A Happy Ending
It is fairly common for Latter-day Saints
to believe that people who leave the Church do so because they are unwilling to
live up to its strict standards and want to rid themselves of the resulting
guilt. My exit story fits perfectly into this chicken-and-egg argument. Why do
I call it chicken and egg? Well, what came first, the loss of guilt, or a
realization that the Church is false? Do former Mormons conclude that the
Church is false because they want to rid themselves of Church-induced guilt?
Or, instead, does their guilt naturally fade away after realizing that the
Church is false?
People have a difficult time seeing facts
that hurt. For most members, realizing that the Church is not what it claims to
be can hurt psychologically, socially, and often economically. I greatly admire
all the former members who had plenty to lose by leaving the Church, yet were
still able to open their eyes and mind enough to objectively study the Church’s
doctrines and history. I was not one of the strong ones. It was only
after I had more to gain from leaving the Church than staying in that I was
able to study it objectively.
Invariably, being a Mormon becomes less
attractive after committing a sin that requires confessing to the bishop. If
the repenting person cannot take the sacrament or attend the temple, then the
visibility of their sin to fellow ward members becomes a source of
embarrassment. Attending church loses much of its appeal. If this continues
over a long period of time, and if one is not at risk of being ostracized by
one’s own family, then objectively examining the Church’s truthfulness becomes
easier. Studying the Church from another point of view becomes possible, even
desirable.
But the question remains, Does this new paradigm come about because the person wants
to live in sin? Are they too weak to live their lives according to the Gospel's
standards? Of course I don’t think so, but there is probably nothing I could
say to convince many Mormons of that. As long as they define their lives according
to the Gospel, then they will probably judge anyone who rejects it as misled by
Satan, too weak to "endure to the end," or an outright sin seeker.
Therefore, I won’t pursue that question.
Rather I will ask one that is much more relevant, getting more to the heart of
the matter: Is it good to feel profoundly guilty about sins that are defined by
the
From his 1927 essay, "Why I Am Not a
Christian," Bertrand Russell explained that "...there is a certain
tendency in our practical age to consider that it does not much matter whether
religious teaching is true or not, since the important question is whether it
is useful. One question cannot, however, well be decided without the other. If
we believe the Christian religion our notions of what is good will be different from what they will be if we do not believe it.
Therefore, to Christians, the effects of Christianity may seem good, while to
unbelievers they may seem bad."
That is simple enough. Nevertheless, most
Mormons don’t seem to get it. They literally don’t understand how a decent
person could judge their church to be bad in principle. It is common for them
to say it doesn’t matter if the Church is true or not because it a great
organization that does far more good than bad; some probably go as far as to
say it does only good. I heard one of these common sentiments in late 1999 when
a missionary serving in
In addition to the Church’s history of
sexism, white supremacy, and anti-democratic stances, the Church causes
psychological harm to many of its members. It is not only possible to see
logically that the church is false, but also to see that it is, according to
the numerous testimonies of its victims, morally bad. To know that the Church
is true people are told to pray, not for knowledge, but for a "good"
feeling, a "burning in the bosom." However, many of its teachings and
its fruits give me a bad feeling.
I accept the challenge to judge its
truthfulness based on feelings. I do so by quoting its past and present leaders
on the topics of racism, sexism, and authoritarianism. I then offer up the
stories on this Web page for my challengers to read. After that I ask, Do all these things give one a good feeling about the
Church? For those that maintain they do I can only conclude that they and I
have different definitions of right and wrong, of good and bad.
I can not take seriously the accusation
that, by rejecting Mormonism, I am shamelessly avoiding my responsibility to
"choose the right." Why? Because the accusers are referring to a
system of morals that I judge to be wrong — not just difficult to follow as
they simplistically imply.
Before telling my story I want to state
that nobody in my family has ever accused me of being a sin seeker. In fact
they have even complimented me for holding good moral values. I am tremendously
grateful for their show of understanding and open mindedness. At the same time,
however, I have read numerous stories about other former Mormons, the families
of which have reacted very differently from mine. Consequently I can only
conclude that my family is one of the exceptions rather than the rule. It is
because of this ostracizing behavior (in addition to much of the Church’s
doctrine) that I am critical of the Mormon Church and culture, and I apologize
to my exceptional family for strongly denouncing what they hold sacred. Once
again quoting Bertrand Russell, "It is not the happiness of the individual
convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind." Of course the
happiness of my family is extremely important to me, but I won’t let that
prevent me from doing my part to expose the Church for what it is in an attempt
to bring happiness to a much greater number of people. In this, I hope they can
forgive me.
My
Story
I had better-than-average experiences
growing up within the Mormon culture. I went through a rebellious phase in my
early teens, but even then I was well accepted and liked at church. I had a
personality that the Mormon culture rewards. I was outgoing, humorous,
confident, and a relatively good speaker. I was the son of well-liked,
respected parents, both of whom almost always held at least one calling or
another. My dad served as bishop for a time.
