“On vous a lave le cerveau” he said, as this ideal looking french couple walked by us on the street. Now, my french at the time wasn’t great, but I understood laver “to wash” and cerveau “brain” and I realized that this french man had the audacity to tell me that I had been brainwashed. In my broken french I turned around and said, “Non monsieur,” I haven’t been brainwashed. I know that the church is true. The man just kind of laughed it off and this french couple strolling downtown in our amazing little French town, just kept walking. Hmmm...
What an interesting thing it is that there are certain events that I can remember like they were yesterday. I was born into the church, my dad was baptized in his twenties and my mom was baptized when she was younger when her family had converted. Mom and Dad were truly converted, we lived in a small town and my dad did essentially everything in the branch. At one time he told us that he blessed, and passed the sacrament, and was conducting sacrament meeting.
Later, we would travel for an hour to get to church from my earliest recollection and I remember praying in the winter time that it would snow too much for us to go to church. I remember the basement of our church filled me with wonder. It was a unique building and there was an apartment for the missionaries down there and the basement also held the primary room, and seemed cave like because the raw rocks were visible. I also vividly remember at church that there was a flight of stairs that led up to the front door. One day a buddy and I were jumping off the top landing of the stairs right beside the front doors, and as I stepped over the railing to jump off the landing onto the grassy hill below. It wasn’t to be because my buddy grabbed a hold of my sweater. I was literally hanging in space, and in a move that potentially indicated some previous brain damage I demanded in no uncertain terms that he let go of my sweater.
Hanging over the side, with my feet resting on the landing, I was helpless. The minute that he let go of my sweater I fell forward and smacked my head on a big rock sticking out of the grass. The next thing I remember was being in a car heading towards the hospital. This was the first of a series of head injuries that may or may not have had a marked influence on the rest of my life. A question still actively debated in family gatherings. I was around 7 or so at the time.
We moved shortly after and we were in a slightly larger branch, that then became a ward and it was an exciting time. I remember we had a member of the quorum of the twelve come to our district and make the changes. I remember thinking “Wow, this guy gives really good talks.” I remember too, that my first experience feeling those electric shock type of feelings came during a district conference and there was a member of the seventy speaking. We sang a song, and I felt it and I asked “what’s that?” referring to the feelings that I was experiencing and it was positively identified as the spirit. It was an important experience because I based my later spiritual experiences on that one. It was interesting to me though because I didn’t feel those feelings unless there was a song going on.
Later on, I know as I approached my teenager years, when people got emotional in testimony meetings I would feel these stirrings, and my heart was pounding. I identified those as spiritual promptings as well, and as I began to experience them more frequently I became more engaged with things that promoted those feelings. When we were in the branch that became a ward, I couldn’t stand going to church. I honestly believe that if we hadn’t moved when I was just finishing my first year of high school I would have left the church, and gone down a completely different path. I had awful self esteem, bad acne, I was overweight, and that year was the first time I felt like I somewhat fit in. I was playing football, and I was lifting weights, and wrestling, and in short, desperately doing whatever I could to conform, to fit in. I was having conversations with people that were older than me on the wrestling team and they asked me pointed questions about the WoW, and the BoM, and polygamy. Well what the heck was I supposed to say, all I knew was that sometimes when we sang hymns I’d feel really good, and I just supposed that everything surrounding those feelings was good. I also knew that my parents knew the church was true, and that was somewhat good enough for me.
The difficulty was that none of the other youth in young mens cared about young mens. I remember one guy was actually brewing wine under his bed, some told dirty jokes, and were completely different people when not at church. There was no social network to catch me as I was on a free fall towards worldliness! I remember as well, from these early experiences of being a young teenager such an awful feeling of guilt and repugnance for myself. I cursed, I mean I really swore a lot at school, while playing football etc. I felt so awful about myself that I can remember the scripture in Alma about wanting the rocks to fall upon you to hide you. I could totally relate, I felt like a weakling, certainly not good enough. Cursing wasn’t the only thing, but I just felt like what was the use, no matter how hard I tried, I could never measure up.
