hats on a convenient peg without doing any exploration at all. But I'm not clear that other 'systems' are any better. 6, you're one of the few - possibly the only - professed atheist I know who has given any real thought to your moral position. Most (and I know loads), simply find religion a bit embarrassing, and drift along in a vaguely well-meaning hotchpotch of unformed semi-principles which leave them struggling to determine right from wrong in situations of any moral complexity. They may not be about to take up arms and storm the walls to propagate atheism, but you don't need to be militant to cause damage. Someone who can't come up with a quick answer to whether it's morally OK to 'borrow' paper from the office is not necessarily someone you'd trust with a bigger moral dilemma, such as the temptation to be unfaithful to a marriage.

At least those Christian waywards are absolutely certain that they've done something wrong.

TA

TA,

Since I'm a legally minded person I have looked at the moral systems espoused (heh) by most of the religious systems. I can see merit in many of them, although some are self contradictory as well. In the process of doing that I came up with my own system. I don't think a person would have to believe in christianity to have decided that they will follow those sets of morals, but I don't think a person just using the moral system should call themselves christian. In that sense I could say I am comfortable with the judeo-christian moral/ethical structure but do not believe in the mystical aspects.

I get what you are saying about the WW, I'm probably just seeing a stark contrast between someone like Looking4 and others who just put a christian sticker on themselves as a shield or something.

I wanted to thank all of you for helping me out with my question. I doubt I have a full understanding of the situation since I am an outsider but I can tell that this discussion has already helped me to get a better picture of the WW's and WH's when they label themselves as christian.

Thanks for the help

Gabe