I Am a Child of God

From the time we were very small, we Mormon children sang

I am a child of God,
And he has sent me here,
Has given me an earthly home
With parents kind and dear.

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

I always thought that believing that we are one of God’s children is a positive thing, that it gives people an innate sense of self-worth, as opposed to those poor Protestants who believe that everyone is a “depraved” sinner. But as I’ve sorted through a lot of things in the recent past, I’ve come to a new awareness of what being a child of God has meant in my life.

As the verses above tell us, we are God’s children, but He sent us to earth to teach us the things we “must do to live with Him someday.” Everything about this life was, in essence, a test to see if we were worthy of coming back to Him. And passing the test meant doing what we were taught to do; anything less wasn’t enough for our Father.

The second verse of the song speaks of our needs:

I am a child of God,
And so my needs are great;
Help me to understand his words
Before it grows too late.

But the “needs” spoken of aren’t love, safety, happiness. No, our “great” need is to understand God’s words “before it grows too late.” In other words, we need to understand what God wants us to do so that, again, we can be found worthy of His presence. And we’d better hurry up, “before it grows too late.”

The final verse is a little more hopeful:

I am a child of God.
Rich blessings are in store;
If I but learn to do his will
I’ll live with him once more.

If we’ve understood God’s word and done what we must do, then “rich blessings are in store.” But notice that the blessings are always conditional. Russell Nelson explained that

“While divine love can be called perfect, infinite, enduring, and universal, it cannot correctly be characterized as unconditional. The word does not appear in the scriptures. On the other hand, many verses affirm that the higher levels of love the Father and the Son feel for each of us-and certain divine blessings stemming from that love-are conditional.

“Understanding that divine love and blessings are not truly ‘unconditional’ can defend us against common fallacies such as these: ‘Since God’s love is unconditional, He will love me regardless …’; or ‘Since ‘God is love,’ He will love me unconditionally, regardless …’ These arguments are used by anti-Christs to woo people with deception.

“The full flower of divine love and our greatest blessings from that love are conditional-predicated upon our obedience to eternal law. I pray that we may qualify for those blessings and rejoice forever” (“Divine Love,” Ensign, Feb. 2003, page 20).

Thus, God is a parent who will love His children only if they understand His words and do what they are taught to do. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I realized just how much of this kind of teaching I had absorbed in my own life.

My mother was talking to me about my struggles with depression (I was telling her how I’m doing really great these days and that the depression seems like a distant memory). I mentioned that one thing I had to overcome was the belief that my self-worth was conditioned on what I did for others. I always put others first, but I never felt good about myself.

My mom asked me where I had gotten that belief, and I told her that all of my siblings and I had been taught in church and at home that we were to put others first, that self-sacrifice was the ultimate act of love and only true way to happiness. That said, no one had ever told us we should take care of our own needs, that we should feel good about ourselves, even if we couldn’t do everything we thought we should.

“I always thought it was a given that you feel good about yourself,” my mom said. “Yes, you serve others and try to meet their needs, but you have to feel good about yourself first.”

“I never felt good about myself,” I said.

“Then you were listening to the wrong people,” she said. “I’ve always thought you were a wonderful person with great potential.”

I wondered who I was supposed to be listening to, because no one had ever said anything like that to me. In my family, praise was served up in tiny slivers, if at all. I don’t remember my mother or father saying “I’m proud of you” until I left for my mission. But it made sense: if self-worth is a “given,” you don’t need any praise. You just feel good about yourself.

I thought about the praise I got growing up. I remembered that, in fifth grade, I won a short story contest at school. I have no recollection of my parents’ reaction, but my uncle, who looking back must have sensed my needs, read my story and then said it was so good that he wanted to buy a copy. So, I wrote out a copy, and he gave me a silver dollar for it. It seems silly, but 35 years later, that moment stands out because it was one when I felt good.

My senior year in high school, I won the district Lincoln-Douglas debate competition. My parents weren’t there, but my teacher, Mrs. Dix, who had encouraged me from the beginning, gave me the trophy and a big hug and told me how proud she was of me for working so hard and becoming a skilled debater.

But that’s all I can remember. When I was a newlywed, my wife said, “I can’t believe I got to marry such a handsome man.” She didn’t believe me when I told her that no one else had ever told me I was good looking.

I suppose on some level I recognized my strengths and weaknesses. I always thought I was rather unattractive, but at least I was pretty smart, at least enough to do fairly well in school. Even when I won an award for being the top first-year grad student in my program, I was convinced that I got it because the board had felt pity for the poverty of my young family.

