How ? a Foundation - Why "The Policy" is a Tipping Point for Me

I've been circling around this post for several weeks. How to write it? When to post it?

I should begin with something of a warning. I'm dealing with significant doubt in this post. The specifics will be few, and their subject matter will likely not surprise individuals familiar with Mormon apologetics and internet forums. But for those uninitiated into the fascinating word of the bloggernacle, FAIR, and all their varied accoutrements, be warned that 10 years ago I would have said this post dealt with "anti-Mormon" ideas. Read forward if you choose, but do so under your own agency. A good rule of thumb to determine whether reading further is a good idea would be to imagine us having a conversation. If I were to say, "I've lost a significant amount of faith in the church," would your response be "Why?" or something else? If it's something else, you might not wish to read. Because I'm about to tell you the why.

Since November, my testimony has crumbled. In most cases, that drastic deterioration has bewildered people I'm closest with. Sure, they say, disagree with it, but why are you back to square one? How does a policy about homosexuality have you asking basic questions about the existence and nature of God, Jesus Christ, and religion?

So today, I'll try to start an answer to that question by telling my story from the past 10 years.

A Firm Foundation

If I were asked to describe the foundation of my faith a decade ago, I would have probably come up with the following metaphor: My faith is like a building supported by six pillars. The six pillars of my belief would be:

• The Bible
• The Book of Mormon
• Joseph Smith and Early Revelations
• Modern Prophets
• My own spiritual experiences
• My conscience and rational mind 

Pretty solid group of ideas. Growing up in the church, I learned to associate a certain indelible righteousness, even perfection, with each of these pillars. The Bible was sometimes an exception in its perfection, but since the only caveat was that it was true "as far as it is translated correctly" and we had the right translation (shout out to King James!), there wasn't really an issue. 

I need to underscore this part because it's important for everything that happens after. These foundations, especially the first four, were presented as essentially perfect. They were bright, unadulterated sources of Truth (capital T!). This was emphasized by teachers and leaders throughout my life, from the baptismal font to the mission field. Some examples:

• The Bible could be tough (you know, all those meddling Medieval scribes either too evil or too clumsy to get the translation right), but true disciples of Christ would learn how to unlock the biblical Rubik's cube and let the true light within shine through.
• People who questioned the Book of Mormon ignored important warnings at the beginning and end of the book. On the title page: "And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ." At the end, in the Book of Ether, Moroni writes: "...I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words. And when I had said this, the Lord spake unto me, saying: Fools mock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness;" It's pretty clear that those who find fault with this book are making a mistake and excluding themselves from Christ's mercy.
• Worries about Joseph Smith were swiftly met with the gravitas of John Taylor's canonized eulogy: "Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it."
• Faith in modern prophets' infallibility was cemented by Wilford Woodruff's teaching (interestingly enough, given in the aftermath of the church-shaking manifesto ending polygamy): "The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty." This mantra has been repeated over and over again. President Lee said it. President Hinckley, President Monson.

And so on. The Bible is accessible to those who read it with the Spirit. The Book of Mormon ("the most correct of any book") has no mistakes, only fools who miss the point. The prophetic mantle should not be steadied by unworthy hands nor should you risk a path that might lead you towards "stoning the [living] prophets" while holding on to teachings from the past. 

The Church set these foundations up as infallible sources of truth or, if they were fallible, beyond the understanding of the individual member of the Church. Intentions aside, this was the effect of  25+ years of correlated instruction.

Foundation Compromised

When I returned home from my mission, I felt I had a calling to be a defender of the faith. My testimony shone brightly, and I wanted to prepare myself to defend the church against the falsehoods enemies of the church might spread. Luckily, I happened to have just transferred to BYU which boasted an enormous collection of books about Mormonism, both for and against. 

I worked hard to maintain balance in my reading. I began working through my understanding of ancient holy writ, specifically the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I read everything from approved doctrinal commentary to independently published accounts attempting to discredit scripture's divine origin. I continued to read the scriptures themselves, concentrating on having an answer for each nuance in the scriptures that might prompt doubt or questions. 

By the end of my undergraduate years, I had a number of apologetic answers developed to undermine claims against the Book of Mormon's divine origin. I won't detail them here, but you may want to read the (in)famous CES Letter that describes some of them. To give you an idea of scope, I had intricate explanations for each of the objections voiced in that letter for the Book of Mormon. But these explanations took their toll on my absolute confidence in the narrative. My apologetic acrobatics meant a few strategic retreats from the indelible narratives of my youth. The Book of Mormon was not perfect in the way I had preached it to be when I walked the streets of Italy as a missionary. 

If I could say that my faith in the church's narrative about the Book of Mormon's origins and historicity was shaken, my faith in the Bible was completely shattered. My studies here were able to draw upon a much longer and more sophisticated research vein. I learned about the Documentary Hypothesis, the history of both testaments, and their likely authorship and composition. By the end, I was able to think about the Bible as nothing more than politically motivated fables meant to institutionalize power structures in both ancient Israel and early Christianity (perhaps in direct opposition to the wish of the historical Jesus of Nazareth). The real Jesus, the real Moses, and really anyone in the scriptures was the fabrication or embellishment of later followers, descendants, priests, and rulers. Though I was comforted with the fact that the ancient Israelites had not, in fact, committed cold-blooded genocide, that comfort came with a steep price as I lost my confidence in the book that had so shaped my interpretive paradigm. From creation to apocalypse, I lost hundreds of reference points for my faith.

