Disappointment

Disappointment is a recurring thing when you leave the church. First comes the big one--the disappointment that the church you've invested your life in is a crock of shit. That's pretty disappointing. Then you're disappointed at the way people react to your leaving--to their disappointment. It's just kind of a sad cycle of disappointment for everyone.

This has recently been thrown into sharp relief for me when I announced my engagement. My fiancé is, like me, an atheist. We have no interest in a temple wedding. We're not terribly invested in the concept of "marriage" at all--were it not for family pressure, we would probably wait a few more years and just live together for a few years first. We'd have a nice wedding when we're able to pay for it ourselves. But to keep the peace, we're doing it now. Four months from now, actually.

My mother's disappointment has been hard for me to deal with. Years ago she told me that her greatest wish for me was for me to get married in the temple to a worthy priesthood holder. Turns out I'm not doing that. I'm getting married in a courthouse to an atheist. The only thing worse, in her mind, would be "shacking up" together (which, ironically, would be my preference if I wasn't taking anything else under consideration). My fiancé was a worthy priesthood holder, at least until he left the church. I think he's a nicer person than most "worthy priesthood holders" I've known. He doesn't judge people. I'm never afraid to be myself or say what I'm thinking around him. That's a luxury that I never had with anyone else, least of all the Mormons I've known (including my family and the one Mormon guy I dated). I am far happier than I would be if I were living her dream for me. She says she's happy for me. But she's still disappointed. And that makes me sad. The librarians at my local library showed more excitement when they heard I was engaged than my own mother did. That stings.

I can't blame her too much--I'd probably react the same way if I were in her shoes. I blame the church. This sort of thing isn't exclusive to the Mormon church; former Catholics and Jews face the same problems, as do people from many other religious denominations. Ex-Mormons have a unique spin on it, because their families believe that they're sacrificing "eternal marriage" for "til death do you part." But the fundamental problem isn't all that different. You're getting married, but the package isn't good enough for your family.

So how do you deal with it? It's hard not to let it all get to me. I've found that the most helpful thing has been talking with my fiancé and sympathetic friends. It's nice to know that there are some people excited for me. It's also nice to feel like I'm not crazy.

Also, you just have to let some things go. I have to accept that my mom is only capable of being so happy for me, and be happy with that. In the end, I know that I'm making the right choice for me.

Freedom

A lot has happened since my last blog post. Most notably, I've graduated from BYU-Idaho (finally!!) and will be getting married in January to a wonderful man and fellow atheist that I met while we were both students there. I'm also coming up on the three-year anniversary of my apostasy. It feels like it's been a lot longer than that because so much has happened. I was thinking about that today, and about how much religion changes a person--whether you're joining or leaving one. A lot of things about me are the same as they always were, but the church was such a fundamental part of my life when I was a Mormon that I really couldn't help but change drastically when I extricated myself from it.

I often note to myself or others how much freedom I have now that I've left the church. A lot of that freedom has to do with ceasing to give a shit about the church's rules. Word of Wisdom? Fuck that, I love coffee--although I still get something of a rush when I go to Starbucks, like I'm getting away with something. It's fun that something so mundane to the rest of the world is so exciting to me. I haven't tried alcohol and I'm not hugely interested in it, although I'd like to try wine sooner or later. Law of Chastity? Fuck that, too. Both the WoW and LoC are examples of ways that the church infantilizes its members. Rejecting the church's rules means having to think things through for yourself. Coffee was a pretty easy thing for me to do. Alcohol is a bit more complicated in my mind, because I have alcoholic relatives and there's a lot of social stuff wrapped up in it as well, but I now trust myself to make mature and responsible decisions regarding it. The same is even more true of sex. I don't rely on an institution to make choices regarding my sex life for me. Back when I was in school, my roommates had a discussion about whether oral sex was okay for married couples to do. To Mormon me, deferring to the church on this matter would have made perfect sense. Now, it's none of their business. It's between me and whoever I'm having sex with; why the fuck would I ask some old guy at church whether oral sex is okay? And, by extension, on what planet should I care about what some old guy, or a panel of old guys, thinks about whether I've gone through some legal shenanigans before having sex? I'm a grown-up. I'm capable of making responsible decisions for myself.

That freedom--the freedom to make my own decisions--is particularly important to me, in part, because of my gender. Since leaving the church I've become adamantly pro-choice. I don't want the church making personal decisions for me, and I don't want the government or society making them for me either. It is my choice whether or not to get pregnant or stay pregnant, and anyone who wants to make that choice for me can fuck off. I don't care if you think that a blastocyst somehow qualifies as a person, or that deferring to someone else's preferences regarding abortion is "taking responsibility" for my actions. I'm not part of a cult anymore. I make my own choices now. The Mormon church and anyone else who presumes to dictate my choices can go fuck themselves.

Another aspect of my life where I feel significantly more free since leaving is intellectual, but still somewhat gendered. I've made posts about this topic in the past, so I'll be brief here--I'm a feminist, and I don't care what the church wants me to do with my life. Choosing not to have children does not mean that I'm "listening to Satan." Neither does choosing career over children. I'm getting married soon, but if I wasn't interested in marriage, there would be nothing wrong with me staying unmarried.

It's kind of an exhilarating feeling, actually. It's like I'm suddenly invulnerable. And, in a sense, I am--I'm immune to the church's coercive tactics. After all, telling me that I'm "listening to Satan" isn't very effective when Satan doesn't exist. You might as well tell me that Santa won't bring me any presents this Christmas.

This freedom is awesome. I wouldn't sacrifice it for anything. Church members are regularly told that the church is the only way to happiness, and that they're happier as members than they would be otherwise. As someone who's lived on both sides of the fence and was reasonably happy on their side, I am so much happier with a free mind. It's like waking up and winning the lottery every day.

Intellectual abuse

One of the things that I find most troubling about the LDS church is the intellectual abuse that it perpetrates on its members. This abuse is a product of the brainwashing that the church does, and it is incredibly harmful to the ability of its members to exercise unfettered critical thinking. Members are trained to constantly measure their own thoughts, opinions, and conclusions against the positions of the church and the teachings of its leaders. If the church has made no definite statement on a given subject, members may debate and think freely, but if the church does have some doctrine or position, then woe to the member who should dare to differ. In essence, the church undercuts the intellectual process. I have seen members develop sophisticated and compelling reasoning for some view that they may hold, and then drop it all without a second thought when they hear a prophet or apostle speak on the matter--even if that prophet's or apostle's justification (if any is provided at all) is weak or patently absurd. 

When I was a believing member of the church, the church was all-encompassing in my thinking. All my thoughts and conclusions had to fit into the framework of my belief. This is only natural, and all human beings do this--try to fit new thoughts and ideas into their existing perception of how the world may be. The troubling thing was and is that the church clothes itself in asserted moral superiority, and disagreeing with the church is not mere disagreement--it is immoral and a reflection on the individual's righteousness. Disagreement with or--heaven forbid--criticism of church leaders is a cardinal sin in Mormonism. Those who dare to criticize are automatically seen as at risk for apostasy--if they are not apostates already. This attitude stifles intellectual discourse and proper airing of ideas. The church sees itself as a unilateral giver of universal truth. Any who disagree are at best misguided by Satan, and at worst are his servants. 

All this means that any members who do question anything in the church or think anything that is not consistent with its official positions are made to feel guilty for their thoughts. It doesn't matter if the issue is something small and stupid like earrings or skirt length, or hugely important like gay marriage or the truth of the church itself. The concept and culpability of thoughtcrime is alive and well in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

ANNOUNCEMENT: URL change

please note that I am changing the URL of my blog to blissfulheretic.blogspot.com.

The meaning of meaning

The second Sunday after my deconversion was stake conference. Said deconversion took place late on a Monday night, and I had had a whole week to think about things. I was quite certain--let's say 97%--that the church was not true. (For reference, I'd now put that somewhere around 99.99%, give or take.) I had spent a lot of time online researching and reading exit stories. I had realized the implications of my lost testimony on the night of my deconversion. I didn't know whether to believe in God. My belief up to that point had been informed entirely by Mormonism, and I had no experience with God outside of that context.

I wanted to believe in God. Oh, how desperately I wanted to believe in God. That first night I cried and prayed myself to sleep. I didn't know what to do. I had a strong suspicion that there wasn't a God, but I didn't want to confront it. It was a giant pink elephant in the living room of my mind, and I really didn't want to deal with it. I wanted to just believe.

Those first few weeks after my deconversion were the most surreal experience of my life. It was as if I was a prisoner recently released from a life in prison. I didn't know what to think or how to handle this new perspective. It frightened and baffled me. Everything was new, and once I got past the initial fear I was like a kid in an intellectual candy shop. I was allowed to think about things that I hadn't been able to before. But at first, it was too scary. And one of the scariest things to think about was whether or not God existed.

The reason this was so frightening to contemplate was because God and Mormonism together had comprised the totality of my life's meaning. I didn't know how to think about life, the world, or even myself outside of that context. The world seemed so dark, empty, and meaningless without it. I had time to think about this on that Sunday afternoon, after stake conference had ended. One of my roommates was out of town and the other two were asleep. It was sunny outside and there was no snow on the ground yet, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and leaned on the railing outside my apartment, just like I had the night I lost my testimony.