These days I feel good about myself, which is a major accomplishment for me. I don’t have to kill myself looking for other people’s approval, and I don’t have to spend my life serving everyone’s needs but mine. And I do not feel responsible for the success and happiness of others.

If there is a God out there (and most of the time I believe there is), surely He loves us “regardless” of our personal failings. I’m not perfect, but I’m good enough. And knowing that has made all the difference.

Top Ten Ways to Get Members to Take Church Less Seriously

Once again I’ve been told that the reason I left Mormonism is that I took it too seriously. Rather than comment directly on the absurdity of such a statement, I’ll just provide some suggestions for getting Mormons to be more relaxed about the restored gospel. After all, I’m just doing my part to help people maintain faith:

1. New Primary song: “Follow the Prophet (unless it’s his personal opinion and/or he’s dead).”
2. Temple Change for Satan: “If they do not walk up to every covenant they make at these altars in this temple this day, they will show themselves to be true disciples, and I’m screwed!
3. Disclaimer before every conference: “The opinions expressed here do not reflect those of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its officers.”
4. Goodbye “Doctrine and Covenants”; hello “Suggestions and Possibilities.”
5. New missionary program: “Preach My Gospel (but don’t be, you know, too pushy about it).”
6. Add a tenth Young Women Value: “Uncommitted.”
7. New hymn: “Do What Feels Good; Don’t Worry about the Consequences.”
8. David Bednar’s new talk: Not everyone has to be a pickle if they don’t feel like it.
9. Revised Teachings of Joseph Smith: “Let us here observe, that a religion that does not allow its members to come up for air and take a well-needed rest once in a while, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.”
10. New Option in church voting: “Sustain. Opposed. Whatever.

Postscript

Sometimes you have to be careful about giving too much information. I made the mistake of using real names in my post about growing up Mormon among Jewish neighbors.

The person I described as my “personal nemesis” just called me on the phone. We hadn’t spoken in a good 25 years or so, but he stumbled across my blog and called both to apologize for seventh-grade behavior and to reconnect.

First, let me say, paraphrasing Jesus, that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. Heaven knows I wasn’t exactly perfect as a middle-schooler. Nor were those years full of unending misery. We did share some good times (and some not so good), and we survived. Oddly enough, he agreed with my assessment of the dynamics of middle school. We really were trying distinguish ourselves as both “normal” and better than normal. And of course the easiest way to do that is to pick on the weak.

Second, it was really great to reconnect after all this time. For whatever reason, we both seem to have turned out to be decent, relatively well-grounded adults. We both have families and careers, and we’re both successful, at least the way that term is used most often.

We talked about our siblings and growing up together. He mentioned that he had once had a fierce rock fight with my brother Danny that had ended in my brother causing him to go to the ER for stitches. As I said, Danny was definitely a fighter. And it’s really good to hear that someone remembers him. I still think about Danny almost every day. I miss him.

Last, “obnoxious” is probaby not the word to describe my former neighbor. True, we have almost opposite personalities, but I suppose when you’re quiet and shy like I was you consider anyone more outgoing to be obnoxious.

The Great and Spacious Mall

I’ve made a few (usually snarky) comments about the LDS Church’s ongoing City Creek Mall project. To recap, the church tore down the old (and dying) Crossroads Mall and ZCMI Center Mall in downtown Salt Lake City. The massive new mall complex is to be called City Creek and will include retail stores, office space, and luxury condominiums. The announced cost was originally $750 million. Currently, the estimate is $3 billion, and as I mentioned, some insiders expect the final cost to be in the neighborhood of $8 billion. Presumably the money is coming from the pooled resources of the entities held by Deseret Management, the church’s holding company.

A lot of ex-Mormons (and some active Mormons) have expressed dismay and some outrage at the church’s project. I think the main reason is that many ex-Mormons regret having donated 10% of their income to the church, and it’s doubly galling that the money they gave is going toward such business enterprises. And in a sense they are right because money that could otherwise have augmented church programs has been diverted to this large project. Indeed, at the very time the church is undertaking this massive expenditure, local church budgets and staff have been cut quite a bit.

It’s telling that the church, with every announcement about the project, insists that no tithing money is being used to pay for it, as if they recognize that such a large expenditure on non-religious efforts will raise some eyebrows in the church. Ultimately, however, the church’s money, even their for-profit entities, at some point originated in religious donations; the church could not have funded these for-profit businesses without some seed money, which of course had to have come from donated cash or property.