Sooner or later, like all Mormon
children, I had to come to a decision about which direction I was going to take
regarding to the Church. At the age of sixteen I fasted for seventy-two hours
to find out if the Church was true. The inevitable result — after all, I had
been indoctrinated since birth — was that I gained a testimony. If I had found
out nothing, I would have remained stuck in limbo. If I had found out it was
false, there would have been serious difficulties at home. A dependent
16-year-old Mormon cannot expect his or her parents to accept such a conclusion
without applying plenty of pressure to go back and ask the Lord again and
again, until the right answer is finally reached. Therefore I didn’t have much
choice but to find out that it was true, and my subconscious mind understood
that. Many Mormon boys miraculously gain strong testimonies just before their
missions to enable them to survive the process. What I did was the same, only I
did it a few years early.
Unlike many soon-to-be missionaries, I
felt no pressure to serve the voluntary mission that the Lord commanded of me
(three years after my fast) because it was something I sincerely wanted to do.
From the age of 16, after seeing the light, my testimony never once wavered. My
desire to serve the Lord was as strong as anyone’s could be. I was a truly
willing and faithful follower.
My only disappointment was that the
Church had recently reduced the length of missions from 2 years to 18 months.
It was not long enough. I had indicated on a pre-mission questionnaire that I
preferred a foreign mission, but knew that no choice would be given. I was
willing and ready to go anywhere in the world.
I was called to
I was going to learn to love those
"children of God" whose "lack of [worthiness] in the
pre-existent life" caused them to be born "in flood-ridden
At least they were better off than the
"Negro, who, in the pre-existence lived the type of life which justified
the Lord in sending him to earth in the lineage of Cain with a black skin, and
possibly being born in darkest
***
Despite the fact that I implicitly
understood what a mission was all about, I still expected it to be one
spiritual experience after another. That was the official view of the mission
experience, and that was exactly the view I bought. I realized I would be
seeking converts, but did not conceive that the methodology used would be like
that of a sales job. I thought that all my plans of action while on the job
would be guided by divine intervention, not marketing strategies.
Needless to say my way of thinking was a
bit naïve — and all too typical among missionaries. Instead of experiencing the
envisioned year and a half of non-stop spiritual events, I experienced one door
after another. It was a sales job that literally wore holes in my shoes. It was
nothing but hard work, with no evidence of inspiration guiding me or any of my
fellow missionaries.
Very little of what we did and said was
left to chance. Even our testimonies, proclaiming that we "knew" that
the Church was true, were a written part of the memorized lessons that we
taught to people. This ensured that everything was presented just right. I soon
realized that we were using polished techniques to sell our product. The
product was club membership. The selling price was one baptism, ten percent of
one’s income, and a lifetime of commitment. Once I comprehended the whole
process I began to reconsider what my "testimony" really was.
How was it that this precious knowledge
that I carried so deep inside my heart, this priceless gift that I was there to
spread across the world, could suddenly be so easily and thoughtlessly replaced
by a memorized line of script? I started questioning the reality of my most
sacred possession. This process of questioning the Church was, of course, a
difficult, in fact devastating, thing for me to go through.
The long, drawn-out process of
questioning what, to that point , had been a given — the Church is true and
defining my life according to it is the right thing to do — was heart
wrenching, and it dragged on for a very long time. The very core of my
paradigm, the way in which I defined my existence and its meaning, was
challenged and threatened throughout my mission because I never saw any sign of
the inspiration that I had assumed was going to guide us missionaries. All I
saw in the way of "conversions" were the predictable results of
standard sales efforts and the friendly socializing that the Church calls
fellowshipping.
My testimony shriveled and weakened, but
its roots were deep. It reached to the center of my brain and was the basis of
everything I knew. It would never again be what it was from the age of 16 (my
personal conversion) up and through to the first half of my mission, but,
nevertheless, it would not die off completely for at least ten more years. The
Church’s mind-molding techniques are indeed very effective. I now have a
testimony of that fact, and that is one testimony I am sure to never lose.
***
One Sunday, more than three-quarters of
the way through my mission, I experienced a watershed event. I was becoming
more and more disillusioned and was terribly homesick. Boredom, mild
depression, and 20-year-old hormones were all taking their toll. My birthday, a
depressing event for most missionaries, was greeted with the news that my
parents had moved away from my hometown. I wouldn’t be returning to my friends
back home. Under these circumstances, I had just been transferred to a new
district and didn’t know any of the members in my new ward.
My companion and I stood at the entrance
to the chapel greeting everyone as they arrived. "Hello brother, hello
sister," I said, shaking their hands, "welcome to church."
