By Bryce Johnson
When I told my mom I was reading Bertrand Russell, she asked why and encouraged me to stop. I don't blame her; Bertrand Russell was an atheist well known for writing "Why I am Not a Christian," and being brusquely critical of all things religious.
As much as I loved (and still love) my mom, I kept reading because I found the material insightful, interesting and inflammatory enough to hold my attention. After Russell, I stumbled upon Feuerbach -- another atheist -- and then Foucault, Heidegger and Derrida, all of whom wrote in the wake of "the death of God."
As it turns out, my mom was right to worry that reading these texts would shake my faith. As I learned that most of what religions and governments have called "universal" or "innate" has been heavily shaped by history, culture and the interests of power, I wondered if that was the case for my faith and activity in the Church.
The more I read, the more I was convinced it was. The times I'd "received revelation" seemed, in retrospect, so tied up in social pressures and expectations that I couldn't honestly keep calling them "divine" or "inspired." For years I'd been conjuring up emotions and naming them things I'd heard in testimony meeting to set myself at ease.
From there, it was a small step coming to terms with the fact that whatever I had, it was not a testimony. Admitting that felt like the floor had dropped out of the room I was standing in. I felt queasy at church, and uninterested in maintaining relationships with people who assumed I was your everyday, believing member of the Church. I was angry that the beliefs I had allowed to shape my identity for so long suddenly seemed like a ridiculous charade. Before long, I asked to be released from my calling, I stopped going to the temple and I gave up on prayer. I could not understand how in all my years of going through the motions, God had not revealed himself to me in a way I could latch onto when the lights went out.
Even though for two or three months I oscillated between anger, numbness and despair, it was refreshing to feel like I was being honest with myself. For the first time in my life, I felt comfortable with who I was, even if I wasn't the Mormon all-star I'd always thought I wanted to be.
Then, after finally opening up to one of my professors, my bishop and a close friend, I summoned the courage to go back to square one -- yep, investigator status -- and start reading the Book of Mormon again. I resumed praying every night to the God I admitted I didn't know, telling him I just wanted to know if he was there, and that I would stay in the Church if he said to, or leave if he didn't respond. "Please say something," I thought many times. There was no bitterness; I was just trying to be honest. And finally, one night, while I sat in my kitchen reading the conference Ensign, I got the clarity I was looking for. It was like light filled up my mind. No fireworks or tears, just an awareness of a correction I needed to make, and a new, sincere desire to forge ahead.
So, it's true: philosophy obliterated my testimony; but that's because it had always been built on some pretty flimsy ideas and emotions. I wondered until very recently why God allowed me to go so long serving in the Church without giving me some ultra-convincing, other-worldly witness fit to withstand the postmodern bludgeoning I put it through. But I can see that over the years he gave me as much as I was asking him for. Deep insecurities and fears of alienation kept me from asking the hard questions; it was just easier to believe what my parents and friends expected me to believe. However, when philosophy gave me the tools to submit my beliefs to more intellectual scrutiny, I became ready for the deeper, more honest conversion God was willing to give.
And now I think I'm finally discovering what love and faith are, and who I want to be. I can see how the Church is a blessing in my life, and I want to raise a family in it. Most importantly, I can finally say I sincerely believe that God is real and so is Jesus, and that they help me make choices that make me and the people I love happy. I guess when I put it like that, it sounds like all the darkness and doubt and pining and prayer over the last year of my life have helped me be able to say something I probably learned to say in nursery -- and there's something really beautiful in that.
This post originally appeared on The Student Review.
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For me however , at some point I realized that everything "good" I found in religion is available outside religion- without the cognitive dissonance of doubting something and believing it at the same time.
Religion doesn't help families (Christians get divorced at the same rates as anyone else)
Religion doesn't make people good, (Most prisoners in the USA penal system self-identify as religious)
The subjective feelings of peace and clarity I got through praying , singing hymns, etc. I found were available through other forms of meditation- religious or secular.
Instead of going to church on Sunday and going through rituals and listening to the preacher pick and choose verses to fit his message, singing, standing up , sitting down, standing up , sitting down....blah blah... I just go outside and play in my garden- its so much easier, and so much more REAL.
It took me years to fully loose faith with many in-between states, some similar to what the author has stated. I have a feeling he is still working on his journey.
That's all it took? All the logic you considered that made you leave the church no longer mattered, because some feeling overcame you?
Unfortunately for you, as much as you'd like to hide behind solipsistic 'everything is subjective so why not Mormonism?' fare, you will never be able to bridge the gap between the Book Of Mormon objectively being a historical farce and total laughing stock and "my good feelings prove that it's true!"
