Hello all, new user today. Mostly looking to get a bit of friendly advice and hoping someone else out there has experienced a similar issue to mine and has come through it unscathed.
I’ll try to keep this as brief as I can;
My brother and I have always been atheist. Always had the skills of knowing ‘how’ to think, rather than what to think. Or so I thought.
My brother has recently (within the last 2yrs) become a heavily influenced Christian. Heavily. He met some girl, fell in love, drank in the hormonal effects of a new relationship and has adopted her very strong belief system. It was a shame really because I lost one very important outlet for rational conversation as my wife doesn’t care much for indulgence for beliefs she doesn’t care about either direction.
My father moved across the country from us 20 years ago. My brother had very little conversation with him until he “found the glory of God”, however I have maintained a pretty good relationship with our Dad, who very recently received a large settlement from the VA for a 30 year old medical claim. He purchased a plot of land, and made himself comfortable for the short time he has left.
Immediately following this event, my newly converted brother and his new wife (who is evidently 100% disabled and receiving compensation for both herself and my brother) packed up all their belongings, and moved in to a house down the road from my Dad.
Following several apologies and visits, they are now working on a full on conversion of my father and from what I can tell, fixing it to alienate me and my wife and kids from his life.
My questions are these: is there anything I can do? If so, what? If not, how do I compartmentalixe this so it isn’t bothering me so much.
If my brother and wife are successful they will have pushed away me, my Dads girlfriend, and will move in to his place, eventually killing him in the most parasitic way possible.
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Joel,
It seems that you have the Ishmael-Isaac-Abraham & Esau-Jacob-Issac problem.
What's the most important thing do you want from your relationship with your father? Do you value your relationship with your brother more than you value your relationship with your father? Once you give yourself an honest answer to those questions you will know what to do.
Joel: I can not advise on a family dynamic I know nothing about ( or care to). What I can talk to you about you. All of my family is religious. All of my co-workers. Most of my friends. Being an atheist is isolating. Except for online, online atheists are the only atheists I communicate with on a daily basis.
Damn chimp3. We are both in the same boat. If I didn't have access here and YouTube to watch atheist-theist debates, I probably would not be here having committed suicide.
That is why I say I wished this site had been invented 35 years ago.
However, Joel, you are definitely in a pickle. Hate to repeat chimp3, but I do not think anyone here can help you. None here know enough about the situation to even think about offering advice. There are too many subtle details that are unknown.
One piece of advice I can give is, most often you cannot change family members. As with chimp3, ALL of my family, excepting me, are very religious. Most of the time, I stay away from them as best I can. ALL of them practice the standard Christian tactics of mental rape, emotional molestation, and psychological terrorism. Hell, while she was alive, my wife would NEVER speak to my mother. "Too damned religious," she would say.
Thus, basically, all I can say is just watch where everything falls. I know you love your dad (wished mine were still alive) just as much as I love my mother. However, I just cannot speak with my mother because of her constant attempts to "get my soul saved" before she dies. I have tried to explain to her how I feel and my viewpoint. But every time I do, it just opens the fountains as she whines about why can I not just see the light?
Let me quit. This is getting depressing...
rmfr
I feel for you Joel.
I was in a similar circumstance almost twenty years ago. Father passed away, and my siblings started to control my mother's life more and more. I could see that they were just after her money and possessions. Sadly, my siblings are assholes.
So I had to make a choice, to fight back and stir up a shitstorm, with my mother in the middle, or just shut my yap and not rock the boat. I based my decision not for myself, but on my mother's happiness.
Although I knew that under the ministrations of my siblings she had lost her independence, she would be a heck of a lot happier without being in the middle of a very ugly and prolonged fight.
I surrendered any inheritance or voice in the family because I just wanted my mother to live her life out without ugly family conflict.
My suggestion Joel, is to be honest and decide which course of action would be in the best interests of your father, not you.
Thanks everyone. So much attention was unexpected. I suppose the difficulty in direction is understandable. I think what I really wanted to know most was how do I stop it from happening without causing a sh!tstorm.
I don’t believe my brother is completely lost, I think it’s his wife. He’s just very malleable and she’s got her hooks in him deep.