Nearly the last to arrive were a strikingly beautiful girl named Mandy (not her
real name), and her mother. The girl firmly shook my hand, and held onto it
just long enough to start me thinking. She lingered and talked, paying me an
awful lot of attention. Without warning, my evolutionary roots rushed to the
surface like a strong, leak-proof basketball that had been forced to the bottom
of a swimming pool, held there for more than a year, and then suddenly let go.
If that had been the extent of our
contact and I had never seen her again I may not even remember that first
meeting. But that didn’t happen. I kept going to church, of course, and so did
she. Not only did her interest in me not fade, it grew. And I was much too
polite to ignore the attention of a beautiful girl.
Over the next few months we developed a
very friendly relationship, and eventually I started phoning her in the
evenings from my apartment. I was breaking an important mission rule, which
would in turn lead to my breaking others that are much more serious.
***
One night towards the end of my mission I
lay motionless in bed, staring anxiously at the underside of the bunk above me.
I looked once again at the clock on the nightstand. Twenty minutes had passed
from the time that my companion had climbed to the top bunk, and I hadn’t
detected any movement from him for almost 10 minutes. Sitting up slowly I
strained to listen; his breathing was slow and steady.
Under the bedcovers I was already wearing
my jeans. Carefully and quietly I slipped out of my pajama top into a T-shirt
that I had hidden next to me. As quiet as a spider I left the room, moved down
the hall past the open door of the other Elders’ bedroom, and out the front
door. Once I was outside the apartment, I put on a pair of tennis shoes that I
had been carrying.
After I was inside the elevator my heart
rate slowed and I took a deep breath. The subway ran until
Forty minutes later I arrived at the
It was a romantic evening. We cuddled, we
kissed, and we explored. But despite ourselves, we remained virgins in the end.
An important, ubiquitous part of Mormon
culture is guilt and confessions. This could be what caused me to share the
details of my experience with a fellow missionary a couple of days later. More
likely, though, I think it was perhaps just that foolish and infamous desire
boys have to brag to one or more of their male contemporaries about sexual
conquests.
***
During the second month of my mission,
while still at the Mission Training Center (MTC), I had heard a talk given by a
General Authority, I can’t remember which one. In his talk, he related a story
about a missionary that had sinned. Other missionaries in his mission were
aware of what he had done, and, doing the right thing, they informed their
mission president about it. This example was used to instruct us all to do the
same thing if something similar happened during our missions. What I had done
with Mandy was the exact example given in the talk: heavy petting. Now a fellow
missionary, one who had heard that very same talk at the MTC, knew about it.
***
Two weeks later I again arranged to meet
Mandy. Same time, same place.
The friend with whom I shared the
experience of my first encounter — who is to this day a good friend of mine —
called me up the night I had arranged to rendezvous with Mandy for a second
time. When I told him I was going to go see her again he gave me a choice: I
was either to confess to the Mission President, or he would do it for me.
He said he had been brooding over my
story since the day I had told it to him. He couldn’t sleep nights, he
explained, and felt that he had no option but to force me to turn myself in. I
sensed his sincere concern and didn’t doubt for a moment that he was doing the
only thing he believed he could. In fact, I even appreciated and admired him
for giving me the choice, because I preferred doing my own confessing.
Every time my friend and I talk about
that event, he cringes and begs me to forgive him for what he did. I wish I
could make him realize that there is nothing to forgive. I perfectly understand
why he did what he did, and I have never once held a grudge. He did what his
indoctrination had taught him to do, and he did it out of love and concern for
me — as well as for his own eternal salvation, of course.
"I want to see her before I
go," I said. "I want to say goodbye to her and explain that I’m going
to confess to the President. I think I owe her that."
"I can’t let you do that," my
friend said. "If you don’t promise me you’ll stay home tonight, I’ll have
to call the Mission President right now."
"Please," I begged, "just
let me say goodbye. Nothing’s gonna
happen."
We argued back and forth until finally I
convinced him I would only say goodbye, that nothing would happen between Mandy
and myself, and that I would confess to the mission
president the next morning. It was ten days before I was scheduled to go home
with honors. I realized that wouldn’t be happening now. I would instead get the
equivalent of a court-martial, and I had no idea how my dutifully patriotic
family was going to react.
My departure that night was the same as
the one two weeks earlier, as was my money situation. This time Mandy met me at
the subway station next to our apartment and rode with me to
As a result, the mood for this second
date had already been set. Levels of intimacy between seem to either remain
level or progress from one encounter to the next; one rarely has to start from
scratch. We opted for more privacy this time, in an even more secluded area of
the park — never easy to find anywhere in crowded
On the subway on the way over, I had
tried to explain to her the predicament that I was in. I assumed she would
understand, being that she was a member of the Church. I started by telling her
I had told a fellow missionary what she and I had done on our first date.
