Recently this arrived in my inbox from someone known in my distant past. The author’s name is real, others have been changed to protect them from further inadvertent injury.

Hi Thier,

You probably don’t remember me, but I sure do remember you. Your the guy who ruined my life by seducing my future wife.

Remember the church youth group and the skating rink trips and church camp? That was supposed to be clean christian fellowship and you ruined it. Jane and I were going to be married – she told me she would love me forever. You took her away and then started messing around with her sister Jean while you were still seeing Jane and Melissa.

It’s so funny to see what your writing about religion. At least I know why, you were a rotten Christian and your going to hell anyway. Keep spouting this atheist crap and you’ll get your just rewards for that and for the way you ruined my life. Im still a Christian so I’ll pray that you see the error of your ways, repent,and get saved like I am.

Sincerely,
Jon Woods

Let’s start with my version of the story above. As an early teen living in a small agricultural town where social life starts and ends with church activities, there weren’t many choices about how and with whom to socialize. That meant that whomever was in your age group in your particular church became your social circle. Within that circle, there was much “experimentation” with regard to relationships, sexuality, and power-dynamics. I have to admit, I haven’t thought much about this time and never realized that my behavior would still stir such emotions so many years later. Nor did I ever believe the relationships there were necessarily intended for permanence, though Jon clearly feels otherwise.

To the specific charges. Jon and Jane were “going together” – whatever that means. On one of the youth outings, Jane and I were a little more than friendly while Jon and Jane were still involved. Shortly thereafter, Jane’s sister Jean and I were also getting pretty friendly and were discovered in these activities by other members of the social circle, which unfortunately included the girl I was “going with” at the time too (Melissa – with whom I had also been very “friendly”.) A series of scenes occurred with many angry accusations and tears. Fights were proposed among the male participants who behaved like this was the television show “Wilmington 45177”. Ultimately, this all ended when I left the community for another town and a new school.

Here’s an apology: Jon, to you and the rest of the players you enumerated in your note, I am truly and deeply sorry for my decisions and actions regarding our joint relationships. I did not realize the full impact of this on the others involved in the situation. For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t intend to cause you harm specifically and bear no malice against you.

I’ll even agree with your assessment that I was a rotten christian, though it pains me more to have been a person behaving badly. As I’ve become more experienced my viewpoints have changed so that I don’t behave in such ways (and haven’t for some time) not because the lord may smite me or because, as you so clearly point out, that I’m going to hell as an atheist heathen.

No, I don’t behave in such ways because it’s wrong to toy around with the feelings of other humans that way, particularly when commitments have been issued. Strangely, I don’t feel the need for a deity to inform me of this or threaten with eternal damnation to insure that I don’t stray from this perspective.

One piece of high irony in this is that now that I am most assuredly not christian, there’s no “thrill” that accompanied such hijinx in the past. I used to feel like I was somehow “getting away” with something and like some sort of criminal, it was a rush.

No, now whenever I feel the temptation to do something less than consistent with my own moral tapestry, I think about the people who could be hurt by the behavior and how I’ll feel having made a decision with no net, so to speak. It was so easy to make such mistakes as a christian because you beg the big guy for forgiveness and you’re off the hook. Now that I’m living here on planet Earth, it’s not so simple anymore. Real actions have real consequences that aren’t so easily repaired.

So Jon, you can damn me to hell, you can pray for me, it really makes no difference. I am sorry for pain you’ve carried for decades now – while I can’t say I didn’t know what I was doing – I can say I had no idea I’d hear about it so far after the fact with so much obvious emotion. I hope that you can somehow find peace and find a way to live in the real world.