Spiritually Dysfunctional: Being The True and Amazing Story of How a Confirmed Jewish Atheist and…
by Fred Singer
Summary
Jewish atheist history professor Fred Singer and his Catholic theologian wife Becky have been arguing over Life’s Big Questions during their thrity theologically stormy years of marriage. Now Fred has put it all together in this imaginitive, offbeat, yet thoughtful and endearing tribute to love and man’s search for answers. Fred will take you on a thought-provoking and entertaining journey-combining humore, satirem, tragedy, memoir,l history,psychology and somek very human characters. Or, to [ut it another way, “Spiritually Dysfunctional” is “Tuesdays With Morrie” riding a Zen motorcycle on “The Road Less Traveled” to discover why “Bad things Happen to Good people.”
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
DO NOT YOKE YOURSELVES IN A MISMATCH WITH UNBELIEVERS
Late October 1976, early evening in the kitchen of my small apartment in Germany. We were breaking up for perhaps the hundredth time.
This one, however, would end it once and for all. Sometimes the conversations about god (little g for me, big G for Becky) and man’s place in the cosmos were interesting, sometimes agonizing, sometimes exhausting. But the time for theological debate was over. The school year was only two months old, and we were at it again. Now what?
I stood in the kitchen looking at Becky. “If you go now it’s over.” We both had tears in our eyes. The sun was dropping fast outside the big window over the table. “If you walk out the door I swear I’ll never call you, never. I’ll never go to your apartment. I’ll never pick you up at your classroom. I’ll never talk to you again. Never. It’s over if you leave. I can’t go through this anymore.”
I turned and sat at the kitchen table, emotionally drained. At the age of thirty-three it was hard to imagine starting all over again. Going to the O club, taking phone numbers, calling for dates, doing the getting-to-know -you-conversations. Maybe I’ll never get married, never have kids, maybe I’ll live alone in bachelor apartments forever. How
could we ever have thought this would work? I sighed and turned. She was gone. Actually gone. Out-the-door-gone. End-of-relationship-gone. The front door was wide open. I looked out the window. There she was walking to her car.
She had really done it, really walked out.
The whole thing had been ridiculous from the start. I had always been contemptuous of religious people; they were ignorant, superstitious peasants; they were serfs; they were people unable to reason, unable to live life on their own terms without that supernatural crutch. I was Jewish and didn’t believe in that either. How could I possibly spend two years with someone who was not only religious, but some
kind of super Christian?
Just the month before Becky had consulted God about our relationship. Opening the Bible at random, she ran her finger down the page and got the answer she was looking for.
Do not yoke yourselves in a mismatch with unbelievers.
After all, what do righteousness and lawlessness have
in common, or what fellowship can light have with
darkness?
What accord is there between Christ and Belial, what
common lot between believer and unbeliever?
––2 CORINTHIANS 6:14-15
There it was. The Supreme Judge of the Universe had given a Celestial Thumbs Down to the relationship. That should have been enough to end it. But in spite of God’s warning, we stayed together.
Until that day in the kitchen. Now I knew it was over.
Thank god. Finally. What a relief. I’m so tired of these conversations. I could think of two or three girls who I would call tomorrow who had no religious baggage. Finished, finished, finished. It’s over.
The next day I went through the motions in school and then
headed for Foodland, which happened to be right across the street from the Fliegerhorst chapel. I knew she’d be there and she was. Her green Capri was out front. She was inside praying, asking for guidance; maybe she wanted a different answer than “Do not yoke yourself in a mismatch . . .”
I walked past the minister who had been meeting with us for months, trying to work things out. “What if she wants to go to church Sunday morning, and you want to stay in bed and fool around?” he had asked. “Are you okay with having Catholic children?”
He started to say something, but I brushed past him. It always seemed that making the decision to marry would be incredibly hard. The world was full of women. Which one? How can anyone make that lifetime commitment?
“Becky!”
She turned, shocked to see me. “How did you know I was here?”
“I knew.”
We were both crying now. I didn’t make any jokes about what god had to say. I had no idea what I was going to say. I was in a daze. I just couldn’t let her go. “Are you going to be my wife?” I asked. “Are we going to live together forever?” The words came out of my mouth but
were somehow disconnected from my brain. I was hearing myself
say these things.
The rest of the world was a blur. There was only the two of us standing in the back of the church. The gloomy late afternoon light made its way dimly through the stained-glass windows.
We embraced, we kissed, we cried. I caught a glimpse of the minister turning away, and for a flickering moment, I wondered about those Sunday mornings and those unborn children––Catholic children. There would be a lifetime of churches, priests, confessions, crosses and . . . Jesus, for crying out loud.
But all of that was secondary to the moment. Emotion trumped reason and there was no turning back.
After two years of this turmoil, getting married would be a piece of cake.
It wasn’t.
© 2006 by Fred Singer Reprinted with permission of Capital Books
Author's Biography
Fred Singer is an adjunct professor of History at Regis University in Denver. He is also the author of “Change Your Mind, Save Your Life,” as well as several hundred op-ed pieces. His science fiction storeis have appeared in Asimov’s SF Magaizine, Fantasy and Science Fiction and others.