Hi, My Name is Mike and I'm a Theist.

I have recently entered headlong into the strange world of Facebook.  And I think I agree with Carl Jung: "If there is fear of falling, then the only safety is in intentionally jumping!"  I've jumped into Facebook, ready or not.  Here's what happened:

The other day, I received an email from a long lost friend: an ex-Jesuit priest who was my novice master when I first entered the Jesuits over 30 years ago.  After I left the Jesuits almost four years later, met my future wife and then became engaged to marry her, Bob welcomed the chance to marry us.  We did various things with him in the early years of our marriage, camping trips, playing stupid poker games, etc.  He eventually left the priesthood, married and we lost touch soon after that.  Life got in the way I suppose.

Anyway, a few days ago, he extended a "friend" request to me on Facebook and I welcomed him to my lonely Facebook page.  You see, I had reluctantly created a Facebook page some months ago so that I could bond with my wife and kids, all of whom were very active and enthusiastic Facebookers.  But I immediately got scared of the whole Facebook experience, locked down my site so tightly that no one in my family ever found it and I never volunteered to any of them that I had a Facebook page.  Much of that fear was due to the fact that I've always kept my recovery life quite separate and apart from my other life, my life with family, friends and work.  And I couldn't see how I could possibly post things on Facebook that would have any real significance without bringing "out" the important aspect of my life called "recovery."

After Bob's request and agreeing to let him be my friend, I made the mistake of telling my wife that I'd heard from Bob -- and that it had been via an request to be my Facebook friend.  "You have a Facebook??" she asked and accused all at once.  I tried to explain what had happened and why I really didn't want to do Facebook, but she wasn't listening.  She was already pulling up Facebook on our computer and having me login to my page so that she could start helping me figure out how to invite others into my life, including her, my kids.  Within in minutes, I was drowning in Facebook family and friends.  And within a few days, my life as I knew it started falling to shit in a hand basket.

On Facebook, they have a thing where you enter some sort of short statement called your "Status" -- this statement is an attempt to let your friends know how you're doing at that moment in time or sharing some interesting (or not) thought.  My children often post some obscure lyric from a song and everyone else is supposed to guess (we are a competitive group...trust me on that!) who wrote the song.  Well, I started trying to connect with my wife and kids (and the ever growing world of extended family and friends..) by posting various status statements.  Within minutes, they were making fun of me and my ways: philosophical to an extreme (I think I even quoted Cicero in one of my status statements) and serious about what I consider meaningful insights into myself and my world.  It was all light-hearted ribbing and laughing...until I made the mistake of saying some things about God and my beliefs or non-beliefs.

In one status statement is said something to the effect that sometimes I consider myself a theist, sometimes an atheist, sometimes an agnostic and sometimes, in the dark corner of my soul, an apatheist: someone who really doesn't care.  That's something that I had sometimes said in an AA meeting and there was a specific intent for saying that in that context: I was trying to convey, especially to the newcomer, that this was not a religious program (even though it appears that we act similar to some particular religions when we begin/end meetings with Christian prayers...) but a spiritual one.  That we were encouraged to come up with our own concept of a Higher Power and that that concept was purely a personal one and not something that they needed anyone's approval or validation. 

But in the contest of Facebook, this statement took on a whole different context, particularly when it was read by my wife of 28+ years.  She read the comment and was deeply upset by it.  She felt that I was portraying myself as being someone totally different from the person she had married 28 years ago.  At one point, she told me that this was like waking up and looking across and the man in bed with her and realizing that he was a Republican!  [No offense to those of you who are Republicans!  She meant only offense toward me, a life long Democrat.]   Someone who she had always seen as deeply spiritual and one who believed in God's existence and who thought often and deeply about theological issues. 

Who then was I now if I was an Atheist, Agnostic or whatever in the hell an Apatheist was??  We got into quite an argument about this one night that ended up with her walking out of the room and sleeping in another room.  I initially reacted to her reaction as though she was trying to control me (I often misinterpret her in that way!) when in fact, I was reacting to her anger in such a way that disclosed that I was really the one with the control issue: I didn't like her reaction and wanted her to stop reacting to me. 

I didn't sleep well at all that night.  I couldn't bring myself to apologize but I knew something was wrong.  Eventually, the next morning I remember something that David Richo wrote about "If something upsets me and it keeps gnawing at me, I do not attribute my reaction only to what the person said or did.  I take my reaction as a signal that something has been triggered in me.  As a signal to look at myself."  I then realized that I was the one with the control issue and that, in fact, it was this very control issue that I been beneath my intentional separation of my life into two parts for the last 8 years: my recovery life and the rest of my life.  I never let my wife into my "recovery life" because I didn't want to deal with her reactions and feelings about whatever was entailed in that life of recovery.  I didn't want to hear her opinions or feelings related to how many meetings I went to or how many sponsees I might have.  I felt justified in doing this for all this time because I thought she was the controlling one.  I was wrong.  I was the controlling one.

As soon as I realized that, the sun came up and I went to my wife and asked her if I could give her a hug and I apologized for being an ass the night before.  I explained why I had reacted so poorly and we talked about this off and on for the next couple of days.

What happened next surprised me.  I went to an early morning and the topic was the 2nd step and as I was sharing I realized that my prior statements about being Theist, Atheist, Agnostic and Apatheist all rolled into one was not true.  And it's never been true:  I am a Theist.  Plain and simple.  Always have been since whenever I struggled with these issues when I was in my late teens.  I have grown and matured in terms of what/who I believe God to be, but I've never had any doubt about the essential presence of some Ever Present Goodness in the world that goes beyond some moral tenant. 

I was mistaken in thinking myself an Atheist.  What had happened on this issue is that I had often asked the atheists that I had encountered, "Please share with me the God that you don't believe in..."  When they did, I inevitably concluded that I also didn't believe in "that" God and then laughed and told them that I guess then that I too was an atheist like them because we didn't believe in the same God that didn't exist!  I neglected to tell them that I actually still retained a belief in a God who did exist!  Usually, I didn't think they would be all that receptive to that....

I had similar experiences with Agnostics.  I've never met another Apatheist.  I do sometimes talk about the option of being Apatheist in the context of recovery though as I think that's a helpful concept for those, especially newcomers, as they struggle with the God issue in AA/recovery.

OK, that's enough for tonight.  Going home for family game night and some Facebooking.

Take Care!

Mike L.