I want to tell you a story about my past, specifically about adopting the religion of my wife's family. Many people marry someone of the same faith, but some don’t. Others adopt the faith of their spouse. For me, I was baptized into my wife's church a month before we were married.
This is a cautionary tale, and one that I think will resonate with many of my readers. The church I joined was very legalistic and claimed to follow the Bible better than any other. As a Christian, I thought this was ideal for me. I wanted to follow God and believed this was the "truth." Yet many years passed before I realized I had made a grave error.
Like it or not, children often adopt the beliefs of their parents without question. That’s the danger of pushing your beliefs onto your children—it’s how many religions grow. It’s easy to accept something as truthful or real when we can make meaningful connections to reality. If we are ready to learn, learning comes easily, and we may find ourselves believing without reservation. As a nineteen-year-old, this happened to me. I was in love, and I knew I wanted to marry my future wife more than anything in the world.
The next twenty years brought me internalizing many teachings that I have now cast away. Without saying much about the denomination, let me just note that the church's teachings were exceptionally conservative—more so than most. It is one of the strictest Christian denominations and follows the teachings of a prophetess who claimed to foresee the soon-coming end of the world when Jesus would return and all his true followers would endure great tribulations.
My religion taught that everything—what I ate, what I read, where I lived, and what I did for work—was an integral part of my salvation journey. God was presented as an exacting taskmaster who would not listen to our prayers unless we strove for perfection. We were told that, in order to be saved and survive the tribulation at the end of the world, we had to be perfect because Jesus would stop interceding for us.
To make matters worse, my wife's family wholeheartedly embraced the church's teachings and adopted an even stricter "offshoot" that believed Jesuits and the government were conspiring to destroy us. The pressure to conform and be perfect became unbearable. Only when I began to research the prophetess and the beliefs—something I was discouraged from doing—did I realize it was all a sham. By then, I had already devoted many years to this faith. I had also spent years internalizing its beliefs, telling myself over and over that I was a "bad person" and a "sinner" who would never be worthy of anything good here or in the afterlife.
When I finally climbed out of the mire of this faith and realized I had been deceived for years, I snapped. I was beyond furious—at everything. Everything I believed was now in question. The world seemed entirely different from what I had imagined. I was also angry at my in-laws, who had held me to impossible standards throughout my marriage for a false religion they refused to scrutinize. When I left, they were upset because I was "lost." I wrote a book and created a website about it, which only added fuel to the family drama.
Worse still, this all unfolded while I was a missionary. I had spent the last decade of my life volunteering for a religion I eventually saw as empty and harmful. What should have been the most productive years of my life—building a career—were wasted on a church eager to cast me out for questioning its teachings. It was a true nightmare.
Should you adopt the religion of your in-laws? I would say only if you have done your homework and thoroughly examined opposing viewpoints and literature without assuming it’s "the only truth." My church claimed to be the remnant church with the spirit of prophecy for the last days. Like many questionable faiths, membership was seen as the best chance for salvation in the soon-coming end of the world. Questioning the faith by reading dissenting books or websites was discouraged. We were told to focus solely on the prophetess's works and the Bible. If we truly understood our Bibles, they said, we wouldn’t need the prophetess's writings.
It wasn’t until I examined the life of the so-called prophetess and realized she didn’t live by her own rules (as is often the case with strict religions) that I saw the cracks in the foundation. Once I left the church, my self-worth, happiness, feelings of freedom and joy, and inner peace skyrocketed. I lost a significant amount of weight almost immediately. I felt energetic and healthy. People noticed the changes. "What happened?" they asked, intrigued. Many were happy to hear I had left this overly strict and demanding church. Others were furious. My in-laws were among the latter. They couldn’t believe I had walked away from "the truth." My wife and I were forced to leave the parsonage we had lived in. It was intense.
Over a year has passed since this ordeal ended. I recently returned to the U.S. for a family funeral and walked into the church I once attended. It felt so good to have moved on, to be separate from all that! I wish I had never adopted my in-laws' religion. I wish I had researched it more thoroughly and not allowed myself to be blinded by love and the desire for acceptance. In the end, I was never truly accepted. I see that clearly now. Joining my in-laws' church was a HUGE mistake, perhaps the greatest one I’ve ever made. The cost was enormous, but leaving gave me a beautiful new lease on life.
It’s so important to set boundaries with your in-laws. Adopting their religion gives them undue power over your life and marriage. By adopting their religion, I was constantly told how to live, where to live, what to believe, and how to act according to the prophetess's rules. Even minor things, like mixing fruits and vegetables or eating spicy foods, were governed by strange 19th-century dietary rules that were supposedly requirements for salvation. If we didn’t follow them, God wouldn’t hear our prayers. It was a mess.
I could go on and on about this part of my life. It was monumental, and most of the friends I made were from the church. Making friends outside the church was frowned upon—a hallmark of controlling religions. I later learned that pastors weren’t supposed to marry church members to outsiders. My in-laws were among my closest friends, and I eventually saw how damaging it can be to be overly involved with in-laws. Family drama is suffocating, and being mired in it is something no one should aim for. There is something to be said for friends who are not family or in-laws—friends who uplift and enrich your life.
When you deconstruct from a religion and mix religious trauma with family drama, it becomes even harder to attend family functions. I realized this during my last trip to Spokane. The fallout was evident in how people interacted with me—from a distance. Although nothing was said, the elephant in the room was always present. Healthy families communicate, but ours doesn’t. That’s a glaring red flag.
If you’re considering adopting your in-laws' religion, establish healthy boundaries from the outset. Make the religion yours. You are not your church. You are not obligated to adopt every belief of an organization, and if you’re told otherwise, run. You are a separate person from your spouse’s family. Don’t let anyone impose their emotional or religious expectations on you. This is your life, and the sooner you realize that, the better. Don’t make the same mistake I did!
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