Breaking It To The Kiddos

Four and a half years ago, on a Sunday morning in mid-September, Elizabeth and I got our young family ready for the day. Our kids were ages nine, seven, and three. For the first time in their lives, we didn't get them ready for church. No frantic scramble to comb hair and pile in the car. No screaming parents or crying kids. Instead, we put on hiking shoes, packed sunscreen, water bottles and a lunch, and headed off for the mountains.

We went to Mt. Falcon park, an iconic Front Range foothill overlooking Denver, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and our own neighborhood in Littleton. A couple miles of trail stretches from the parking lot towards the peak. Halfway along this hike there are ruins of an old stone house, and then the trail continues to some other ruins once intended to be a summer residence for U.S. presidents. Both of these homes had been repeatedly struck by lightning until they were eventually abandoned to ruin. Now they make interesting hiking destinations for Colorado weekenders.

Along the trail, there is a pull out among some pine trees, with a cluster of large granite rocks. This was a resonant spot for me and Elizabeth. We'd had our first kiss right there about fourteen years previously. 

We sat the kids on the rocks looking out over the city, pulled out the lunches, let the littlest toddle around. We told them that this was the spot where Mommy and Daddy had our first kiss. We reenacted it, which they thought was both funny and gross. Eventually we asked, "Did you guys notice that we didn't go to church today?" "Yeah," they responded, "but this is way funner!"

Here's some context: the previous week we had decided, after a particularly painful testimony meeting, that we were finally done with being Mormon. This was a huge decision, not made quickly or easily. We had agonized over it for seven months. We had already come to the conclusion that it wasn't true, not in the way it had been presented to us, but we still hoped that we could find enough good there to salvage something useful. (And I acknowledge that there is still truth and value there for many.) But for us, the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual compromises required of us to stay became untenable. Mostly, we were scared and confused. We didn't have a relationship with another soul on planet earth who had ever left the church. There was no roadmap, nobody to talk to. We guessed--correctly--that there would be huge ramifications amongst our family and friends, that we would be ostracized, vilified, patronized, fasted-and-prayed for. That seemed a hefty price to pay, and for what? There was no clear direction for us to follow beyond the church. It seemed like all paths were shrouded in mists of darkness. Yet those twinkling lights of truth kept beckoning from beneath the mists.

One day, my daughter had come home from church with a coloring page of a polygamist-looking pioneer woman with the caption, "I Will Be A Mother In Zion." (This was not too long after the raid of the FLDS compound in Texas, and all of the polygamist women appearing brainwashed on TV asking for their children back.) Whoa. I suddenly saw something through my daughter's eyes that I had never seen before: the suffocating weight of social and doctrinal pressure on women to fulfill first and foremost their divine destiny to bear children. For sure, I wanted my daughter to someday experience the joy of motherhood and family. But not as her final, ultimate goal. This was my brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, witty, precocious, precious daughter! She could do anything she wanted in life. No limits! Yet here I was, allowing well-intended others to wrap these chains of "roles and duties of women" around her young, impressionable brain. 

We realized that we were playing a dangerous game. In order to elude the imminent pains of us leaving, we were continuing to subject our children to a belief system and all of its ramifications that we no longer held to. We were not being authentic to ourselves, to fellow church members, and mostly to our children. The concern of "What will happen to our kids if we leave?" suddenly inverted to "What will happen to them if we stay?"

We decided that we owed it to them to lay it out on the table, and to let them know that our decision was not an act of weakness, but of strength, courage, intelligence and integrity. That there were going to be some hard feelings with relatives and friends. That nobody else in their world would understand our decision, but that we (the five of us) would stick together no matter what.

And that's how we arrived at that spot in the pines on Mt. Falcon on a Sunday morning in September. "Well, kiddos, the reason we're not at church is because Mom and I have decided that we are no longer going to be Mormon." This surprisingly didn't seem to carry the shock waves that we thought it would. My middle son asked, "So that means we don't have to go to church anymore? Yes!" 

Thus began for the next hour a powerful, open, loving discussion with our young children that ranks in the top ten best moments of my life. We told them that we had believed so strongly in the church our entire lives, that we had built everything around it, believing that it was exactly what it said it was, the only true church and the only way to salvation. We went on missions, to BYU, married in the temple, paid tithing, served in callings. It was an honor to do all of this because we believed it was the most important thing in the world. But as we got older, we started to see things in a different light, and we learned that the church had not been truthful with us about some very important things. 