But that’s really beside the point. It may surprise some people, but I don’t have a problem with the church’s mall project. It’s their money, and they can do what they want with it. I take them at their word that their primary goal is to prevent the area around Temple Square from becoming urban blight.

In my more cynical moments, I have said that the church’s twofold mission is growth and income. I know, officially the mission of the church is to invite people to “come unto Christ,” but in Mormon terms that means joining the LDS church and obeying its rules, including paying tithing. I’m not alone in my cynicism, of course. A number of years ago The Economist discussed LDS proselytizing in terms of “return on investment” for each convert. They concluded that, even at low retention rates, the church profited from its missionary program (you have to admit that’s much more cynical than I am).

From a purely mercenary perspective, a business case can be made for the mall project. That said, the church started the project at a time when real estate prices were very high, and now, with the continued weakness in real estate (some say the commercial real estate market is about to crash) and the explosion of the project’s budget, the church is unlikely to recoup its investment anytime soon.

But again, the church made a business decision that is theirs to make, and I don’t begrudge them that decision. I’m no longer a stockholder in that corporation, as I don’t contribute tithing money anymore.

Christmas Time Is Here

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s November 10 today. That means that we’re still a few weeks away from Thanksgiving, and Christmas isn’t even close. But apparently, it’s not too early to start celebrating the Savior’s birth.

When we moved back to Utah, I purposely set my alarm clock to “Lite” FM 100, the local easy listening station here in Utah. Why? Simple. The music is guaranteed at least 80% of the time to be some schmaltzy 70s or 80s love song that I can’t stand. It’s much more motivating to get up and turn off the alarm than it would be if it were a song I liked. But I digress.

This morning, the alarm went off as usual at 5:45, but I sat up in disbelief as I heard Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here” from the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. You have got to be kidding me.

I hit snooze (I do that sometimes), and when it went off again, it was Harry Connick, Jr.’s version of “The Christmas Song.”

What. The. Hell.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this. Perhaps they’re trying to encourage early Christmas shopping this year to help get us out of a deep recession. Or maybe they think that Christmas will cheer us all up in the wake of so much doom and gloom. Or maybe they’re just idiots who don’t know when December is.

In other news, the cost of the LDS Church’s City Creek Mall project is now officially estimated to be $3 billion. Originally, then-Church President Gordon B. Hinckley said the project would cost approximately $750 million. Since that time, the cost estimates have steadily crept upward, just as predicted by a construction expert involved in the project. He says the true cost is $8 billion and that we can expect further increases in the public estimate until that figure is met. I suppose time will tell.

Come to think of it, FM 100 is owned by Bonneville Communications, which is owned by the LDS church. I wonder if there’s a connection between the Christmas music and the mall. Maybe they’re trying to get people used to having an early jump on Christmas so that, when the mall finally opens, people will buy early and often.

After all, the mall isn’t going to pay for itself.

Faith Deficit Disorder

Recently, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, and I started taking medication for it. I had never realized just how much this condition had prevented me from functioning fully. I simply hadn’t know what normal was like. After a month on the Adderall, I am doing really well.

One visible benefit from the medication is that I’m a lot more organized, and my desk at work, which has always been obscured by piles of papers and CDs, is organized and clean. One of my coworkers mentioned that he had thought I had been laid off because my desk looked like it had been cleared. When I explained about the Adderall, he said he was taking it, too, and for him, like me, it has been life-changing. Another coworker mentioned that he too is on Adderall. Coincidentally, both of these guys are closeted apostates in that both of them have lost all belief in Mormonism but stay active and participating for social and familial reasons. One of my apostate coworkers said that it was funny that all three of us unbelievers suffer from ADD. He wondered if there were a connection between our loss of faith and the ADD.

He isn’t the first person I know who has attempted to make a connection between psychological disorders and apostasy. My old friend, amateur apologist and armchair psychotherapist Wade Englund, has long asserted that loss of faith in Mormonism is a result of distorted cognitive processes. Thus, he advocates cognitive behavioral therapy for us apostates. I’d never given much credence to that, but then my cousin, who is a psychiatric nurse practitioner, mentioned in passing that she had “trouble feeling the Spirit” before she started taking ADD medication.

Could there be a link between ADD and apostasy?

