I was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when I was 8 years old, which is the Catholic equivalent of being baptized as an infant, and I have been a faithful member for most of my life since then. The LDS church is not just a church to attend on Sunday. It’s a lifestyle that governs many, if not most, aspects of one’s life. All of my major life decisions have been influenced by my belief in the teachings of the church.
While the church was good for me as a youth, the more time has gone on in my adult life, the less satisfied I am with it. This past year, I realized that the cons of church membership were outweighing the pros. In an effort to figure why the gospel wasn’t helping my happiness like I’ve always been told it should, I put my beliefs under the microscope of unguarded, honest scrutiny like never before, in which I no longer accepted a conclusion prior to examining the evidence. I asked questions without assuming any answers were off-limits. The following is a brief and incomplete attempt at retracing my faith journey. It’s partially meant as a way to document my journey for myself, but I also want to attempt to represent myself as honestly and accurately as possible to others, because that’s how I strive to live my life.
The phrase “I know” is an innate part of the Mormon vocabulary, which is used as a way to demonstrate that one has received an unquantifiable personal witness that the church is what it claims to be. Several years ago, I subconsciously stopped using it because I realized that it’s not a true statement, because nothing is truly knowable. I don’t think my wife, Emily, ever noticed, but at some point, she confided in me that the phrase “I know” bothered her as well.
“I know” is a phrase that seems disingenuous to me, and here’s one example of why: if we truly know that this is the only true church on the face of the earth, then what’s the harm in reading material on the internet that could damage our testimonies? Why do we regularly get talks in General Conference about how we should be careful about the information we read, or be careful about people we talk to? If our testimonies are dependant on self-imposed information control and regularly having the doctrine repeated to us, then it seems that our conviction is more of a result of hearing one side of the story than “knowing” something irrefutable. Claiming to “know” seems to be nothing more than an admission that we intentionally surround ourselves with an echo chamber of people and information that reinforces our views. The truth is, I don’t think that anyone “knows” anything, which was my first big disagreement with Mormon doctrine. I don’t believe that either science or emotional religious experience can ever truly give us the certainty and orderliness in the world that we naturally and desperately crave as human beings. For all we know, we’re living in a simulation run by a space octopus, and the good feelings we get when we read the Book of Mormon are implanted in us as part of an experiment. While this example may not seem probable, my point is that anything is possible and we will never be able to know for sure.
There are many boats of certainty in the stormy sea of this cruel and chaotic world, of a vast assortment of sizes and shapes. There are so many that most of us haven’t seen them all, or even a tiny fraction of them. If the Catholic church possesses an aircraft carrier, Islam has an even bigger and more impressive aircraft carrier. Even a modest dinghy known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a larger boat than the Mormons, who possess what is essentially a canoe, with God as the captain and the only valid license to be on the water.
In the April 2019 General Conference talk entitled “Come, Follow Me”, Russell M Nelson told a story of a man who chose not to join the church. President Nelson stated “Thankfully, I am not this man’s judge. But I do question the efficacy of proxy temple work for a man who had the opportunity to be baptized in this life—to be ordained to the priesthood and receive temple blessings while here in mortality—but who made the conscious decision to reject that course.”
There was something about this that didn’t seem quite right, and Emily and I began to talk about this idea. Why does God care so much about ritual? If a person performs a ritual, but they are not worthy to do so, then the ritual is null and void and does not offer them the reward that it’s supposed to provide. In that sense, actions are more important than any ritual.
What’s confusing is that President Nelson seems to also be preaching the supreme importance of ritual at the expense of actions. He seems to be suggesting that it doesn’t matter how good of a person this man is - if he hasn’t performed the correct ritual, he doubts that he can go to heaven. Just as President Nelson questions the efficacy of a proxy ritual for this man, I question the fairness of keeping a person out of heaven who might have strived his whole life to reduce suffering in the world, solely on the basis that he didn’t feel the need to live by the unintuitive rules of a canoe.
While these thoughts and questions continued to be present somewhere in our conscious and subconscious minds, Emily was called as Relief Society president of our student ward. Aside from the fact that she felt pressure to act the part of a committed insider by testifying that she “knows” things taught were true, more troubling was the fact that the inspiration that we assume leaders have (we talk as if our callings come from God after all) was strangely absent, despite reading scriptures daily, praying regularly, and generally doing everything she could do to have the spirit. She put forth a tremendous effort to “magnify her calling”, even to the detriment of her health at times. And yet, she was on her own, with assistance from deity seemingly nowhere to be found.
