Fork in the Road
From the outside, what I have been experiencing the last couple of years looks a lot like a crisis of faith. But faith crisis doesn’t quite capture it. There were certainly times where it felt like a crisis, but, for the most part, it felt like a conversion. I see it as a natural extension of the journey I have been on since I first learned to pray as a child, but there was definitely a fork in the road.
I remember when I started Seminary (Seminary is daily religious studies for LDS teenagers) my teacher invited us to go to a quiet place and take Moroni’s challenge found at the end of the Book of Mormon.
I took the invitation very seriously. I remember going to my room late in the evening after my homework and chores were done. I closed the door and opened the Book of Mormon. I read Moroni chapter 10 verse 4.
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. — Book of Mormon; Moroni 10:4
I knelt down on my floor and said a prayer out loud. I usually prayed in my mind when I was alone — but I felt like this was a special occasion that required a special prayer. Before I started speaking I already felt a warm, loving feeling come over me. It happened just how my Seminary teacher said it would, just like Moroni promised. I knew I had felt the Holy Ghost confirm that the Book of Mormon is true. I finished my prayer and stood up, excited and grateful. I remember immediately offering another informal prayer of gratitude in my heart thanking God for the experience.
That was a conversion. It started me on a journey. That journey sent me on a church mission to Bolivia. It sent me to Brigham Young University. It led me to the love of my life. It led me to get sealed in the Salt Lake Temple and start my eternal family. The most important thing for me on this journey has always been to follow my heart.
Sometimes, when I tell people about my “faith crisis” they think they know something about what happened to me. They see it as the end of the journey that started when read Moroni 10:4 and prayed alone in my room. They think it means I have stopped praying, reading the scriptures, and following the commandments. They think I have changed. They think I have stopped listening to my heart. The way I see it, this is just the next stage on my journey. I am the same person I always was and I am listening to my heart.
Good, now we got that straight… let me tell you about my faith crisis.
I was reading the book Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. For the most part, I was really enjoying the book. I had read some books about US and World History. It was always a subject I enjoyed. It had never occurred to me that I might also enjoy Church History as well. The story was well written and I was learning a lot. Then, about three-quarters of the way through I reached a strange passage about Joseph Smith’s marriage to Emily and Eliza Partridge (here is the link if you're curious). It challenged what I believed about Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. It seems odd, looking back now, but I wasn’t bothered by it at the time, just curious. So I followed the footnotes and found The Temple Lot Papers and other documents. This started me on a Church History research project. I read books by Church historians like In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton and Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman. I read all of the Church Gospel Topic essays. I discovered FairMormon.org (now called FairLatterDaySaints.org) and FARMS. I stayed up late nights reading. I couldn’t get enough.
At first, I didn’t think much of this. I do this sort of thing. I get really excited about a subject and take a deep dive. But after a few months of this, I started to realize something was happening. I didn’t view my Church or its origins in the same light. Some of this new information conflicted with things that I considered core to my faith in the Church.
It's hard to believe, but it had never occurred to me in my 30 years that I might just be a member of a normal, man-made church. I wholeheartedly believed that I was a member of an organization that God himself created and continued to lead. I was aware that the Church had critics, but I figured they were just Satan’s emissaries sent to destroy God’s Kingdom. I never took any of the criticism seriously. This experience softened my stance. It opened my mind and my heart. It caused me to examine my faith. I sincerely asked the question — how likely is it that what I was raised to believe is actually true.
I don’t remember ever hearing the term faith crisis before all of this happened. In my view, there were faithful members of the Church and there were people who lost their way. I wasn’t sure what I was anymore, but I didn’t feel like either of those things. Around this time I discovered a category of articles called Faith Crisis Archives on FairMormon. Many of these articles were written in order to help people navigating a “faith crisis” and one or two even featured people who had their own faith crisis and “survived” (whatever that means). It slowly began to dawn on me — I was going through a faith crisis.
Now equipped with the proper vocabulary I started searching the internet for stories and advice related to faith crises. I discovered there were a lot of people going through exactly what I was experiencing, and not just LDS people. I read their stories in blogs and on Reddit. I listened to them on Podcasts and YouTube.
I started to notice three categories of conclusions to these faith crisis stories.
First, you have the casualties. They lost their faith, they no longer attend church, and they might even be atheists now (heaven forbid).
Second, you have your survivors. They endured their faith crisis and then they returned back to being an orthodox member of their religion.
Finally, you have the hippies. They don’t believe the same way they used to. They might go to church they might not. They seem to flow back and forth between the orthodox believers and the skeptics with ease. Generally, they just seem unaffected. (I have a hunch that the survivors are more bothered by the hippies than they are by the casualties . . . but that's a story for a different time).
So this was my narrative and my identity. I was a good ol’ Mormon boy in the thick of a faith crisis. And I was going to lick this thing.
And so it went. I prayed. I fasted. I listened to talks by Church General Authorities in the car. I read my scriptures at night. I went to church every week. And, most important of all, I told no one.
This went on for months and I just started feeling worse and worse. My doubts didn’t go away. I started feeling grumpy and agitated. I didn’t feel like myself.
I felt like an imposter. I wasn’t sure I even believed that the Church was real and yet, almost daily, I put on this little show. My wife didn’t even know about the one thing that kept me up nights.
So I decided to tell her.
We were on a little weekend trip as a family to these hot springs about an hour or two drive north from our house. I knew the drive home would be the perfect time to tell her.
I was driving and Alyssa was in the passenger seat. Before I knew it I was telling her. I can’t even remember what I said. I can’t remember what she said. The whole thing was a blur. I said something along the lines of, “I have some doubts about Joseph Smith and the Church’s claims”. The only thing I remember very clearly was the feeling of relief that washed over me.
It quickly became apparent that I had transferred my burden to Alyssa. While I felt relief Alyssa was feeling stress and anxiety. To Alyssa’s credit, she handled the situation perfectly. Unless you have ever been a member of a strict religion like Mormonism, it's hard to understand how difficult and scary that experience was for my wife. In Mormonism, an individual's salvation — i.e. the quality of their afterlife — is directly tied to their marriage. We believe that people who are baptized in the LDS Church and then sealed to their family in an LDS Temple will live with their families forever, with one important caveat, they must stay a faithful member of the Church for the rest of their lives. I have even heard Mormon people say they would have rather their loved ones died than lose their faith.
So when I told Alyssa about my doubts— I was rocking the very foundation of our eternal family’s structure. Given our beliefs, panic and anger was a rational response. However, she chose to respond with love and curiosity. She asked questions and listened. She remained calm. I am so grateful for her.
I started out by saying this experience has been a conversion, and yet what I have described might sound like a deconversion to some. After all, I believe in fewer things than I did before.
What I have learned through all of this is that faith and belief have more in common with airplanes and bridges than tanks and barricades. I got rid of a lot of the bulk that was weighing me down and I am left with something that can bear its own weight and withstand a strong crosswind.
So what do I believe now? Frankly, not much, and yet it seems to be more than enough. I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is a recipe for happiness. I believe that as individuals and societies adopt the principles of “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek” they will create heaven on earth. I also believe in the power of prayer. I don’t know if anyone is listening to my prayers, but when I sincerely pray with a quiet heart I feel love and peace.
And that is the entirety of my testimony. As I said, it's not much. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I think he was discussing novels when said it, but I think it applies to testimonies too.