In talking to my co-medicated friends, I discovered that what we had in common was a real hunger to learn and discover and propensity to become bored when we’re not learning. In me, this hunger for learning led to a passion to read as much as I could about my religion, its history and its doctrines. At one point when I was commuting by bus from Orem to work at the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, I was reading my scriptures for 90 minutes in the morning and then reading the teachings of the modern prophets (LDS church leaders) an equal amount of time on the way home. On my lunch hours I would go down to the Church Historical Library and read whatever I could get my hands on.

Oddly enough, I never read anything that could be considered “anti-Mormon.” I avoided “The Godmakers” and Fawn Brodie, preferring to read pioneer journals, scripture commentaries, and old conference addresses. Inevitably, as the people and events of my religion’s history became more real to me, my perceptions of my religion changed. Now, I’m not saying that exposure to church history necessarily leads to loss of faith, but certainly the jarring disconnect between the sanitized Mormonism of Sunday School and seminary and the messier but real history changes the way one understands Mormonism. Certainly many people find their faith strengthened by their study of church history and doctrine, but I would argue that their perception has been changed forever.

My interaction with apologists and ex-Mormons bears this out. Those who have been exposed to church history outside of official Mormon publications view Mormonism much differently than do those whose study is limited to correlated church materials. The difference is exemplified in the reaction of some to new information. As an example, quite often we hear of people discovering troubling information about Joseph Smith’s practice of polygyny and polyandry. One could grow up in the LDS church, attend meetings, read lesson manuals and scriptures, and yet be totally unaware that Joseph Smith had at least 33 wives, 11 of whom were concurrently married to someone else at the time. I knew growing up that Joseph Smith had taught and practiced polygamy, but I had always been told that these were sealings, not really marriages, and they were mostly to support widows. I know, it sounds naive, but that’s what I was taught. I suspect I’m not unique in having been taught that. But when someone goes to FAIR or MAD with their concerns about these issues, they are uniformly ridiculed, first because they are said to have been “lazy” for not learning about these things earlier, but second because they are clearly not sophisticated or nuanced enough to understand the godliness of Joseph Smith’s actions.

It seems clear to me that, even in their defense of Mormonism, apologists have radically changed their perspective on troubling issues from polygamy to the very problematic Book of Abraham. What separates the apologists from the apostates is the conclusions they allow themselves to reach. An apostate looks at the Book of Abraham, for example, and understands that the papyrus that Joseph Smith claimed to have translated bears no relationship to any story of Abraham, much less to the anachronistic story canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. Apologists, on the other hand, are reduced to sputtering about missing scrolls and redefining the word “translation.” My favorite apologist response has to be the one suggesting that, although Joseph Smith believed he was translating the papyrus, he really wasn’t, but the text is still the revealed word of God.

But in the end, the new information has forced a transformation of heretofore “orthodox” belief. Lamanites thus stop being Native Americans, and the Book of Mormon takes place in an ever-shrinking geographical location. And the apologists got to this transformation the same way we did: they too hungered for knowledge and found it.

That to me is the common ground between apologists and apostates: we all have a natural curiosity, a desire to learn and understand more. Despite the ulterior motivations believers ascribe to apostates, almost without exception it has been the drive to learn, to know, that characterizes the ex-Mormons I know. The same is also true for most of the apologists I know. The difference, I suspect, is in a person’s willingness to consider that the church might not be what it claims to be. One prominent apologist once said that he believed, a la Thomas Kuhn, that it was healthy and necessary to shift one’s paradigm with new information, as long as the center of the paradigm never shifted. That center of course was that the LDS church is true.

In the end, the Adderall hasn’t dampened my natural curiosity, but rather it has helped me to be more focused in learning new skills and new information. But who knows? Maybe a few doses of Ritalin might have kept me on the straight and narrow.

Unbroken

Ex-Mormons are often accused of “playing the victim” and wallowing in “victimology,” and it’s always struck me as weird that many church members simply cannot imagine that anyone might have been hurt or damaged by their association with Mormonism. People do get hurt, and often the hurt goes quite deep. Acknowledging that pain is not an indictment of Mormonism but simply acceptance of other people’s experience.

I’ve written before about how Mormonism compounded my innate issues of self-worth, guilt, and shame (I don’t think I need to explain in detail how Mormonism contributed to my feeling that I didn’t measure up and never would). In the LDS church there is a major focus on “worthiness,” meaning that one must meet a certain level of obedience before being eligible for certain ordinances, blessings, and church assignments. We could not have the influence and companionship of the Holy Spirit, we were told, unless we were worthy. Although I regularly and honestly passed my worthiness interviews, I always had nagging guilt and wondered if I really was worthy. I would beat myself up for little things, sure that I was deficient in some way. In talking with current and former members, I realize that I engaged in far less sinful behavior than most, but I was sure that God was disappointed in me for not measuring up.

