I was a missionary in England. I would ask my companions “why are we chosen – why are we born with the Truth, when these people aren’t?” This idea seemed so arbitrary, unjust, and arrogant. Those weren’t adjectives we used to describe God so how could God want such a thing to happen? Like a child asking of his squeamish parents where babies come from, their answers placated, but never fully satisfied. I continued to ask the question in my head not wanting to speak out loud, to press the issue for fear of “apostasy”. The answers ranged from, “they will have a chance to accept the Gospel in the next life” to “everyone is born with the Light of Christ and just needs an opportunity to feel the Spirit and accept the True Gospel”. Questions inevitably popped into my head, though never spoken out loud, such as “why are we bothering now to give them that chance - they obviously don’t want it” and “do you only get one chance or lots of chances – if only one, we’ve just damned everyone we’ve talked to today and they don’t even know it, why not just let the Holy Ghost or the folks in the Spirit World work on them, I’m sure they’re much more persuasive than I” and if lots of chances “then why the bloody urgency to make sure everyone has a chance NOW – they’ll have plenty of time and opportunity when they’re dead.”
However I kept silent and I accepted the answers. I even used them myself – lots of times. I fully believed that if I said something often enough then eventually I would know it was true, just as my companions and leaders said they knew it was true. And through my childhood, adolescence, and into my 30’s, I would say I “knew” the Mormon Church was true. It was expected of me to say so and to say so with a look of earnestness and just the right amount of pleading, fawning emotion modeling myself after the General Authorities I saw on television twice a year and the Bishop and Stake President I saw on Sundays. I did this often, truly hoping that one of these times I would really “know” it.
I talked and did all the things that a Mormon boy should say and do. As an adolescent, I was considered the leader that others should look to – the rock. And I bought it; I obeyed the commandments (not just the Ten but also the Mormon-centric ones such as “no drinking alcohol”, “no swearing”, “pay your tithing”, “no sex before marriage”), read the Scriptures (especially the Book of Mormon - at least 21 times; I counted!), dressed appropriately, and advanced in the Priesthood. The praise felt good, the acceptance, the status, the love; all of it felt really good. I had a good time. I had fun growing up – there’s no question about that. I just never really “knew”. I sometimes felt like an imposter but didn’t know any other life and certainly didn’t dwell on this feeling nor could I articulate what I felt. Things were working for me. Within my Mormon circle, I had prestige, acceptance, and love. Why jeopardize a good thing?
I attended Ricks College (as it was then known) and was instantly surrounded by people who believed and did as I believed and did. It was amazing. I had a wonderful time. Status was conferred on he who was most righteous with a few extra points to those who were “on the edge just a little”; like a Bollywood movie – always titillating but never engaging.
As expected, without question, and even with a lot of youthful exuberance along with a fair amount of dutiful pride, I was soon on a plane to England to serve my two year mission. It was here while knocking on British doors that I began to ask questions out loud. Innocent enough particularly as I accepted the answers and gave no illusion that I was fundamentally unsure of my faith; in fact, I don’t know that I was fully aware how unsure I was. Mainly I was interested in properly understanding the doctrine. I craved understanding. I read as much as I could on the doctrine, the history, the biographies, the faith-promoting stories. I wanted to know everything. Like a lawyer researching a case, I devoured as many books as I could afford on the meager allowance given a missionary. I was diligent and worked hard believing that my efforts would be rewarded and God would bless me but to my horror, the more I read, the more my questions gnawed at me.
However I kept silent and I accepted the answers. I even used them myself – lots of times. I fully believed that if I said something often enough then eventually I would know it was true, just as my companions and leaders said they knew it was true. And through my childhood, adolescence, and into my 30’s, I would say I “knew” the Mormon Church was true. It was expected of me to say so and to say so with a look of earnestness and just the right amount of pleading, fawning emotion modeling myself after the General Authorities I saw on television twice a year and the Bishop and Stake President I saw on Sundays. I did this often, truly hoping that one of these times I would really “know” it.
