Prologue

There is an exodus of committed, intelligent Mormons renouncing the Church. This essay is a small addition to the growing corpus of LDS faith-crisis literature written for and about doubting Mormons. “Maybe since Kirtland,” posits Marlin Jensen, former Church Historian, “we’ve never had a period of—I’ll call it apostasy—like we’re having now.” Call it what you will, but my sweet wife and I find ourselves with no other choice but to turn away.

We met as temple workers, and were united in a marriage that was, above all else, religious. We have raised our children in sincere devotion to the doctrine and programs of the Church. We each grew up believing that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a preeminent role in God’s dealings with humankind. We never imagined so far along in our walk with the Church that we would doubt our cherished childhood beliefs.

Some of the most thoughtful Mormons we know left the Church before we ever doubted, and we prayed for them and shared their cautionary tales. After a time, we realized that those friends were on the crest of a progressive wave of doubters. Many assume these apostates have read some inaccurate propaganda, or failed to pray and study God’s word, or become offended by some fellow church member, or committed some grave sin. My wife and I have learned first hand that this does not accurately describe the faith-crisis experience. In fact, the more sincere and engaged the doubter is at the start, the more upsetting is the rift. Compound the disorienting loss of faith with disparagement from friends and family, and the experience can be traumatic—a “lifelong sorrow” as my wife says.

Most active Mormons probably do not realize that the Church is bleeding out quality adherents, but a handful of discerning thought leaders have made genuine motions to understand the crisis of faith. Acclaimed essays and books on the subject include:

Planted: Faith and Belonging in an Age of Doubt by Patrick Mason

by Patrick Mason The Crucible of Doubt by Terryl Givens

by Terryl Givens Letters to a Young Mormon by Adam Miller

by Adam Miller Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis: A Simple Developmental Map by Thomas Wirthlin McConkie

by Thomas Wirthlin McConkie For Those Who Wonder: Managing LDS Questions and Doubts by Jeff Burton

The Church has also proactively organized committees of subject matter experts to publish several “Gospel Topics Essays” responding to common challenges. (A more appropriate title for the collection might have been “Non-Gospel Topics Essays” given the divergence of the topics from the simple good news of Christ.) The essay titles include:

I want to be extremely clear that my purpose is not to persuade or convince, and the reader should notice a distinct lack of convincing evidence in my humble essay. A proper argument would require effort and expertise far beyond my present scope. This is intended as a personal testimony, in a spirit of openness, born of a religious culture that promotes the sharing of innermost thoughts. I hope it will be received as such, but I know from personal experience that to challenge religious tradition can be offensive and painful. If I offend, I ask forgiveness. If I cause pain, I hope for healing. If I spark curiosity, I am open for dialogue.

Introduction – An Experiment

When I was a full-time Mormon missionary, I zealously shared this scripture with anyone who agreed to investigate our doctrine (Alma 32:27):

…behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

Promoting faith as an experiment assured me that my religion was enlightened and rational. I was energized by this well-known statement of LDS apostle J. Ruben Clark: “If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.” Taking this concept to heart is how I ended up losing my faith. Through reading and observing and analyzing and pondering, sincerely and prayerfully, these six pillars of my religious faith have been subverted:

The Plan of Salvation

The Soul

The Resurrection

The Son of God

The Devil

The Restoration

The Plan of Salvation

I am skeptical of claims that humankind has a unique and central role in the universe. The notion that we are protagonists on a cosmic stage may be the ultimate causation-correlation fallacy. It does not follow from our consciousness of the universe that the universe exists for us to be conscious of it, anymore than per capita margarine consumption follows from the divorce rate in Maine.

Consider, for a moment, that your existence has no intent, and notice your feelings of incredulity arising within. Imagine you and your family are living a story with no import, and notice your instincts pushing back and insisting on your divine purpose. That instinct to be socially meaningful is the source of our success as a species; cooperation is what makes us human. Langauge, art, romance, currency, education, religion, and war are stories we tell about our biologically evolved instincts. We weave narratives to organize tribes, communities, countries, and corporations.