Although I don’t think I’ve expressed this before, I have often felt like the damage done to my soul was permanent, that Mormonism had helped break me in ways that could never be repaired. So, yes, those feelings contributed to deep resentment toward the church; it’s natural to have bad feelings toward people and institutions that have hurt you. Many church members, particularly those I met on message boards, told me those feelings were irrational and obvious signs of a bitter apostate. One person told me that I should treat leaving the church like divorcing an abusive spouse: rather than dwelling on the ways the ex-spouse (the church, by analogy) had hurt me, I should just move on and forget about it.

Of course, that’s easier said than done, particularly when the ex-spouse makes constant efforts to get you back and your friends and family constantly tell you how wonderful the abusive spouse is and how you really should give him or her another chance. And of course, we get the constant refrain that the breakup of the relationship is our fault, not the abuser’s: we were too proud, wanted to sin, were spiritually lazy, and so on.

In one sense they are right: there’s a difference between acknowledging pain and wallowing in it. And I am sure I did my share of wallowing. But a strange thing has happened since I finally got past most of the raw emotion. Without really trying, I have reached a point at which I don’t feel like I’m permanently broken anymore. I used to feel like the guilt, the inadequacy, the shame were all just part of me that I would forever have to fight.

I really don’t know what’s changed, but I feel like I can finally put that baggage down and walk on without such a heavy load. I’m not naive enough to believe that these old and well-ingrained attitudes will just vanish, but somehow I feel hopeful, as if I am somebody worthy of self-approval. It’s one thing to have a bishop or stake president pronounce you worthy, but it’s an entirely different thing to really feel worthy. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced that before in my life.

The Church of George Costanza of Latter-day Saints

I found this old post of mine and thought I’d share. I still think it’s kind of funny.

I don’t watch a lot of TV these days (no time for it anymore), but occasionally I will watch a rerun of “Seinfeld,” which I still enjoy, even though I’ve seen every episode as far as I can tell.

The show is sometimes hit and miss, but generally the hits far outnumber the misses. But the one consistent piece of brilliance is the character of George Costanza, which Larry David says that he based on himself.

George is a squat, balding man who says (accurately),”I lie every second of the day. My whole life is a sham.” Rather than face the sad reality of a life of mediocrity, George simply makes up a successful life for himself. When asked what he does for a living, he says he’s a marine biologist or an architect: “You know I always wanted to pretend I was an architect.” Even his aspirations and dreams involve lying.

His entire life is compartmentalized, as well. The persona he adopts in relationships (Relationship George) is entirely different from the person he is with his friends (Independent George), and he lives in fear that the two will eventually collide: “A George divided against itself cannot stand; if Relationship George is allowed to infiltrate George’s sanctuary, he will kill Independent George!”

George spends a lot of time trying to keep reality from invading the dreamland of lies. He swims out into the ocean to save a suffocating whale rather than admit he’s not a marine biologist; he claims to have designed the “new addition to the Guggenheim”; and he tells NBC that he had produced an off-Broadway play (called La Cocina) about a cook named Pepe.

So much of George’s life is fictitious that even he has trouble determining what is real: “Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it,” he says. We wonder if there is a real George hiding somewhere behind the facade.

For me, this is how Mormonism operates. If you think about it, it all started with a simple lie: an angel appeared to Joseph Smith and told him about some plates, though technically, it begins earlier with Joseph’s discovery of a “peepstone” while digging a well (and no, it doesn’t begin on a beautiful spring day in 1820—that was added later). And everything thereafter has been an extension of that one lie to the point that it’s sometimes hard to separate reality from the prevarication. But it’s OK, because “it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

FARMS is probably the church’s most visible Costanza-like agent of denial. They spend their time making sure that the real church does not collide with the fantasy church. Some people have harshly criticized FARMS for dishonesty, but I think it goes deeper than that; these people really believe it. At least they have constructed such an alternative reality based on the lies that it would be catastrophic if they let the superstructure fall.

In one “Seinfeld” episode, George tells his fiancee’s parents that he is going to his nonexistent house in the Hamptons for the weekend (“I figured since I was lying about my income for a couple of years, I could afford a fake house in the Hamptons”). Calling his bluff, the in-laws offer to go with him. George drives almost all the way across Long Island, hoping against hope that they will give up and turn around before he’s confronted with reality. I think the FARMS folks find themselves in the same position: they hope no one will call their bluff but will just accept their pat answers and move on. But each day they move closer to a confrontation with reality. I once tried to get Daniel Peterson to respond to Robert Ritner’s demolition of the Book of Abraham; nothing doing. I was told to do my homework, and then when I read Peterson’s list of articles, I was told that Ritner’s tone was unacceptable for a peer-reviewed journal.