Leaders like Bishops and Relief Society presidents have to assume many roles all at once. These leaders are expected to act as middle managers, financial planners, marriage counselors, sex therapists, among many other roles. They’re expected to do this with no training in these fields. This is supposedly ok, because God is all-knowing and knows how to help each person in the ward, and can communicate how to fulfill these roles through the communication medium of revelation.
This is all well and good, as long as revelation is actually being received. If revelation is not received on a regular basis, the consequences are potentially disastrous. For example, imagine a software engineer acting as a mental health professional and counseling someone with suicidal tendencies because they don’t know how to stop being gay other than dying so they can be “fixed” in the next life. If there’s no revelation, bad advice can easily be given and people could be hurt as a result. This is why Emily not receiving adequate revelation represents a big problem.
In the hours after our Sunday church meetings concluded each week, we began driving Idaho backroads, talking and sometimes venting frustrations we were having. I had grown increasingly discontented with years of church participation in which I gained the sense that I didn’t have the correct personality type: that God was simply not ok with introverts with hobbies. The church is a voracious beast that will take most of one’s free time and replace it with highly extroverted callings and activities in which we must continue to talk to people instead of regaining life energy by doing something we enjoy (by ourselves!).
I saw the rest of my life stretch before me, with the thought that I will always be asked to spend a huge portion of my time insincerely acting the part of an extrovert, and how miserable this seems like it would be. In order to be obedient to God and magnify our callings, or even to be considered “worthy”, I wondered why does it seem like I need to purify myself of the desire to be alone once in a while? How do I actually go about doing that, so that I can be happy participating in the church like I’m supposed to in order to go to the Celestial Kingdom?
The Relief Society president call came around the same time we stumbled into learning about meditation, mindfulness, and Eastern Philosophy, which offered an interesting juxtaposition with church activity.
Lessons in church generally discuss ideas and doctrine, not specific application of skills. The premise is that learning about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we could learn, and everything else will “fall into place” if we learn about Jesus. The lessons are usually repetitions and variations on a theme of previous lessons, as there is a limited amount of material that a lesson giver is authorized to use. I find that church lessons about the excruciating minutiae of the three degrees of glory or about the Millennium do not provide many actionable takeaways to make my inner world and the external world a better place. Too often I have walked away from church empty and unfilled.
At church I have always been taught that we should strive for certainty, and if we’re not certain, then we likely haven’t put in enough effort. Mormonism claims to have answers to questions, at least to the ones that matter. It seems most religions of the world strive for peace through certainty.
The secular Buddhist concepts I was learning, on the other hand, flipped this idea on it’s head. Instead of working hard to find peace through having answers, the idea was to strive to stop being tortured by unanswerable questions, or in other words to stop caring about the question in the first place. The goal is to find peace by accepting uncertainty. I became much more interested in learning applicable skills through mindfulness practice and other Buddhist concepts than sitting through repetitive lessons about things that are supposedly going to happen in the future but which still have very little applicability to the ‘here and now’. I was starting to admit to myself that I simply don’t enjoy church and it too often seems like an unwise use of my time.
After Emily served as Relief Society president for some time, we moved to a different apartment because Emily was pregnant and we wanted a larger living space. Emily was released from her calling and we stopped going to church on the advice of our pediatrician, who recommended we stay away from public places for 3 months to avoid the risk of our newborn son contracting a dangerous illness in the most vulnerable months of his life.
This was an exceedingly difficult phase of our lives that seemed like an eternity, but which thankfully got better over the course of time. As the first three months came to a close, we looked around and realized we had successfully gotten back on our feet (at least as much as a new parent can). Going back to church seemed like it might be in the cards, but we were both comfortable enough to openly admit that we were dreading it. Not only were we going back to something that we didn’t enjoy, but we were going to have to ruin Kev’s nap schedule to earn this privilege.
However, the guilt and worry that God wouldn’t be pleased and we’d lose out on blessings became too much to bear, so we started dragging ourselves to church to attend sacrament meetings. Almost as soon as we did, the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage. Amidst the frustration of trying to buy canned goods, toilet paper, and masks, we were suddenly off the hook: all meetings were canceled for the foreseeable future.
However, we continued to conduct our own home church as directed, by using the church’s “Come, Follow Me” manual. The lesson material in this manual is fairly sparse and mainly consists of questions that church members are encouraged to discuss. The questions cover the same ground that every lesson in church covers, but now we were in charge of the direction the lessons took. We started to speed through lessons and give the correct answers like good boys and girls do and then proceeded to talk about the gospel, and I mean really talk about it.