Her reaction was natural; she was shocked
and more than a little upset. By contrast, my unnatural Mormon paradigm
couldn’t comprehend why she would fixate on the minor detail of my
having told a friend about our experience. Why couldn’t she understand that the
only thing that mattered in the entire world, more important than world hunger
or war, was my having to confess this to the mission president the very next day. I was on the road to eternal damnation and all she
could think about was her own embarrassment. What was wrong with her?
Despite her reaction the mood was not
destroyed. We sat on a park bench in the moonlight looking into each other’s
eyes. The long silent invitation to act made my mind reel. I was confused with
a flood of indoctrination. The priest inside my brain (from Woody Allen’s All
You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask)
was himself seduced by what he saw through my eyes. The fact that a priest, an
elder even, was consenting to this immoral act, multiplied the degree of the
sin tenfold. Thornbirds fluttered overhead as I
reached for some scarlet-colored thread and prepared to stitch a letter.
***
Because I knew I would be confessing to
the Mission President the next day, the experience of lying in bed that night
while waiting for my companion to fall asleep was very different from the first
time. I was keenly aware of the eternal implications of what I had done on my
first date with Mandy. On top of that I was actually planning, in fact
anxiously waiting, to meet my accomplice in sin again. I was a serious sinner
and was undoubtedly under Satan’s influence.
Mulling over these disastrous realizations
depressed me profoundly. I suddenly hated myself much more than usual, which
was no easy feat since I had become an expert at despising myself for every
minor infraction of the Mormon God’s ubiquitous commandments. I even hated
myself for things I had not done (one can never do enough of what one is
supposed to when they are a Mormon). I hated how pitifully weak I was. I hated
my dirty, worthless soul. People don’t care for those they hate, so I no longer
cared about myself. Having reached that point, I no longer cared about anything
at all — a dangerous state of mind.
Such a state of mind isn’t dangerous if
it comes right before one heads to the confession — though it can make driving
there risky. Feeling this way about one’s self creates a deep sense of humility
before God, causing the sinner to gratefully soak up the bishop’s, priest’s,
pastor’s, or mission president’s, expressions of understanding, love, and
concern. It turns God’s mouthpieces into heavenly angels with remarkable
healing powers. Most notably is their power to promise sinners that they will
once again become whole and worthy of self-respect, even self-love.
This particular state of mind was severe
in my case, and what made it dangerous was that it didn’t come just prior to my
confession, rather it came before my next encounter
with Mandy, the source of my sin. This was a problem. A boy that hates himself,
and disrespects himself, is not going to respect his date. I had entered a
vicious cycle; my feelings of despair and my "sinful" acts were
feeding on each other. I had defined myself as a loathsome sinner, and
therefore I longed to sin. The more I hated myself, the more I wanted to make
myself worthy of hating.
Increasing "sinful" behavior in
frequency, degree, and kind often happens simply because a person believes that
they are a "sinner." As a result harmless behavior, if
believed to be sinful, can lead to harmful behavior. Often the original
behavior that has led a person to believe they are a "sinner" is not
harmful to them or anyone else. This
you-might-as-well-sin-since-you’re-already-a-sinner mindset is one way that
religion produces irrational, neurotic behavior. Another is by forcing people
to forgo reason in the process of deciphering right from wrong.*
Music was a dear love of mine from early
on in life, and despite all the warnings from church leaders about possibly
becoming possessed by its influence, I still broke
this important mission rule. I bought cassettes by such groups as Pink Floyd,
Led Zeppelin, and the Talking Heads.
I lay there that night, drunk with sin,
waiting to date Mandy again, and waiting for my companion to fall asleep. While
I waited I listened to the Talking Heads’ album The Fear Of
Music. I can’t think of a more appropriate title for an album to fit that
moment. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
I had already listened to it several
times on my mission, but on this night it turned to pure evil. As I lay there
listening, the room seemed to pulsate and I feared for my eternal life. I
expected at any moment I may be possessed by an evil spirit. A former companion
of mine had repeatedly feared being possessed by an evil spirit and had asked
me to give him a blessing on one particularly fearful occasion. Suddenly, his
experiences were no longer trivial to me.
***
Mandy was not dating the same person she
had been two weeks before. I was caught up in a religious daze. Submitting to
the evil influence guiding me, I switched to autopilot and accepted the
invitation I read in her eyes.
Ironically one of the most emphasized
doctrines of Mormon theology is free agency. The concept of free agency is that
God allows all his children the freedom to do whatever they please. They can
choose to obey him or they can choose to sin, and they will be judged according
to what they choose to do.