We moved though now, and I was in a new ward, but like a real one this time. Our stake had a basketball tournament, and I clearly recall an incident that portrayed my utter ignorance about church ball. Even though in my small ward we played basketball for almost every activity, and I played basketball all the time but I was unaware of the subtle intricacies of the game. During my first game in the tournament,there was a pretty talented guy driving towards the basket. I was standing there most likely feet pumping like I was about to football tackle him, and as he got closer I got a brilliant idea. I just extended my arm out and completely close lined the brother to the ground. I grinned and was pretty pleased with myself until I immediately recognized that this must not be kosher. He was really pissed, and walked out slamming the door open. I was unsure of what i had done wrong and the rules were explained to me.
The stake basketball tournament was not the only thing that was different here. There were actually young men who cared about the church and eegad, even followed the rules! This gave me hope, and I started to enjoy seminary, although my innate sarcasm was somewhat troubling to my leaders I suppose. I was a really good teacher, and so ended up being the president of all of the priesthood quorums, and whooped everyone in scripture mastery. I don’t like to toot my own horn but... well maybe I don’t mind it terribly, but the point is I was doing everything I needed to to be a champ in the Mormon culture I found myself in.
The problem though was that I was in a catholic school, and I started learning about other religions, not only that but in this larger city there were all these different cultures represented with their various religious traditions and it made me think a lot about my own. Furthermore certain things bothered me, like Noah and the Ark. How in the halibut did he pull that one off? My Catholic history teacher told me that the story most likely represented a great flood in a localized area, and was not a worldwide event. That made sense, I looked up the Mormon understanding.... oh, it was worldwide, and it was the baptism of the earth, and the fire at the second coming was like the earth receiving the Holy Ghost or baptism of fire. Okay.
Other things seemed entirely difficult to swallow, even when I was wanting to, Adam and Eve, the timeline, the tower of babel, the Jaredite barges, someone keeping the sun still (or as we learn in the book of mormon, the earth stands still in relation to the sun), etc. There was a lot that bothered me, but I figured that’s okay, I’ll take it on faith and I’ll learn later.
My testimony came into question when my cousin asked me about the church, and I had no idea what to tell him. So I asked the missionaries for advice and they gave me the first discussion pamphlet, we went over it together. Then somehow it came up, how do you know it’s true. Well, yeah, how do I know it’s true? I didn’t know I realized with a shock. So I set out to find out if it was true. I read the BoM, and I studied and then I prayed, nada. So I thought about Jesus’ statement about why it was that the Apostles couldn’t cast out the devils and he said “this kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer” So I fasted, and was praying and when I came home from school I prayed. At first nothing, the second time nothing, but I didn’t understand it I really wanted to know. Then the third time I got this sort of thought that was what I understood to be pure intelligence, or inspiration. “You already know it’s true”. I felt relieved, and content and so happy. Well duh, I mean honestly you already know. I don’t know how I didn’t see then that that’s just way too convenient. I didn’t get the burning, or the response that Moroni promised, all I got was me saying you already know.
Yet it was good enough at the time, but my real salvation during my youth came in the form of an angelic voice, in a super sweet girl. I was still pretty anti-social when I turned sixteen and couldn’t see the point in dating smelly girls. But I was at a youth conference, and there she was singing this song, and honestly I was transfixed. I already related earlier in this account that music had a special effect on me, and this was no exception. I was floored, and to this day can remember an image that my mind conjured up of a ray of light surrounding her. So I managed to find out who this girl was, and I knocked her off her feet. I was a natural born romantic and gave my whole soul to this girl. Now, in retrospect, what the hell was I thinking? I mean clearly I wasn’t, and anyone who has been head over heels in love with someone in their teenage years will relate to the bi-polar nature of these relationships. I remember having some powerful “spiritual” experiences relating to this relationship.