Carefully consider this timeline of the observed universe (taken from Yuval Noah Harrari, Sapiens, pub. 2012) and ask yourself whether you are as significant as your story imagines you are:

Years Ago Events 13,500,000,000 Matter and energy appear. Beginning of physics. Atoms and molecules appear. Beginning of chemistry. 4,500,000,000 Formation of planet earth. 3,800,000,000 Emergence of organisms. Beginning of biology. 6,000,000 Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees. 2,500,000 Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa. First stone tools. 2,000,000 Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species. 500,000 Homo neandertalensis evolves in Europe and the Middle East. 300,000 Daily usage of fire. 200, 000 Homo sapiens evolves in east Africa. 70,000 The Cognitive Revolution. Emergence of fictive language. Beginning of history. Homo sapiens spread out of Africa. 45,000 Sapiens settle Australia. Extinction of Australian megafauna. 30,000 Extinction of Neandertalensis 16,000 Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna. 13,000 Extinction of Homo florensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species. 12,000 The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent settlements. 5,000 First kingdoms, script and money. Polytheistic religions. 4,250 First Empire—Akkadian Empire of Sargon 2,500 Invention of coinage — a universal money. The Persian Empire—a universal political order. 2,000 Han Empire in China. Roman Empire in the Mediterranean. Christianity. 1,400 Islam 500 The Scientific Revolution. Humankind admits its ignorance and begins to acquire unprecedented power. Europeans begin to conquer America and the oceans. The entire planet becomes a single historical arena. The rise of capitalism. 200 The Industrial Revolution. Family and community are replaced by state and market. The present Humans transcend the boundaries of planet earth. Nuclear weapons threaten the survival of humankind. Organisms are increasingly shaped by intelligent design rather than natural selection.

My instinct is to read the story like the script of a divine playwright, but when I spend time with the facts I am able to recognize that instinct and set it aside. These events are not pre-determined, they could have unfolded in many other ways, and the next billion years might unfold in unexpected ways. One indication of this is that Homo sapiens has transcended its native abilities. Eating, sexuality, mobility, and all the basic functionality emerging from random genetic mutation and selected for by a disinterested environment has been eclipsed by the technology created by human cooperation:

We evolved to run for safety, and now we sit for hours in offices, in cars, and on couches.

We evolved to gorge occasionally on fatty and sugary foods, and now we have unlimited quantities of cupcakes and Pepsi.

We evolved to seek sex with a willing partner, and now we have limitless pornography.

We evolved subtle reward-centers in the brain, and now we take pills to stimulate them.

We evolved to survive at any cost, and now we expend massive wealth on life-extending medical treatments.

We evolved to maximize the success of our offspring, and now we can read our own genetic code and engineer our own embryos.

Techno-religion spawned in Silicon Valley is replacing the monotheistic myths inherited from our agricultural ancestors, just as monotheistic farmers replaced the animism of their hunter-gatherer ancestors. The Old Testament is obviously outmoded, and the Christian narrative is following its Abrahamic roots into oblivion. Perhaps the story will continue to unfold in our favor, and perhaps not.

Christianity in general, Mormonism included, is told as a history of the creation of the universe, the fall of Adam and Eve, and the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie proclaims that without these three cosmic acts, “all things would lose their purpose and meaning, and the plans and designs of Deity would come to naught.” Joseph Smith plays a special role in the Mormon narrative, claiming to have been visited by Deity—two bearded immortal men wearing glowing white robes—the Father and the Son. The narrative is that he was instructed to start a “restored” Christian religion with corrected doctrine, for which he was eventually imprisoned, shot, and killed. “Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision,” explained the LDS prophet Gordon B. Hinckley. “It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud. If it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens.”

President Hinckley would do well to remember that the importance of Joseph Smith’s story, like all good stories, is in its message not its facts. For practicing Mormons, details of the Church’s origin story are absorbed by the all-encompassing social values on every issue from marriage and family and sexuality, to education and work and responsibility, to health and nutrition, to self-reliance and altruism. The Mormon worldview taught me clean living, respect for others, and personal responsibility. I celebrate my moral heritage, but I do not make the mistake of entangling moral principles with truth claims.

The Plan of Salvation is a narrative, perhaps valuable, but it is not an accurate description of our universe. It emerges not from observation or rationality but from the collective ideals of the faithful.