I mulled over the idea of atheism in my mind as I watched the wind blow through the grass and the trees of my dorm's courtyard. I couldn't comprehend it. How could this beautiful, fascinating, complex world exist without some kind of divine being? How could my life have any meaning at all? I wanted to believe. I felt emotionally compelled to believe. But intellectually, I couldn't justify it. I was faced with Søren Kierkegaard's choice of whether to make a leap of faith, and I couldn't do it. I was caught between faith and doubt, and doubt was winning, even though I didn't want it to.

I came to no firm conclusions that day on the railing outside my apartment. I would work through this dilemma over the course of the following months. But that day, I couldn't even put a name to what I believed. I didn't believe--or disbelieve--anything. I didn't know what to believe, and it was uncomfortable. The reason this dilemma was so difficult was because I needed meaning in my life, and I didn't see how I could have it without God.

Human beings seem to have a compelling need for meaning. What they mean when they say "meaning" is very subjective, but the persistence of the question surely indicates that we need some kind of answer to it. Philosophically speaking, there are four basic answers to the question. All but one was incomprehensible to me as a newly minted apostate, because all four have fundamentally different conceptions of what the question is. Well-meaning people on Internet forums told me that I had to create my own meaning. They might as well have been speaking Klingon for all the sense that made to me. Meaning, to me, wasn't something you could just create out of your own fancies and preferences. It was supposed to be objective, immutable. I subscribed to the religious version of meaning. For something to have meaning, in my view, it had to fit into a bigger picture somehow. This view of meaning is very well articulated in a poem popular with Christians, the author of which I (regrettably) do not know:


My life is but a weaving
between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors,
He worketh steadily.
Oft times He weaveth sorrow,
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper,
And I the under side.

Not 'til the loom is silent
and the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas
and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
in the Weaver's skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
in the pattern He has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares,
nothing this truth can dim.
He gives His very best to those
who leave the choice with Him.

Meaning, for me, required my life to fit into "the big picture" in a predetermined way, just like the individual threads in a tapestry go together to make a picture. The proposition that one must create one's own meaning will make no sense to someone who thinks this way--after all, a bunch of threads all doing whatever they please is not going to make any kind of discernible picture on a tapestry.

I hinted at the second view of meaning earlier--this view questions the utility of "meaning of life" as a concept. It holds that the idea that life must have a "meaning" is, in itself, meaningless. In the first place, the question, "what is the meaning of life?" presumes a priori that life does, in fact, have a meaning. But does it? And in the second place, what does that mean? If you reject the existence of God and of any other overarching teleology, you can't have meaning in the tapestry sense. You have to come up with something else. This view holds that there is no such thing.

The third view, which is often confused with atheism itself, is nihilism. Nihilism holds that while the concept of "meaning" is coherent, no such meaning can or does exist. Many atheists do take this position, but not all do. When I subscribed to the tapestry view, I saw nihilism as the only alternate option. And justifiably so--if you reject the truth of the tapestry view, but still retain that definition of meaning, then you are faced with no meaning.

The fourth view is the humanist view. This is the "create your own meaning" view. And it requires a shift in one's understanding of the meaning of meaning (so to speak). Instead of a tapestry, the humanist view sees meaning as a sort of mosaic--there's no overarching picture, but it's still beautiful even in its chaos. And, as you would expect, definitions of meaning vary widely within humanism. This view is, in one sense, much more limited than the tapestry view because it is not objective or overarching, nor does it have any kind of ultimate end. It's temporary and subjective. But on the other, this same fact creates a great deal of freedom and flexibility as well. And it does require much more of the individual. It requires one to "know thyself," as the ancient Delphic oracle admonished. It requires one to work through the mire of epistemology and ethics, and it doesn't have easy answers.

I did not understand this distinction that first Sunday. I could only conceive of meaning in a limited way. I wanted to fit into something beyond my own control or will. In a way, I wanted to be enslaved to a "higher power"--it did not matter what God's plan was, so long as I fit into it somewhere. But I had already realized that I really had no interest in fitting into the Mormon conception of meaning. I have chosen the humanist view. Admittedly, this makes me something of a relativist. It entails a certain amount of epistemological ambiguity. I'm okay with that. But the important thing to understand--what I did not understand as I began my search for meaning without religion--is that before you can find the meaning of life, you have to know what that question means to you.

The Family

Family is very important in the Mormon church. From a doctrinal standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. The essence of LDS theology is the belief that God is our Eternal Father, and that the purpose of this life is to prove ourselves worthy to become like him. Celestial marriage (what that means depends on which prophet you ask) is considered indispensable for salvation because the function of immortality--that is, being like God--is to create more worlds and populate them with one's spiritual offspring. (Naturally this necessitates polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom, but that is another issue entirely.) Since the purpose of this life is for all of Elohim's children to gain bodies and be tested for worthiness, the church teaches that everyone has the responsibility to assist in this plan by bringing as many spirits as possible into the world. That is the ostensible reason why Mormon families tend to be rather large, and why Mormons are encouraged to marry early and to have children as soon as possible after marriage. Many Mormons also believe that their families were constituted in the preexistence and that there are certain spirits who were meant to be in their families. It's common for members, especially women, to share stories of thinking at one point that they were done having children, but later realizing that there was still one or more spirits waiting to be a part of their family.

Because the family is so central to the LDS view of the very meaning of existence, the church places a great deal of emphasis on it. In 1995, the church issued a Proclamation on the Family that outlines the church's beliefs about the family and its role in this life and the next. Among other things, the Proclamation emphasizes traditional gender roles and sexual mores, as well as insisting that "God's commandment for his children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force." 

In recent years, the church has been trying to enhance its image as a "family" church. It has always been adamantly opposed to homosexuality and gay marriage, and it has received a lot of press for this since its involvement in Prop 8. Nary a conference goes by without a veiled reference to "the family" being under attack. The current threat is the gay rights movement, but historically the church has also identified feminism and interracial marriage as threats to the family. 

All this leads one to ask what exactly the LDS church means when they talk about "the family" When they state from the pulpit that "the family" is "under attack," what do they mean? Personally, I find it rather absurd when the church says that marriage and family are under attack when in fact they are actively trying to deny marriage and family to LGBT people. It is obvious that not all families are created equal in the church's eyes--gay parents, single parents, and working mothers are all considered threats to their ideal. 

"Family" is a loaded word, and not just in the LDS church. Politics is peppered with references to "family values" and such. That's not surprising--humans are social creatures by nature, and one's family is one's first social network and plays a vital role in human development. We tend to have strong emotions about our families as a result. This makes "family," with all its emotional baggage, an ideal word for manipulation. A common technique that coercive organizations use is thought-stopping. One thought-stopping technique is to use loaded language that elicits knee-jerk responses rather than promoting rational discourse. "Family" in Mormon-speak is one of these words. It means more to a Mormon than the dictionary definitions that can include a family with a married heterosexual couple and their children as well as a childless married couple or a family with gay parents. Family for Mormons is not just a group of people who are joined together by love and commitment; it is also a set of ideas. I outline some of these below.

1. Mormons believe that the family was intended to be an eternal unit, and in order for this to happen one has to have certain ordinances performed in LDS temples. Only members can have these ordinances performed, and this means that the whole family must be Mormon. It means that if you are a member and single, you should only marry a member (and the church uses scare tactics and manipulation to convince people to do this). It means that if you are a convert, then you should convert your family as well. And it means that your most important priority in raising your children will be to keep them in the church. 
2. Because Mormons see the family as the instrument that executes God's plan, they believe that they have an obligation to marry early and to have many children starting as early as possible. I discussed this and the damage it causes in my previous blog post. 
3. Biologically speaking, only a male and a female can have children, and the LDS church makes much of this fact. Because having children is so central to their conception of existence--God's spirit children must be given bodies--the church defines family by these biological limitations. This is further fueled by the fact that the church subscribes to a very rigid view of gender and gender roles, insisting that children need both male and female parents. 
4. Because women who work are likely to have children later and to have fewer of them, the LDS church emphasizes a traditional family model with a working father and a stay-at-home mother. As many of my previous posts have indicated, I have serious beef with the role that this creates for women. There is more to a woman than her reproductive capacity, and her choices in life should not be circumscribed by that. 

In sum, "the family" as defined by the church is in fact shorthand for a Mormon, heterosexual, patriarchal, traditional family unit. Such a narrow definition, with its emphasis on superficial and non-universal criteria, causes more important considerations to take a backseat. The church does not like a definition of marriage or family based on mutual love and commitment because such a definition is not exclusive to heterosexuals. Such a clinical focus on the family as an offspring-producing unit is ultimately harmful to the family as an instrument of human association and affection. Gay couples cannot marry, foster children are denied stable homes, young adults are pressured into early and unwise marriages, and young married couples are pressured to have children when whey may not be able to afford them and may not even want them. It is ironic that a loaded word that relies on legitimate emotions about family and its meaning actually undermines those very emotions in order to reduce the family to a coercive tool. I find this to be deeply disturbing. I love my own family very much, and the fact that the church essentially reduces it to a political tool is very bothersome to me--and I am a child of heterosexual parents in a church-sanctioned marriage. How much more does that undermining of what "family" really means apply to people whose families do not fit the church's political ideal, but are families nonetheless?