I talked and did all the things that a Mormon boy should say and do. As an adolescent, I was considered the leader that others should look to – the rock. And I bought it; I obeyed the commandments (not just the Ten but also the Mormon-centric ones such as “no drinking alcohol”, “no swearing”, “pay your tithing”, “no sex before marriage”), read the Scriptures (especially the Book of Mormon - at least 21 times; I counted!), dressed appropriately, and advanced in the Priesthood. The praise felt good, the acceptance, the status, the love; all of it felt really good. I had a good time. I had fun growing up – there’s no question about that. I just never really “knew”. I sometimes felt like an imposter but didn’t know any other life and certainly didn’t dwell on this feeling nor could I articulate what I felt. Things were working for me. Within my Mormon circle, I had prestige, acceptance, and love. Why jeopardize a good thing?
I attended Ricks College (as it was then known) and was instantly surrounded by people who believed and did as I believed and did. It was amazing. I had a wonderful time. Status was conferred on he who was most righteous with a few extra points to those who were “on the edge just a little”; like a Bollywood movie – always titillating but never engaging.
As expected, without question, and even with a lot of youthful exuberance along with a fair amount of dutiful pride, I was soon on a plane to England to serve my two year mission. It was here while knocking on British doors that I began to ask questions out loud. Innocent enough particularly as I accepted the answers and gave no illusion that I was fundamentally unsure of my faith; in fact, I don’t know that I was fully aware how unsure I was. Mainly I was interested in properly understanding the doctrine. I craved understanding. I read as much as I could on the doctrine, the history, the biographies, the faith-promoting stories. I wanted to know everything. Like a lawyer researching a case, I devoured as many books as I could afford on the meager allowance given a missionary. I was diligent and worked hard believing that my efforts would be rewarded and God would bless me but to my horror, the more I read, the more my questions gnawed at me.
Once back home, I again found myself surrounded with old friends from Ricks College who had also returned from serving their missions. I quickly fell back into the comfort of being accepted and of being rewarded for believing a certain way and convinced myself I did believe that way, that the Mormon church was the “only true church on the face of the earth”.
I moved on to BYU where I continued to enjoy the camaraderie and carefree days of college. I met my wife there. In a culture where marriage is stressed from the age of 19 on we did what was expected and were married. She was 2 months past her 19th birthday having just finished her sophomore year at college and I was 2 days from my 23rd birthday. Back up to our second date where my soon-to-be wife informed me “professors in my school don’t like your school” - I was an Accounting major in the Marriott School of Management - the most righteous major in the most righteous school on campus; she was a major in a “liberal” social sciences department. What that could that mean? Someone at BYU doesn’t like the status quo – mind-bending thought…how could that possibly be? It doesn’t make any sense…I don’t get it…it’s not in my worldview - but it stayed with me.
I continued to feed my passion of devouring books on church history and doctrine. Like on my mission I wanted to understand and really know that what I was living was in fact “True”. Like most people at BYU, my political thought was dominated by rightist philosophies. I listened to right-wing talk radio, believed fervently in Reagan-omics, attended business school dominated by disciples of Peter Drucker, and felt sincere frustration when Bill Clinton was elected President. At some point during my political right-wing, religious fundamentalist bent, in the school library, I stumbled on a book by well-known, though little-read, Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley. Many of his words made a deep and lasting impression. They struck a chord in my soul. I read words for the first time that talked about concern for the Earth, real compassion for the poor, how making money doesn’t equal goodness, and other, for me at the time, paradigm-shifting ideas.
My wife, who as mentioned was a student in the more-liberal, if that is possible at BYU, College of Social Sciences started bringing home readings from authors such as Wendell Berry and Terry Tempest Williams. These writings fascinated me. My mind literally felt like it was expanding, like some new Universe had just been discovered. I began to see the Church in a slightly different light; like perhaps the rose-colored glasses I had always worn were slowly, very slowly starting to fade. The idea that one could be a Democrat and also a good member of the Church became palatable. I joined a wilderness conservation organization. Sarah and I started to hike and backpack in the Wasatch Mountains and the deserts of southern Utah where I saw the Beauty of Wild places and felt the first stirrings within me of a bond to the Earth and a desire to protect and to conserve.