The Soul

The concept of a human soul arises from “what it is like” to be human. When I see my body in the mirror I say “there is my body,” as if it is an object I possess. I might say, “my body is getting old,” like a car with a lot of miles. But who is this “I” that claims ownership of this body? Is the real me living somewhere inside, pulling the levers to control my limbs?

“Here I am, inside the theater, located roughly somewhere inside my head and looking out through my eyes,” describes Susan Blackmore. “I experience touches, smells, sounds, and emotions. And I can use my imagination too — conjuring up sights and sounds to be seen as though on a mental screen.” Is that my soul living inside my body? This way of thinking about what it is like to be human is called dualism: (1) the body is part of the natural, material world and (2) the soul or spirit is an indivisible, supernatural substance. Religious texts describe the spiritual senses as superior to the physical: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10, also 3 Nephi 17:16, also Doctrine and Covenants 76:10).

A sincere but humorous failure to prove the existence of the soul came when a Victorian doctor placed dying patients on sensitive scales hoping to detect a slight decrease in mass with the departure of the soul from the body of the deceased. It really was not a bad idea, given Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8: “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.” Recall the definition of matter: physical substance which occupies space and possesses rest mass.

In spite of scripture, modern cognitive science rejects the dualist explanation of consciousness, proposing instead that consciousness emerges physiologically, like the immune system or the circulatory system. This “monist” explanation, however, is nowhere near finalized. The other physiological systems work unconsciously, so the question of how consciousness emerges out of cells and tissues is a hard problem with no apparent solution. In other words, there is a wide gap between claiming that consciousness is physiological and explaining the physiology of consciousness. There simply is no system in the body that corresponds to the conscious part of our mental activities—one big strike against monism.

What we do know about mental process, however, contrasts radically with the idea that “I” am an indivisible soul experiencing the world through the senses and giving instructions to my body. Clever experiments have isolated the left and right brain hemispheres and shown disagreement between the two regarding career choices, for example. Other experiments show widely disparate perceptions for the experiencing self and the remembering self, which are the same person just at different moments in time. Some philosophers and scientists have concluded that consciousness emerges gradually, that we are not born as an “I” but only become such as a sufficient store of sensory inputs begins to give us the impression of individual context. In any case, we know the majority of our brain activity is not conscious or unconscious but subconscious, a fact which severely complicates the dualist view.

Consider then that you are not an individual, but instead a boiling stew of conflicting perceptions and intentions. If your instinct is to reject this thought as strange, this is evidence of the utility of the “soul” perception, which persists in spite of empirical evidence otherwise. There is not much we can do to change “what it is like” to be human, but intellectually I can understand the findings of cognitive science and accept the fact that there is no spirit living inside my head making all my important decisions.

If admitting that you have no soul makes you feel depressed, consider the marvelous implications. The question of where consciousness comes from, and how it imposes itself may be the most profound question there is. The human brain is the most complex construct in the known universe. I find monism no less sublime than dualism, but less problematic given the current evidence. It is congruent with the material effects of mind-altering substances and it eliminates the nagging puzzle of what the spirit does while the body sleeps. As John Locke famously quipped, “Socrates asleep is not the same person as Socrates awake. The one would know the other just as well as he would know a man in the West Indies whom he had never met.”

The Resurrection

My favorite thing to do is ride my mountain bike, so heaven in my mind is infinite miles of singletrack with nothing to stop me from pedaling. Yet when I think about the best trails—Moab, Sedona, Whistler—I ask myself how many times I could ride these trails before the onset of boredom. A thousand rides? A hundred thousand rides? A million rides? What if my very first mountain bike ride in heaven I hit a gnarly rock garden going OTB without so much as a scratch or a bruise to my resurrected body. What if I climb the steepest grade without so much as elevating my heart rate? What if I ride for days and I never have to go to work, or mow the lawn, or take a sip from my water bottle? Suddenly, mountain biking in heaven is not very fun. Resurrected bodies diminish the risk and effort required for the thrill.

Perhaps heaven is better than mountain biking, and if mountain biking is worthwhile then heaven is only more worthwhile. This argument cannot stand, because immortality is not a question of quantity but of quality. Resurrected life is by definition not comparable to mortal life, and everything I understand about life must be invalid from the eternal perspective. Immortal glory must be on another dimension, completely unfathomable in a mortal context. I must necessarily abandon any attempt to prepare for the unknowable. Heaven can be nothing like the thrill of mountain biking.