Dick and Jane: or, The Marriage Trap

Meet Dick. Dick is a 21-year-old recently returned missionary. He was born and raised in the LDS church. He has been a valiant member of the church his whole life. He did well in school, advanced through the levels of the priesthood, graduated seminary with a nearly 100% attendance record, and served an honorable mission in Uganda. Dick does feel guilty because he can't seem to shake his masturbation habit and because he occasionally looks at pornography. Not very often--maybe once a month or so--so he rationalizes to himself that it's not a serious problem. But deep down he feels very guilty. He feels like he is betraying his priesthood and temple covenants.

On the whole, though, Dick is an ideal, squeaky-clean Mormon boy. He is returning for a second semester at BYU after he dutifully took two years away from his education for his mission. Although he only baptized four people while on his mission, he came away with a deep testimony of the gospel. He reads his well-worn scriptures daily and prays fervently. He is majoring in business at BYU (even though he'd much rather study physics) so that he will be able to provide for his future family. He serves in his student ward as a Sunday School teacher.

Dick's top priority right now, as per his former mission president's instructions, is to find a worthy young woman to be his eternal companion. He's been told by his bishop that it's his responsibility to date as much as he can. And so he does, looking for the girl who's meant to be his wife.

Meet Jane. Jane is a lovely girl. She worked her way through the Young Women program until she earned her medallion, graduated seminary with honors, and has a burning testimony of the gospel. Like Dick, she prays and reads her scriptures every day. She keeps her mind and body pure and innocent. She strongly believes that her greatest mission in life is to be a wife and mother--she can't wait to be a mommy. She's studying at BYU, but she hasn't declared a major yet. For one thing, she's hoping to be married soon, so she assumes that she doesn't need much in the way of higher education. And for another, she doesn't know what she would like to study, having focused all of her goals and dreams on her ideal of a fairytale wedding shortly followed by motherhood. She's taking light credit loads consisting of general studies supplemented by ballroom dancing and sewing classes. But although she does not devote much energy to her education, Jane is quite intelligent. She has an aptitude for math and a fascination with art (although she fastidiously avoids any paintings or statues of naked people). But because being a mother someday is so important to her, she devotes most of her time and energy to developing skills that will help her make a happy home. She loves the social life at BYU with all the handsome returned missionaries who seem so much nicer than the non-Mormon boys she knew in high school outside of Utah. She's had a series of boyfriends, but has lately begun to doubt herself because none of her relationships led to marriage. As a result, she immediately latches on to any man who expresses interest in her, convinced that this, at last, is "the one."

Dick and Jane meet when they are assigned to the same FHE group one semester. They start dating a few weeks into the semester. As with all her previous relationships, Jane hopes that this one will lead to a date at the temple. She enjoys planning not-so-hypothetical weddings with her roommates and browsing rings and dresses online. Dick, while still feeling unworthy because of his masturbation problem, is delighted to have found a special daughter of God, and he redoubles his efforts to keep himself pure for her. He slips up sometimes, but he is trying.

By Thanksgiving Dick and Jane are getting serious about each other. Jane has high hopes that Dick will propose any day. Dick is having a difficult time restraining himself sexually. They have very strong feelings for each other and are convinced that they are in love. Everyone around them is happy for them, and roommates are beginning to ask when the engagement will be. Reading a recent General Conference talk encouraging young adults, especially young men, not to hold off on marriage serves as the final push for Dick to propose to Jane just before the Christmas break.

After the engagement, Dick and Jane are showered with congratulations and well-wishes. They become stereotypical lovebirds--cooing at each other, playing with each others' hair, and generally being oblivious to everyone else around them (and rather annoying both sets of roommates). Their conversations consist primarily of flirting and wedding plans. After a long six months and several close calls with the Law of Chastity, the two are married in the Salt Lake Temple.

The first few months are divine. Dick and Jane are passionately in love with each other. Jane quits school and takes a job to help pay for Dick's tuition. She stops working, however, when after less than a year of marriage she finds that she is pregnant. Both she and Dick are overjoyed, but Jane especially is ecstatic because she is now beginning to fulfill her divine role as a woman.

More children follow, and soon it becomes apparent to both that married life is not the fairytale that they always thought it was. Jane's time is taken up with her growing number of children and they rarely have time alone together. When they are able to spend time together, they find that they have little to talk about. Dick has returned to his pornography habit to fill the emotional and sexual void created when the magic of his relationship with Jane faded. Jane wonders why her husband does not love her anymore--if he did love her, then obviously he wouldn't be seeking solace in the nasty videos that he watches when he thinks she's asleep. Jane invests herself more and more in her children, Dick more and more in his work. Dick is unhappy at a job that he finds boring and unstimulating, although it does provide well for his large family. Although she will never admit it to herself, Jane is unhappy with her life as well. Shortly after her youngest child begins school, she becomes seriously depressed and her doctor prescribes Prozac. To a casual observer, Dick and Jane have a wonderful life and a happy family. But both partners wonder if they're doing something wrong in their marriage that is keeping them from the happiness that they were promised.

---

Dick and Jane's story, while obviously fictional in this case, is one that repeats itself many times over in the Mormon church. Men and especially women are taught that having a family is the most important thing they will ever do in life--that it is a divine calling. It is common for returning missionaries to be told by their mission presidents that their next responsibility is to find a wife as soon as possible. Women are regularly taught in church that marriage and children are the most important priorities in their lives. Both are encouraged to interpret their feelings as "promptings of the Spirit," and they consequently mistake early infatuation with a relationship for the Spirit telling them that they have found the one that they are meant to be with for eternity. The increasing sexual tension in the relationship compounded with the expected abstinence prior to marriage places additional pressure on the couple to marry as soon as possible so that they can keep themselves "pure." As a result, it is extraordinarily common for Mormons to marry quite young and after dating only for a short period of time. After marrying and having children right away, many of these couples find that they have little in common besides the church. They may become depressed or feel like they are not righteous enough. Obviously this isn't the case all the time; sometimes couples get lucky, and some have enough presence of mind to avoid rushing into a marriage and children with someone they've only known for a few months. But it happens more than it should, and it is a direct result of the church's harmful teachings.

I've heard it argued that the church does not actually pressure its members into early marriage and children. But consider, for example, the oft-quoted Family Proclamation's statement that "God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force." This little quote is often cited in church lessons and BYU devotionals to urge the faithful to reproduce early and often. LDS prophets and other church leaders have made clear there insistence on this matter. In a 1987 General Conference address entitled "To the Fathers in Israel," Ezra Taft Benson quoted Spencer W. Kimball as he urged young couples not to wait to have children:

 "I have told tens of thousands of young folks that when they marry they should not wait for children until they have finished their schooling and financial desires. … They should live together normally and let the children come."

In the April 2011 General Conference, both Thomas S. Monson and Richard G. Scott urged young adults to marry. In "The Eternal Blessings of Marriage", Scott said, "If you are a young man of appropriate age and are not married, don’t waste time in idle pursuits. Get on with life and focus on getting married." In his address entitled "Priesthood Power," Monson, the man who speaks for God, scolded young men who postponed marriage:

"Now, I have thought a lot lately about you young men who are of an age to marry but who have not yet felt to do so. I see lovely young ladies who desire to be married and to raise families, and yet their opportunities are limited because so many young men are postponing marriage.

This is not a new situation. Much has been said concerning this matter by past Presidents of the Church. I share with you just one or two examples of their counsel.

Said President Harold B. Lee, 'We are not doing our duty as holders of the priesthood when we go beyond the marriageable age and withhold ourselves from an honorable marriage to these lovely women.'"

Monson then went on to urge unmarried men not to worry about financial considerations such as how to take care of a wife (as if women are incapable of taking care of themselves!) and to suggest that young men are simply "having a little too much fun being single." It is clear that the church puts an extraordinary amount of pressure on young adults to marry and produce offspring, and young members like Dick and Jane are the victims. People rush into marriage and children under the direction of church authorities and then wonder why they are not happy.

All the answers

I have a lot of childhood memories of my mom teaching me. Even though I've rejected the religion she raised me in, I will always be grateful to her for her teaching. She taught me to love learning, to ask questions, and to think my own thoughts. I have several memories of her helping me with math homework. Several times I tried to get her to just give me the answers to the problems I was trying to solve. Like any good teacher, she refused, insisting, "you have to figure out the answer for yourself."

When I stopped believing in the church, the most devastating thing for me was the realization that I didn't have answers anymore. Worries about the the afterlife and how to tell my family of my apostasy were frightening, but the most terrifying thing of all was the realization that where I thought I had knowledge, I had only ignorance. My recurring thought during the month leading up to my final epiphany was that the rug had been pulled out from underneath my feet. I felt like a cartoon character who, after rushing off a cliff, looks down and realizes that there is nothing beneath him.

