in which Mormonism is conspicuously absent

I've been meaning for a while to comment on the section on my sidebar called "On the world, in which Mormonism is conspicuously absent." Most of the other lists of books in my sidebar include books on Mormon history, culture, theology, etc., all books I personally read during my exit process. The exception is "further reading," which includes books I've read since transitioning to my post-Mormon world that I found were relevant to my adjustment and understanding the mindrape that was Mormonism.

The "conspicuously absent" section, then, are books I read just before my world view collapsed, or only shortly thereafter, when I was still reeling from the collapse. Now, it's been two to three years since I read those books, so I don't remember all the details, but a few comments on a couple of them is in order.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
This book discusses major societies in each continent, their developments, and conjectures why they developed, or in some cases, why the didn't. Geography and environment are big factors in the fates of human societies, as are domesticatibility of animals and plants.

and

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson
This one is an easy read (Bryson is normally a comedic travel writer), and gives some funny and interesting histories from science, from the primordial gunk that was first life, to modern theories and debates.

Very interesting in themselves but why did they affect me and my transition out of the church?

There are no Lamanites in these books.

No Nephites, no Hebrews building ships to sail to the Americas. No indication whatsoever, no blip on the screen, no unanswered questions about how a certain group of people just suddenly showed up in South America. The traditional Mormon view of how the New World was populated is 100% beneath the attention of the authors and all the anthropology, geology, paleontology, archeology, geography, linguistics, and biology that they mold together to tell the history of the Americas and the world.

Years before, that would have not worried me. I would have brushed it off as persecution (they know we have the truth, but their scientists repress it; it's all a part of Satan's plan to confuse people and fight against Heavenly Father) or ignorance (they just haven't heard the true history yet; we need to get those missionaries out there to soften their hearts).

But since I read these books when I did, when my mind was more open and doubting, they struck me like a ton of bricks.

Mormonism is insignificant in the world.

Heart of Redness, by Zakes Mda
This is the fictional story of a modern Xhosa village and how their history of the Xhosa Cattle Killing (a real life event) affects them. The Cattle Killing occurred in the 19th century in South Africa. Two young girls, who would most likely be diagnosed with schizophrenia in today's world, were treated as prophetesses visited by spirits in the 19th Xhosa village. One of their prophecies was that the Xhosa, whose entire livelihoods were keeping cattle, must kill all their cattle in order to defeat the white people and make those damn colonists just go away. If all the Xhosa people would kill their cattle, ships of powerful warriors would come from the sea to help defeat the whites. Some people believed the girls, and killed their cattle and waited. And waited. And waited for those ships to come. They never came. The believers blamed the non-believers for not killing their cattle too. Whites took power and eventually formed the apartheid government. In the fictional part of the story, set in a coastal village, a group of people resurrect the cattle killing story, forming a cult of believers who again wait and wait and wait for the coming of the ships.

Having been raised with the story of Jesus and the Second Coming, I couldn't help but see parallels. Once upon a Mormon world view, I would have interpreted this story to be an echo of the One True Story, proof that all societies once knew about Jesus. Instead, I saw Jesus and the waiting and waiting and waiting for the Second Coming to be just as ridiculous as half of this village relying on the voices of a couple schizophrenic girls from 150 years previous. They differ in time frame and scale, and Jesus, if he existed, probably wasn't schizophrenic (at least I haven't heard any theories like that), but all the same, it was a serious blow to my belief in a Second Coming.

my boy, the skeptic

While driving in the car with my son in the back, I listened to him matter-of-factly tell me his thoughts on heaven.

"You see, people said God lives in the clouds. But then they built airplanes and flew up there and saw that there's no God there. So then they said God lives out in space. But then they built rocket ships and flew up in outer space. And guess what."

"What?"

"No God there either."

further reading

I finished reading Orwell's 1984, and was chilled to the bone. While the imagined world in the book is more powerful and controlling than anything ever experienced, I couldn't help but find some parallels to the psychology of being a believing Mormon. Hey, it's my experience, it's what I know. If I were Chinese, I'd find parallels with the Cultural Revolution's brainwashing; if I were Salvadorian, I'd find parallels with the disappearances.

I found the concept and power of doublethink most striking, and shocking. Doublethink has many explanations, but one basic definition given is this:

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" (pp. 289-290).