This same religion teaches people that if
they sin they will come under Satan’s influence. It also teaches its members to
feel guilty when they sin, and that the degree of guilt should correlate to the
severity of the sin. Sins are ranked very clearly: first is the denial of the
Holy Ghost, making one a son of perdition; second is murder; third is sex
outside of marriage. This ranks premarital sex very high, right after murder,
and heavy petting is near the top of sex offenses.
This ranking is contingent on knowledge,
and as a missionary of course my knowledge was complete: I knew all of God’s
commandments. This meant that I was a very serious sinner, and therefore my
guilt was extreme. I believed, therefore, that I was heavily under the
influence of Satan. Where’s the free agency in that? (Of course, as an atheist,
I believe in free agency, but the state of mind that Mormonism had put me in
was not conducive to clear thinking and mature, responsible decision making).
Based on this logic my self-disgust and sinful actions fed on each other.
I kissed Mandy passionately. Thinking
that I was being led into the abyss by Satan, I took her with me, tricking
myself into believing it was all beyond my control — regardless, I’m not sure I
cared anymore. All was a blur. My brain was mush.
Needless to say, at this point I thought
nothing of her welfare, only of my own, which was already beyond repair. She
soon realized where this was all going and led me to a two-story boat that was
docked at the pier. She took my hand and led me...or was I leading her...or was
Beelzebub leading us both?
We lay down in the dark of the upper
deck. Slowly and awkwardly we undressed. After situating ourselves somewhat, we
unceremoniously exchanged virginities. The uncoordinated experience was
unmistakably un-romantic. More importantly, it was dangerously
unprotected. It was a stupid thing to do. It was, in fact, something I believe
I would not have done had I possessed a clear head. If I had carried an
iota of self-respect with me that night, I would have respected my date at
least enough to care whether or not she got pregnant.
She never did, but that’s not the point.
The point is that the idea of whether or not Mandy might get pregnant didn’t
even cross my mind, let alone whether or not it would hurt her psychologically
to lose her virginity to someone that was about to walk out of her life
forever. Ironically, the very same culture that had influenced me to remain a
virgin until the age of 20 had also influenced my decision to lose it in a
foolish, harmful manner. It did so by clouding my sense of reality, and my
ability to prioritize what mattered.
As I exited the boat, the cells of my
body felt like billions of tiny saturated sponges that were weighing me down. A
dark heavy cloud was pushing me towards the ground, making each step an effort.
The skin of my face hung like dough on a rack. "You’re going to
hell," I said to myself. "You’re going to hell." I repeated it
again and again.
***
Nearly an hour and a half later I
returned to the apartment. The alarm that was supposed to wake me up went off
almost the moment I lay down to sleep. After the other missionaries completed
their morning rituals and left to proselytize, I called the mission president.
"I need to talk to you," I
said. "Can I come see you right now?"
He surprised me by asking if it could
wait until the next day. Couldn’t he sense my desperation? If not, wasn’t he,
as mission president, in tune enough with the spirit to receive an
inspirational message from God regarding the seriousness of my request?
Missionaries, and most Mormons, actually believe such things. Obviously he did
not understand that I was in serious trouble, and of course he shouldn’t have
been expected to.
Soon I was sitting in his office. My
companion waited just outside in the mission home’s reception room. "I had
sexual intercourse," I confessed to the president.
He was visibly surprised and quickly
began asking questions. He asked where my companion was at the time. I gave him
an overview of the night before and he quickly judged my companion to be
innocent. His questions were then aimed at assessing my level of guilt. He knew
he would have to hold a church court and sit in judgment of me. Therefore he
needed enough specific information to make an informed ruling.
He asked if I had ever done anything like
it before, either before or during my mission. He wanted to know the entire
history of my relationship with Mandy, how I met her, how many times I had seen
her and where, and everything that had happened between us. He asked if I had
masturbated on my mission, and if I had read any pornography.
I wasn’t the least bit surprised by any
of his questions and honestly answered each one. Then he surprised me with a
question about someone else. "Is there a possibility she’ll get
pregnant?"
I had to think for a moment.
"Yes," I said, realizing for the first time the earthly consequences
of what I had done. The thought stunned me briefly, but it didn’t make the
situation seem any more serious to me.
I was placed under house arrest. I was
not allowed to leave the mission home or make any phone calls. My companion was
sent back to our apartment. Two missionaries from the mission home accompanied
him. This was the only way to ensure that no missionary would ever be alone:
three left and two returned. For the time being — until the next monthly
shuffle of missionaries from one district to another — my companion was made
part of a threesome. Other than spending lots of time in the bathroom, I had
discovered the only way to get around the sacred rule of "thou shalt not leave thy companion’s side": quietly sneak
out at night (Of course I was not the first, or the last, missionary to have
figured this out).
I had already lived in the mission home
for four months as secretary to the president, so the mission home environment
was neither strange nor intimidating to me. There were six missionaries living
there and none of them were told why I was staying there that night. The
financial secretary that had been my companion during my stint as secretary was
still there. He and I had become close friends. Like everyone else, he could
sense that something was seriously wrong.