I have never seen any plausible indication that a dead human could come back to life. So much is known about the workings of bodies, yet no reasonable explanation exists for the workings of a resurrected body. If resurrection is allowed then physics is not allowed, and if physics is allowed then resurrection is not allowed. If there is some dimension in which the two are reconciled, it is beyond my capacity to understand. Can I be expected to live my life based on principles beyond my ability to comprehend? I must logically abstain from attempting to understand any claims about the afterlife.

This dawned on me while sitting in a funeral, where friends and family of the deceased described his many hours dedicated to church obligations. I realized in that moment that preoccupation with the afterlife is a distraction. Pascal wagers that even a minuscule possibility of an infinitely glorious afterlife is worth betting on—a small number multiplied by infinity is still infinity. However, I am not sure I have the stomach for high-stakes gambling. It is analogous to being presented with a choice between two options: a pile of cash worth a million dollars or a sealed envelope that may or may not contain a check for a billion. Which would you choose?

In any case, the resurrection narrative seems like a thinly disguised attempt to assuage the masses and dull the pain of aging and obscurity. If comfort is a reason to believe in a resurrection, then an uncomfortable resurrection narrative is reason to disbelieve. The thought of living in heaven for millions of years, billions of years, trillions of years, trillions of trillions of years, infinite existence is disorienting, even upsetting. Life is only joyful because it is so precious. I imagine my brain in a vat, stimulated to experience perfect bliss. Would I prefer a virtual reality of perfect bliss? No, I would rather live a real life with its risks and its promise of death.

The Son of God

We do not know much about Jesus of Nazareth (not as much as we think we know), but he seems to have eschewed convention and creed, and he was marginalized to his death. A few writers recorded their memories of him defying the laws of physics, being born of a virgin, turning water to wine, walking on the sea, commanding a storm, and raising Lazarus from the dead. A critical reading of the New Testament shows that we cannot and should not require historical fidelity from the gospel authors. They were evangelists in a time of religious and cultural upheaval, a time before biography and historical method existed. I am not convinced after carefully reading their words that they accurately captured the message that Jesus was trying to share.

Jesus the Jewish mystic was extraordinary, and I am in no position to prove whether or not he defied the laws of physics. I can only say that during my brief existence, I have experienced nothing supernatural, no reversal of death, no walking on water. My observations are narrow in scope and they leave much room to believe in the unseen, but they are my only context and I rely on them implicitly. If I combine what I have experienced with the experience of others, I find supernatural claims from two-thousand years ago to carry very little weight.

Countless Sunday School lessons revel in Jesus feeding the five-thousand and giving sight to the blind, but none of them acknowledge the Haber-Bosch process, which increased the earth’s agricultural output by orders of magnitude and now nourishes almost the entire population of the earth. None of them mention the marvel of modern optometry and Lasik surgery. Christian adherents are so enamored with a handful of ancient accounts of infractions against the laws of physics that they overlook the repeatable triumphs of the scientific method.

If your life is comfortable—if you are educated, if you take hot showers and sleep on a soft mattress, if you drink clean water and eat fresh fish and chicken and steak and bananas and strawberries and cashews and almonds and cheese and peppers and avocados and chocolate and oranges, if you have traveled on an airliner to far-flung continents or islands of the sea, if you get a flu shot or take ibuprofen or penicillin, if you go to work in a tall building with climate control, or drive a car, or go golfing, or watch television and movies—then you ought to see that the alleged miracles of the Bible are quaint and outdated. They were glorious and inspiring to pre-modern people who had no concept of chemistry or physiology or electricity or aerodynamics, but they are a backwards step and a poor use of mental energy in a system that is fast-tracked for progress.

Miracles, by definition, are extremely rare. If one in a thousand people have a brief experience during which the laws of physics are bent or broken, the ratio of supernatural to natural observation across the population is still negligible. Perhaps Jesus is the rarest of individuals, immune from the requirements of meiosis, conservation of mass, and entropy. Clearly he had a transformational effect on St. John and St. Paul and many others; but every Christian I have ever known is still subject to the laws of physics. I have to place the greatest weight on my own experience and observation. I have been so undeniably impacted by the observable natural laws that landed astronauts on the moon and split the atom and doubled human life expectancy, that it seems imprudent for me to spend significant time parsing the reliability of the New Testament. I agree with Jesus’s message that God’s kingdom is around us and that sin is defeated. He accepted death rather than submission to self-serving hierarchies and creeds, and he looked forward to an increasingly connected and enlightened world.