Cognitive dissonance, anyone? How about how I was able to belief in the creation and Adam and Eve, the fall, Eden, all that, and also evolution and the age of the earth? How Joseph did a bunch of immoral things, but could still be a great prophet, second only to Jesus?

The idea of crimestop was also disturbingly fascinating, and familiar, to me.

"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism, the philosophy of the Party], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity" (p. 287).

I essentially thrived on crimestop during most of the time I was exploring church history, when I was a Sunstone Mormon. Stopping myself from using crimestop could be another way of saying what I have said before, of letting the barriers in my mind crumble, of letting all the pieces of the puzzle come together.

There is a particular character in the book, named Parsons, who is perfect at doublethink and crimestop, at blackwhite thinking. He has bought into the Party line completely, so much so that when his own seven-year-old daughter turns him in to the Thought Police for talking in his sleep ("Down with Big Brother!"), he is thankful. He is glad they caught him in time, so he can be fixed, and returned to society without a negative thought--even subconscious--about the Party. He is willing to serve 5 or even 10 years of hard labor to be re-educated, to come back to unthinking orthodoxy, goodthink.

It reminded me of "ex-gays" in Mormonism and other homophobic religions. Just like Parsons, an "ex-gay" sees his own self as faulty, wrong, and in need of help and repair. He is thankful that the church is there to show him how to change, how to deny to himself who he is, and feel love for the church that "changes" him.

Another striking parallel with the book and the church is the rewriting of history. The present Party decides what is history, who exists and who didn't, anything that is true now (who the enemy is, for example) has always been true. People who realize that the enemy was Eurasia only four years ago, but is Eastasia now, need to consciously forget that they were ever at war with Eurasia. Then they need to forget that they forgot.

While the church is slowly, slowly getting better at admitting even its ugly history (Joseph's polygamy and the Mountain Meadows Massacre have been mentioned in the Ensign, for example), there is definitely a tradition of recreating history to make mythology--and calling it History. We have "forgotten," for example, that the first four presidents of the church made it abundantly clear that polygamy would never be taken from the earth. We have forgotten that there used to be death oaths and naked washings and anointings in the temple. We have forgotten that women used to give blessings to the sick and wounded. We have forgotten that Joseph Smith was in Carthage Jail for a crime he actually committed. We have forgotten that the date of the Melchizedek priesthood "restoration" is unknown (and yet somehow manage to celebrate it on Mother's Day, of all days).

Luckily, the church doesn't have "memory tubes," as does the Party, where all records of the now false past are incinerated. So we can remember.

classics

Though I was always a good student and have always read a lot just for fun, I've realized lately just how many great books I've never touched. This includes many books that, had I read as the close-minded Mormon that I was, I would not have gotten nearly as much out of them as I could have.

When I did read "important" books and classics, I read them with barriers in my mind. I could have seen them for what they were, or what the authors hoped them to be. I could have gleaned lessons about life from them, or gained a better understanding of the variety of human experience. Instead, I reworked them in my head, either devaluing them for not having The Right Conception of God or judging characters for not acting Right. Or when characters found themselves living a false, trapped life and escaped, as in the young adult book, The Giver, I saw the false, emotionless, colorless life as The World and the freedom from it, Mormonism. I never once in the reading of that book, years ago, think, "Is my life like the boy's? Am I living in a contrived world? Is there something more out there?" I failed to ask the same questions with movies such as The Truman Show and The Matrix.

I've often wondered, of all the books I read as a devout Mormon, if I reread them now, I'd have a totally different perspective on them. Like Camus's The Stranger or the ancient The Tale of Genji. (And if I read them 20, 30, 40 years from now, I'll have a different perspective again.)

With that in mind, I have sought out some classics to read. Lately, I've read Maya Angelou and Robert Louis Stevenson. Currently, I have George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 in front of me.

Animal Farm is shocking so far, and even though it's a satire of communist Russia, I can't help but see some of the characters' thoughts as eerily similar to some I've had regarding Mormonism. I've playfully reworked some of the details in a couple quotes.

After a terrible blood-bath purge, Boxer, the hard-working horse says, "I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings” (p.52 in the edition linked above).

Another horse, Clover, muses over the same incident as Boxer.

“There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened, she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon” (p. 53).

