It’s hard to sort out the reasons and the sequence of my loss of faith. In the afterimage of my memory, it looks like a single explosion rather than an evolving realignment of ideas. The epicenter of that explosion is God’s silence. In my darkest hours, prayer produced no succor. I was left alone to struggle in pain and doubt.
Some may excuse God’s absence by saying that I shouldn’t expect answers exactly when I want them, that they arrive in the Lord’s own time. That’s not good enough some times. If I’m on the verge of forever losing my faith in God, then getting back to me tomorrow isn’t soon enough.
Others may say that God sometimes answers prayers negatively. Answering “no” or offering only silence to the plaintive question “Are you there?” shows either a twisted sense of humor or a heartless disinterest.
Maybe God is trying to teach us something we might wonder. That might be reasonable when someone just wants to know that someone is watching out for them, but when a child on the brink of starvation in Africa cries out to God for food, or a sex slave loses all hope of escape from the endless rapes that have become her life, my heart tells me that no amount of learning can justify such gratuitous suffering. God will strike a man dead for violating the sanctity of the Ark of the Covenant with a well intentioned touch (2 Samuel 6:6–7), but he won’t lift a finger to protect the holiness in the heart of innocent children? I ask you to judge which is holier and more deserving of protection.
Wo to the God who offends these little ones (Matthew 18:6). May a millstone be hung from his neck, and may he drown in the depths of the sea.
If God wanted to teach me to have compassion, then his plans have gone slightly awry. Not only has my compassion for suffering increased, my hatred for any deity who would put us through such torture has caught flame. It has shown me that whether or not God exists, he can’t be bothered to help us. We are all we’ve got no matter how we answer to ourselves the question of whether God lives. In our darkest hours, we can only look to each other.
If I die and unexpectedly meet God, I’ll have a choice word or three for him, spit in his eye, and cheerfully go to Hell where all the compassionate folk take up residence far from that insufferable tyrant.
Most of you probably don’t know about go and so won’t appreciate this, but I feel like sharing anyway. I’ve been matching my wits against the computer for a few months—against GNU Go to be precise—and I don’t remember the last time I managed to capture such a large group of the computer’s stones (SGF).
I’m playing black in this game, as usual. The computer resigned after I placed my stone at G4. That whole group of white stones on the left is dead; there’s nothing white can do to make them live. With that, I’ve reduced white’s territory to the middle and top, not enough to have a hope of winning.
Actually, the game was lost several moves earlier when the computer placed a stone at G8 allowing me to seal its fate by extending my group at F6. There was no way to escape at that point as long as I kept my wits about me.
Most religions implant psychological safeguards against apostasy, little emotional bombs of fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing that get triggered by the mere act of questioning. In religious orthodoxy, doubt is the domain of fools. It is the consequence of having hardened your heart like Pharaoh or resenting God’s power like Lucifer. Oh ye of little faith!
I must confess that even though I’ve made my peace with the idea that not everyone will see Mormonism the same way that I do, I still worry about my family’s future.
I attend sacrament meeting most weeks, and every time I do, the reasons that I left reinforce themselves to me. When I was Mormon, I assumed that anyone who attended church enough would eventually soften their heart to the truth. Every time a relative attended church who hadn’t been there in years, I imagined that they would realize what they had been missing and come back into the arms of the church. I enjoyed church, so I assumed that they had simply forgotten how good church was, and with a little reminder, they would remember and return to the faith.
Now I see the LDS church differently, and I finally understand that for some people, attending a Mormon church service only gives them more reason to stay away. It’s not a problem of forgetting; they object to Mormonism on principle. I never imagined as a Mormon that the words spoken the pulpit could be disturbing and repulsive.
As a Mormon, I thought that anyone who disagreed with the teachings of Mormonism was being deceived by Satan, that the antidote was to feel the joy of the Holy Spirit in church. I now see that is too simple. As I continue my life outside of Mormonism, I am generally happier though I have good days and bad. Mormon teachings give me no joy, so attending church services has no hope of persuading me to return—none that I can see.
So I understand why someone else might not find the same joy as I do in the ideals of freethought. The idea of doubting and not feeling certain about our beliefs is frightening for some, even though I revel in it because it feels authentic to the human condition.
I’ve seen both sides, and I see how unhealthy Mormonism (or any other fundamentalist, cultish group) can be. I don’t like the idea of my family being stuck there. I don’t like the idea of that separating us. I hope they can find their way out. I want them to wake up to the toxicity of Mormonism. They want me to wake up to the joys of Mormonism. We are at an impasse.
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