Not having answers is scary, especially when it comes to big questions like the meaning of life and what happens when we die. Mormonism gave me very neat and sensible answers. Leaving Mormonism meant leaving the answers. But I still wanted easy answers. I realized almost immediately that there probably wasn't a god, but I held on to the idea of him for more than half a year. I wanted him to exist and I wanted him to give me answers. I kept praying, sometimes desperately. I wanted so very much for there to be a wise, all-knowing being who loved me and had my back. But more than that, I wanted answers--solid, sure, indubitable answers.

Those answers never came. When I finally realized what I'd known all along, that pleading with the silence was not doing me any good, I had to accept that there was no cosmic authority figure who would tell me the answers. I had to figure things out on my own, I knew that I was fallible. Life doesn't have an answer key like my math book did. And I wouldn't have it any other way. As my mother taught me when she refused to tell the answer to that long division problem, the point isn't knowing what the answer is. It's knowing how to think for yourself--because when you think for yourself, the answers you find are really yours.

Faith Walk

I loved girl's camp as a teenager. By girls' camp, I don't mean Girl Scouts--the LDS church does a knockoff version as a part of the YW program. In many ways, it's a lot like a regular summer camp. We had hikes, slept in tents or cabins, did crafts, roasted marshmallows, and went swimming. But it was more than just a regular summer camp; its primary function was to strengthen the testimonies of the attendees.

There were lots of reasons why I loved girls' camp. I've always loved camping, and I enjoyed spending the time with my friends. I loved the campfires and the goofy songs. I loved the late nights and the early mornings; we ran on sugar and goofball-ness instead of sleep. And the best part of girls camp was the "spiritual high," as we called it, that camp induced and that lingered for weeks afterwards.

In retrospect I feel profoundly manipulated by girls' camp. It was a tradition that every year on the last night of camp we would have some kind of huge activity meant to bring "the spirit" and strengthen our testimonies, followed by a testimony meeting. This activity could take various forms from year to year, but the most frequent version was a "faith walk."

It always started in the evening, an hour or so before sunset. It was the end of the week, so we were all exhausted from sleep deprivation and usual camp activities. Most years they built up to the final activity throughout the week. One year especially stands out in my memory.

This year, they spent the week giving little devotionals on various aspects of the gospel--repentance, exaltation, prayer, etc. Then on the last night of camp, they gathered all the girls together and then had us sing hymns while we waited. They guided us off in small groups of three or four, and we went on a short hike. We were instructed to be very quiet and not goof off with each other. At designated places along the trail, leaders quizzed us on the concepts we'd been learning about throughout the week. Our final destination was a section of trail that had been blocked off with a sheet. Here we were blindfolded and taken behind the sheet, and our hands were placed on a PVC pipe rod about four feet above the ground. We walked blindfolded down the trail using the rod to guide ourselves. The only sound was the sinister-sounding whispering of leaders playing the part of devils tempting us away from the rod. They would come up to us individually and whisper in our ears. It was not difficult for me to realize what the simulation was supposed to be teaching, and so I closed down my ears and pressed forward. However, I was nearly to the end when a voice told me that I had reached the end of the rod. I let go, and was immediately escorted to the beginning of the rod. This time I was determined not to let go, and I successfully made it to the end of the rod and my blindfold was removed.

The sight that greeted me is burned into my memory. I was in an outdoor amphitheater in the forest. The sun had set, and the amphitheater was lit by thousands of white Christmas lights and a small potted tree set up on the stage, also bedecked with white lights and hung with miniature portraits of Jesus. All the leaders were dressed in white. Since I was part of one of the first groups to start the walk, the amphitheater was mostly empty. I sat with a few other girls from my ward and waited for the rest of the girls to finish the walk. A boom box was playing hymns, and one of my friends next to me was sobbing.

After all the girls had made it to the amphitheater, there was a short devotional accompanied by some hymn singing, and we made our way back to our cabins as individual ward units. Everyone was very quiet and subdued as we walked back, and several girls were still crying. It was now completely dark.

After we had gathered around our ward campfire, our bishop gave us a brief talk and bore his testimony, and then opened the gathering for testimony bearing. All the girls bore their testimonies, and nearly all of us cried. I remember one girl who initially refused to bear her testimony, but she eventually caved under pressure--all of us sitting near her were whispering to her to go up. At the conclusion of the testimony bearing, a prayer was offered and we went to bed. That year we were sleeping in cabins, and we pulled our mattresses off of our bunks and into the middle of the floor. We fell asleep exhausted and tear-stained.

This exercise was repeated every year I was at girls camp, with variations on the specifics. Not every year involved a makeshift iron rod, but every single year we had a closing testimony meeting with intense pressure on every girl to bear her testimony. One year that we did do the iron rod simulation, the rod was a long rope. We were blindfolded as usual and led around the camp area. When the simulation was over, we removed our blindfolds but we did not let go of the rope. Instead, we carried it with us back to our campsite and continued clutching it as we sat in a large circle. We had learned our lesson: never let go.

Modesty

When I was in Young Women, modesty was easily one of the biggest things that leaders emphasized. The church has pretty specific standards for clothing, especially for girls. The church's handbook for youth, For the Strength of Youth, says this:

Immodest clothing includes short shorts and skirts, tight clothing, shirts that do not cover the stomach, and other revealing attire. Young women should wear clothing that covers the shoulder and avoid clothing that is low-cut in the front or the back or revealing in any other manner. Young men should also maintain modesty in their appearance. All should avoid extremes in clothing, appearance, and hairstyle. Always be neat and clean and avoid being sloppy or inappropriately casual in dress, grooming, and manners. Ask yourself, “Would I feel comfortable with my appearance if I were in the Lord’s presence?”
...
Do not disfigure yourself with tattoos or body piercings. If girls or women desire to have their ears pierced, they are encouraged to wear only one pair of modest earrings. [Source] 

As a teenager, I was meticulous in following these standards. I always made sure that my clothes had sleeves, that my necklines weren't too low, that my skirts and shorts came at least to my knees and that no skin showed between my neck and my knees.

If you noticed, the most stringent standards in the quoted paragraph apply to young women. The young men have standards as well, but they are very different. For example, the young men in my ward often took their shirts off to play basketball in the gym. On the other hand, though, they didn't get to wear earrings, so I guess it came out even.

The way I see it now, these standards are primarily a mechanism of control. They are arbitrary. I point to the earrings standards as a perfect example. Why are multiple sets of earrings bad? Why are men not allowed to have any? Is it because punching holes in your earlobes is bad? Why, then are women allowed to have them at all? On the other hand, if it's okay to punch holes in your ears, why on earth does it matter how many you have?

Turns out I'm right. In the spring of 2005, David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles related the following story in a BYU devotional, which was subsequently published in the Ensign:

Sister Bednar and I are acquainted with a returned missionary who had dated a special young woman for a period of time. He cared for her very much, and he was desirous of making his relationship with her more serious. He was considering and hoping for engagement and marriage. This relationship was developing during the time that President Hinckley counseled the Relief Society sisters and young women of the Church to wear only one earring in each ear. 

The young man waited patiently over a period of time for the young woman to remove her extra earrings, but she did not take them out. This was a valuable piece of information for this young man, and he felt unsettled about her nonresponsiveness to a prophet’s pleading. For this and other reasons, he ultimately stopped dating the young woman, because he was looking for an eternal companion who had the courage to promptly and quietly obey the counsel of the prophet in all things and at all times. The young man was quick to observe that the young woman was not quick to observe. 

I presume that some of you might have difficulty with my last example. You may believe the young man was too judgmental or that basing an eternally important decision, even in part, upon such a supposedly minor issue is silly or fanatical. Perhaps you are bothered because the example focuses upon a young woman who failed to respond to prophetic counsel instead of upon a young man. I simply invite you to consider and ponder the power of being quick to observe and what was actually observed in the case I just described. The issue was not earrings! [Source]

Let me repeat that last sentence. The issue was not earrings. The issue was obedience. Setting aside the fact that this man wanted an obedient wife makes me see red, Elder Bednar has here plainly admitted that the standards of the church with respect to personal appearance don't exist for moral or even practical reasons, but for the sake of obedience. The important thing is not to think and make rational decisions, but to follow the "counsel" of church leaders.

Another dimension of the modesty issue that I find bothersome is the fact that it's so repressive. It is one element of a wide variety of aspects of Mormonism that repress sexuality in both men and women. Like it or not, human beings are sexual creatures. That's how we reproduce, and it's a pretty important part of what makes us human. Mormonism in general has a very unhealthy attitude towards sex. It's considered to be a good thing if you're married, but evil and bad if you're not. So it's very important for members to keep their sexuality within carefully prescribed boundaries. Modesty is a part of that. In my own case, it created a strange distance between myself and my own body. Just like I tried my hardest--and generally successfully--never to think about sex or anything sex-related, I was very good at ignoring the sexual dimension of my own body. I think that is very harmful.