During my lifetime I have woken several
times from nightmares feeling relieved that my unfortunate predicament had
merely been a dream. Usually I had committed some terrible act in my dream that
would adversely affect the rest of my life. When I wake I suddenly realize that
I will not have to suffer the terrible consequences of that act after all.
The next morning was the only time I have
woken up and thought, "Oh no! It really happened!" Rather than waking
from a nightmare, I woke out of a pleasant dream into one.
Later that morning I witnessed the only
convincing evidence that the mission president may have truly been inspired. I
was pushed to the forefront of his schedule and was soon talking one-on-one
with him in his office again. The first question he asked was "Are you
sure what you told me yesterday wasn’t all just a bad dream and we can go on just
the way things were before?"
I was taken back by his question. It fit
too perfectly into the mold of what I had experienced when I woke up just a
couple of hours earlier. At the time it didn’t occur to me that he was possibly
offering me an escape route. Maybe he was reaching for a way out of dealing
with this problem that I had handed to him. But how could I possibly explain
everything away as a bad dream? I judged his question to be a rhetorical one
(which it most probably was).
"No, it really happened," I
said.
Soon his two apes (a slang term for a
mission president’s assistants) were sitting on either side of him and the
court began. I had never had my peers sit in moral judgment of me before that
day (or since) and it felt strange. It will never happen again; I won’t allow
it. Only 12 hours earlier I had confessed the most intimate details of my life
to the mission president, and doing so seemed as
natural and right as could be. Now I was admitting my sins to fellow
missionaries, not as friends and confidants, but as judges.
The mission president gave an abbreviated
version of my story for the record, periodically asking me to confirm. In this
way I was merely required to admit my sins, saving me the embarrassment of
describing them. The apes were not spoken to, nor were they asked to speak.
Before the judgment was handed down I was
offered the chance to speak for myself. I fully realizing where this was
headed, so after expressing the incredible amount of guilt I felt, I then made
it clear that I didn’t want to lose my church membership. I was sincere, and my
mumbled, choked-up presentation attested to that fact.
The mission president made his judgment.
After explaining that he understood I had never done such a thing before, and
had no history of unusually sinful behavior, he recommended that I be "disfellowshipped." He asked the apes what they
thought, which was the first time they were asked anything. They of course
agreed — what were they going to do, challenge the mission president? — and my judgment was sealed.
I was surprised by the outcome. I had
assumed that I would be excommunicated and lose my membership. It was my
understanding that the act I had committed as a missionary was automatic
grounds for excommunication. My father, a former bishop, later told me that he
had thought the same thing. Therefore we were both surprised that I had instead
been disfellowshipped.
Disfellowshipment is a form of probation in which a church member
is not allowed to participate in church activities. A disfellowshipped
member cannot hold a church calling or partake of the sacrament, and is not
allowed to speak or pray during church services. I would still be a member,
however, and this would make it much easier to return to the life I had lived
before my mission began.
Excommunication (cancellation of Church
membership) comes with the same restrictions as disfellowshipment,
plus two addition ones: those that have been excommunicated are no longer
allowed to wear their temple garments and are not allowed to pay tithing
(though it is invariably explained to them that they can pay tithing through
another church member if they wish — hint hint). It
takes a long time for an excommunicated person to prove that they have fully
repented and are worthy to be re-baptized a member. A disfellowshipped
member, by comparison, can return to full participation status much easier and
much quicker.
So I was better off than I thought I
would be, but I had still done something terribly unworthy of a missionary, and
I wasn’t going to return home with honors. Even though I retained my
membership, I knew my parents were still going to be devastated. My parents had
moved to a new ward and my mother was no doubt anxious for all the members of
her ward to meet and fall in love with her humorous, brilliant, good-looking,
well-behaved son. "Brilliant" and "good-looking" could
remain part of her highly biased view of me, but the definition of
"well-behaved" was something she had to look to the Mormon Church
for, and it had already made its judgment: guilty — which in turn would greatly
diminish anything remotely "humorous" about my disposition. My trip
home was not going to be an easy one.
One Mormon father’s reaction to his son
having been stabbed while serving a mission in
...the young
man’s father [said] that there are worse things for a Mormon missionary than
wounds or even death.
He said that
when their church president came to their home Saturday and said, "There
has been a problem with Bradley," the family was "worried that he’d
done something unworthy."...
They were apparently relieved to find out
that Bradley hadn’t sinned, and had instead merely been viciously stabbed by
drunken Russians. His father explains why they were so glad to hear this:
"You see,
we’d rather have him come home in a pine box than do something unworthy,"
Dale Bordern said, battling to hold back tears....