I took my first job in Denver, then was shortly transferred to Birmingham. From there we moved on to Guelph, Ontario where my wife enrolled in a graduate degree program at the University of Guelph. During this time, I read more Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold. My political views took a definite turn to the Left and I no longer shared the same political philosophy with most of the members of the Mormon Church (at least in the western US). While in Guelph, I remember sitting on the floor of our small family student housing apartment with my wife and us asking one another, “Could you leave?” as in could you leave the Mormon Church. My answer was “I’d like to know I would stay even if I had the courage to leave.” At that time, I articulated for the first time something I’d known deep down probably since I was an adolescent – I was trapped. Trapped by expectations, trapped by parents, trapped by the loss of love that would no longer be given me by an admiring crowd. I didn’t have the courage to leave, not because I knew it was true, but because I didn’t want to upset my parents, my grandparents, my friends. I didn’t want to lose the love that comes from the status I had gained in the Church. With what would I replace the hole that would be surely be raging if I were to leave? No, there was no way I could leave; the emotional and social cost would be too great. But what of my own spiritual cost by staying and not really believing? I shoved that away.
I felt more and more callousness in the doctrines of the Mormon Church. I did not want to be part of an organization that felt the highest calling of a woman was to make babies (have a quiver full of children) and clean her home. I did not want to be part of an organization that substituted spirituality for dogma. I did not want to be part of an organization that believed the only way to God was through its own leaders. I did not want to be part of an organization that believed wearing white shirts on Sunday was the indicator of one’s standing with God. But I was trapped. Trapped in years of indoctrination, in feeling like I couldn’t fail my parents, my family. Would they no longer be an eternal family because of me? Because I failed them? Where would I find friends? Who would talk to me? Who would love me? What would my status be? These were serious, painful, and very difficult questions that caused me years of private anguish.
I attempted to bury this anguish by immersing myself even more into the history of the Church, thinking that there, surely, I would find relief. But this only caused my anguish to grow as I learned about the socially constructed nature of the church doctrines that I had been taught had come straight from the Mouth of God. As I learned of the greedy, angry, provocative, power-hungry, loving, compassionate, gentle leaders of the church, I discovered they were human; just ordinary humans. I found myself understanding how anthropomorphized God had become to suit the foibles and passions of these men.
I would rage inside at the unjustness of it all, at how there was no way to talk about these things within the Church without fear of being dis-fellowshipped or excommunicated. We moved from Guelph to Bozeman, Montana.
I was “called” to be in the bishopric within a local ward of the church. I very much struggled with this. I wanted to think that perhaps I could manage this. But the cognitive dissonance required by saying I believed x when really in the core of my soul, I knew I didn’t was on some days so devastating I would leave the church with physical headaches and stomach aches that I would pretend didn’t exist as I came home. I didn’t know how to deal with it – the emotional pain now bleeding into my physical self was overwhelming. I chose to say and do the right things, as prescribed by Mormon leaders, believing this would be my salvation. My epiphany would one day come and I would be like Saul on the road to Tarsus – converted and wholly believing. Instead, the only epiphany that I ever felt was the very real pain caused by staying and now preaching from the pulpit the doctrines I knew I couldn’t believe in.
At about this time, my wife went through her own Hell. She threatened to leave me and the Church. Thankfully, only one of those threats happened. However, for a long time, we lived in the same house as roommates, orbiting satellites, who acknowledged each other as little as possible. I would still attend church without her, but had resigned from the bishopric. During this very difficult period in our marriage and in my crisis of faith, I had frequent bouts of insomnia, of physical exhaustion where I took time off from work, of bouts of screaming rage. I reached out to friends in the Church holding on to that last desperate thread of my known world. The final act came when my wife and I (along the with the two wonderful boys we now had) decided to spend the summer near Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta. Several times, I attended the church there on my own. During one of these visits, I was so wounded by the pronouncements being made I left early, vowing to myself to never attend that church again. And that was that.