Joseph Smith's rampant polygamy and polyandry,
represented in this chart, is now officially
acknowledged by the Mormon church.
Sorry, but as a father of a 13 year old girl,
that's just not something I would want
to defend as moral or divine.
.

In an age appropriate way, we then told them about polygamy/polyandry. Joseph Smith was married to 34 women, while 11 of them were married to other men, and a few of them were fourteen year old girls. To which my nine year old daughter said, "That's weird, why would anybody want to be married to 34 women?" Exactly. And to make it worse, he lied about it, and the church lied about it for him. Then we talked about the Book of Mormon being a fairy tale that was disproven by science and historians, and said, "It's got some great stories that we all love, but wouldn't that be weird if we built a religion out of Dr. Seuss?" And lastly we addressed blacks and the priesthood, and said that we refused to believe in a god who would judge people by the color of their skin, because even if the church didn't treat people that way now, it did for 150 years, and if they were wrong about something as important as that, then maybe they were wrong about being the only true church.

Then I gave them an analogy that apparently stuck, because they still bring it up today and laugh about it. I said, "Imagine if the Pepsi Center (sports arena in Denver that seats 20,000 people) were filled with everybody who had ever lived. Everybody has lived a full life, filled with happiness, sadness, adventure, boredom, family, sickness, friends, faith, etc. Now they're dead and waiting in the Pepsi Center, like it was a prison for spirits. Most of them are confused, and don't know where they are or why they're there. Then with lights and trumpets, Jesus walks into the arena, and a few thousand people cheer, while everybody else wonders, 'Who is this guy?' Then Jesus takes a microphone at the center of the floor and says, 'Alright, all the good Mormons, stand up and follow me! You get to live in heaven and be gods. The rest of you wait here and I'll come back some time to visit you.' So he waves his hand, and six people stand up and follow him out the door. When the door closes, the arena goes dark again, and the other 19,994 all look around in confusion and say, 'What the heck just happened?' Now, would that be fair, kids?" 

This was the image I had of Christ returning in his glory
to claim those whom he would save in the Celestial Kingdom.
It's a beautiful picture, but I always thought it unfortunate
that so few were going to even know who he was,
and only the tiniest fraction would be going with him.
But how lucky was I!

"No, that's not fair," they said, "Why wouldn't Jesus take them all with him?" They got it. They of course couldn't articulate the nuance, but they understood that a God who would save only a chosen few out of the innumerable human masses was not a God of justice, equality, or love, and to believe so devalues the actual lives of almost everyone who's ever lived.

We finished by telling the kids that we believed in love, honesty, equality, justice, science and truth, and that we could no longer trust the church to teach us or them those things. We said that we were a little scared ourselves, but that we were going to be brave and honest rather than continue to teach them things we had come to know were not true. We reassured them that we loved them and that they would always be safe and loved in our home.

Then we asked how they felt about it and if they had any questions. I specifically asked my daughter, since she had been baptized, if she felt comfortable leaving the church. She looked at me full of trust and said, "I'll do whatever you think is right, Dad."

Gulp. That's a lot of pressure on a Daddy. Was I certain of my decision? A few doubts still bubbled in the back of my mind. What if I'm wrong??? (This was before "doubt your doubts" became a thing.)

In a world of uncertainty, how could I be so certain of these conclusions? I couldn't go back to pretending again that I knew things "beyond a shadow of a doubt." Yet failure to act, or acceptance of an inherited status quo, is still a passive kind of action. Based on all the evidence before me, combined with my own intuition and countless hours of pondering, prayer, meditation, and listening for answers, I came to a seismic decision, jointly with my wife: our family was moving on. I felt certain of my earnest intentions and yearning for truth, and certain that even if I was wrong, a loving and just God would honor them. There was that compass again, an invisible magnetic field orienting me, pointing me towards something beyond. In a world where everything else seemed fluid, I still trusted it. 

Our family got up, hugged, and headed back down the trail together, towards the parking lot, towards the unknown, towards hidden light, like seeds in the soil, straining toward the sun. 

