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.)

Checkmate

Since right around my 40th birthday, I've unexpectedly found myself immersed in a new craze: chess.

I've played chess my whole life, always enjoyed it. But until now, I had never put much thought into how to play, never studied tactics or strategy, never studied grandmaster games or analyzed my own strengths and weaknesses as a player. I played wild, intuitive, Captain Kirk-style chess. Always attacking, occasionally pulling a brilliant checkmate out of thin air. But the simple truth was that I wasn't very good, and I didn't even know it. Better opponents had their way with me, much to my bewilderment. They seemed to have method to their games, whereas I had none.

I'm still not very good, but I'm twice the player I used to be. (What's 2 x 0?) But there is the semblance of method to my madness now, and I owe this to two people: my son Grant, and his chess coach, Ann. 

If Chess-Craziness were a disease, then Grant and I caught it from Ann, whose genuine enthusiasm for chess is both boundless and contagious. Seriously. This woman eats, sleeps, breathes chess. When she teaches chess, an irrepressible joy radiates into her speech and body language. Ann was a grade school teacher and the chess club supervisor at Grant's school until she retired last year. But she saw great promise in my mathematical, competitive son's chess-playing. And she's harbored a lifelong dream of starting a chess school.

So Ann reached out over the summer and offered to be Grant's chess coach. Once a week for the last five months, we've met for a couple of hours at a local Barnes & Noble to learn the finer points of the game. I started out as a parent chauffeur, but soon became totally transfixed by the lessons myself. How can one become transfixed by watching someone else explain and demonstrate chess moves? Well, if you're asking that question, you've obviously never been afflicted with Chess-Craziness, nor had Ann as your teacher.

Ann has taught tactics to which my mind was previously blind: openings, exchanges, skewers, forks, and end game calculations. What a difference it makes to have a game plan other than "I'm gonna catch my opponent by surprise!" Ann calls this Hope Chess. I was the Hope Chess Master.

Now the chess virus has spread to my other son, Justin, and even to Elizabeth and Joy. The most frequent activity at our house? Chess games and puzzles. (Chess puzzles are little worksheets or apps asking you to guess the best move.) All of this chess immersion has culminated in a couple of small tournament championships and trophies for our boys, both Grant and Justin. But the biggie is the state-wide scholastic tournament in two weeks. Ann thinks Grant has a chance. He has a naturally aggressive style, probably picked up from playing his wildly attacking daddy so often. But he sees several moves ahead, engineering complex multi-piece attacks, setting and springing traps, taking the initiative and never letting go. Grant and I have been keeping track of our games since Christmas. Through seventy-five games, we're neck and neck, me clinging right now to a one game lead. He and I typically engage in throwing haymakers from the back ranks. They're slugfests. They tend to be fun and pretty quick games. Perhaps you'd like to come and watch us play sometime? Maybe if your paint has already dried?

They say that there are 10¹²³ potential variations of a chess game. This is called the Shannon number. That is a number way way bigger than the number of atoms in the entire universe. Think of all of the grains of sand on every beach and desert in the world. There are something like 10 quintillion atoms in every grain of sand.  Now think of all of the grains of sand on every planet and rock in the entire universe. And of course you haven't even made the smallest scratch in the surface of all of the atoms in every galaxy, nebula, star, planet, moon, ocean, organism, bacteria, etc. We're talking incomprehensibly big numbers. But think of it. If you wanted to count every possible chess game variation, and you wanted to assign one atom in the universe to stand for each possibility--you simply couldn't it do it. You'd run out of atoms before you ran out of chess variations. Dude. All this possibility emerging from an 8 x8 chess board with 32 pieces.

And this is why I think chess has really grabbed me, and why I'm bothering to write about it in my post-Mormon spiritual quest blog. It is order from chaos. For something so infinitely complex, it is also a competition with set goals, boundaries and rules. There are a bazillion bazillion variations, but only hundreds of possible moves from each position. Of those, only a dozen or so are decent moves, and only one or two are best moves. Computers making millions of calculations a second still take a few seconds to sort these moves out. But the human mind surveys, calculates, extrapolates, devises. And then, if it's my mind, it throws the queen deep into enemy territory only to have it captured by the knight it was somehow oblivious to.