We asked questions such as “are we going to do the temple work for the Black people we denied from entering temples for 130 years”? On that note, why do we simultaneously believe that God is in the details of our lives, helps us find keys and choose the next Bishop, but yet is completely silent for 130 years about denying an entire race of people saving ordinances? If this was a mistake (and I refuse to accept that God is racist), why did the next 10 prophets after Brigham Young not correct the mistake? And what is the assurance that current prophets aren’t making similar mistakes today?
While I’ve always known Emily to be a devout church member, I’ve also heard her say on several occasions that she considers polygamy to be a wholly unpalatable practice and that if it was reinstituted she would be out of the church as soon as possible. I was always sympathetic to this sentiment, but after reading Saints volumes 1 and 2 (the new church-sanctioned historical narratives), which are extremely apologetic to the practice and yet admit that “many women weren’t happy”, I wondered what does polygamy actually look like in practice? What are the logistics? I wanted to know what the women who actually lived through it thought of this practice, and so I began to research it. It turns out there’s not a lot of surviving journals or memoir material from polygamist wives, but much of the information we do have is a painful look into many lives made miserable through this system of lawful infidelity.
Here’s my hot take on polygamy. It sucks. It’s a horrible idea. It’s an inherently sexist and grossly unjust system. It’s bad for families - men, women, and children alike. And yet, the church remains staunchly apologetic about the practice. In fact, men can still be sealed to multiple women in the temple, whereas women can only be sealed to one man, implying that while polygamy is against the law in much of the world, it’s an eternal principle that will be practiced in heaven. If heaven is going to institute something as repulsive as the system of polygamy, is that a place where I want to sacrifice everything, even my own happiness if necessary, to get to? If a prophet of God was instructed to institute such a system, why does it seem to make people so unhappy?
I know that I must **have read D&C 132 at some point in my life, but somehow I missed the stuff about virgins being “given” to men and women being “destroyed” if they don’t like it. D&C 132 is disturbing and alarming, and it implies the correct order of heaven is that women should be treated as property.
We continued to ponder questions around the treatment of women in the modern-day church. For example, why aren’t women allowed to be Sunday School presidents? This is an odd choice of a calling to prevent women from holding. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a reason - other than the obvious, forbidden one. We could try and twist and contort our minds to come up with some reason, and in the end just say we need to have faith, that God’s ways must be higher than ours, and focus on “feeling” the gospel rather than thinking too much about it. However, a much simpler, less intellectually exhausting, and more probable answer is simply that men like being in charge and only want women to preside over children and other women, but not men. This is the answer that makes the pieces of the puzzle fit together. This realization and subsequent insights have lifted a heavy burden of cognitive dissonance that I didn’t know that I was carrying.
Ok, sure, this and other church policies are subject to change, and when they do I suppose we’re all supposed to be grateful for revelation and that God finally told us that we should rescind a bad policy, after over a century of God’s church implementing it. Maybe leaders of the church do see through a glass darkly and don’t get revelation as much as we sometimes incorrectly assume and we should cut them some slack, but I also see through a glass darkly. Why am I following another blind person? Why do I have to be patient with prophets?
We even took on the most important and foundational doctrine: The Atonement. We pondered the question, what does the Atonement actually do? Anytime we’ve made poor choices that made us feel rotten, we felt better as we made better choices. Praying the regret away hasn’t ever worked to make us feel better, neither has confession.
Only changing seems to work. After all, isn’t change something universal that everyone has access to? How could it be that only Mormons, with the “real” access to the Atonement, could repent and feel better about life? You’d think that all non-Mormons would be profoundly unhappy, with no way to repent and use Jesus the proper way, but as I look around, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
During the pandemic, the time came for us to bless our son, which is a tradition in the church in which a child receives a blessing a few months after birth. The logic of blessing a baby came under scrutiny in our discussions. We were confused why babies are typically blessed in front of the entire congregation in the biggest church meeting, in what seemed to me should be an intimate, private affair. More importantly, we found that we couldn’t figure out what we could possibly bless a baby with that would make any sense. Church doctrine seems to uphold agency as sacred and not something that even God can trifle with. And yet, isn’t the usual trope of blessing a baby that they will marry in the temple overriding that little person’s agency? The decision is ultimately going to come down to them, regardless of what they were blessed with, so what good does blessing them do? Will God force them to have a desire to marry in the temple, for our sake? In fact, any priesthood blessing doesn’t seem to make much sense. If God’s will is going to happen regardless of what I bless someone with, then what’s the point in the blessing? If the person is healed, it’s happily God’s will. If the person isn’t healed, it’s unhappily God’s will. But it’s always God’s will and it’s up to us to accept whatever that is. What’s the difference between this and just accepting that life happens and we’re not in control? Why don’t we just run a study and objectively observe whether blessings actually work? Shouldn’t Utah statistically have fewer deaths from incurable diseases if priesthood holders really have the power to heal?