Why Silencing A Dissenting Opinion Is A Bad Idea

From John Stuart Mill:

Eppur Si Muove

Eppur si muove . . .

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition, charged with being "vehemently suspect of heresy" and forced to "abjure, curse and detest" his scientifically-derived conclusion that the earth moved around the sun. Under threat of torture and perhaps death, he recanted, yet managed to quietly stamp his foot and mutter to the ground, "Eppur si muove." 

Translation, "And yet it moves . . ."

What he meant, of course, was that the facts spoke for themselves. No matter what he (under duress) or the Church might proclaim to the contrary, the truth was the truth: the earth revolved around the sun. He knew it. He was still convicted of heresy, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In a beautiful irony, after his death Galileo's right middle finger was eventually preserved and now sits in a museum in Florence, flipping the bird towards the Vatican for all of eternity.

Which brings me to a discussion of Truth (with a capital T). My stated objective of this year's spiritual quest has been "My Search For Meaning After Mormonism." Are meaning and Truth synonymous? I would propose that while objective Truth does exist, we then construct subjective meaning out of it--or around it. I've accepted that we live in a universe of quantum uncertainty.  But I still feel the pull of my compass needle towards some bedrock magnetic vector of truth. Man, I want to unearth that magnet, press my face to it, and then live in accordance with it. Once unearthed, how broad will it be? What will it be its shape, its texture, its shine? No, we'll never know it all, perhaps not even the slightest part. So within all of this "not knowing," can we know anything? Is anything certain in this uncertain existence?

One of my favorite Mormon hymns has always been, "Oh Say, What Is Truth?" by John Jaques.

Oh say, what is truth? ’Tis the fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce,
And priceless the value of truth will be when
The proud monarch’s costliest diadem
Is counted but dross and refuse.

Yes, say, what is truth? ’Tis the brightest prize

To which mortals or Gods can aspire.
Go search in the depths where it glittering lies,
Or ascend in pursuit to the loftiest skies:
’Tis an aim for the noblest desire.

The sceptre may fall from the despot’s grasp
When with winds of stern justice he copes.
But the pillar of truth will endure to the last,
And its firm-rooted bulwarks outstand the rude blast
And the wreck of the fell tyrant’s hopes.

Then say, what is truth? ’Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps over.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst,
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal, unchanged, evermore.

Beyond the sometimes archaic language of this hymn (firm-rooted bulwarks, costliest diadems, fell tyrant's hopes--huh?), here lies the articulation of my concept of objective truth: it doesn't matter what we think of it, it simply is. It is the brightest prize, should be sought after to the ends of the earth, should weather the worst, and should be left standing even when the heavens depart and the earth ceases to be. Eternal, unchanged, evermore. When I used to profess my faith and testimony, it was in the service of this framework of truth. A hope in things not seen by my weak, fleshy eyes, but which yet were in some objective way True--verifiably, eternally True. (See Alma 32:31)

Now,  a person may believe, with every fiber of her being and beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the first humans came into existence 6,000 years ago in Missouri, or that the Book of Mormon is a historical record of the ancient peoples of America who descended from Jews. But that doesn't change the fact that those things are objectively false. You're free to believe them, just like you are free to believe in Santa Claus. But the case is closed on their truthfulness, and someone's fervency, or claims to privileged evidence or authority, does not persuade them to become true.

Are there relative truths within those claims? Perhaps. The sun sure looks like it moves around the earth. There are relative truths in Mormon doctrine, sure, and many objective truths, too. But what is the definition of Christ-like love? What constitutes a family? What is the purpose of life? These are relative interpretations or constructions. We create lists of things we believe to justify our preferred narratives of Manifest Destiny or God's Chosen People or whatever paradigm seems to best fit our current agenda. We create scriptures, have visions, promulgate legends, idolize leaders, build temples, all symbols which are eventually accepted as literal depictions of some essential facet of this mystery of life. But are these things True? Well, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