Tears coursed
down Borden’s cheeks as he explained the importance for his missionary son to
"choose the right, do what is right, return with honor."
[His brother]
Christopher said he recently had come home from a mission in
[Christopher]
related how he and fellow missionaries were told that in ancient
"We want
Bradley to return with his shield, or on it," Christopher said.
That’s pressure — no question about it.
If, God forbid, Bradley were to have succumbed to the tempting invitation of a
pretty Russian girl who fell madly in love with him, and he with her, his
family would rather he were dead.
One has to wonder what the Mackintosh
family thought of the Borden family’s preference that Bradley come home in a
pine box rather than "do something unworthy." Quoting from the
article again we learn that:
Bradley Borden
was stabbed once in the stomach, and his fellow Mormon missionary, Jose Manuel
Mackintosh of
Perhaps the Mackintosh’s would rather
have seen their son come home outside of the pine box that he came home
in, even if he had done something so human as to commit a "sin" as
defined by the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
At the end of my court, in a very
compassionate tone, the mission president looked at me and said, "Elder,
this doesn’t erase all the good that you did on your mission. You were a good
missionary, with lots of success, and the Lord will remember that." Then
in a somber, sad tone he said, "It will take me a long time to get over
this, if I ever get over it."
Pressure built up in my face. I tried to
fight back all the tears, but a couple escaped. I simply nodded, unable to
speak.
My mission president apparently did get
over it eventually. A few years later, while serving as a bishop, he was
arrested for soliciting a prostitute and forcefully resisting arrest. He has
since repented and returned to the fold. I chose another path.
That afternoon I was escorted to my
apartment to collect my things. A flight was quickly booked for me to leave the
next day — just one week before the official end of my mission. I spent the
remainder of that day with nothing to do but sit and ponder how painful my
return home was going to be.
I had already packed, so the next morning
was a leisurely one. More time to think. More time to dread. Standing in the
lobby of he mission home, I was finally down to my last few minutes. The
mission president’s wife walked in and stood across the room from me. She asked
nicely, and matter-of-factly, if I was waiting to be taken to the airport. I
confirmed that I was, and we soaked up a moment of awkward silence together.
I wondered what she knew.
The financial secretary walked out of his
office. He knew that I was about to leave, and he had a very strong hunch as to
why. I smiled at him as best I could. He stood and looked at me for a moment.
Then he walked over, wrapped his arms around me, and did something I will never
forget. He wept.
At the time I felt as if I desperately
needed to be comforted. Suddenly, though, I was comforting someone else, and it
made me feel good. It was encouraging to know that I was still able to do so in
my condition. I told him not to worry about me, that I would be fine.
I think he gave me what I needed more
than anything else at that moment. I needed to be convinced that I was still
worth loving, and he did it in an irrefutable way, by empathetically crying
over my situation. Friendship doesn’t get any better, or stronger, than that. I
will always be grateful to him for that classy show of compassion.
The mission president’s wife watched the
whole thing. She said nothing. I again wondered what she knew.
Based on the description
of my mission’s final two days, readers might guess what a 20-plus hour trip
home was like for me. It gave me a lot of time to dwell, plenty of time to
shudder at the thought of facing my parents. It was lot’s
and lot’s of time, but still it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want the trip to end. I
wanted it to go on forever. I didn’t want the plane to ever land. At the very least,
I didn’t want it to land at the airport where my parents were going to be
waiting.
When the trip finally ended I sat and waited until
everyone else was off the plane. I couldn’t keep the flight staff waiting so I
forced myself up and dragged my feet off the plane. When I neared the end of
the exit tunnel, just before rounding the final corner where I would be in view
of anyone waiting in the reception area, I stopped. I set my luggage down and
leaned against the wall. I didn’t want to walk around that corner where I knew
my parents were waiting — I didn’t feel I could take it. I wanted to lie down,
close my eyes and evaporate.
I knew I couldn’t stay inside an airplane
exit-tunnel forever, so I walked past the corner to face what lie ahead. I
immediately saw my parents standing there all alone. Everyone else had left.
This meeting was terribly hard on them as well, and my making them wait so long
had made it even worse.
Dad forced a little smile. I know mom wanted to,
but she couldn’t. It was obvious she’d been crying, and I’m sure she must have
shed plenty of tears during the previous couple of days.
We exchanged big hugs, and then they took me home.
They certainly still loved me. They made sure I understood that, and never once
said or did anything to make me doubt it. My mother’s dreams had been
shattered, so it would be impossible and unfair to expect her not to have been
terribly effected by what happened, but her love and concern for me was not
diminished in the least.
The Borden family said they preferred that their
missionary son return to them dead with a clean record, rather than alive and
having done what I did. In stark contrast, my parents wished for nothing of the
sort. In fact my mother was angry that, as a direct result of my being disfellowshipped, I was disqualified to return to
The first thing a missionary does when he
or she returns home is to give a homecoming talk. Not me. I was not allowed
even to pray in church, let alone give a talk.