After months of struggling with the question of priesthood blessings, and starting to feel resentful that we seemed to be only performing the blessing to appease family, I finally came up with a few things that we feel didn’t involve overruling his agency, and we got the damn thing over with.
When it comes to Mormon doctrine and history, there are many questions, and there are usually are no satisfactory answers. Every question seems to spawn ten more questions. And yet, there is always one answer available that can suddenly make sense of everything. The answer that we’ve always believed to be unavailable to us is the one that seems to be capable of clearing the fog and allowing us to see with clarity. That answer is simply that the church isn’t run by God. The answer that the church is run by men (as opposed to God, or women for that matter) is so beautifully simple and does so well in relieving the heavy burden of cognitive dissonance, that it’s an irresistibly attractive alternative to continuing to try and twist our minds into the correct pretzel shape to make it all work in our heads.
If the Mormon church really is the one true church, why is the test of life whether or not we can find the correct flavor of certainty and perform the correct ritual? What does this actually prove? I wouldn’t join any organization that openly barred women from serving in the highest positions of leadership. This seems wrong. And what exactly do women have to look forward to in the next life? Do they get to be invisible Heavenly Mothers who have no contact with their children and seemingly have no other role?
Why are we going to be judged based on the supposed virtue of having the ability to ignore things that seem wrong, in the name of obedience? Why would God want us to favor obedience over following our conscience? I don’t understand why belief in something is weighted just as heavily on the heavenly scales as virtuous actions are.
The idea of religious exclusivity (that there’s one correct church0 is a cornerstone of the Mormon religion, analogous to the granite cornerstones used for the foundation of the multi-million dollar edifices which are constant reminders that religious exclusivity is an immovable, core tenant of the faith. Temples are where the dead who never followed the correct path can enter it posthumously, and so exist as a simulacrum of the idea that there is one denomination of Christianity that is the only true path for everyone living or has ever lived in the world.
As auspicious as the doctrine of eternal families seems to be at face value, the unhappy side to the doctrine is that when family members discover a different preference, this is perceived as an action that is detrimental to the eternal family collective. Because exaltation is a family matter, people are incentivized to have an uncommon vested interest in their family members’ personal choices. The doctrine of eternal families often turns private inclinations into public infractions.
I believe most citizens of the world could agree on a core set of universal principles. We could do so because we possess advanced brains that are able to reason about what the world might look like if we didn’t have some shared set of moral principles as a common denominator. Following Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, or simply following the golden rule as commonly recited to children, will do much to reduce suffering in the world and safeguard us from trouble, whether or not these principles have a basis in God. They don’t necessarily require belief in a deity or a prophet speaking for a deity; they can be intuitively rationalized through logic and reasoning.
Most religions seem to exist partially as a way to help us understand unintuitive rules that are supposed to help us to be more upstanding and moral. In other words, religion is supposed to help us reach conclusions that we wouldn’t arrive at unless we followed an authority figure who knows better than us and can show us the correct, unintuitive path.
These kinds of dictates can be justified by the claim that “God’s ways are higher than our ways”. This is a statement that implies that God is concerned about whether we’ll be obedient to instructions without understanding the “why” of what we’re doing. In fact, whether or not we’ll obey certain rules based on our feelings as opposed to using logic is the very test of life.
We’re taught to follow unintuitive rules like avoiding drinking coffee and covering our shoulders, not because those things are inherently immoral. In Mormonism, these rules are connected to morality because they show that we’re obedient. The specifics of the rules don’t necessarily matter; they could be anything, and they change over time. But the specifics of the rules aren’t the point. As far as the church is concerned, obedience is the highest moral law.
According to Mormon doctrine, if we decide that we’ll only live by rules that we understand, and reject those that we don’t, we will be eternally penalized and will forever forego being with our family. We must follow rules that we don’t understand, or pay the price. As to what to be obedient to, we can and should rely on our feelings to guide us, and if we’re honest seekers of truth, our feelings will confirm that the Mormon church is the only organization with the authority to administer the correct rules.