But the point is that it is a system of order and strategy. Very little is left to random chance. A superior player, such as Ann, will lead you along inexorably towards a checkmate. She sets the tempo, grabs the initiative, gets inside your head, and then springs the trap. Yet even she considers herself a middling player, of course comparing herself to chess masters.

In a year in which I'm trying to discern--or create, or imagine--order emerging out of spiritual chaos, chess has exerted a powerful hold over my mind. I like to play it. I like to think about it. Heck, I even like to watch other people play.

I have a dream of sitting on a beach somewhere when I'm eighty, with nothing to do other than play game after game with my children and grandchildren. I'll have honed my skills to a razor's edge by then--or at least learned enough gimmicks to give that impression. I'll lure the little grandchildren in, set the trap, and then beat them with a brilliant queen move from the back ranks. "Checkmate," I'll announce. Playfully absorbing their awe, intending to assuage their pain, I'll reach my hand out in victory . . . only to watch them reach for their knight instead. Bye bye, queenie.

This game, with its simple structure and infinite permutations, promises to fascinate, torment, and humble me forever. Or at least another forty to fifty years. Sounds like a fun way to pass the time.

Ann whooping all of the Foster boys simultaneously, called a "simul."

Complex persecution, or persecution complex?

The Christmas Stories

(This post is not meant to offend anyone who maintains a literal belief in the events of the Christmas story, but rather to offer some personal reflections on the powerful spirit that permeates this time of year. I intentionally didn't post this during the holidays so as not to offend. So no bah humbug here, just honesty. But if you prefer your beliefs remain unchallenged, then you probably should head elsewhere.)

December 2014

I recently went to a fantastic Christmas concert for Sound of the Rockies, a hundred-strong men's a cappella chorus. Last year we went to see a friend perform, and although he's since moved to Arizona, we were so blown away by the quality and spirit of the performance, that we went back this Christmas, this time taking the kids.

A hundred men's voices, each song ending in a roof-blowing, spine-tingling crescendo of perfect, multi-layered harmony. It was energetic and immersive. All night, the music moved back and forth from secular ("I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus") to religious ("O Holy Night"). It was funny, moving, serene. My children loved it. My seven-year old was transfixed for almost three hours, a miracle in itself.

As I watched him absorbed in it all, I couldn't help but think about his perspective. Against all odds (and the thinly veiled skepticism of his two older siblings), he still believes in Santa Claus. Actually, I would venture at this point that he persists in belief of the Big Red Guy out of sheer force of will. (And trust me, this boy has a formidable will.) And yet, taking a cue from his parents, he says he doesn't believe in God.

The irony, eh? Still believes in Santa, because of his naiveté, his precious youthful yearning for magic (and, undoubtedly, for presents--there's a potential price for disbelief!), and his complete trust in his parents to not tell him a lie--those same parents who have been conflicted but complicit in the Big Lie his whole life.

"Something seems a little off here . . ."

So he believes in Santa, and yet doesn't believe in God. Hmmm . . . Is this a good thing? I think so. Are we depriving him of some sacred right to still believe in God? No. For now and into the future, if he expressed that inclination, we wouldn't dissuade him. We're simply being honest with him. We're not pretending to believe in things we don't. We've discovered a reverence and awe for the natural world, for science, for the human condition, that feels nearly equal to that which we ever harbored for our conception of God. And it's another blog post, but I think it is short-sighted reaction that believers tend to have towards non-believers, that they can't live lives of integrity. I believe that honesty, integrity, values, compassion, and authenticity can be found in equal (or more) abundance within a secular philosophy.