Sorry, but at this point, I’d trust Art Vandelay more than I would FARMS.

Chosen Among the Jewish Gentiles

I belong to one of the ten tribes of Israel. No, seriously. I have the documentation to prove it. All Mormons are taught that they are of the House of Israel and therefore can lay claim to the blessings given to one of the tribes, so much so that until perhaps the middle of the last century, Mormons referred to non-Mormons as “Gentiles.” And a lot of Mormons have told me that there are amazing similarities between our frontier American restorationist Christian beliefs and those of honest-to-goodness Jews. Being a seventh-generation Mormon, I grew up knowing that I was one of the chosen people, even if no one else knew it. At seventeen, I visited my local Patriarch, who laid his hands on my head and “declared my lineage”: It turns out I am of the tribe of Ephraim.

But what about the original chosen people, the Jews? Well, we knew that before Jesus’ Second Coming, the entire House of Israel would be gathered into one fold, the Jews to Jerusalem and the other tribes to the “New” Jerusalem, which of course is to be built in suburban Kansas City (no, I am not making this up). Our job, if we chose to accept it, was to help gather the rest of the lost tribes by turning them into Mormons.

At the age of six, I got my chance: we moved into a heavily Jewish neighborhood on the northwest side of Los Angeles. I would guess that between 40 and 50 percent of our neighborhood was Jewish. Every year the important Jewish holidays (Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah) were holidays from school simply because so many children would be absent anyway that it made no sense to hold classes. So it was that I found myself an Israelite in a sea of Jewish Gentiles.

At six years old, no one is consciously trying to win converts to Mormonism, at least I wasn’t. But for those six years it had been drummed into me that I was an example of the believers: people were watching me to see if I would stand up for what I believed. So I was the best little Mormon I could be in the hopes that I would measure up. I was literally “trying to be like Jesus … in all that I say and do.”

But our new neighbors greeted us with more bemused curiosity than anything else. In a neighborhood full of small families and expensive German cars, we were the weird people with a million kids (actually, just six) and the enormous van. Unlike the rest of the neighborhood, we didn’t vacation in Vail or Hawaii, we didn’t go to summer camp, and we actually did our own yardwork and housework.

So, we didn’t fit in exactly.

“You left one of the m’s out,” said Terry, the neighborhood bully, one day.

“What do you mean?” I asked completely innocently.

“It’s not ‘Mormons,” he sneered. “It’s ‘Morons.’”

“Yeah,” chimed in the obnoxious kid down the street with the puka-shell necklace. “I heard they can’t even eat peanut butter or drink root beer.”

Explaining was useless. They had latched onto the one thing that made us outsiders: our peculiar Utah religion. There was nothing we could do about it.

My brother Danny responded to our new pariah status by constantly getting in fights, no matter how much bigger the other kid was. I on the other hand just tried to maintain a low profile, keeping to myself for the most part, which wasn’t exactly capturing the missionary spirit of my ancestors. Saving the Jews would have to wait, as surviving elementary school was far more important.

So for the most part I made my peace with my Jewish neighbors. One of my best friends was Howard , a computer-obsessed kid who didn’t care a bit about religion, neither his nor mine, and I was happy to leave it that way. But our respective religions nevertheless pulled us apart in different ways. Howard and my other Jewish friends went to Hebrew school in preparation for their bar mitzvahs while we went to Primary meetings at church on Tuesdays and spent pretty much all day Sundays in church. Because of this, we developed two circles of friends: those we saw at school, and those we saw at church or temple. Those circles almost never overlapped.

Life went on just fine until middle school, which of course is one of those brutal times of life when adolescents tend to distinguish themselves by being as cruel as possible to the smaller and weaker (I was both, unfortunately). Once again, religion became a way to divide and conquer. Not being Jewish, we weren’t part of the majority, and not being Catholic or Protestant, we didn’t quite fit in with the Christians. One cheerful Evangelical (aptly named Calvin) told me one day that, sad to say, I was going to hell. Of course, I quietly thought the same thing about him. About the only kids lower in the social order were the Iranians, but then this was 1979 and a lot of kids were afraid of them. Not surprisingly, I started hanging out with some of the Iranians.