A final thing that bothers me about the Mormon concept of modesty is the fact that, yet again, it takes control and autonomy away from the individual and replaces it with blind trust in authority, even if that authority issues arbitrary rules that make no real sense (like the earring example that Bednar so eloquently illustrated). This is one of the most harmful aspects of Mormonism in my view. They claim that agency and choice are fundamental aspects of their religion, but it really boils down to choice between being obedient and thinking for yourself, with the only "right" choice being obedience. The way I see it, that isn't really a choice at all.

Dear God: What a year can do

I like looking through my old journal entries. I especially like looking at the things I wrote one year ago, and seeing how I've changed since then. I found this in my journal entry for June 17, 2010:

Dear God,
I don't know if you're real. It would be awfully nice if you were, because sometimes my life sucks. It would be nice if there were somebody who were in charge of it all, who is making all the good and the bad work towards some ultimately good end. But I don't know for sure whether to believe in you or not. Why should I? I mean, I wouldn't want to worship a being who is needlessly cruel. I would find that to be morally reprehensible.

Which brings me to my question--why all the weirdness? Why on earth would you do something so dumb as to hide all overt evidence of your existence, and then threaten people with hell if they don't believe in you? Where's the sense in that? I mean, seriously. Do you have insecurity issues, control issues, or what?

Basically, it would be nice if you could be up-front about who/what you are, and what you want of people. Let's be reasonable here. I refuse to treat life like a college class where the syllabus is a contradictory puzzle with half the pieces missing, and grades are awarded arbitrarily. 

I've got lots more to say to you, God, but I'm really tired now. I have class in the morning. So just think about that, OK? If you're really there, why don't you start acting like a rational grown-up? Just a suggestion.

I was essentially an atheist at that point. In an earlier entry I describe myself as a "peaceful agnostic." But damn. On June 17, 2009, I wouldn't have dreamed of writing something like that. And now, I've given up the last shred of wishing-for-God that I still had in the back of my mind one year ago. A year ago, I was figuring out how to define myself in terms of religion. I didn't really believe, but God was frequently on my mind. But after that final night on the temple grounds, I stopped worrying. Now I never wonder if God's really there. I really did give him a fair shot. I really tried to believe, but he never came through.

And you know what? I can safely say that since that last prayer that night by the temple, I've been the happiest I've ever been. I don't wonder or worry like I used to that one of the religions in the world is true, and that I'm condemning myself to hell through my ignorance/non-belief. My whole life, the people I've known have insisted that atheism is the most depressing philosophy out there, that it implies that life is meaningless and empty. But I've found that the opposite is the case. Life without God is free of so many of the worries I had when I believed in God, or when I was trying to believe in him.

One year ago I was a baby atheist. I wasn't even ready to call myself an atheist--I called myself an agnostic, just to be on the safe side. It's amazing what a year can do for a person. God and his existence/non-existence is not really on my radar, to be honest. It doesn't keep me up at night anymore (and it sure as hell used to). Now, I am free.

Double Bind

I remember my mom saying that one of her worst fears was that one of her children would leave the church. At the time, I was sure she had nothing to worry about on that score. I believed in the church with all my heart; for one thing, I'd never known anything else, and for another, I was convinced that it made sense. Sure, I'd had moments of cognitive dissonance with polygamy and misogyny and racism, but they were quickly suppressed. I had learned at an early age that whenever I found something about the church that bothered me, the thing to do was "put it on the shelf" and trust that I would find answers eventually. The idea that I might leave the church one day was inconceivable.

When I did realize that the church wasn't true, the scariest part about the whole thing was the prospect of telling my parents. I knew they would be devastated. I considered never telling them, and just pretending to believe for the rest of my life, but that was a losing proposition from the start. I hate pretending to be something I'm not. For the record, they don't know yet as of this writing. I won't be telling them for awhile for various reasons, but I have plans to do so as soon as it's feasible. But I have absolutely no intention of  pretending for the rest of my life. 

But this dilemma of mine made me realize shortly after I stopped believing that the church was not a benign organization. A healthy organization would not cause a mother to feel that she's failed at parenting if her daughter leaves the church. A healthy organization would not cause someone's "worst fear" to be that a loved one would leave. That is manipulative and evil. 

The church uses family members to create a double bind on apostates. We are faced with a choice between pretending to believe something we don't, or devastating our families. That is not healthy. It is a giveaway sign of a cult. An honest organization does not need to rely on guilt and fear to keep people in. An honest organization can take criticism. 

From a believing Mormon's perspective, there is no legitimate reason to leave the church, ever. Members are taught that people "apostatize" because they have been offended somehow, because they wanted to sin, because they were spiritually weak, or because they were prideful. Ironically, the church actively tries to persuade potential converts to leave their own churches, even if this means disappointing their families. I have heard dozens of converts tell stories about their families being angry with them, being sad, or even disowning them because they joined the LDS church. And the church glorifies these people for their fortitude. But when the situation is reversed--when someone who is already a member leaves the church--they are vilified and judged. 

According to the church, apostates cannot be happier outside of the church than they were in it. People are taught to fear and vilify apostates, and when a loved one apostatizes the believing member is left with an awful choice. Either they must view their loved one as having "fallen from grace," so to speak, or else they must somehow accept that their husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, or sister had a legitimate reason to leave. Like the apostate, the believing member is placed in a painful double bind. It is disgusting to me that the church manipulates and coerces its members in this way. There is nothing of good report or praiseworthy about it. And as members become apostates in increasing numbers, the problem is only going to get worse. 

As I said above, the church's attitude towards people who leave it is one of the major reasons why I consider it to be a harmful and coercive organization. Families are forever, but only if everyone toes the line. The church uses fear and guilt to manipulate its members, and that is wrong. 

My Last Prayer

In previous posts, I've talked about my gradual change to atheism. The change didn't happen in a rush of realization like the loss of my testimony did. But if I had to identify a point in time when I realized that I was a complete atheist, it would be one night during the summer of 2010. That night was like many nights in that I was feeling very lonely and I had no idea what to do with myself. I went to the temple and sat on the grounds as the sun set and just thought. I thought about how much had changed since the last time I'd been inside a temple--it had been over a year. I looked up at the stars and wondered if there was anyone up there who cared about me at all. I had stopped praying a few months previously, because my desperate prayers just weren't being answered. But I decided to give it one last shot. If I was ever going to regain a belief in God, this was his chance.

I said everything that I had to say to God. I told him about how frustrated and lonely and confused I was. I told him how much I wanted to believe that he was real, but that I really didn't think it was fair of him to expect me to believe in him when all appearances indicated that he didn't exist. I asked him to help me know if he was real. I don't know what I expected. I didn't expect any kind of miraculous vision. I didn't expect a warm fuzzy feeling like the one I had been told to expect when reading the Book of Mormon. Even if I had felt something like that, I wouldn't have trusted it. I think that I was really expecting everything to suddenly make sense, that all my doubts and the apparent problems with a belief in God would vanish in a brilliant flash of logic. Whatever I was expecting, nothing happened. Nothing. In a way I wasn't really surprised by the nothingness, because that was all I had been getting for months, even before I lost my testimony of Mormonism. But this time was different, because I accepted it. No divine answer was forthcoming. I had done my level best to believe in God, and God had failed the test.

As I walked back from the temple to my apartment, I didn't really think much about what had happened. It was almost as if nothing had happened, because nothing had really changed. But I was finally at peace with God--that is, with his lack of existence. Since losing my testimony I had always wondered in the back of my mind if there really was a God, and if he really cared. I had now accepted that I was on my own and that there wasn't any supernatural force to guide me or comfort me, or even to lend me a listening ear. I had talked to God, and no one had heard me. I wouldn't even realize the significance of that night until later. Even though the experience itself was emotionally difficult, my reaction immediately afterwards was really just a shrug of my shoulders. So there was probably no God. That came as anything but a surprise. That night I let go of my angst over the God issue and got on with my life. I haven't worried since.

The Bliss of Heresy

I call myself a blissful heretic. I chose that name for a reason. I disagree with the old saying that ignorance is bliss; I have found that as I eliminate ignorance from my mind, I become a much happier person. During the final stages of my belief, the cognitive dissonance was very painful and I would not have called it bliss. When I embraced the truth, the shackles of dissonance fell away from me and I was free to explore reality, unhampered by obligations to ancient superstitions and corrupt authority.

I don't use the word "heretic" flippantly. There was a time when heretics were tortured and burned alive. I consider myself infinitely lucky to live in a time and a place where the worst consequences for my heresy are disapproval and possible rejection from my family. Even that's pretty bad. It's bad enough that, as of this writing, I am still "in the closet" to my family and friends about the fact that I'm an atheist. But the worst that could happen to me really is not that bad.