But I've decided not to label myself anymore. I'm open to the idea that there is some underlying order and purpose to our existence, that there is a generally benevolent creative force that is unfolding itself, a Universe self-actualizing through us. But I don't believe in a personal, literal God or afterlife. So atheism doesn't fit exactly. I like secular humanism, but it feels a bit euphemistic. Despite my fondness for Buddhism and new practice of meditation, I'll never be a Buddhist. It's orthodoxy seems just as goofy to me. Taoist sounds pretty good, but I'm still not sure exactly what that means. After reading a biography of Albert Einstein, I thought Einsteinian Agnostic fit pretty well: he didn't believe in a personal God, but found divinity in the prevailing order of the Cosmos. But that's not a defined label. Sometimes I think Jedi Knight would fit best--but I'm not sure I have a high enough mitichlorian count to be legitimate. But bottom line is, I'm still a spiritual work in progress, and I'm committed to pursuing my belief (or lack thereof) with integrity, without pretense, and without shrinking from hard questions. If at any time I feel like I am compelled by evidence or experience to believe in a certain way, then I will do so. But at this point, I'm not standing for anything. Just moving purposefully towards love and justice.

Which brings me to my feelings about Jesus. When I first left Mormonism, I found most resonance with the idea of "Christian Universalism." This seemed to allow me to be at once Christian without the constraints of orthodoxy. "Christ's love is so powerful and pervasive that it simply doesn't matter what you believe. He will save us all." This was more comfortable for a time than throwing the baby Jesus out with the Mormon bathwater, because I once had what seemed a deep and unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Redeemer. For all of my criticisms of Mormonism, that was one thing that it planted deep in me: a faith in Christ.

(There is a Mormon legend that this painting represents "the best likeness of Jesus" that the Mormon prophet had ever seen, clearly implying intimate familiarity. As missionaries, we used this picture when teaching about Jesus. Thus this was the image I utilized when visualizing my future interactions with him. Seemed legit.) 

I remember feeling, shortly before coming home from my proselyting mission in Brazil, that I wanted to do nothing but preach Christ resurrected for the rest of my life. In fact, I couldn't imagine what else in life would even be worth discussing. How could people go to movies, go on dates, read other books, have careers? None of that mattered. Jesus was the reason, this season and every season! I was in the thrall of my faith. Jesus Christ was to my mind an absolute actuality, the most real and important thing in the universe, the gravitational center around which everything else orbited. I baptized converts, said my daily prayers, made covenants in the temple to offer my life to him and his church if necessary, offered my heartfelt service to my fellow man, all in his name. I had dreams of bathing his feet with my tears, of watching him suffer for my sins in the Garden of Gethsemane, bleeding from every pore. I imagined feeling his perfect loving embrace when I successfully completed my mission here on earth, weeping as I touched the nail prints in his hands and feet, hopefully to be admitted to his presence in the Celestial Kingdom, where he would say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." A persistent semi-vision came to me: I was one of the infinite hosts of heaven, clothed in white, bathed in light, singing the anthemic Hallelujah chorus within a giant celestial coliseum as Christ the King entered triumphant to claim as his own all those who confessed him to be their Savior . . . and, of course, who also kept their Mormon covenants.

During my medical residency in Greeley, a man wrote an op-ed piece in the Greeley Tribune, slamming Joseph Smith, claiming that Mormons weren't Christian. Why? I don't know. He hated Mormons. So I wrote a rousing rebuttal, sidestepping any controversy about the prophet (I sincerely knew nothing about any controversy. True to Mormon scripture, I thought Joseph Smith was second only to Jesus Christ in his righteousness and importance before God. There was no dirty laundry. Nothing to be ashamed of.) So I responded in print as a Mormon doctor with a fervent testimony of Christ as Savior. It was widely read in the community. I received many kudos from Mormons and non-Mormons alike for so vigorously and articulately defending my faith in Christ.

Now, for those who maintain a literal belief in Christ, I sincerely honor you here. That is a beautiful, powerful, compelling force in a person's life. I remember it well, often with aching nostalgia. As you probably feel now, your faith seems to transcend your physical experience, more real than reality, offering you hope of eternal exaltation and thus purpose and direction, a solid anchor point in the liquid fray of life. A real part of me hopes that can last for you, like it couldn't for me.

Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to lose that faith, that certainty, for that sure foundation to suddenly dissolve beneath you, dropping you into an endless ocean of doubt. Imagine if this erosion of faith felt totally inevitable, irreversible, just like water can't hold it's shape once the glass breaks. Imagine how you might flail if suddenly everything you once believed seemed to become false, that everyone you trusted seemed to be either lying, oblivious, or lost like a child in an infinitely-layered fable. Your foundation of rock has suddenly turned into sand.