But I was still very much an outcast. The aforementioned obnoxious kid had by that point given up the puka shells but had become in a way my personal nemesis. After school and in the summers we played baseball in the street, rode our bikes along the trails through the hills, and generally had a great time together. But at school he treated me with absolute contempt. I wasn’t popular, and he was, and that was that. But I forgave him time and again until the day he stuck his gum in my hair on the bus, apparently to show how cool he was. We rarely spoke again after that.

I went to several bar mitzvahs, though notably not the one for the guy with the puka shells. The year before I had at age 12 been ordained to the priesthood of God by my father in a quiet and private ceremony during which my mother had sobbed silently. A bar mitzvah was quite a different affair: very public and full of symbolism, and of course very joyous, loudly and boisterously so. Secretly I was jealous. I wanted someone to celebrate me, but then Mormonism isn’t really about that. It’s all about solemnity and simplicity, which is why Mormon chapels are so severely unadorned and almost corporate looking. Although we were of the same family, there was a wide gulf between us Mormons and our Jewish cousins. Yet we had faith that someday we would bridge the gap and welcome them home into the Household of God.

That day seemed to come one memorable night when I was 14 or so. As usual, my friend Craig and I showed up at our church for our Wednesday evening youth activity only to find a large Israeli flag standing in front of a painting of Lehi’s dream. The foyer, usually filled with young parents trying in vain to quiet unhappy children, was brimming with people, each man and boy wearing a yarmulke and a flowing tallit. Could this be it? Had the Jews finally seen the light and joined with us? Could Jesus’s coming really be that close?

No, it was Rosh Hashanah, and the local temple had rented our church for the evening, as it was large enough to accommodate those who naturally attended temple only on the high holidays. Jesus would have to wait.

My Israelite status was confirmed one day in my eighth-grade science class. Our teacher, Mr. Joseph, who was himself Jewish, bet one of the other teachers that he could correctly point out every Jew and every Gentile in our class. He started in the back and as he pointed to each student, called out, “Goy, Jew, Jew, goy, goy … ” until he got to me.

“Hmmm,” he pondered, his hand on his chin. “This one could go either way.”

Of course! I thought. My Ephraimite blood was throwing him off.

“Jew,” he said, hopefully.

I wanted to explain who I was, but another kid chimed in with, “No, he’s a Mormon,” as if I had leprosy.

I don’t remember any of my Jewish friends visiting our church, but then after the flurry of bar mitzvahs, I didn’t have any reason to visit their temple. Until I met Esther. My junior year in high school I had begun to emerge from my self-imposed exile of low-profile anonymity. I joined the debate team, and it was there that I met her. She sat next to me, and I thought she was one of the most beautiful people I had ever met, both inside and out. She always smiled and seemed to radiate kindness, and I was so glad I got to sit next to her and become her friend.

Then one night the president of the debate club called me and said, “I’m calling to let you know when Esther’s funeral will be.”

I was speechless.

“She killed herself this morning,” was all she said.

A few days later we filed into the temple, respectfully taking one of the proffered yarmulkes, and sat in stunned silence as the rabbi talked of Esther’s pain. He read the note she had left wherein she said that she was tired of pretending to be happy. I hurt so much for her, and for once I felt totally connected to someone else.

That was the last time I was in a Jewish house of worship until well into adulthood. By then religious differences seemed to fade in importance, though my odd religion occasionally came up, whether it was my firiend Mike explaining that his dad played golf with a foul-mouthed, beer-drinking Mormon bishop or Rubin joking that I probably couldn’t wait to go on a mission to save the heathens in Africa.

Then I left for Utah to go to school at Brigham Young University, as my mother had taught us a good Mormon should do. There were no Jews there, no Catholics, no Protestants, and certainly no Iranians. I didn’t really think about Judaism again until the day I received a letter from home when I was a missionary in La Paz, Bolivia. My sister, who had walked away from Mormonism as soon as she left for college, was getting married … to a Jewish guy. Not only that, but she was converting to Judaism. Here I was thousands of miles away from home trying to bring as many people into Mormonism as possible, and my own flesh and blood was abandoning our faith. She was even rejecting Jesus.

I was appalled. But I got over it. I quickly realized that my sister was happier than I had seen her in a long time, and that was good enough for me. We attended my nephew’s bar mitzvah earlier this year, and it was just as joyous as as I had remembered. As I thought about it, it seemed like the divide had been bridged, and we were one in the House of Israel, though not in the same way I had once imagined.

