Greetings Post-Mormon friends,
I will try (and probably fail) to keep this brief so that people may be better inclined to read it.
I grew up in a devout Mormon home. In the ‘demon haunted world’ of my childhood, little sister got sunstroke because we went to the beach on Sunday. I was (in all likelihood) going to be changed in the ‘twinkling of an eye’ when Christ came again in the year 2000. Spencer W. Kimball spoke face to face with Jesus in the temple and Bruce R. McConkie was the most brilliant scholar on earth. Ah, 1970’s Mormonism – when men were ‘gods in embryo’, the Negro was ‘less valiant’, and Hinckley’s PR sensibilities were but a glimmer on the horizon.
I was an abnormally religious kid – even by LDS standards. My heroes were not the worldly flesh of Wayne Gretzky, Nolan Ryan, or Julius Erving. My heroes were Nephi, Moroni, and the boy-prophet Joseph Smith. I developed quite a reputation as a junior Book of Mormon scholar in those days. You might say I was a fanatic, which didn’t help with my already notable social awkwardness.
Growing up in the 1980’s, I was a model LDS teenager. I had no disposition to do evil. I never tasted alcohol or tobacco. I never engaged in sexual experimentation much less hooliganism. I went to early morning seminary of my own free will and choice. I encouraged all my LDS friends to do likewise and made no secret of where I stood with my non-LDS acquaintances (notice I didn’t say ‘friends’. I had no non-LDS friends, even though I spent most of my teenage years far from the Arizona-Alberta Mormon corridor). The church didn’t just become an integral part of my identity – it was my identity.
My first hiccup on the straight and narrow path to eternal life came in the months preceding my mission call in 1991. For the first time since puberty, I had acquired a collection of non-LDS friends. Many of my preconceptions about non-members were challenged as a result. More importantly, I had taken enough schooling by then to begin noticing the incompatibilities between hard science and LDS doctrine. After a bit of soul searching, I concluded that Satan was ramping up his efforts in order to keep me from going on my mission. I certainly wasn’t going to let Satan win, so off to the MTC I went.
Whether one believes that the LDS church on the whole is a mind control cult or not, there is no denying that the MTC more than fits that bill. The experience nearly broke me – mentally and emotionally – as they tried to mould me in their image. As the prospect of 'living a lie' was never an option for me, my choices were clear. I could go home in disgrace or I could manufacture some duress-fuelled ‘spiritual experiences’. I chose the latter – or at least made a concerted effort to. My mission (a.k.a. Tract-fest ’91-’93) is an essay unto itself. I think I made it to the finish line more on shear pride and stubbornness than anything else. At one point, I seriously considered taking a bus to Toronto and just disappearing - wipe the slate clean. I still – 20 years later – have recurring nightmares where I’m back in the mission field for some fuzzy reason or another. I can’t get the smile off my face the next morning when I realize it was all a dream. It always struck me as a bit…umm…demoralizing that the devout Mormon can expect unknown eons of de facto ‘street contacting’ amongst the dead in the ‘spirit prison’. I think I’ll take my chances as an inmate in said ‘spirit prison’, thank you very much.
After my mission, I went through another Peter Priesthood phase, perhaps in response to the guilt I felt over my perceived shortcomings as a missionary. For my stalwartness, I eventually found myself serving in the Bishopric of the YSA ward. Looking back, I think my ‘testimony’ during this time had more to do with what I perceived to be a superior lifestyle inside the Church than any commitment to metaphysical concepts. The social life afforded by the YSA scene (especially the comely female part of it) certainly helped smooth over the rough doctrinal edges. By contrast, I found I had little in common with my beer guzzling student peers in the Engineering department.
During the late 1990’s, a few things happened that sowed the seeds of my eventual apostasy:
The first came when I finally experienced an intimate encounter with a ‘strong atheist’ (meaning he wasn’t just atheist by default – he had actually studied the issues) by the name of Bernie. I was partnered with him as an interior painter in the summer of 1995. I had the requisite visions of Bernie all dressed in white as I clasped his wrist in the baptismal font – his wife looking on through tears of joy as she waited for her turn. Bernie was quite a bit different than the mainstream Christians I had dealt with predominantly on my mission. Things didn’t do quite the way I had planned. Bernie had a knack for raising a lot of questions that I had only weak or repugnant answers to. The more he questioned me, the more bizarre and unpalatable my beliefs appeared. I finally angrily announced that my religion was off limits as a subject of conversation.
The second came in 1997 when my father announced that he was leaving the church. This news was not especially surprising to me. Since serving as a Bishop in the late 1980’s, his activity had been gradually fading. I still considered it a tragedy of the highest order. I thought of my still active mother, living in another man’s Celestial harem while my beloved father languished in the Telestial Kingdom - or worse. My father, although disillusioned himself, thought us kids would be better off living the LDS lifestyle and didn’t want to rock our boats. He was not forthcoming about his reasons. When I talked to my Mother about it, she told me that he had been profoundly disturbed by research he had done into the origins of polygamy and had not been able to reconcile it after more than 10 years of trying. I resolved not to see what all the fuss was about, but rather to expressly avoid researching polygamy for fear of suffering the same fate. Boyd K Packer would have been so proud!