I disengaged from my studies out of fear for my testimony. I was often despondent at church, and I struggled with how to teach gospel doctrine ethically. I fell into depression when called as a ward mission leader because I felt that I could not, in good conscience, use the scriptures to convince others to join the church. 

As time went on, I tried to remember my explanations and forget my doubts. The result was a web of shifting justifications that I could use to plug a hole in the metaphorical roof but that I couldn't quite commandeer to fix the source of the trouble.

But at that point, only two pillars of my testimony were compromised. Perhaps, I thought, if I shifted my weight a little more towards Joseph Smith and the teachings of modern prophets, I could maintain my faith in the LDS church.

Tipping Point

In graduate school and beyond, I returned to the BYU library with renewed zeal. I felt that I had to bolster my faith by learning more about Joseph Smith and studying more closely the words of modern prophets to compensate for my waning faith in the divinity of ancient scripture. 

Starting with Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, the story of Joseph Smith began to be much more complicated. As I read many books and primary sources, the rumors and conflicts that had flitted on the outskirts of my previous studies were now front and center. From the many conflicting versions of the First Vision to the lies and manipulations surrounding the practice of polygamy, my unquestioning confidence in the Prophet Joseph was compromised. Just like the Book of Mormon and Bible, I created elaborate explanations to smooth the edges of my cognitive dissonance. I suspended ultimate judgment, choosing to focus on the good things Joseph and his early community of saints accomplished. But just like my experience with scripture, these explanations required strategic retreats from the sunny narratives of my youth.

At the same time, I dug into church history. Perhaps most bothered by the racial segregation of the priesthood and temple access, I focused on the shift between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young on race (initially, I used that difference to bolster my faith in Joseph's divine guidance). Of course, bringing in Brother Brigham amounted to pulling on a rope connected to a lot more baggage than I anticipated. Blood atonement, Mountain Meadows Massacre, bullying and public shaming of both family and followers. Through the generations of the church I jumped, from polygamy, to treatment of Native Americans, women, LGBT people, and of course, all the way up to 1978 and the retraction of the priesthood ban. 

One might think that all this would have compromised my faith in modern leaders, but somehow I managed to erect a division between past and current leaders. I clung to a faith that although leaders in the past had made terrible mistakes, the current leaders would not. They would not lead me astray. It's illogical in hindsight. It's incredible to think of the mental gymnastics required to maintain such a distinction. But I held on, refusing to allow a fourth pillar to be compromised. 

Then November happened. All around me, I saw history repeating itself. And a few weeks ago, I heard Elder Nelson enshrine these actions in the pomp and circumstance of prophetic revelation. I saw firsthand the foundations of a mistake that will take generations to heal. My fourth pillar, and the final pillar based on sources outside of my own mind, was now compromised. 

Falling

What do you do when you find out the perfect faith narratives of your youth aren't true? That the Bible isn't the writings of prophets, but rather those of powerful individuals during what the LDS church calls periods of apostasy? That the Book of Mormon, if translated at all by Joseph Smith, was done so through the medium of a seer stone in a hat while the golden plates lay buried in secret places? That there are strong evidences that Joseph Smith and his friends adapted and/or copied whole portions of the book from other texts? That Joseph pressured and manipulated young women into rapidly consummated marriages that should be kept secret from their parents (and his own wife)? That prophets are just as prone to cultural blinders as the rest of us but that, unlike the rest of us, their blinders are supposed to come from God?

So much of my testimony was connected to the sanitized but untrue church narratives of my youth that I began to doubt all of my testimony. I couldn't figure out which parts came from bits I could still regard as truth and which parts came while pondering and consuming falsehood. As a result, I began to also doubt my personal spiritual experiences and found many of them suspect of emotional confirmation bias. Down went the fifth column.

The safety nets of scripture, doctrine, theology, and modern teachings were already compromised and could not catch me as they should have. I fell into a deep confusion and subsequent despair. 

Landing

So here I am now. I have one pillar left. My own conscience. Perhaps it too will crack under the pressure of increased scrutiny. 

I hope to rebuild my house of faith, but it will take a long time, and I will demand much more evidence in return for faith. (In fact, I will have to redefine the idea of faith by determining whether I accept the definition of faith found in the Pauline epistles which were considered heretical by the original 12 apostles but were embraced after those apostles were largely killed in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and Christianity shifted to gain apolitical acceptance within the Roman Empire.)

Part of me wants to return to the church's teachings for this foundation, but it is hard to trust someone when you feel like they have lied to you. It's harder still when you realize that you knew you were being lied to for at least a third of your life, but that a combination of fear and hope constrained you into willful ignorance and inaction. 

The most immediate casualty of this process has been exclusivity. I no longer believe in exclusivity of truth claims. Of a one true and living church. I also no longer believe in the exclusiveness of the "believers" to some great insight into life's purpose and practice. Of course, I also no longer believe in the infallibility of my own extrapolations, so I welcome being proven wrong on this score.

Instead of digging a defensive moat around exclusive institutional truth claims, I have begun as an investigator again. Not just of the church, but of God himself (herself? itself?), Jesus Christ, and the concept of prophets. I question religion. I question everything. It is a daunting position from which to begin, but it is also an exciting one. What has my exclusivity blinded me from? How can I become a better person by rejecting false premises?

President J. Reuben Clark, a church leader in the early 20th century, is quoted as saying: "If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed." That statement used to give me great confidence that my testimony would be vindicated. It still gives me confidence, but that confidence is no longer in myself. It is in value of skepticism and doubt to guide me to some new foundation of truth. 

I hope there is a God. I hope there is a Savior. I hope there is truth. I look forward to finding it.