Overwhelmed by Indifference

For whatever reason, Elvis Costello seems to reflect my mood these days. I’m not sure what that means, but some of his lyrics again captured my mood:

Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed.

I have been thinking a great deal about  how some people really believe we are in the end times, in a battle for human souls, and that at some point Armageddon will come and the end of the world. One of my readers posted in response to my essay on Dallin Oaks’s recent speech:

The warning is, put on your seat belts, we’ve got some major turbulence ahead, the same kind of moral/spiritual turbulence you can read about ad nauseum in the Book of Mormon. For the real issue here is not gays but the basic question of whether we’re a secular or a god-fearing society. The balance is fast shifting toward secular, which will bring us the same civil war, outside invaders, secret combinations, and natural disasters that the Nephites faced when they turned from God in this promised land. Only with today’s technologies, this time it won’t take 1,000 years to fully play out…

Similarly, someone I know from the MAD board routinely speaks of critics and unbelievers in terms of ravening wolves who are trying to destroy God’s true church. He says that some of us are unwitting tools of Satan, but we’ll drink of the wrath of God soon enough.

Obviously, this kind of melodramatic warrior imagery isn’t unique to Mormonism. Even the most benign Methodists sing “Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war!” But on the other end of the spectrum are the violent jihadists who sing “You have the atomic bomb, but we have suicide bombers.”

Belonging to a religious group makes one feel part of something bigger and grander than a single life. It feels wonderful to be an instrument in the hands of God toward some larger cosmic purpose. Naturally, those outside the group are to be considered the Other, either to be pitied for not having “the truth” or disdained for “kicking against the pricks” and criticizing the movement. Mormons, for example, often speak of how they feel sorry for people outside the faith, who would be so much happier if they had the gospel in their lives. At the same time, they express bewilderment and often contempt for those who consciously decide to reject Mormonism. Such people, they say, are spiritually dead or hard-hearted. 

A similar, though far more extreme, dynamic is on display in David Rohde’s excellent account of his seven months of captivity at the hands of the Taliban.

My captors saw me — and seemingly all Westerners — as morally corrupt and fixated on pursuing the pleasures of this world. Americans invaded Afghanistan to enrich themselves, they argued, not to help Afghans. …

Pressing me to convert, one commander ordered me to read a passage of the Koran each day and discuss it with him at night. He dismissed my arguments that a forced conversion was not legitimate. He and the guards politely said they felt sorry for me. If I failed to convert, they said, I would suffer excruciating pain in the fires of hell.

At one point, a visiting fighter demanded to know why I would not obey. He said that if it were up to him, he would take me outside and offer me a final chance to convert. If I refused, he would shoot me.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I am not equating Mormons with the Taliban (though it is interesting that some ex-Mormons have been compared to Afghan terrorists, such as Tal Bachman, whom many apologists refer to as “Tali-Bachman”).

Rather, it’s the commonality of attitudes that I find interesting, and as I said, this attitude permeates pretty much every religious group: we alone have truth and are happy and fulfilling God’s plan.

Thus it’s natural for some people to see things in the stark terms of a war for the souls of humanity. They need to see every criticism of their beliefs as Satanic attacks on the truth. It’s much easier to dismiss a hateful attack than a legitimate criticism, but if you start from the premise that there are no legitimate criticisms, then you can dismiss every non-positive observation about your religion as anti-whatever you are.

Such an attitude would explain why some people are so offended by what they term “smooth-talking critics” who really just feign “niceness” as a tactic for spreading their hateful and evil message.

But in the end, the battle is being fought only in the mind of the believer. Many of us Mormons were taught from an early age that everyone outside the LDS church was watching us closely to see if we lived up to our faith. But it was shocking to me after I left to learn that no one was paying attention; no one cared what we did. Sure, they might think we were a little odd, but that’s about it.

And the church at large, although many of its members believe it is under constant attack from the media and others, rarely appears in the public consciousness. Mormonism surfaces as an issue only when the church or its members put themselves there, such as when Mitt Romney ran for president and the LDS church went all out to pass Proposition 8 in California.

No one cares about this alleged battle. I for one am overwhelmed by indifference. I don’t care enough about the LDS church or any other religion to attack it. I don’t care if I’m pitied or reviled for opting out of Mormonism. It just doesn’t matter much in the eternal scheme of things.

Of course, that’s just part of Satan’s plan, I suppose. He just has to convince us that nothing important is at stake, and he’s won the battle.  At least he has with me.