What really happened though is I chose to give in entirely to the church. Who cares about these doubts, I mean I was stark raving insane in love, and happier than I had ever been. Also sadder, scared, mystified, jealous and totally lost. But I no longer questioned the church and I fell even further into the work of understanding the scriptures, and the workings of the church, partly in regards to my patriarchal blessing. I started going out with the missionaries once a week, learning the doctrine of the discussions, knocking on doors, visiting less actives, everything. My heart was dashed to pieces by my angelic voice, in a sweet, but now acknowledged confused and lost girl. She cheated on me, and lied, and ripped my heart out with a pair of needle nose pliers. But I was heading off to the MTC and was ecstatic. I was going to serve with all my “heart, might, mind and strength”
The MTC to me was awesome, all you can drink Chocolate Milk, all you can eat lucky charms. I felt like this was a small glimpse of the terrestrial kingdom, except that we were so shrouded from the outside world that some of the members of my branch and I began to imagine super hero type scenarios and I longed to talk to a non-mormon French person. I had some powerful experiences in the MTC relating to the gospel. I was teaching about the prophet Joseph Smith once and felt like I was on fire. I remember coming back to the room after our mock teaching session and exclaiming “If I can teach about the prophet Joseph Smith every day of my mission I will be so happy!” Little did I know that it was the prophet who would in fact lead to the destruction of what I felt was an unflappable faith.
I left to France and frankly had an amazing first three months. I felt like I could understand people, and that I could more or less communicate what I wanted to them even in somewhat simplistic French. My companion rocked, and I had a great first two transfers. Although at the end of our first 6 weeks when we had taught but one wishy washy discussion after day upon day of door knocking and street contacting, I had a mini mental breakdown considering that I must be a spiritual failure or something. Then the second companion came, and well, I can say this, I was a green, on fire, cocky missionary, and he was going home in less than three months. I accused him of being lazy, and told my mission president. He confronted us both about it, and when I said in front of the MP that he was slacking off, I entered into the worst 5 weeks of my life up to that point. Elder Shorty the English Prick... (I’m trying to conceal his real name) became incredibly angry, at one point we had an appointment fall through and I knocked on the door three times in anxious hope that someone would respond. At the end of the third knock Elder Stupid Head flipped, he called me an idiot and told me to stop knocking. We walked home in seething silence, and then literally for the next 5 weeks he didn’t talk to me, and when he did it was in grunts and yelling.
Needless to say that when he got transferred out of there at the end of that transfer I almost kissed the feet of my new companion! The mission progressed and the french got better, and then I got transferred from this idyllic french town to the center of Paris. Gracious it was beautiful! History on every street corner and beautiful parks, and everything I had seen Paris to be. Except that as a missionary I didn’t get to experience it as I would have liked. It was beautiful, but our apartment was a dump and mice infested. In fact, one night I was sleeping and all of a sudden I started to come out of dreamland to this vague sensation that something was wrong. I felt this faint feather like pitter patter and then as I became more awake I realized with horror that there was a mouse scurrying up my body! Before I fully woke up he had run down my face and I bolted upright and yelled in disgust. What a crazy time, in this shabby little apartment in one of the most incredible cities in the world!
Then it was over and I got transferred to another area. We had some pretty crazy experiences in one of France’s most dangerous ghettos. I met some amazing people and it opened up my eyes to the terrible plight of millions of our African brothers and sisters who fled to France from the Congo where there is a civil war that’s killed millions and caused the rape and wanton destruction of vast swathes of land in that region. I heard their stories and was ill equipped to properly tell them why it was that the God we preached and taught would allow this to occur. Free agency was all I could muster and then, as now it seemed like an inglorious cop out. My mission was on what I felt was an upward climb, and then the unthinkable happened. I had a companion that was a compulsive liar, story teller, who abused me. I couldn’t compute that this had happened on my mission, and I couldn’t bring myself to talk to my mission president. The Elder in question got sent home and I was in a funk of self denial for the next two transfers even though I had a great companion. I went to the office, spoke to the mission president and shared most of what happened. I served as Assistant to the President for a while, which was really cool. I had amazing companions, spent time with my Mission President who was an extraordinary man. I stayed there for more than two transfers and then had my favourite missionary experiences in the area where I stayed for the least amount of time. We experienced success, and were like brothers. We laughed more than I had in ages, and had an amazing time of it. Then I moved, opened up a new area, and ended my mission with a great missionary who spoke excellent french and we worked our tails off.