Somehow in your journey you failed to question the method Mormons teach you for determining truth. here is a hint - every cult uses the exact same method: Subjective emotional experiences. You were trained your entire life to feel them, and still somehow think they are anything but proof that you were indoctrinated from a young age.
Hopefully others can read what you have written in the comments
"I also get the impression for some of you, that in remaining part of the Mormon church I have, by extension, signed away my ability to engage seriously with the realities of the history of the church and the validity of Joseph Smith's claims and the works he produced. I would respond that if he was wrong about everything he said, or he made it all up, or if he never even existed, it wouldn't matter to me."
Way to totally discredit yourself. "I don't care if it's fake if it's real" Cognitive Dissonance is alive and well
So often we characterize the opinions of those we disagree with as being "irrational." The truth is that most people are rational creatures. Certainly rational thinking can go awry if it's built on shaky assumptions. But if we possess any kind of intellectual honesty at all, we'll realize that we're all equally subject to being products of our culture and the limited information that's available to us--and because of that we all hold some pretty myopic views. It's profoundly arrogant and woefully simplistic to assume that because someone's experience and opinions are different from ours, they must must not be valid.
If the fruits of Bryce's acceptance of Mormon teachings are being (1) eloquent and (2) very kind to people who say nasty things in response to his personal faith journey--I think he's definitely got something worth pursuing.
Anyway, thank you all for reading my article and responding, no matter what you think of my experience. I hope what I've written here is helpful as well.
Best,
Bryce
You need to look up what non rational and inexplicable mean. A skeptics answer to something that can't be explained is "I don't know", which is far more rational than "I don't know - therefore god did it"
It is completely irrational for a god to exist before the universe in order to create it as time began only with the big bang. There was no 'before'.
"In the end, I am daily constructing a narrative about the way the world works..."
Yea, that would be part of the problem right there. You are trying to construct a narrative. A satisfying and relatively complete story about how the world works and what your special place in the world is. The story needs to be satisfying, not correct. You aren't concerned about accurately understanding how the world works.
Further, I think there is some sense in these comments that to a few of you I have taken the easy way out by staying a part of the Mormon church--that it is an intellectually lazy route to to take. That if I were to give all this a little more serious thought, that I'd take the plunge and walk way from Mormonism for good. You are entitled to these opinions, certainly, but they are quite unfounded. For one, it seems a little silly for people to speculate about my state of mind and what the future holds for me. You know so little about me. Even so, for two, I want to say that more often than not, I find myself disagreeing or wanting to heavily qualify the statements of church leaders now and in the past. I have serious doubts about just about anything that ever fell from the lips from any man (or woman), including the church's founder. I don't support the way Mormon leaders have approached LGBTQ issues, and I don't think the church is quite cognizant enough of the way it treats its female members. Just because I and all mormons decide to stick with the church doesn't not make us all pollyannas.
Also, I think it would be pretty easy to read my article and assume, as several of you have, that I more or less fought my way back into belief--that I never quite shed the intellectual fetters of dogma and Mormon culture and never really intended to. My first response would be that what you've read here represents a very brief and summary review of a very long and dark and rewarding journey I'm still on and intend to be on for the rest of my life. I'm constantly reevaluating the uses of reason and belief in my day-to-day journey, and navigating the tenuous line between a trust in a higher power and a healthy refusal to believe anything and everything institutional, written or presumed. In other words, you have no idea who I am and what I have experienced, and are dismissing what I have expressed out-of-hand, it seems, simply because it doesn't quite fit whatever worldview you subscribe to. That doesn't hurt of offend me by any means, but it's a pretty stiff way to approach new ideas and ways of thinking.
You aren't thinking criticially or genuinely doubting Mormonism in any way. You aren't seriously reevaluating much of anything. You are thinking about things just hard enough to remain a Mormon without looking like some foolish conservative. This is beneath you. You have the ability to think so much more clearly. Use it. The only reason you aren't is out of a cultural expectation to remain a Mormon.
Let me address my frank concern that you published this in a student newspaper at BYU. There are undoubtedly students at BYU who have doubts similar to you, who are beginning to see that Mormonism is nonsense, and yet you gave them this article to keep them stuck in Mormonism anyways. How dare you!
I'll address the contents of your other posts there.
Perhaps you are already too far down the rabbit hole for anyone to convince you otherwise.
“The prisoners who chain themselves need no captors.”
A college undergrad articulates his personal journey of coming to a particular way of knowing and is dismissed outright by some Bill Maher wanna-be’s in the comments section.
Smug atheists who wonder why more “intelligent” people don’t join them don’t seem to realize that it’s not the belief system people find unappealing.
It’s the company.