The Devil

The “problem of evil” is the crux of any proposition regarding God. Given that we experience such evil in the world, we are left with only a few options regarding the nature of God:

God is inhumane

God is powerless

God does not exist

God is temporarily holding back

The last option seems to be most popular, and it is in this option that the antithesis of God becomes crucial to the story. Picking up the latest edition of the official LDS Church periodical, I opened to the featured article, “The War Goes On” with the glamorous subtitle, “Know Your Enemy: How to Resist Four of Satan’s Strategies” written by the fabulously named Larry Lawrence. The article begins by recounting the narrative: “We have been battling the hosts of evil in an ongoing war that began in the premortal sphere before we were born… Satan’s strategy was to frighten people. He knew that fear is the best way to destroy faith… He was very jealous of the Savior… Thankfully, God’s plan triumphed over Satan’s lies.”

The article describes in extraordinary detail all of Satan’s motives, and the series of unfortunate events by which he morphed from holy to evil. “Imagine how Satan’s betrayal hurt our Heavenly Parents,” muses Elder Lawrence.

Satan and his followers were cast out of heaven, but they were not sent immediately to outer darkness. First, they were sent to this earth… Why were Satan’s hosts allowed to come to earth? They came to provide opposition for those who are being tested here (see 2 Nephi 2:11). Will they eventually be cast into outer darkness? Yes. After the Millennium, Satan and his hosts will be cast out forever. Satan knows that his days are numbered. At the Second Coming of Jesus, Satan and his angels will be bound for 1,000 years (see Revelation 20:1-3; 1 Nephi 22:26, D&C 101:28). As that deadline approaches, the forces of evil are fighting desperately to capture as many souls as they can. What motivates Satan? He will never have a body, he will never have a wife or a family, and he will never have a fullness of joy, so he wants to make all men and women ‘miserable like unto himself’ (2 Nephi 2:27). The devil targets all men, but especially those who have the most potential for eternal happiness. He is clearly jealous of anyone who is on the pathway to exaltation… The war that began in heaven continues to this day.

Larry Lawrence should realize that angels and devils are just metaphors for our impulses. I was once assigned to serve as a juror in the homicide case of a Bakersfield gang-banger. There were nine counts against the defendant, Isaiah (names changed). The Criminal Threats charge was perhaps the most disturbing. I had to listen multiple times to a recording of Megan—Isaiah’s pimped girlfriend and meth customer—begging him not to stab her. It was relentless and intense and it showed the darkest sides of a dark and twisted relationship. I was looking for true evil, but after considering all the facts of the case, and finding the defendant guilty of first degree murder, I found no evidence of any supernatural evil.

Isaiah’s common-law wife, Priscilla, presided as a sort of matron over Isaiah’s illicit activities, and she encouraged his abuse of Megan and probably other women. Priscilla came to the court proceedings and once she brought two cute little girls, ages two and four. In one iPhone video entered as evidence, Priscilla was coaching a hysterical petty criminal named Mohammed who had been slapped in the face by Isaiah when he failed his assignment to steal $500 worth of goods from a nearby store. Priscilla explained to him, “you didn’t get socked you got slapped…Isaiah has to do that to teach you…Look he hits me and I’m his wife…Relax, you’re not being held here against your will.” Mohammed was crying and rambling the whole time and he clearly feared for his safety.

During the six weeks of the trial, I sat directly across from Isaiah. Every day listening to the evidence and examinations, I looked at Isaiah’s body language, I looked at his face and into his eyes. I wondered to myself what was the source of his behavior. I never was able to correlate his actions with the whisperings of Satan, the temptations of the devil. As far as I could tell, the “Father of Lies” had much less to do with Isaiah’s choices than the father of his Y-chromosome, who apparently provided a turbulent home environment and minimal education.

