#dav beal

"it's at this point where it's like, I hope this isn't true. Because I don't want to go through life always having to think I'm the worst in order to find the life in Christ. And that whole thing (where) it just sort of requires you to feel really bad or at least admit that you're just sort of a nothing, you have nothing. And that's why you need Jesus and isn't this such great news?? It just stopped being good news for me."

After that he talks about how whenever he came to the church about his struggles, his problems were blamed on him not working enough on his faith and relationship with God and how that has a serious effect on how he viewed himself as a person and it is wild to feel like i relate so much to Dāv fkin Beal. I'm also really surprised that he seems to be deconstructing Christianity as a whole as opposed to Bethany's flavor of fundamentalism.

So I really can’t stand Dāv. What do you mean probably?! It’s your name! This feels like a middle schooler who desperately wants to be cool and unique.

Honestly it feels like she is to some degree, but it's almost like it's against her will lol. Every time she starts talking about changes in her ideology, I can't get over this feeling that she's holding onto to parts of fundamentalism really hard, like the picture in my head is her being yanked away by her feet by logic while she still has her fingertips dug into her old ideas of morality.

It feels like there are parts of fundamentalism she can't wait to give up, like the way they define ideal womanhood, which I've always felt has maybe made Bethany feel a little insecure as a tall girl who got married at 30 and struggled with pregnancy and fertility. But inevitably, there will be aspects of her old ideology that she either found comfort in, or just fully accepted as truth and reality, that will just be harder to deconstruct. And I can totally relate tbh, even if you feel like a fairly progressive person existing in a conservative Christian world, it still will get it's hooks in you in some ways and transitioning out of that is almost always harder than most people anticipate.

I feel like Dav is probably regularly presenting her with ideas and logic she just can't argue with, for lack of a better description. My understanding of Dav's beliefs is that he doesn't even consider himself a Christian anymore, so if Bethany makes up her mind to stay with him, there are just some things she'll have no choice but to deconstruct tbh. I can't get over the feeling that it might inevitably lead to their breakup though, because it just feels like for parenting and harmony's sake they will eventually have to be on the same page, and the vibe I get from Bethany at the moment is that she doesn't want to fully deconstruct at all. I don't know if she'll ever be able to get on the same page as Dav, who at the moment is super firm in his beliefs.

This is of course just my speculation, and probably me projecting my own feelings about mixed belief relationships onto them, it's totally possible that I'm wrong. Personally, it would just never work for me if I wasn't on the same page as my spouse about spirituality in particular because that's something I take very seriously (as I feel both Dav and Bethany do too just from listening to them talk about it) especially while raising kids.

telling someone who is *that* religious that you don't believe anymore is something you just expect to go badly.... either they're going to be sad or mad or passive aggressive, they're probably going to question your intelligence ("you're just not understanding what the word is *really* saying"), in my personal experience it has never gone smoothly. my family/church community wasn't even on the Beal's level of conservative but telling a few people went so badly that it just scared me into not talking about it with anyone from that world anymore.

so I really applaud Dav for being so public about it, it would've been easy for him and Bethany to keep it quiet to avoid the confrontation of her Christian following and her family. and I'm certain there's going to be people from that following who will be helped by his openness about this topic bc he might be the first person some of them have ever heard openly talk about challenging the ideology he was brought up with, esp Girl Defined's younger female audience.