Quote Originally Posted by figureaddict View Post
Just be you. Anyone giving you grief about your being active in the church is probably just mad your making them look bad for actually doing what they say they are doing. My wife was raised catholic and it is a bane to my in-laws that I'm not and don't plan on ever being Catholic. Im a god fearing Jesus loving christian and Ill just stick with that.
My wife & I have speculated a bit on the motivation for some of what they do, and this is an attitude we both agree is at play for a lot of it. In a similar vein to the religion, something that has really drawn the ire of a bunch of them is the fact that I no longer drink. My wife doesn't, either, but this is mostly because she's been pregnant or breastfeeding for most of the last 3-4 years. It's not something I bring up or expound upon; I simply don't do it. If someone pushes the issue I'll tell them I don't drink, but I don't go any further than that. I do have a problem with the amount of drinking a lot of my family members do, but instead of making an issue out of it I've simply avoided those gatherings or left before they turned ugly. This actually started before I quit drinking, mainly because I didn't have any desire to be around for the passing out and puking, or for when the vicious, verbal attacks spread to the point where they were going after people who were actually at the party (as opposed to the standard procedure of targeting people who weren't there or who were in another room). This last bit has led to some of the ugliest family scenes, with parents/in-laws of the nastiest in the group either in tears or kicking people out of their house. Considering how frequently this has occurred, it still baffles me that the parents not only pretend that their children don't behave this way, but defend them and attack anyone who complains about similar treatment. They've also vehemently defended their children's drinking, employing selective amnesia so they can claim that the new carpet wasn't the result of one of them vomiting all over the old one, that certain fights or other damages never occurred, etc. One cousin resumed her very heavy drinking within weeks of having her baby. Everyone knew this because she spent the last few weeks of her pregnancy posting on Facebook about how she was looking forward to drinking again, then documenting that first night out with pictures and posts whose incoherence progressed as the night went on. This was over a year ago and despite her ongoing chronicling of her wasted nights out, her parents are still adamant that she hasn't had a drop since the baby was born.

Getting back to my point, though, I know of several parties I didn't attend where a big topic of conversation was how a bunch of them were glad I wasn't there so I wouldn't ruin their fun by preaching about their drinking. As I pointed out, I've never done anything of the sort. Some of the comments that made their way back to me, though, sounded a lot like self-accusation on the part of the person making them. One cousin apparently gave a speech that I undoubtedly would have made had I been there condemning him for his back-to-back DUI's. Several others apparently have done similar things, pointing out what I would accuse them of, all of which had to do with either the level of their drinking or bad things that have happened as a result, including many things I'd never heard of until they brought them up at these parties. It absolutely sounds like me not drinking (or drinking less since a lot of this took place before I quit altogether) led to me being made a scapegoat for their own guilty consciences. It wouldn't be much of stretch to assume that something similar is going on in regards to the religious stuff.