I have found that there is a strange bliss in heresy. I don't mean that I go about being contrary and unpleasant. But freedom of mind is blissful in a way that is unlike any other kind of freedom I have experienced. If a question needs to be asked, I'm no longer afraid to ask it for fear of the answer. I no longer shy away from difficult philosophical questions like free will and causation. I'm no longer afraid that the conclusions will threaten my "testimony." A friend of mine once asked me if my study of philosophy ever shook my testimony. Naturally, this friend did not and does not know that I am an atheist, and therefore could not have known the irony of her question. No, philosophy does not shake my testimony. Philosophy, philo sophia, is the love of wisdom. I am delighted to pursue my search for truth and wisdom wherever it leads. Perhaps it leads me wrong sometimes, for I am a fallible human being and I don't always think things through properly or have all the available evidence in front of me. But I am not afraid of being wrong, because I am always seeking to find what is right. My best defense against error is hardly going to be blind faith. I should keep my mind as open as possible, on the chance that my view of reality might be wrong or limited. I'm not afraid of my testimony, such as it is (or rather, isn't) being "shaken" because if something is false, it ought to be dislodged from one's mind, and if it is true, then it should stand up under scrutiny. The bliss of heresy is the utter fearlessness with which one can pursue wisdom.

Standing for Truth and Righteousness

The Young Women motto is "stand for truth and righteousness." When I was in Young Women, my group had a tradition on Sundays that during opening exercises, we would have a period of time during which anyone could get up and share with the class how they had "stood for truth and righteousness" during the week. Usually the girls who got up would get a small piece of candy as a reward. At the time I thought nothing of this tradition, but looking back it disturbs me.

The things that girls would share as "standing for truth and righteousness" varied widely, but they most commonly involved being Mormon in a profane world. Many of the girls in my group were in choirs or plays at school, and it was common every few weeks for these girls to share that they had altered their performance dress with sleeves and a higher neckline or that they had refused to say a petty swear word such as "damn" as part of their lines in a play. I'm all for standing up for one's principles, but the part that bothers me is the getting up and telling everyone every Sunday. Most girls would try to share something every week, both because they wanted their Sunday chocolate and because of social pressure. During pauses, girls would elbow each other to get up. I was no different from anyone else. For me, as I suspect it was for most girls, sharing the ways I had been "righteous" in the past week was almost a kind of high. I got to show everyone else just how righteous I was, and enjoy their admiration. It was an ego booster, but it also served to bind me more closely to the group and to cause me to base a lot of my self-esteem on how I was perceived by the other girls. Everyone judged everyone else. If one of the girls didn't add sleeves to her choir dress or chose to perform on a Sunday, everyone else would look down on her--even though no one ever said anything.

The real difficulty with this kind of "standing for truth and righteousness" is that no one seemed to think very deeply about what they were standing for, or why. Sure, we swallowed all the rhetoric about standing up for "values" and being a "light to the world," but what did that really mean? It really boiled down to following rules--the church's rules--even if they seemed silly. There were no exceptions to the rules, ever. The world was black-and-white.

We were encouraged to be "steadfast and immovable" in the gospel. But where is the value in that? Where is the value in sticking by something even if it doesn't make any sense? Why is obedience a virtue? In the church, standing up for "values" ultimately boiled down to being obedient, to doing what the prophet has told you to, even if it seems silly. We were taught that "obedience is the first law of heaven." In other words, the ultimate virtue was not honesty--it was subordination of one's own reason, intuition, and moral compass to a dictatorship of "revelation." The ultimate result of this is that if obedience is the first law of heaven, the primary and most important virtue, then honesty is vilified. The person who says, "that doesn't make any sense; I don't think I'm going to follow it" is not a moral hero, but a weakling or a hedonist. The young woman who asks why, exactly, it's wrong to have two sets of earrings, and refuses to obey that command until reasonable justification has been given, is not to be praised, but chastised. She is not standing for truth and righteousness--an ironic phrase indeed when it implies moral dishonesty.

Perhaps I am going too far in calling obedience moral dishonesty. Perhaps it's unfair of me to apply my own standard of ethical epistemology to everyone else. But in my own view of the world, "good" and "bad" must be justified. They can't be arbitrarily assigned. They have to have reasoning behind them. If one rejects this, then the whole concept of morality, ethics--whatever you like to call it--is utterly meaningless. If "good" is solely determined by what an authority figure says, then there is no point in calling that authority figure "good." It becomes a circular argument to say that the prophet's counsel is good. How do we know that counsel is good? Because it came from the prophet. How do we know he is a prophet? Because his counsel is good. And round and round it goes.

If you're going to stand for something, you have to have something to stand on. You have to have some kind of epistemological rationale, some kind of logical footing, in order for you to even say that you are standing for something worthwhile. The kind of ethics I was taught in church was completely empty in this respect. The kind of ethics I now espouse are not based on obedience and faith, but on honesty, truth, and humility--the humility to admit that I was wrong.

It Gets Better

I remember how scared and devastated I was when I lost my testimony. Life was pretty difficult for me for a long time. Mormonism was all I knew, and I had no idea how I was going to live outside of it.

I don't know how likely it is that a Mormon who is doubting their faith will stumble across my blog, but if any ever should, this post is for you. And my promise is that it gets better, if I may borrow a phrase used by the LGBT movement.

I think that the best thing I did when I lost my testimony was reach out for help. I started posting on an exmormon recovery board, postmormon.org, and the people there were incredibly supportive. Another thing I did that was incredibly helpful was doing research on grieving and how it works. For many, perhaps most people who leave the church, there's a grieving process involved. It was incredibly helpful for me when I realized what was going on and why--and that it would eventually peter out and I'd be okay. A useful model for understanding this is the 5 stages of grief. The important thing to realize here is that this process is not like a game of Monopoly, where you land on each square, pay your dues, and move on. Everyone will experience these emotions differently, in a different order, and sometimes simultaneously. You will probably experience some of the different stages more than once. People are complex things, and leaving the Mormon church (whether you leave only mentally, or physically as well) is a long process for many people. The church entwines itself so entirely into the lives of its members. It permeates quite literally every aspect of life--from big things, like philosophical epistemology, to little things like what you can eat and drink, to intensely personal things like sexuality and relationships. There is no area of life that Mormonism doesn't touch. When you are freed from the church, it's a wonderful feeling. Your life and choices are completely your own and you don't have an organization trying to impose its one-size-fits-all dogma on you. But because the church is so completely a part of everything, the process of extricating yourself can be long and painful.

Everyone's experience will be different, but I am going to give a quick run-down of what the process was like for me in the hopes that others will be able to relate to parts of it, and recognize the differences in their own experience. The process started when I was exposed to information about the church that contradicted everything I had been taught. This information was online, and my initial reaction was to defend the church. I was convinced that the information being presented was false, and by Jove I was going to correct that misinformation! Obviously, this backfired badly. I was having references to the Journal of Discourses and LDS canon scripture thrown at me, and ultimately I realized that the discussion was going nowhere and gave up. The information I received perturbed me, but not so badly that it really affected me aside from irritating me.

Over a period of about a month, I repeatedly encountered things that chipped at my resolve. These things fell into two categories--reasoning and evidence. The reasoning was really the most powerful influence on me. I remember one day in particular when I couldn't get the conflict between D&C 132 and Jacob 2 off my mind. After my classes for the day were done, I remember sitting at the kitchen table in my dorm with my scriptures and laptop, poring over the relevant verses and trying to reconcile their differences. I spent the better part of the afternoon on this. And things like this kept happening, on average about once a week. Every time my attempt to reconcile the problem turned out to be futile and I gave up. One night it hit me that the church might not be true after all.

Doubt is a curious thing. It's like belief; you can't just make yourself doubt something. The philosopher Descartes tried to find truth by doubting everything, and then building his worldview back up starting with the self evident truth that "I think, therefore I am." But as the pragmatist philosopher William James pointed out, Descartes didn't actually change his behavior. He still kept his hand out of the fire, still ate and drank, still interacted with his world in the same way as always even though he was trying to doubt that any of it existed. I think that James has a more accurate conception of doubt than Descartes--namely, that doubt is uncertainty as to how one should act. And you can't make yourself doubt. Try it--try doubting whether you'll burn your hand if you stick it in the fire. Do you now have any hesitancy about how you should act with respect to the fire?

When I started doubting, I had no idea how to act. It was painful. When you don't know how to act, you can't really function. One term for describing this is "cognitive dissonance"--the painful phenomenon of having two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. I believed that the church was true, yet I was aware of things like the contradiction between D&C 132 and Jacob 2, the heinous history of polygamy, Joseph Smith's false prophecy about the second coming of Christ being at the end of the nineteenth century, Brigham Young's Adam/God doctrine--and the list was growing. I didn't know what to think or how to act. The way we cope with cognitive dissonance is obvious--we suppress one of the conflicting ideas. So I suppressed my doubts. They were still there in a dark corner of my mind, but I ignored them so that I could function. I was in denial.