Now our marriage feels like it is growing well again. The pain caused by the extreme cognitive dissonance has been alleviated. I feel honest and liberated. But I still feel a certain emptiness, like the hole isn’t really plugged. There’s a lack, a gap in my life. I struggle to understand how to fill it. I’ve tried meditation, poetry, yoga – all were wonderful and gave me a sense of calm, of creation, but they didn’t fill me. Perhaps I should look deeper into myself and find the missing ingredient there. These words are an attempt at that. It feels right. Maybe the hole should always be there at some degree – this may be from whence the sense of wonder comes, from whence the desire to live comes, from whence life grows.
I believe that fundamentalist dogma takes us away from ourselves. I feel myself becoming more and more comfortable with the word “atheist”. I believe in love and in wandering and in finding ones way. I believe the cliché which says “the purpose of life is to live”.
I moved on to BYU where I continued to enjoy the camaraderie and carefree days of college. I met my wife there. In a culture where marriage is stressed from the age of 19 on we did what was expected and were married. She was 2 months past her 19th birthday having just finished her sophomore year at college and I was 2 days from my 23rd birthday. Back up to our second date where my soon-to-be wife informed me “professors in my school don’t like your school” - I was an Accounting major in the Marriott School of Management - the most righteous major in the most righteous school on campus; she was a major in a “liberal” social sciences department. What that could that mean? Someone at BYU doesn’t like the status quo – mind-bending thought…how could that possibly be? It doesn’t make any sense…I don’t get it…it’s not in my worldview - but it stayed with me.
I continued to feed my passion of devouring books on church history and doctrine. Like on my mission I wanted to understand and really know that what I was living was in fact “True”. Like most people at BYU, my political thought was dominated by rightist philosophies. I listened to right-wing talk radio, believed fervently in Reagan-omics, attended business school dominated by disciples of Peter Drucker, and felt sincere frustration when Bill Clinton was elected President. At some point during my political right-wing, religious fundamentalist bent, in the school library, I stumbled on a book by well-known, though little-read, Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley. Many of his words made a deep and lasting impression. They struck a chord in my soul. I read words for the first time that talked about concern for the Earth, real compassion for the poor, how making money doesn’t equal goodness, and other, for me at the time, paradigm-shifting ideas.
My wife, who as mentioned was a student in the more-liberal, if that is possible at BYU, College of Social Sciences started bringing home readings from authors such as Wendell Berry and Terry Tempest Williams. These writings fascinated me. My mind literally felt like it was expanding, like some new Universe had just been discovered. I began to see the Church in a slightly different light; like perhaps the rose-colored glasses I had always worn were slowly, very slowly starting to fade. The idea that one could be a Democrat and also a good member of the Church became palatable. I joined a wilderness conservation organization. Sarah and I started to hike and backpack in the Wasatch Mountains and the deserts of southern Utah where I saw the Beauty of Wild places and felt the first stirrings within me of a bond to the Earth and a desire to protect and to conserve.
I took my first job in Denver, then was shortly transferred to Birmingham. From there we moved on to Guelph, Ontario where my wife enrolled in a graduate degree program at the University of Guelph. During this time, I read more Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold. My political views took a definite turn to the Left and I no longer shared the same political philosophy with most of the members of the Mormon Church (at least in the western US). While in Guelph, I remember sitting on the floor of our small family student housing apartment with my wife and us asking one another, “Could you leave?” as in could you leave the Mormon Church. My answer was “I’d like to know I would stay even if I had the courage to leave.” At that time, I articulated for the first time something I’d known deep down probably since I was an adolescent – I was trapped. Trapped by expectations, trapped by parents, trapped by the loss of love that would no longer be given me by an admiring crowd. I didn’t have the courage to leave, not because I knew it was true, but because I didn’t want to upset my parents, my grandparents, my friends. I didn’t want to lose the love that comes from the status I had gained in the Church. With what would I replace the hole that would be surely be raging if I were to leave? No, there was no way I could leave; the emotional and social cost would be too great. But what of my own spiritual cost by staying and not really believing? I shoved that away.
