pre-exit 3: does--not--compute

Although I was a quite faithful youth who characterized herself as having a strong testimony, I had a few issues with the church. Rather, there were a few big ones, and a larger number of small ones. (Thoughts about these will unfold over the next few posts.)

The big ones challenged me the most, required the most mental gymnastics to try to understand, and were never resolved. These issues stayed with me, though I’d managed to put them on the back burner now and then. They stayed with me until the end, and are still some of the biggest problems I see in the church. (I won’t say “problems I have with the church,” because I think the problems are the church’s, not mine.)

The big issues were these: the historical denial of the priesthood to blacks (Africans and people of African descent); the on-going denial of the priesthood (and hence any real leadership positions) to women, along with the general inequality of women; and the historical practice of polygamy. (The ongoing practice of polygamy didn’t bother me so much except where it “sullied” the name of the mainstream church. I considered modern polygamists misled and not Mormon.)

I struggled over these issues, and did what I’ll call “faithful Mormon research.” That is, I collected information about these issues in church- and culturally-sanctioned ways: I talked to faithful Mormons, both my peers and my leaders; I looked for references, passages, and comfort in the standard works (mostly Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants); I checked conference talks and writings by past prophets; I read other church publications; and I prayed.

It never occurred to me to go outside those routes, despite the fact that I was dissatisfied by the answers I found. The crucial thing is that I never allowed these or any other, smaller issues, to “damage” my testimony of the church. In my youth, I never thought, “There’s no way Heavenly Father would do such a thing,” or “If there is a true church, it wouldn’t do that,” or “I can’t believe in or support a church that does this.”

The barrier put up by “this is the true church” rhetoric sufficed to keep me from asking those important questions. I just couldn’t think anything that would damage the idea of God being in charge, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being His True Church.

I look back at my old self, astounded.