The mission, as I look back now was a combination of definitely very awesome, and very awful experiences. It shook me a lot, trying to understand the events that transpired, and to come to terms with the fact that there was so little appreciation for this beautiful message that we were sharing.
How come people didn’t see the beauty that I did, that families could be eternally together. That we could live with God and Jesus forever in the Celestial Kingdom and there continue to grow eternally as human beings and progress line upon line. I was really floored, and confused, why was it that God didn’t give these people more light? I mean the branches here all needed help, they all needed more good strong members, but we were striking out left right and center.
But nevertheless, I was excited to be home, grateful I finished the mission, and looking forward to trying to continue my life. I got home and was released, I cried when I saw my family and felt like this must be like heaven on earth. This was my idea of what this eternal family unit would be like. Minus the delays at JFK, and the fact that I was starving! I went home, and talked with my family, told them the cool stories. Told my mom and dad about how one night a bunch of North African hoodlums had thrown stones at us and tried to steal our cell phone, and that I was serving in a ghetto. It was cool now, but would have been emotionally traumatic to tell my mom while I was serving there.
I went to a dance on New Years Eve, just days after I got home, and it was fun, but I was awkward. Understandably so I had never really been super confident in that area, but the mission really helped. I now was absolutely unafraid of rejection, I mean honestly, I’ve had literally thousands of people tell me no. So if a girl said no, “their loss” and moved on. I got into school a week after I got home and was excited to be moving on with my life. I got excellent marks in College, and then in the summer I met a girl. Our meeting could be transcribed to a hollywood event. I saw her across the room, was immediately smitten, and despite her efforts to throw me off the trail, I managed to hound her sufficiently to at least go on a date. We were engaged several months later, and married less than a year after that.
It was a problem because her family couldn’t attend the marriage ceremony, but we had an as authentic as possible ring exchange ceremony to try and make up for the insult. It only worked to a certain extent, we have now found out that close friends, and especially family were deeply hurt by their lack of participation in the real marriage ceremony. We moved, were in a great ward, had awesome friends and after a brief stay at college left because we were broke! Things hadn’t worked out as planned, and I started a few different businesses. We got pregnant, early and tried to do the right thing and were excited to be starting this family young.
We moved back home and became even closer to our families with the new grandbaby/nephew. It was awesome to be home, and I got a new job. I was using my french skills, and it was pretty good. I had a new calling as YM president. I had just finished teaching seminary the year before and loved it. How fun it was to spar with these young people, and answer questions and bear testimony every day of the week like I had during my mission.
But as YM president I had the opportunity to work with the PEC and liked it as well, working with such good men and women who were doing their best to serve. Some of them seemed like goofy good men, and some seemed backwards and awkward but they were God’s children as well. I did my best to love these people regardless, but I was alway attracted to the fringes, and I couldn’t at that time figure out why. It was at this time, when in my work I became interested in history again.
I began to talk actively with my boss not in religious terms but about current political historical realities in the world. I was intrigued as I realized just how little I knew about the creation of the world as I knew it. It had seemed to me, like it had basically always been there in the form it currently was. I remember reading a large historical book as a youth that explained God’s hand in world history up to this point. I ate it up, I mean look at how profoundly God had shaped the powers that be so that the gospel could be restored. I started to reassess that idea. Now I hope that any Americans who read this won’t take it the wrong way, but this book glorified the US as God’s chosen land, and people, and totally discounted any possible frailties or faults of the country. There are simply no absolutely virtuous countries, and so I felt let down. Furthermore, as I started to look beyond North America, and even beyond Europe I was confused.
