My Path After the Policy, and My Resolution

Boilerplate: I welcome constructive comments. Please point out flaws in my reasoning or understanding. Just do so respectfully. 

"Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered." - Thomas Paine, Crisis I


This post is about doubt. There is no happy ending at the end of it. No redeeming moral beyond the hope for new discovery that Thomas Paine describes so eloquently above. Rather, this post seeks to chart what I've felt the past few months as my intricately woven beliefs have, despite my best efforts, unwound.

I think it's more than fair to ask: "Why now? Why, after all the many things you've read and thought about from polygamy to Book of Mormon geography, would something as innocuous as a policy that simply clarifies the church's stance against gay marriage cause this little crisis of yours?" Taking a step back, I'll concede that the doubt that follows seems disproportionate to its source.

However, the answer comes down to my relationship to the prophets and apostles who lead the LDS church. This relationships has characterized my religious practice and thought my entire life, and it is this relationship which determines my place in the Mormon community. You might even saw this relationship is what makes me Mormon.

I have long advocated for the attitude supported by many great LDS thinkers, from Terryl Givens to Brigham Young, that prophets are individuals with a special calling to speak in the name of deity. Along with this calling, however, comes the extremely difficult task of guiding a community that craves their guidance in every permutation of the law without wanting to hear or know about the difficulties of erratically timed personal revelation.

A close study of prophetic experiences in Christian scripture does not paint a picture of prophets standing by a dictaphone taking constant notes from heaven. That type of constantly available, waterfall-like revelation seems reserved for two figures well on the margins of that canon--Muhammad and Joseph Smith--and even then, only for short stretches of remarkable theological production.

As for the rest of them? Revelation from God seems to have been about as common as striking a stone to extract water. The spiritual experiences that shaped these prophets were rare and life-changing, but they did not occur often enough for the prophet to always speak confidently with the voice of God.

Unfortunately, precedent and organizational pressures created movements and churches with millions who demanded that very kind of omnipresent prophetic theophany. But much of my reading, especially of the Bible and many parts of the Book of Mormon, reveals tale after tale of prophets using their own best judgment when the heavens remain silent. They issue edicts in the name of Jehovah because that's what the people want. They don't want to hear what Moses or Joshua, Peter or Paul has to say. They want what God has to say about eating shrimp, or fighting the Amalekites, or figuring out when all these people who are mean to us are going to burn in everlasting flames. And the prophets acquiesce. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't.

This creates a serious problem of expectations, and this problem is clear throughout LDS history (which I know far better than the histories of other religious traditions). These prophets have the demands of two very different audiences. Those who wish to have the truth handed to them and those who recognize that even a prophet can't always speak divine truth.On the one hand, you have a Brigham Young begging those listening to him to find out for themselves if what he's teaching them comes from God: "The greatest fear I have is that the people of this Church will accept what we say as the will of the Lord without first praying about it and getting the witness within their own hearts that what we say is the word of the Lord." On the other, you have him fiercely defending his teachings on topics like race and blood atonement.

The problem is not that prophets make mistakes. In fact, a prophet with very human struggles is far more faith-affirming to me than a prophet who basks within the clean lines of infallibility.

Instead, the problem comes when prophets forget this dichotomy and their own imperfection. Think of the doctrines mentioned above, taught by President Young and perpetuated, to some degree, by others. Think of the doctrine of polygamy. Think also of great steps forward. President Woodruff taking a step back and realizing that polygamy was putting the entire community at risk or President Kimball having the gumption to look beyond precedent and inherited biases to ask hard questions about race and the plan of salvation. In all cases, all of this, good and bad, was credited God. But I'm beginning to be suspicious of ascribing all of this to divine injunction.

Enter the policy change. Like I mentioned in earlier posts, I do not believe this attitude towards LGBT brothers and sisters comes from God. It is instead an attitude mired in a tradition of fear and misunderstanding. It is hate justified by pseudoscience and tragic precedent. I don't demand that prophets foresee all mistakes and problems. But I do expect them to be responsive (not reactionary) when the outside world leads out in the process of becoming better

But if the prophets contend through both direct statements and tacit maintenance of a hateful status quo that this comes of God, then they are making a willful mistake, and I am left with a difficult choice. Either privilege obedience to these prophets at the cost of my own tacit support of a policy that causes pain to my brothers and sisters or privilege purity of conscience at the cost of the doubt and pain that will undoubtedly occur along that path.

I find myself choosing to walk down the latter path for a piece. I choose to look closely at the intricate justifications and explanations I have crafted to make sense of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Church history, theology, and practice and to see if, to paraphrase Thomas Paine's word, I have been wanting in sincerity, hiding contradictions in the shadows to keep them undiscovered from myself and others.

So I will question it all. From the nature and existence of deity to the organization of the 21st century Church. I relinquish the bulwark of loyalty to see what lies beyond. I may return someday to the relative safety of orthodox obedience, but not until I have journeyed and determined that, after all, its safety is the best place for me to learn and grow and that it is the most ethical, most healing, most productive spiritual place possible in life.

My tools will be many: the thoughts of men and women (both holy and profane), the experiences of my life, and the moments of mystic awe from throughout my life that I will seek to remember and retain.

And you. Your thoughts and your experiences. I am grateful for the thoughtful and personal outpouring of hope, understanding, shared concerns, and rescue. Your love (and concern and outrage and fear and support) means a great deal to me and will shore up the way on this difficult path.