I do not believe the men overcrowding our prisons are disproportionately susceptible to the promptings of the devil. This idea is a remnant of our evolutionary tendency of mistrust, a convenient explanation for the apparent absence of God and our own complicated history of short-sighted choices. The logical extent of fixating on this perceived war between good and evil is radicalism—ISIS is obsessed with this narrative. Satan is the personification of our fears, and when we emphasize those fears we miss out on the reality of improved living standards, increasing literacy and equality, longer life expectancy, and decreasing violence.

Samuel Johnson, the great moralist, admitted that if he were to divide all his thoughts into three equal parts, two of the parts would consist of illicit thoughts. Yet I do not accredit even one of those wayward thoughts to a whispering demon. Larry Lawrence shares this final (inaccurate but interesting) anecdote: “Heber J. Grant, as a young man, recognized the whisperings of the devil planting doubts in his heart and resisted, saying out loud, ‘Mr. Devil, shut up.’” Maybe Isaiah should have tried that.

The Restoration

Mormon truth claims would be less dubious if they were not so insistent about their own truthfulness. Mormonism in practice is consumed with curating and correlating the Church narrative, constantly re-telling the story and requiring loyalty in an “us vs. them” dichotomy. This creates remarkable solidarity within the Church, but wholesale vulnerability from outside of the narrative. That is why the Mormon world shudders when Richard Bushman, faithful Latter-day Saint and eminent historian, admits: “The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change.”

I am curious to see how the narrative shifts over the next generation, but I will not be looking to the Church for moral guidance while it tries to sort out its story. The Gospel Topics essays seem to signal increased transparency, but they cast only enough light to make the Church look more photogenic. The First Vision Accounts essay downplays contradictions between the canonized version (which I was required to memorize during my mission) and the earliest and less embellished 1832 vision account. More suspect, it fails to mention Joseph Fielding Smith’s sequestration of the original 1832 account. A recent devotional by Elder Richard J. Maynes brushes over this questionable history, showing that Church leaders are still hiding behind the monolithic narrative.

If discrepancies between vision accounts do not invalidate the Church’s truth claims, backdating the priesthood restoration narrative does. For a full explanation of the malfeasance, read Dan Vogel, Evolution of Early Mormon Priesthood Narratives. In short, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 1835 fabricated the story of John the Baptist and Peter, James, and John visiting as resurrected angels five years earlier to bestow upon them priesthood authority. The falsification is identifiable by several anachronisms in the tardy account, and by the traceable alteration of canonized revelations and other documents. Motivation for the doctrinal modification is apparent in social developments of the time: Smith’s charismatic authority was beginning to falter within the Church, and a legalistic hierarchy connected to Jesus was designed to fortify the ranks. The new concept of priesthood authority conveniently provided official duties that Smith could dole out to his supporters, beginning with Cowdery, to raise their social status in exchange for loyalty.

Conscientious investigators can spend lifetimes trying to clear the murkiness around Mormon truth claims, and a growing number of scholars are devoting their careers to just that. The most unpleasant part of my faith journey over the last few years has been observing the zeal of the faithful, and realizing that I have been guilty of arrogant certainty about unknowable claims. Small children and veteran Church members alike boldly stand at the pulpit and testify, “I know the Church is true!” What does that even mean, and how do you know it? How do you know so much about the nature of God, and about God’s plan for humankind and the vast universe? What do you do when you learn that something you know is true is actually not true? Just a little honest investigation reveals, “The dominant narrative is not true.”

Conclusion – Don’t Worry Be Happy

Having jettisoned my religious faith, I feel less burdened and more focused. My friend described it like cleaning out the attic, “You have to take everything out and then decide what to keep.” In tidying up, I thank my old beliefs for their service and discard that which no longer sparks joy. I feel sadness at the loss, but I can never go back to my old way of thinking, I can never un-learn what I have learned.

Where I previously had so many religious concepts and rules and terminology to articulate my place and purpose in the universe, I now have a loss for words. If you are looking for a label, I suppose I am agnostic. God is encumbered with centuries of speculation, and I do not want to participate in that game. It is enough for me to wonder at the source of it, to be part of the source. I enjoy the people around me, my family, my own consciousness. I am humbled by the mysteries of the past and the future.

My wife and I are as focused on the well-being of our marriage and our children as we ever have been, and we are trying to live wholesome lives filled with light. We want to do away with dogmatism, and nothing really has changed regarding what we know, only we do not pretend to know more than we actually do.