There came a point when I couldn't suppress the doubt anymore. I had shoved that "spiritual shelf" so full of different things that when I encountered one more problem--in my case, the Book of Abraham--it didn't fit on the shelf anymore and it came crashing down around my ears. I felt the full intensity of the doubt and uncertainty, and to this day I can think of only one other time when I was in more emotional pain (also connected to the church). It was then that I started posting on postmormon.org. Within twenty-four hours I was out. I had been resisting the notion that the church wasn't true, but by this time the only thing stopping me from admitting it to myself was intellectual honesty. I wanted to make sure that I had given the church a fair shake before I rejected it. But the pile of problems was just so enormous, the very honesty that made me initially hesitant pushed me to realize, it probably isn't true. The absolute relief that flowed over me when I made that realization was incredible. There was a long, hard road ahead of me out of the church still, but I entered into an acceptance phase for awhile. The last month of that semester at BYU was surprisingly pleasant. The month or so previously had been painful, and now I was free. I started exploring the boundaries of the new world that my mind was in, and found that it had none. I was as free as a bird, and it was exhilarating. In short order I accepted evolution as scientifically viable, gave myself proper sex ed with the aid of Wikipedia, and even started questioning the existence of God.

That last item was the one that drove me into another difficult stage of my deconversion. Atheism frightened me. I tentatively explored the idea with my mind, trying to get a feel for the world, and didn't find any God in this new, ex-Mormon world. It frightened me. About two weeks after I stopped believing Mormonism, I watched The Lion King with my roommates and ended up very distressed over the death of Mufasa. What happens when you die? I didn't want to lose my family forever. The problem of death kept me vacillating on the question of God for several months. At different points I was an atheist, an agnostic, a deist, and at one point almost a Christian. And then, after months of worrying that issue, I let it go. I realized that no easy answers were forthcoming, and almost imperceptibly, I began thinking of myself as an atheist.

That was the process of my intellectual change, but the emotional one was much, much more difficult. This is where the stages of grieving come in. Sometimes I would experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance all within a single day--sometimes a single hour. I knew it wasn't true, but sometimes I was still so emotionally attached to the church that I tried to make myself not know. Most often I was angry and resentful, which always seemed to throw me right into depression again when my anger proved utterly ineffectual. At one point I was so obsessed with the problem of death and whether or not life had any meaning that I was suicidal. The issue plagued my mind so much that it became like a vise on my brain that wouldn't let go. It was always there, looming in the background. I remember one dark night when my family was watching a movie, and I was so trapped inside my own mind that I locked myself in the bathroom, trying desperately to gain control of my mind, and the thoughts of death just wouldn't stop. Try as I might, I couldn't make them go away. There are few things that terrify me as much as not being able to control my own mind. I want to point out here that part of the problem in my case was that I have a history of problems with depression, especially in the winter months and as a side effect of PMS, and I have no doubt that this was an enormous part of the problem with my fixation on death. But it had never been this bad before.

My point in sharing this is that I want to show anyone who's in a similar situation that it gets better. You can move on, you can figure it out, and you can find meaning and purpose in life outside of God. It was really hard for me for awhile, and there's a chance that I might not have made it through. But I did, and I can promise that life on the other side is wonderful, and even better than life in Mormonism. It's going to be hard for awhile, and that's okay. Don't try to force yourself to be happy right away. It's okay to be sad. But don't give up, and if you find yourself seriously depressed like I was, please please please ask for help. Life is wonderful, and leaving Mormonism gives you so many wonderful options. Grieving is a part of letting go, but it doesn't last forever, and it WILL get better. :)

Music Theory

I think that in many ways, religion worships mystery. When I look at the history of religion, one of its main purposes seems to be to explain the unexplainable. Where did we come from? Well, Father Time slept with Mother Earth. Or Kukulkán and Tepeu made humans from maize. Or Yahweh made everything in six days. Where do we go when we die? Well, we go to the house of Hades. Or we spend eternity in some sort of paradise. Or... nothing happens. We're just dead. 


So, when I say religion worships mystery, I mean that it derives its raison d'être from humans' inability to explain the world. In ancient mythopoeic religion, humans explained natural phenomena by anthropomorphizing them. Everything had a persona behind it. There were river gods, rain gods, mountain gods, fertility goddesses, plant gods-- everything had a god behind it. These gods served to explain the natural world, which otherwise seemed completely nonsensical. 


In time, however, humans developed better ways of explaining things. For the Greeks, this was philosophia-- the love of wisdom. During the European Renaissance, "natural philosophy" was the study of the natural world. And this natural philosophy became what we now call science. I don't think I have to reiterate the story of how Christianity fought against science, how people like Galileo were persecuted for being so brazen as to undercut the church's monopoly on "truth." There's a reason that religion was so threatened by rational inquiry. If there were other ways of finding out knowledge, then religion was entirely unnecessary. 


Religion stifles knowledge and inquiry. It worships the gaps in our knowledge by filling them with gods. It tries to get us to be satisfied with answers that aren't answers, to persuade us that we don't need to know, don't need to ask why and how and when, tries to convince us that the ultimate virtue is ignorance. But they don't call it ignorance. They call it faith. 


And religion has been very successful in pulling this off. It has succeeded in convincing people that without ignorance, life is meaningless. Without faith, without mystery, without God, what meaning is there to existence? Without the promise of eternal reward and the threat of eternal damnation, why should one treat one's fellow human beings well? This is the great lie of religion. Ignorance and mystery add nothing to life except fear and misery. 


I'm a musician. For a time, I thought that studying music theory would remove the sublimity of music. Oh, how mistaken I was! I'll admit, my knowledge of music theory is limited, but what I do know has not diminished my admiration for music one bit. On the contrary, my understanding of scales and intervals and overtones has enhanced my love of music. 


Human beings love the experience called wonder. But there are two kinds of wonder. One comes from ignorance, and the other from understanding. Having experienced both, I can say that the wonder of understanding is much deeper, much more beautiful, and infinitely preferable to the wonder of ignorance. God is not necessary to explain the universe. We don't need religion to be good. These artificial, two-dimensional explanations only cheapen our experience of the beautiful universe that we are a part of. 

A letter I wrote as an angry ex-Mormon

This is a letter that I wrote some time ago to vent my frustration at the facade I was keeping. I had been an apostate for approximately six months, and would have described my religious status as "agnostic" (although, in retrospect, I really was an atheist, but wasn't ready to admit that to myself). For many people, leaving Mormonism has an anger stage, and this was mine. Many of the emotions that I express in this letter are no longer applicable to me, but at the time they were very real and nigh overwhelming. And, when I am feeling strong emotion, my typical coping mechanism is to write.

*      *      *

Dear roommates, visiting teachers, classmates, professors, FHE siblings and others: this letter is to inform you that I am not who you think I am. I may look like an innocuous Molly Mormon, but rest assured, more lies beneath the surface.

I am one of those who has never broken curfew. My conduct with respect to For The Strength of Youth is irreproachable. In other words, I seem like an ideal Mormon girl. Because of this, many of you seem to be quite fond of me. I appear very safe and docile and stereotypical. This is not the case.

If you asked, I could tell you things about Mormonism that would make your hair curl. From things you have heard about-- polygamy, blacks and the priesthood-- to things that would seem to you like they came from an alternate universe-- blood atonement, Masonic temple ordinances-- your life and perspective would never be the same.

I look to you like ideal temple marriage material. I can cook and sew and play the piano. I love children. I know the answer to all the questions in the Sunday School manual-- more detailed and sordid answers than you would be comfortable with, in fact. Mormonism is in my blood. It goes back six and seven generations in my family. In one sense, I will be a Mormon until the day I die. And yet, there is more. If you asked me what I really believe about religion, you would wish you hadn't.

If we should remain in contact, you will one day be shocked and surprised to learn that I have removed my name from the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I wonder what thoughts will go through your mind when you hear of this. If you should ask what happened, I will inform you that all those years you knew me, you never knew me. For the four years that I contributed to Sunday School, Relief Society, and religion classes, I did not believe a word of what was said by me or others. It was all a charade.

Perhaps you will ask why I pretended. Why did I deceive so many people as to my true self? The answer is complicated. Perhaps I do not really know the answer myself. Consider, though, what you now think of me. Is it positive, or negative? I would wager that the word "apostasy," along with all its negative connotations, has crossed your mind. Consider what it must be like to be branded an apostate by those you love. Consider-- if you were in my shoes, would you make yourself known at once? Would you be willing to take the consequences of coming out immediately? You have heard about how early Mormons were shunned and persecuted when they left the faith of their fathers-- be it Lutheranism, Catholicism, Presbyterianism or what-have-you. Do you pretend that Mormons do not do the same thing to those who apostatize? Do you think I wanted to make my mother cry and become a living example of the bitter fruits of apostasy?

Perhaps you are not aware of certain aspects of the CES Honor Code. You know that my education is one of the most important things to me in my life. I chose the school I did because I thought it would be an excellent beginning to my academic career, and because I still believed in the Mormon church at the time I enrolled. When I discovered what I did, I was already on the road to a degree. I still liked my school, in spite of all its trappings in which I no longer believed. I had no money to transfer. This is where the Honor Code comes in. Religious freedom does not exist for BYU students; if they are LDS at the time of enrollment, LDS they must remain for the duration of their education. To do otherwise would mean expulsion. Expulsion, you say? Yes. Students must be members in good standing of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As I am sure you are aware, apostasy does not constitute good standing, and as you may or may not be aware, it is grounds for excommunication. Expulsion from an LDS school on grounds of apostasy entails educational credit revocation. I refused to allow this to happen. Therefore, I put on the act that you thought was my true identity. Perhaps my motives were not the best. Perhaps you think I should have made myself known to the world at once, and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps you are right. However, I did not and do not ask for your approval. My actions are my own, and I do as seems good to me. I do not believe that I have any responsibility to an organization that deceived me. The time, place, and circumstances of my revelation are to be on my terms, not those of an organization that has manipulated and lied to me from the time I was a child.