Regarding the introduction of polygamy, or a cover-up of a child molestation, or the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a Mormon might have very similar thoughts:

"I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our church. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to have more faith. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings to do scripture study.”

Another horse, Clover, muses over the same incident as Boxer.

“There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days before she converted, and that before all else it was needful to prevent backsliding. Whatever happened, she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given her, and accept the leadership of The Prophet.”

exorcising the spirit

This post follows an earlier one, the spirit. Check that one out first so you can get a segue into where I'm coming from.

During my long process of questioning and exiting, I've re-evaluated just about everything in my life. I had a especially hard time explaining, defying, and reinterpreting the Spirit. One issue that held me up was that my mom spoke to the Spirit on a daily basis. Spoke. Daily. Even to the point that other Mormons thought she might be a little cuckoo. I think she eventually learned to stop announcing her personal revelations. Not because she questioned them when others did, but because she decided those other people just didn't get it. They could have those revelations, too, if they just listened, you see.

On my way out of the church, I started to doubt that God talks to any of us, that that sort of God didn't really exist. But what would that mean for my mom? Was she just crazy? Was she schizophrenic? Had she, this whole time, been basing her decisions--including how to raise us--off the little voices in her head? I really thought those things about my mom, and thought, for a short time, that maybe she really, really needed a psychiatric evaluation. For a while, it was the only alternative explanation I could think of. Exorcising the Spirit was, then, a choice between "the Spirit really talks to people" or "my mom is crazy." Not a comfortable place to be.

I no longer think God sends messages to people, nor that my mom is crazy (though I think a trip to a counselor wouldn't hurt). I eventually came to another explanation. I now think that her revelations, her promptings, her still-small-voice moments come from within herself, defined and interpreted in a Mormon-influenced way. Her prayers are simply reflections into her own desires and fears, moments to clear her mind of other things and figure out what she wants. This goes for all of my moments of praying and feeling the Spirit, too. If I remember right, Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World was very helpful in my seeing things in a new way. People's brains work to try to make sense of things, and when these things do not have an obvious, natural explanation, it is easy to interpret them in supernatural ways.

Another reason it was so hard to let go of the Spirit was that my mother raised me to think that the Spirit was everything: my conscience, my guidance, my only hope in negotiating this difficult life and returning to heaven. Nothing could be known better than by the Spirit. The Spirit trumped all, including the most obvious evidence. Asking the Spirit, e.g., the messenger for the Lord, was the only way to know things, to make decisions of any gravity, to get comfort, to overcome doubts.

So you could say I felt a bit, well, completely and utterly lost when I realized the Spirit was not, actually, what I thought. I didn't know where to turn for guidance, for comfort, for answers. I felt adrift, floating freely and uncomfortably, without direction. What were my standards? What were my morals? How was I supposed to live?

Somehow, I don't remember how, it finally dawned on me that I was capable of making my own decisions, even about the big things. That I had my own, internal moral compass that could guide me. It was a liberating moment, to see that. It was also quite scary. Before, I had only been asking questions in order to get answers from others. "Where should I go now? What am I supposed to do?"

It only then occurred to me that I should be asking myself questions.

Where do I want to go?

What do I want to do?

The choice is mine.

on questioning, or being a heretic

For a while, when I was still a believer, and reading through some Sunstone and Dialogue issues, I earnestly and innocently put my questions and doubts forth to other Mormon believers, thinking I would get earnest and honest answers. Mostly I got bearings of testimony, or got advised to "put my questions on the back burner" or "you'll understand later, in the after life." The stuff I was reading and thinking was so compelling to me; I couldn't understand why others didn't find it interesting or important like I did.

None of their answers or routes were satisfactory to me. I kept asking and searching, but learned to keep my questions to myself and to those I trust not to just bear me their testimonies. That's not what I needed. I felt like I must confront this issues and doubts, ask these questions, even at the risk of going through pain and confusion (which I certainly have).

Ultimately, I think everyone who goes through questioning their faith, the meaning of life, etc. (whatever their religions), are the better for it. No matter what their conclusions. Whether they decide to stick with that leap of faith, or whether they decide to stay confused, or whether they decide to abandon their religious heritage--each comes to a conclusion that works best for them.

That doesn't mean there's no pain in it. On the contrary, I went through a dark and difficult time for a while, but I am now happy and content with my decisions as they stand now. I continue to search, and I'm happy with that too.