The third came in 1997 when I attended an Institute class on the Pearl of Great Price. To this day, I still wonder if the man who taught the class was some sort of anti-Mormon mole. The instructor told us about the re-discovery of the Chandler papyri that spawned the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists had found it to be nothing more than garden variety funeral orations. Not only that, portions of the facsimiles that were missing and had been drawn back in by the revelatory powers of Joseph Smith were accurately identified by Egyptologists prior to the papyri re-discovery (they were out of place at best and gibberish at worst). I was floored. I was also floored that I appeared to be the only one visibly disturbed by all this. The instructor did offer up the standard apologist excuses, but they seemed to me to be appallingly weak (on par with “the dog ate my homework”). He also shared the story of Heber C. Kimball’s covert introduction to polygamy. I was floored again. As a missionary, I had told investigators that such stories were anti-Mormon fabrications!
I thought little more on such matters during the heady days of courtship and honeymoon that followed in 1998/1999. My wife and I were married in the temple. Alas after a couple years of marriage, it became clear to me that my doubts were refusing to stay on the shelf. I desperately wanted to believe for the sake of my beloved wife if for no other reason, but it became harder and harder to do so.
My watershed moment came in 2001, when I got called to be the Ward Mission Leader. I had always taken my time/talents/possessions pledge in the temple very seriously. As I see it, declining a calling is a clear breach of that covenant. Nevertheless, thinking back on my nightmare of a mission – I knew I wanted to have no part in a program that psychologically abused young boys for its own ends. I was also becoming quite certain that the church was not what it claimed to be and it would be hypocritical of me to spread that message. We went home. I cried. My wife cried.
For years after, I kept hoping that something would happen to miraculously resolve my concerns. I accepted a calling as Ward Financial Clerk. I soon became disgusted by what I came to view as religious extortion and demanded a release. My final callings were as Primary teacher. I eventually became disgusted by the dubious themes and blatant propaganda tactics being served up to impressionable young minds. I soon decided that I could not in good conscience serve in that capacity either. I continued to attend church with my wife out of solidarity, but became ever more disturbed at the content of the talks and lessons. Walking out in silent protest became a regular event, much to my wife’s chagrin.
During this period of drift, I was still averse to reading anything that was blatantly anti-Mormon or anti-Religion. Perhaps I was still hoping for a positive resolution – or maybe the taboo instilled against such works was still too strong, like a mine field that remains as a deterrent long after the war is lost. I remained in a holding pattern for years. Eventually I read Jared Diamond’s best selling “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (where’s the harm in that?). That book led to Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee”. Diamond’s ideas made perfect sense to me, but I had to acknowledge that they were wholly incompatible with Mormonism. Finally in 2008 I picked that diabolical silver book, Dawkin’s “God Delusion”, up off the shelf of the local bookstore and carried it to the cash register – all shaking and red faced as if it were a copy of “Barely Legal” magazine. I took it home and opened it (when my wife wasn’t watching, of course).
I mentioned earlier that I was raised in a devout Mormon home, and that I was socially awkward. I figured out sexual intercourse by instinct before anybody explained it to me. I wondered if that was indeed what people did, or if I was just a sick freak. I still remember the flood of relief I experienced when I finally learned (in sixth grade health class) that it was the former rather than the later. Reading Dawkins “God Delusion” was a similar experience. He taught me what I already knew on instinct but had been afraid to articulate or embrace. I remember the famous quotation (a Sunday school favourite) from Parley P. Pratt: “eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when the night came, for I preferred reading to sleep”. Ironically, such was the case with me and Dawkin’s book. In the years since, I have had a voracious appetite for any books on human anthropology, evolutionary psychology, critical thinking, and the biology of belief. It has been like Thanksgiving dinner every day after being raised on a diet of styrofoam. Strangely enough, I didn't feel the urge to kill, rape, maim, and pillage ad nauseum as a result to my new found world outlook. Instead, I felt a humble part of a much larger whole.
Less euphoric but still necessary was confronting the real history of the church for the first time. How anyone can go on singing “Praise to the Man!” after reading Todd Compton’s “In Sacred Loneliness” is completely beyond my grasp. I felt anger towards my father for allowing me to go on sacrificing for the legacy of a wanton sexual predator, but eventually came around to respect if not agree with his decision. The Church’s totalitarian philosophies (witness the jaw dropping Doublespeak and Inquisition-style spectacle of Alma 30 for example) was equally troubling. Where I was once dismayed at my lack of a strong ‘spiritual witness’, I now consider myself fortunate that such a dubious experience was not allowed to forever interfere with my conscience and intellect.
This essay has become too long already, so I will spare you my accounts of the trauma of coming out of the closet except to say my wife is still active in the Church. While my decision brings her sorrow, she has learned to respect and accommodate it. I love her fiercely and would do anything for her – except live a lie.
The truth really DOES set you free.
May 10, 2010