You don't know me. You never knew me. Until you have walked through the valley of the shadow of doubt, you cannot know me. You cannot possibly understand the feelings of shock, betrayal, anger, depression, fear, and resentment attendant to the apostasy that you so vilify. Similarly, you cannot know the irony of the bitter fruits of apostasy. The fruits of apostasy are bitter, yes, more bitter than you can possibly imagine. Yet the knowledge of the truth is often bitter. I have learned not to fear the bitter fruit of knowledge.

Therefore, I ask that you judge not, lest ye be judged. You may need me one day. Should you one day find yourself in my shoes, you will know where to find understanding. When you have nowhere to turn, you will have a friend who has walked the road less traveled. When you grapple with the fear and uncertainty, someone who has already grappled with them will be there to shine light and hope in the darkness. Perhaps you will never find yourself in that situation. Perhaps you will believe until the day you die. One never knows where the road of life may take one. But, perhaps, you will one day find yourself on a road that you never expected yourself to walk. For that reason, I ask that you not censure the road I have taken until you have walked it yourself.

-BlissfulHeretic

Bluebeard

From childhoodreading.com:

Once upon a time, in the fair land of France, there lived a very powerful lord, the owner of estates, farms and a great splendid castle, and his name was Bluebeard. This wasn’t his real name, it was a nickname, due to the fact he had a long shaggy black beard with glints of blue in it. He was very handsome and charming, but, if the truth be told, there was something about him that made you feel respect, and a little uneasy…

Bluebeard often went away to war, and when he did, he left his wife in charge of the castle. He had had lots of wives, all young, pretty and noble. As bad luck would have it, one after the other, they had all died, and so the noble lord was forever getting married again.

“Sire,” someone would ask now and again, “what did your wives die of?”

“Hah, my friend,” Bluebeard would reply, “one died of smallpox, one of a hidden sickness, another of a high fever, another of a terrible infection… Ah, I’m very unlucky, and they’re unlucky too! They’re all buried in the castle chapel,” he added. Nobody found anything strange about that. Nor did the sweet and beautiful young girl that Bluebeard took as a wife think it strange either.

She went to the castle accompanied by her sister Anna, who said: “Oh, aren’t you lucky marrying a lord like Bluebeard?”

“He really is very nice, and when you’re close, his beard doesn’t look as blue as folk say!” said the bride, and the two sisters giggled delightedly. Poor souls! They had no idea what lay in store for them!

A month or so later, Bluebeard had the carriage brought round and said to his wife, “Darling, I must leave you for a few weeks. But keep cheerful during that time, invite whoever you like and look after the castle. Here,” he added, handing his bride a bunch of keys, “you’ll need these, the keys of the safe, the armoury and the library keys, and this one, which opens all the room doors.

"Now, this little key here,” and he pointed to a key that was much smaller than the others, “opens the little room at the end of the great ground floor corridor. Take your friends where you want, open any door you like, but not this one! Is that quite clear?” repeated Bluebeard. “Not this one! Nobody at all is allowed to enter that little room. And if you ever did go into it, I would go into such a terrible rage that it’s better that you don’t!”

“Don’t worry, husband,” said Bluebeard’s wife as she took the keys, “I’ll do as you say.” After giving her a hug, Bluebeard got into his carriage, whipped up the horses and off he went.

The days went by. The young girl invited her friends to the castle and showed them round all the rooms except the one at the end of the corridor.

“Why shouldn’t I see inside the little room? Why? Why is it forbidden?” Well, she thought about it so much that she ended up bursting with curiosity, until one day she opened the door and walked into the little room… Of all ghastly horrors! Inside, hanging on the walls were the bodies of Bluebeard’s wives: he had strangled them all with his own hands!

Terror stricken, the girl ran out of the room, but the bunch of keys slipped from her grasp. She picked them up without a glance and hurried to her own room, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Horrors! She was living in a castle of the dead! So that is what had happened to Bluebeard’s other wives!

The girl summoned up her courage and she noticed that one of the keys – the very key to the little room – was stained with blood.

“I must wipe it clean, before my husband comes back!” she said to herself. But try as she would, the blood stain wouldn’t wash away. She washed, she scrubbed and she rinsed it; all in vain, for the key was still red. That very evening, Bluebeard came home. Just imagine the state his poor wife was in!

Bluebeard did not ask his wife for the keys that same evening, but he remarked, “You look a little upset, darling. Has anything nasty happened?”

“Oh, no! No!”

“Are you sorry I came back so soon?”

“Oh, no! I’m delighted!” But that night, the bride didn’t sleep a wink. Next day, Bluebeard said:

“Darling, give me back the keys,” and his wife hurriedly did so. Bluebeard remarked, “There’s one missing, the key to the little room!”

“Is there?” said the young girl shaking,

“I must have left it in my room!”

“All right, go and get it.” But when Bluebeard’s wife put the key into his hand, Bluebeard turned white and in a deep hoarse voice demanded:

“Why is this key stained with blood?”

“I don’t know…” stammered his wife.

“You know very well!” he retorted. “You went into the little room, didn’t you? Well, you’ll go back again, this time for good, along with the other ladies in there. You must die!”

“Oh no! I pray you!”

“You must die!” he repeated. Just then, there was a knock at the door and Anna, Bluebeard’s wife’s sister, entered the castle.

“Good morning,” she said, “you seem rather pale.”

“Not at all, we’re quite well,” replied Bluebeard.

His wife whispered in his ear, “Please, please give me ten minutes to live!”

Bluebeard replied, “Not more than ten!”

The girl ran to her sister Anna who had gone up to one of the towers and asked her, "Anna, do you see our brothers coming? They promised they would come and see me today!”

But Anna replied, “No, I don’t see anyone. What’s wrong? You look agitated.”

“Anna, please,” said the shaken girl, “look again! Are you sure you can’t see someone?”

“No,” said her sister, “only one or two peasants.”

Just then the voice of Bluebeard boomed up to them, “Wife, your time is up! Come here!”

“I’m coming!” she called, but then said to her sister: “Oh Anna, aren’t our brothers coming?…”

“No,” replied Anna. Again Bluebeard shouted up.

“Come down at once! Or I’ll come up!” Trembling like a leaf, his wife went downstairs. Bluebeard was clutching a big knife and he grabbed his bride by the hair…

“Sister, I can see two horsemen coming!” called out Anna from the tower that very moment.

Bluebeard made a horrible face, “They too will die!”

His wife knelt to implore, “Please, please don’t kill me. I’ll never tell anyone what I saw! I’ll never say a word!”

“Yes, you’ll never say a word for eternity!” snarled Bluebeard, raising his knife.

The poor girl screamed, “Have pity on me!”

But he fiercely replied, “No! You must die!” He was about to bring the knife down on the girl’s delicate neck, when two young men burst into the room: a dragon and a musketeer. They were his wife’s brothers.

Drawing their swords, they leapt towards Bluebeard, who tried to flee up some stairs, but was caught and killed. And that was the end of the sad story. Bluebeard’s poor wives were given a Christian burial, the castle was completely renovated and the young widow, some time later, married a good and honest young man, who helped her to forget the terrible adventure. And that young lady completely lost all her sense of curiosity.

*    *    *

The lot of a Mormon apostate is similar to that of Bluebeard's wife. We are told our whole lives that everything is fine and dandy, that the church is true, that Mormonism is the only way to happiness, when in reality there is an ever-growing stash of mutilated bodies in the closet. We are told never to question, never to look at "anti-Mormon literature," because then the Spirit will leave us, and we will become apostates. Those who do open the closet door find themselves shamed, villainized, and ostracized. In other words, their stories are hidden in Bluebeard's closet along with all the rest of the unpleasant facts about the Mormon church. 

When I first read the story of Bluebeard as a child, I thought that the wife was quite foolish for disobeying her husband and opening the forbidden room. She had a pleasant life in a fine castle full of treasures, with a husband who treated her well. If she had never opened the door, she likely would have gone on forever in happiness, never knowing about the morgue in her own house. 

Later I realized that, even though the results of opening the forbidden room were unpleasant, it would have been awful for Bluebeard's wife to live forever oblivious to the horrors in her own house. She was not foolish for disobeying her husband. The moral of the story isn't "wives should obey their husbands and check their curiosity." It's "don't marry a serial killer." And how are you to know if you are married to a serial killer if you take everything he says at face value and ignore the fact that all his previous wives have mysteriously disappeared? 

If you were married to a serial killer, wouldn't you rather know about it?