I haven’t left … yet.

Hello, and thanks to all for providing a place to talk about important stuff. I prefer blending in with the background, but I assume it’s considered good form to introduce oneself. I’ve been working on this for a few days trying to put together my relevant experiences without my usual rambling, but after reading about what others here have experienced, my story seems almost trivial. Well, perhaps others have felt the same, so here goes …

After my first exposure to the site a few months ago, I was pretty excited, hopeful, and a little skeptical. I read the mission statement. What could motivate someone to go to the effort of creating a website with a mission statement like that? While I still don’t know the whole answer to that question, I finally decided that you guys must be for real.

Sunday is my least favorite day of the week. Sunday school and priesthood meetings are torture. I try to fashion what I think is a smile on my face, be quiet and let the banalities and platitudes fly. Invariably incredulity will show on my face, and I think it makes people uncomfortable. If I weren’t such an introvert, I might attempt a careful dialogue, but a quick cost benefit analysis is usually enough to keep me quiet.

I’m a convert. I joined the church while in high school, served a mission, married in the temple, etc. An experience relating to the Book of Mormon, shortly after joining the church, has been the primary basis of my testimony through the years. As a missionary I had the usual periodic struggles with wanting to be able to teach with a clear conscience, but had what I felt were answers to prayer that were sufficient for what I needed at the time. I got through it and was reasonably successful. I have always been somewhat ambivalent towards the BoM, in spite of my experience, and have been both believing and guardedly skeptical. I’ve never really felt at liberty to express those feelings since they seemed to go to the root of things, though they no longer seem that way to me. Of course, those concerns only became more pointed as I learned about the usual litany of interesting things about the church. I started out as an ardent rule-keeper, but gradually I have become disdainful of rules. My political outlook has become steadily more liberal, for lack of a better term.

Does anyone remember ETB’s “to the Mothers in Zion” talk from 1988? As the pamphlet went out of print and GBH did an effective about face, I asked myself the obvious questions. Why the about face? How much of this is a personality thing? What else should I start wondering about? Occam’s razor was always tugging at the back of my mind: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It was becoming apparent that something was wrong. President Hinckley’s several interviews were revealing, bless his heart. “Brigham Young said a lot of things”. (Can anyone verify that one, BTW? I read it once and it sounded about right, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint the source.) In one interview he describes his interaction with God in a way that makes his relationship sound not very unlike my own, in sharp contrast to what had always been hinted at. (Just today someone in SS explained how all the twelve speak directly with Jesus.)

Over the past year, my anger and feelings of betrayal have subsided. I’ve had a few tastes of what stage 5 is like, and I’m looking forward to more. For all intents, I am still here because it’s important to my wife that I stay. But I believe I can turn this to our mutual advantage. Far from being ‘led away captive’, for the first time in a long time, I’m pretty certain that I like where I’m headed.

Some books and other works that have helped me greatly over the last few years: Stages of Faith, Doubt: A History, Carse’s A Religious Case Against Belief. The Faithful Dissident blog site, from which, among other things, I first was able to seriously appreciate the concept of being Mormon ‘on my own terms’. Everyday Zen. A really excellent essay by Christian Kimball that I found on Sunstone. Eugene England’s Dialogues with Myself. Richard Bushman’s Believing History. Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

I’d been accumulating my list of ‘what abouts” only to find that most have been captured in, for instance, John Dehlin’s excellent PowerPoint presentation. Those issues have fallen to the side and are no longer that important to me. They really wouldn’t bother at all in a society where they were acknowledged as issues. Here I thought I was so clever.

I have no conception of what the traditional meaning of ‘true’ and ‘know’ (as I perceive them, and as used in the context of church) have to do with anything.

I’m rambling in spite of my best intentions. I think that perhaps including some (redacted) excerpts from some notes I’ve been trying to keep about my journey might be useful. Maybe they will be helpful to some. Please forgive the length of the post.

Causes for doubt: apotheosis of Joseph Smith, polygamy as practiced in Nauvoo, polygamy as practiced between 1890-1910, Brigham Young JD full of weird stuff. Statements by GBH (“Brigham Young said a lot of things”) and several interviews wherein he seems to confirm that his experiences and access to the divine are no different than ours, that is, somewhat ethereal and subject to misinterpretation. Various subjects discussed by general authorities throughout the years which seem to contradict scientific evidence: DNA analysis, evolution, age of earth and universe, promises made in priesthood blessings, patriarchal blessings. Geographical claims of extent of BoM territories. Apparently, new editions of the BoM state that the Lamanites are ‘among’ the ancestors of native Americans, whereas it used to say that they were the ‘principal’ ancestors. Reasonable person hypothesis, i.e. which is more likely, that God deals in highly convoluted ways with His children, or that the ‘gospel’ is not true. Basically, one has to bend over backwards in order to ignore the inconsistencies. Is this the willful ignorance that Stephen Carse speaks of? Do I want to be willfully ignorant. Is that a bad thing?

Causes for belief: Ultimately, this is where I am at and expect to be at for some time. My family. One, two, or possibly three experiences over the past 30 years that I want to attribute to the Holy Ghost. A desire to live forever … but do I really want to? Does a belief in an afterlife contribute or detract from happiness? Testimonies of others.

If it’s not possible to be a faithful member with doubts then I can’t be a faithful member … I simply don’t know how to do it. Am I being “led away captive by the devil” or is that simply a euphemism used by the ‘faithful’ to stigmatize those who can’t see things the same way that they do?