In addition to the criteria that is explicitly stated to be required to go to heaven and to be happy, there are many unstated rules and cultural pressures. For example, long hair on a man is not technically against the rules, but it does mark one as an outsider. Long-haired men will likely not be given important jobs in the church, and if they are, they will be asked to cut their hair. To dismiss even a suggestion from a church leader is dangerously close to disobedience, which is a problem because, again, obedience is seen as the highest moral law. There are many unwritten rules in the Mormon church that are not explicitly taught as required to go to heaven, but because of the supreme importance that God apparently places in obedience to Mormon church leaders, advice and suggestions from them should not be taken lightly.
As I write this, COVID-19 has been relinquishing the pressure on our collective throat, and the expectation of church attendance is back. However, I’m not planning on going back anytime soon, not because it’s too hard, or that we became lax in our discipleship, or because we’ve sinned. It’s because the doctrine doesn’t make sense at the deepest, most fundamental levels. We’ve found that it doesn’t make us any happier so there’s no point in ‘choosing to believe’ (whatever that means). Stated simply, Emily and I were doing everything we were supposed to do and it just didn’t work for us. And so, we’re taking an intentional step away.
In making this decision, I’m afraid that I have to accept some implications in regard to my relationships. I fear the idea of a one true church and conditional eternal families can too easily build walls between people. Instead of being genuinely curious about us, and instead of being happy for us, I fear that we will always be seen as having a problem. I fear that any tragedies that happen, or any struggles we go through will be seen as an affliction to help us remember God. I fear that as a result, we won’t have the desire to be honest about any hardship we may be going through. I think the reason I fear these things is that I know what it’s like to be on the other side, to be the one to not ask questions because I know I’m not able to accept the answers. We used to think that if the church was the only one true church, then there would be no legitimate reason for someone to leave because it is the only path to morality and God. In other words, there was no room for empathy.
Since making the decision to stop participating in the church we find that we are able to talk more openly than we ever have before, both with each other and with other people in our lives. For the first time, we can truly listen to and accept those who have decided to drink coffee, as ridiculous as that may sound to some. Indeed, one of the most surprising side effects of staying away from church is how much our relationships with certain people have improved. But I fear the cost of this is worsened relationships with those who do believe drinking coffee is wrong. I fear that the church is family friendly only so long as all the family members are sufficiently devout.
Every Mormon family probably has at least one member who decides to go a different path than staying in the religion they grew up in. Why should we feel so sad and judgmental, as if they’ve somehow “lost their way”? Does this mindset bring true happiness? Why are we more concerned about whether someone stays in an organization than whether they’re happy or a good person? I don’t believe the church has a monopoly on raising good, moral children. If that was the case, then the world would look very different. I’m grateful for the way I grew up, and in comparison to the alternatives that were possible, I consider myself to be a lottery winner. But as an adult, the church just isn’t working for me.
Life is exceedingly difficult whether or not we participate in a church. Life was hard before, and it’s still hard, and will probably still be hard in the future. It’s likely that tragedy may strike at some future time, and this tragedy could be almost too difficult to bear. But I believe this to be the case whether or not I’m an active church member. I don’t fear tragedy as a potential form of punishment, instead, I see that misfortune as an inherent, unavoidable part of life. Rather than trying to suppress and resist my suffering by attempting to offload it to God, my hope is that I can gain the ability to accept whatever suffering is dealt to me. No doubt this will be a lifelong pursuit.
I’m ok with the idea of “if it feels good, do it” in certain areas of my life. For example, I don’t need a song to necessarily make sense. I can “feel it”, and enjoy it even though I don’t understand it. However, I’m not willing to base my ethics and all of my life choices on feel-goods alone.
I’m tired of thinking I’m superior to everyone else. Why should I assume I have enough light and knowledge that it’s my duty to impart it on all the poor souls without as much as me? Why should I bring up that I went to church over the weekend to help spark questions about my beliefs? Why should I act as though I’m the one with all the answers? I’d rather listen and learn from others, and not assume I’m the one with the wisdom to impart.
I plan to try and live my life in a way that reduces as much suffering in the world as possible, and if there is a God, I think She’ll understand. The mantra I wish to live by (often attributed to Marcus Aurelius) is:
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
I don’t know if it’s possible to simultaneously believe in a one true church and empathize with someone who chooses not to participate. I hope it is; I don’t want to hurt anyone because of a different preference.