Or let's say the course of your life has led you inexorably towards a cliff that's standing at the very edge of the world. The Void. When you walk to the edge of the abyss, and look over your shoulder at the comfortable lights of home behind you, with all of your family and friends entreating you to return, and with seemingly nothing before you except darkness, will you turn back? Or will you proceed onward into that darkness? Why would you? Well, you know what's behind you. You've seen it for what it is. It seems empty and hopeless. But then a glimmer of hope shines down in the Void: could the dark clouds in front of you actually be concealing something profound, beautiful, and true?

Both choices before you are compelling, yet both seem like a suicide. You have reached an excruciating decision point: you must, due to the relentless forward pressure of life, make a fateful choice, either to return to that inauthentic falsity of your previous faith that still beckons you, or to trust your internal compass and leap into the unknown. But one way of the other, you're forced to move.

Maybe you can see that it is not a step taken lightly, or without consideration of consequences. Give me, my believer friend, for a moment, the benefit of your doubt, that I too wanted to believe, that I did believe, so badly that it when I ceased to believe it felt like my heart had been carved out of my chest. Maybe you can understand that, despite the severe and potentially eternal costs involved, I became simply unable to maintain the charade anymore. I could no longer pretend, or twist myself in intellectual pretzels, or lie to my daughter's face, just like I couldn't stick my head in sand and hope to keep breathing. I was going to be authentic before myself, before my family, before society, and, if it applied, before God, even if it killed me. No more crippling cognitive dissonance. If God existed, he would honor my courage and integrity--and if he didn't honor those indivisible aspects of my soul, then he wasn't a God I could have faith in, or want to spend an eternity with. But if he didn't exist, then I had never had anything real to fear losing anyway, and so for the perceived severe price of my disaffection, I would have purchased an insight of great importance into the nature and purpose of my shortening life.

The lights in the void beckoned. The gates behind me closed. It was Pascal's wager in reverse: everything to gain, and nothing to lose. You know my choice. My reach was away from a personal God, off of the straight and narrow path, and towards hope, staring across those mists of darkness, that formless void, and whispering, Let there be light, please.

Back to Christmas. As I watched my son enthralled by the sights and sounds of this Christmas concert, a mash-up of the secular and the sacred, an elusive, child-like insight fluttered across my mind, something I knew, but that I now saw through my son's wide eyes. They're just stories! Santa Claus. Baby Jesus. Elves and reindeer. Angels and wise men. Each as real or fictional as the other. And what awesome stories they are! Fun, poignant, cozy, directive. Perhaps not "true," yet with human truth embedded within them. Be good, be giving, be hopeful. You are known and loved. Within these Christmas stories, I was able to find beauty and truth this season, acknowledging them on a believer's terms, accepting them on mine.

That's how I see it. Our civilization conspires--collectively, unconsciously--to perpetuate these Christmas stories, because of their magic and their morals. Because we children and adults want so desperately for something to hold on to. Because we live in a real world that often feels like a dream. Because we sense there must be some grand mystery to it all, some wizard behind the curtain. Because we hope some big jolly guy is checking our name off his list, or reaching back for us from beyond the veil. We need nice stories to tell by the fireplace on Christmas Eve when it's snowing outside, or in the chapel on Sunday morning before we head to war. This is a level on which I can appreciate these stories, remembering their magic for me in my youth, holding them both carefully and skeptically in my palms, where I can find some salvageable truths worth sharing with my children. But they will be shared as such. As stories. Not as the moon itself, but as fingers pointing to it. All available angles will be presented with good will and careful scrutiny, and my son will have the choice of what he chooses to believe, or not. No threats of supernatural consequences, no pretensions to privileged authority.

This Christmas, he chose to believe, in Santa at least. The minute he expresses true doubt, the ruse will be revealed. Hugs given, congratulations for being such a smart boy and figuring it out. But that hasn't happened yet. His reasons for maintaining belief are still too strong. It was an awesome Christmas. Our youngest boy was lit up with magic and delight all season long.

And wouldn't you know it? The big fella came through again. Lots of thoughtful and quirky presents under the tree.

Well played, Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Well played.

Never Not Now