I felt more and more callousness in the doctrines of the Mormon Church. I did not want to be part of an organization that felt the highest calling of a woman was to make babies (have a quiver full of children) and clean her home. I did not want to be part of an organization that substituted spirituality for dogma. I did not want to be part of an organization that believed the only way to God was through its own leaders. I did not want to be part of an organization that believed wearing white shirts on Sunday was the indicator of one’s standing with God. But I was trapped. Trapped in years of indoctrination, in feeling like I couldn’t fail my parents, my family. Would they no longer be an eternal family because of me? Because I failed them? Where would I find friends? Who would talk to me? Who would love me? What would my status be? These were serious, painful, and very difficult questions that caused me years of private anguish.
I attempted to bury this anguish by immersing myself even more into the history of the Church, thinking that there, surely, I would find relief. But this only caused my anguish to grow as I learned about the socially constructed nature of the church doctrines that I had been taught had come straight from the Mouth of God. As I learned of the greedy, angry, provocative, power-hungry, loving, compassionate, gentle leaders of the church, I discovered they were human; just ordinary humans. I found myself understanding how anthropomorphized God had become to suit the foibles and passions of these men.
I would rage inside at the unjustness of it all, at how there was no way to talk about these things within the Church without fear of being dis-fellowshipped or excommunicated. We moved from Guelph to Bozeman, Montana.
I was “called” to be in the bishopric within a local ward of the church. I very much struggled with this. I wanted to think that perhaps I could manage this. But the cognitive dissonance required by saying I believed x when really in the core of my soul, I knew I didn’t was on some days so devastating I would leave the church with physical headaches and stomach aches that I would pretend didn’t exist as I came home. I didn’t know how to deal with it – the emotional pain now bleeding into my physical self was overwhelming. I chose to say and do the right things, as prescribed by Mormon leaders, believing this would be my salvation. My epiphany would one day come and I would be like Saul on the road to Tarsus – converted and wholly believing. Instead, the only epiphany that I ever felt was the very real pain caused by staying and now preaching from the pulpit the doctrines I knew I couldn’t believe in.
At about this time, my wife went through her own Hell. She threatened to leave me and the Church. Thankfully, only one of those threats happened. However, for a long time, we lived in the same house as roommates, orbiting satellites, who acknowledged each other as little as possible. I would still attend church without her, but had resigned from the bishopric. During this very difficult period in our marriage and in my crisis of faith, I had frequent bouts of insomnia, of physical exhaustion where I took time off from work, of bouts of screaming rage. I reached out to friends in the Church holding on to that last desperate thread of my known world. The final act came when my wife and I (along the with the two wonderful boys we now had) decided to spend the summer near Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta. Several times, I attended the church there on my own. During one of these visits, I was so wounded by the pronouncements being made I left early, vowing to myself to never attend that church again. And that was that.
Now our marriage feels like it is growing well again. The pain caused by the extreme cognitive dissonance has been alleviated. I feel honest and liberated. But I still feel a certain emptiness, like the hole isn’t really plugged. There’s a lack, a gap in my life. I struggle to understand how to fill it. I’ve tried meditation, poetry, yoga – all were wonderful and gave me a sense of calm, of creation, but they didn’t fill me. Perhaps I should look deeper into myself and find the missing ingredient there. These words are an attempt at that. It feels right. Maybe the hole should always be there at some degree – this may be from whence the sense of wonder comes, from whence the desire to live comes, from whence life grows.
I believe that fundamentalist dogma takes us away from ourselves. I feel myself becoming more and more comfortable with the word “atheist”. I believe in love and in wandering and in finding ones way. I believe the cliché which says “the purpose of life is to live”.