If God was behind human history, and orchestrating behind the scenes to allow the gospel to flourish, why was he so inefficient? I mean, if you look at the Communist movements in the early to mid 20th century, why would he allow it to take root and to cause such delirious destruction amongst the various peoples where it took hold. Furthermore, fascism, rampant modern imperialism, and the fact that the gospel is not allowed to be preached to a billion people in China. This brought up more questions, why wasn’t the gospel flourishing like mad so we could reach these poor lost billions? I began to wonder about the line that I had always been taught about my blessed birth. I had been so blessed to be born where I was because of my outstanding actions in the pre-existence. What did that mean? These people born where they were, suffering from famine, destruction, and “ignorance” of the true gospel were simply not as valiant? Well, I guess that there were relatively few really valiant people in the pre-existence considering that the Gospel has only 13 million or so adherents (far less who are active) contrasted with the 6 billion members of the human family.
This troubled me but I moved on, I supposed I should just be grateful for my position as one of the lucky ones. I was just working like crazy to feed my family working two jobs, and doing all I could to fulfill my calling. I got a new job, more money, yeah! But the more I started working for the corporation, the more I felt like I was losing my soul. They were so focused on profit I felt like we were trampling on small businesses who were our clients, and trying to extract as much as possible from them under false pretenses. There came a night of terrible distress for me, I went for a walk long into the night and imagined my life if I kept working for this company. I knew I would be unhappy, and never content with myself because I felt like I was destined for more than doing something I hated, where I felt no growth.
I came away deciding that I needed to go back to school. I talked to my awesome wife and she agreed, so for the next year I did school part-time, and I loved it. I loved interacting with people who were thinking about something other than a pay cheque. I loved the scholarly debate, and the opportunities to explore new aspects of history which was my major. I began to feel less and less excited about church, but I went nonetheless. I blessed my second child at this point, and felt so grateful to be in a church that exalted the family to a celestial, eternal realm. I bore my testimony for the first time in a long time and felt truly elated. It soon passed, I was reading every day, praying, fasting, paying tithing... what was going on? I was teaching the youth now in sunday school and enjoyed it a lot. I realized that I really loved to teach and so decided that I would teach for a living after I graduated. (I can be grateful for this decision due to my involvement in church, I feel very blessed in many other ways thanks to my church upbringing).
So I know it’s been long, but let’s speed up a bit, I quit work, and was now in school full-time. I was trying to figure out how to fill my second semester and saw that there were two third year history courses that had opened up. I needed third year credits to graduate anyways so I registered in what I felt were rather obscure history courses. One was Constitutional History in the US, and the second was Modern Ukrainian History. I went to the first lecture for Modern Ukrainian History and then it happened. Such a weird setting for a life changing statement, “All History is a lie”, how bold and how crazy!
He went on to explain the statement as follows, the writers of history are the winners, and all writers of history have a self-serving bias. I was interested, it’s true I suppose, I mean WWII history is probably not taught the same in Germany as it is in North America. I’m sure that the War of Independence is recorded differently in American and British annals. So I accepted that, but for some reason that statement bothered me and it kept reappearing in my mind. Why? Why was this bothering me? I was working at a part time job in the evenings and while I was working I realized what it was, “But not the church I thought. Of course not the church’s history.”
God’s divinely organized church on earth would have no need to revamp or whitewash its history would it? Certainly not, and with this gleaming proclamation I sat down and googled Mormon history I think. I stumbled upon the site exmormon.org, and initially guffawed sure in my knowledge that the church was true. Then I began to see that these statements were backed up with quotes from original sources, sometimes even photocopied original sources. I started reading at 1:30 AM or so, and read through the night. What was abundantly clear to me at that point was that I had been lied to. Now I guess some apologists might arch their backs and hiss but here’s my point. I was never told that Joseph Smith didn’t do these things, but I was never told that he did.
ie. Book of Mormon translation in a hat...huh? I’m sure the pictures I’ve seen represent Joseph Smith as actually looking at the Gold plates. How odd it is that they were covered and sometimes not even present when he translated. So why did he need them?