Does any of this matter, really? Should I simply be content to find a niche where I can do good, and do good? Is that enough, or is that just cynicism? Is a valid response to simply stop thinking about it? Is it my pride and pseudo-intellectualism that is the problem?

Been reading Hearing the Voice of the Lord. In some sense parts of it feel good (though for some reason … pride? … I am loathe to admit it) but on the other hand it makes no sense at all. “Testimony is when you believe that what you know is true”. What does that mean??? Lots of effort distinguishing between when God intervenes, inspires, reveals, and when things, thoughts just happen. I can’t see how you can logically posit the existence of both. Either God controls everything or nothing. Either all evil is the result of Satan, or none of it is. How do you draw the line between when God thinks something is important enough to intervene, and when He doesn’t. And if there’s no way for us to tell the difference, then we might as well assume all or nothing, as there can be no meaningful alternative. Is the beauty of the gospel that it makes no sense? Any in-depth and serious attempt to make sense of this is doomed to failure, but so is any attempt at understanding our existence.

At times it appears to be a vast facade — a caricature, perhaps — of a belief system. How much of that is a result of the culture? Why do I find it so annoying?

A friend thinks I suffer from addiction. Addiction to thinking, I suppose. Maybe she’s right, but quite honestly, I find the suggestion silly and insulting. Regarding knowledge and belief, someone posed the question (as described in Doubt: A History) of whether all these philosophers were any happier for their ‘understanding’ of how things work. I think the answer is that they probably were not. The same is true for me, I suppose.

Last Sunday the SS lesson was about the Book of Abraham, etc, and so there was some discussion of the papyri, etc. The teacher did not mention the problems that surround the papyri and their interpretation, which are substantial, even overwhelming, and lead inexorably to the fundamentals of ones faith in Joseph Smith as a prophet. Since he clearly (at least according to most reasonable people, including Mormon apologists) did not translate the papyri in the usual sense, nor could he understand Egyptian, something else must have taken place.

The other day a friend and I were discussing what (a member of the stake presidency) talked about at the last stake priesthood meeting. He was basically reading the temple recommend questions. This friend remarked that he didn’t have an issue with any of them, and that that was surprising. In other words, for instance, the “Do you accept Thomas S Monson as the prophet seer, revelator and as the only person …” and other’s like it, I remarked that the correct answer is “yes” because the real answer is impossible to articulate, and “yes” is close enough.

Is religious knowledge that different from scientific knowledge? Currently, I believe they are completely different parts of my life. The FARMS guy who says, regarding the provenance of the Book of Abraham, that while 50% of church members hold to this or that theory, the other 50% ‘don’t care’, may be onto something. Is (one of) the difference(s) between me and ‘others’ that they (for instance in sunday school) feel a need to tie things up in neat little packages, whereas I don’t think it’s possible, given what we are capable of ‘knowing’. Maybe the second 50% represent the place that I need to go, where I have given up trying to make sense of anything, and just follow along, contented. “I believe because it works for me.” “Here I am, God, do with me what you will. Or show me another way.”

“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. … I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. —Søren Kierkegaard

Back to the FARMS guy for a minute. The issue he raises, perhaps unintentionally, is that all of the standard trappings of normalcy, as associated with church history and particularly it’s beginnings, may be irrelevant. All the intuitively obvious or satisfying concepts that ‘we’ so assiduously strive to recreate in sunday school, trying to make things seem normal, may not be necessary at all. I think it was Brigham Young who said that even if Joseph Smith were a rascal (i.e. liar, cheat, philanderer — I need to find the exact quote) it didn’t matter to him (not that I think he thought it was true — he was just making a point) because of the truths that he, Joseph, helped to restore. That’s where I’m getting to. Golden plates? Irrelevant. An accurate translation of papyri or an Egyptian ‘alphabet’? Irrelevant. Sword-wielding angels with very peculiar requests? Also irrelevant. Zelph? What else may be irrelevant? And what is relevant?

I’ve been reading the book about Mother Teresa. It was surprisingly enjoyable and compelling for me because of the main issues it deals with: faith, and how to become close to God while making some sense of it all. I just got done reading the concluding chapter and it occurred to me that the author (and apparently many others) considers that she was an anomaly. I kept asking myself as I read the book, ” what is it she is missing, what is she looking for?” Maybe the reason I ask this is because I see my life and relationship to God as similar to hers. In summary, I don’t find her situation unusual or surprising. It would be surprising to me that there aren’t more people like her. I think that because of her personality, she was driven to understand certain things for which there aren’t answers. The reason she seems anomalous to others is because the “others” simply don’t think that deeply about it. I could be way off base.

Why, my wife wonders, do some of us suffer as a direct result of going along with the ‘plan of happiness’? It makes no sense to her, and though it makes no sense to me either, it really doesn’t bother me, at the moment at least. A friend went to see the SP, whose advice to him was to stop trying to figure things out. Good advice, perhaps?

So here I am still trying to figure things out.

Anyway, it seems clear that one cannot understand the world with any certainty. It will always be somewhat of a mystery. If we can come up with a model that tacitly accepts that fact and yet is satisfying to us, why not go with it?

In summary, I’m hopeful this will be a safe home for me, but it just occurred to me that maybe it ought to only be a temporary one. We change at a fairly rapid clip, so who knows how or where we’ll end up? Hopefully that makes sense to someone.