And yet . . . I do believe in objective truth. Please note that this is an open-ended belief: our understanding of what is true will continuously evolve. I'm committed to evolving with it. But gravity was always true, the speed of light was always constant, even before we had the slightest notion of what those concepts meant. In the end, I believe the Truth will always rise to the top, damn the Inquistion. Not immediately, but over time, through the application of the scientific method, the false will be winnowed away, and the truth prevail, thrusted upon the firm-rooted bulwarks of the fell tyrants' s costliest diadems. What cataclysm would have to befall civilization for us to regress to believing in a flat earth, or Greek humoral medicine? In the big scheme, the Truth Train moves in only one direction. Objective truth exists--within our agreed upon reference frame-- independent of the attitude and inclinations of the observer. 2+2=4. Gravity. DNA. These things exist. There are equations that define them that were just as true at the Big Bang as they are today at M.I.T. They are observable, quantifiable, verifiable, predictable, reproducible facts of existence. The fact that human minds have discovered, articulated, and harnessed these scientific truths inspires reverence. And the corollary of this is equally important: things can be proven false. And why devote your precious life to something false?

Religion was held up to me by my well-intended parents and church leaders as a fountain--the only trustworthy fountain--of real truth, everlasting truth. The rest of the world was decaying into moral relativism, science was deceiving people with things like evolution and dinosaurs, but the Church would always stand firm in defense of God's absolute truths. In fact, on my way out of the church, I was given by a bishop, counter-productively, a talk given by the Mormon prophet of my youth, Spencer W. Kimball, titled "Absolute Truth." This talk is an exercise in fallacious logic, spiritual hubris, and bullying. In it, he delineates certain truths which he deems in the most emphatic way beyond contention or corruption. Among these are Adam and Eve, the Great Flood, the Resurrection, the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. Oops. Was he just confused, or was he lying?

Speaking of relativism: interestingly, Albert Einstein did not want to call his most famous theory "Relativity." In fact, he initially called it "The Theory of Invariance." What a different connotation that has! Einstein had discerned that observations (such as time, length, and mass) were relative but predictable, yet only because there existed fundamental constants and laws, such as the speed of light, whose constancy transcended reference frames.

Here's an explanation of how these semantics have had philosophical implications:

"Albert Einstein was unhappy about the name 'theory of relativity'.  He preferred 'theory of invariance'.  The reason is that [one] cornerstone of his 1905 theory of relativity is that the measured velocity of light is the same (invariant) regardless of any relative motion between a laboratory and the source of light.  What Einstein feared came to pass when the popular catchphrase of his theory became 'everything is relative.'  It was snatched up by people not acquainted with the scientific context, who regarded the theory as evidence in support of their own social views." 

--from "Social Theories First" by Arthur Miller, New Scientist, Jan 2006

Einstein never said or believed that "everything is relative." He once said, "Relativity applies to physics, not ethics." But even for his physics of relativity, the backbone was always invariance and constancy. Therein lay objective, predictable, verifiable Truth. And that Truth--the predictable order of the universe--was God to Einstein. (And then quantum came along and blew that up, introducing uncertainty, another frequently misapplied term. Getting over my head now, so will save that for later.)

To be blunt: to me, the contextual truth of Mormonism has become, like Galileo's middle finger, a tremendous irony. It is a religion founded on and justified by the claim that God chose and spoke directly to Joseph Smith, revealing to him the unadulterated absolute truth of his One True Church and "things as they really are." (Jacob 4:13) And yet as those ostensibly absolute truths revealed by Joseph and his successors are systematically shown to be false through modern science and research (see: Book of Abraham), there is, in my opinion, only one recourse for the believer who desires to maintain his faith: retreat to the relative. Who can penetrate that subjective realm to disprove a person's faith, which is, by definition, irrational?

This retreat to the subjective is on full display in the church's recently released, official yet unattributed essays, which attempt to spin the church's plethoric dirty laundry in a positive direction. (How do you put positive spin on God's prophet secretly marrying other men's wives under threat of destruction by an angel with a sword?) Yet all the spin in the world can't disguise the obvious conclusion: the Church, no matter how well-intentioned or beloved, is simply not True. Not like it defines itself, as "the only true and living church on the face of the whole earth." (D&C 1:30)

A believer may protest, cry heresy, shun the heretics, cast them out, censor their speech. But truth marches on. And there is only one way this ends, my friends. As Martin Luther King once said, "The moral arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice." And may I add, good Reverend, towards Love and Truth.

Eppur si muove.

(As inspiration for this post, I'd like to acknowledge this excellent essay, written by a believing Mormon, about John Dehlin's impending excommunication set for Feb 8th, a modern-day trial of heresy.)