The Book of Abraham - what... we have most of the original papyrus and the three fascimilies are incorrectly translated and are from the ancient Book of Breathings, that’s not nearly as ancient as Abraham for example....huh?
The Book of Commandments was severely altered from its original state when it was recompiled into the D&C. One point that really got me was when they changed the description of Oliver Cowdery’s gift from being the gift of the rod, to the gift of Aaron. A simple oversight perhaps?
The multiple First Visions that didn’t really add up. How do you forget to mention God the Father’s visit in one account, and mention an angel in another? Yet I taught this memorized official First Vision as much as possible during my mission. What the Fetch!
The inconsistencies, the plagiarisms, the anachronisms (stuff that shouldn’t be in the Book of Mormon but is) metal, chariots, horses, western european/modern american crops that have never been found, and one that always got me, why doesn’t the church just dig up the Hill Cumorah? They’d find millions of bones there and that’d be it. I realized that there are in fact now most likely two hill cumorahs. Oh. The original Book of Mormon didn’t sound nearly as refined as now. For example that someone was “a going to”. That’d be a slip up on God’s part for choosing the prophet Joseph and him throwing in such quaint frontier talk. The problems in the Book of Mormon that I had considered before, Jaredite barges, etc. and others I hadn’t, began to taint the whole thing.
But here was the biggest thing, Joseph Smith and then Brigham Young became in my eyes power hungry, religious bigots. That sounds harsh, and it’s meant to be. I went to church the other day and loved the people there. I felt good being there, and had some of the familiar stirrings and was excited for it. Then, we sang Praise to the Man and my skin crawled. Alright, so let me just list a few of things that really bothered me:
Joseph Smith:
Had a fling with Fanny Alger, and creates the doctrine of Polygamy to cover it up. Years later he relates the story of an angelic visitation where Joseph is condemned to death and destruction if he doesn’t start to teach “God’s” law of marriage.
33 wives in total
Many were teenagers or much younger than him
Many were already married, and he consummated these marriages.
He ran for President of the US, and he created the Council of 50, was anointed as king. He creates the temple ceremony three weeks after he’s elevated to the position of master mason in the Nauvoo Masonic temple.
There are so many elements of the temple ceremony of the pre 1990 kind that were taken out. If they hadn’t changed it by the way then maybe when I got my endownment in the early 2000s I would have run out with fingers in my ears...
His false prophecies.
His teachings in the Book of Mormon that perpetuate the moral legitimacy of hating, and destroying the Native Americans.
His teachings in the Book of Abraham where the mark of Cain is described, leading to and allowing for the disturbingly racist views of the church that were carried to the next level by our next noble prophet Brigham Young.
In fact I can go on and on and on. I have since become so disgusted by the clear differences between what I was taught in the LDS church growing up, and the historical base of this organization. It made me angry, and sad, and confused. What to make of all these spiritual experiences I had had? I didn’t know, and in some ways I still don’t know. I know this though, they’re not totally unique. Yes, I think that that’s something that I can safely say. Born again Christians, Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Hindus, I mean the list goes on. Devout people of these faiths will exclaim, “I know it’s true”. I have seen signs, or felt God’s love, and his acceptance of this church or faith or there's "proof" I'm right! These people in many cases are so convinced they’re willing to die for their beliefs. So who is right? I’d say that not one of them is totally right. I think that if God does exist, we would be hard pressed to try and constrict God to anyone one belief system. As one of my friends put it, if we imagined that our planet was the size of the head of a pin, than our galaxy alone would be the size of the entire continental United States. Woh! So do you think God would be overly concerned about whether or not we wear a certain type of underclothing? Do you think that he minds if you watch a football game on Sunday when he’s got billions of Universes to run? I don’t know, and I don’t think that any one person has a legitimate claim as God’s sole spokesperson on earth.
I have more to say, but I need to end now, I know that this is rambling, but if you’ve read it thank you. If you want to hear more about what I have to say, follow me at: http://sowhatnowfriends.blogspot.com