My mother had no doubt been talking
excitedly to people in the ward about my return. I’m sure the fact that I would
soon be returning was announced to everyone at church (I wonder how many
noticed that I returned a week earlier than I was supposed to). The ward
members were all certainly expecting to hear me speak on the first or second
Sunday after my return. Instead, however, my return was merely announced by the
bishop during sacrament meeting.
I stood up for everyone to see, and then
sat back down without saying a word. Later, during that same meeting, the
sacrament was passed around. Because I was a disfellowshipped
sinner, I was unable to partake, and had to pass it on to the person sitting
beside me.
All of these obvious signs sent a clear
message to everyone in the ward: the newly returned missionary that arrived
home a week early has sinned. The scarlet letter I had stitched in Victoria
Park that night was now being worn by me every time I attended church.
People at church were nice, and I made
some friends, but on the whole it was socially awkward and I hated going. I
only went to make my parents happy. I knew I had hurt them enough, and I didn’t
want to do any more to them than I already had. So I went through the motions.
None of this did my self-esteem any good.
***
Before long I met a girl that I started
to date pretty steadily. The relationship developed to where sex became a
regular part of it. In effect I was sinning while on probation.
My probation period involved regular
interviews with the bishop and stake president. For a while I lied to them and
said I was doing fine. Before long, though, I decided I had had enough. I no
longer wanted to lie just so I could continue to participate in a charade I
wanted no part of in the first place. I wanted to end it all. So I confessed.
At the time I had absolutely no harsh
feelings against the Church. I had been programmed to blame myself for my
unhappiness, and that’s what I did. I wasn’t angry at the Church or any of its
members, but I hated my life, and wanted to stop playacting. Something had to
change and confessing was the only way I knew of to change things. Asking to have my name removed from church records, and my
membership cancelled, never crossed my mind. I was still following the
orders of my life-long indoctrination and was willing and ready to accept
whatever judgment the Church gave me.
I didn’t know if the Church was true or
not. All I knew was that I was very unhappy in it and I wanted out, at least
for a while. In the back of my mind I still felt that if any church was true
then it was certainly the Mormon Church. I believed it was the most rational
and logical of all religions, offering better, more thorough answers to all the
deep theological questions. I decided to walk away from religion for the moment
and believed that if I ever went back it would be to the Mormon Church.
I now look back at that belief of mine
and laugh at it for two reasons: First, I had not studied other religions, so
my assumption that the Mormon Church possessed the best answers was based on
what I had been told by the Mormon Church itself. Second, I hadn’t even studied
Mormonism (which is typical of the vast majority of Mormons), so I believed it
to be logical and rational based, again, on what it said about itself. So I
allowed myself to remain in a confused limbo for years over a belief system
that is anything but a logical and rational belief system; it is in fact
very easy to refute.
I foolishly postponed investigating the
Church. For the time being I just wanted out, and as long as all the
unconscious baggage remained in my mind, confessing was the only conceivable
way to do it. Unfortunately I waited 10 years to do my investigating. I say
"unfortunately" because a recovering former believer of a particular
belief system must come to terms with the question, "Is it true."
Until that is done, there will always be a ball and chain to carry around, of
various weights and sizes depending on one’s personal experience with the
organization in question. When I finally did my studying and saw how easily the
Mormon Church can be seen for what it is, I kicked myself for not doing it
years earlier. The truth really does make one free.
A court was quickly arranged and I
received a letter in the mail informing me of the time and date. I arrived at
the chapel with my parents. They were not allowed to attend the court so they
waited outside in the lobby. I was escorted in by my bishop. I wasn’t prepared
for what awaited me. Filling the small room to capacity were fourteen men in
suits and ties standing around a conference table. I was escorted to one end of
the table and stood there with their eyes upon me. It was the most intimidating
moment of my life.
The first councilor of the stake
presidency headed the hearing. He instructed everyone to sit. He explained the
charges and asked me to confirm my guilt. After going over what I had
confessed, I was then subjected to all the men asking me questions as if I were
at a press conference. The questions involved actions going back to even before
my mission and were mostly related to masturbation, pornography, and sex. Whether
or not I had masturbated before my mission (two years prior to the date of my
hearing) surely had no bearing whatsoever on the outcome of my hearing. The
only reason I can figure as to why I was asked such a question,
is that every man present must have wanted to feel he was playing a useful part
in the hearing and therefore asked anything he could think of that hadn’t
already been asked by someone else. I went through the robot motions of indoctrination
and answered all their questions, which is something I regret very much,
because those men had no right to expect me to answer any of those questions.
It was a perverted and bizarre expression of power by some men over others.**
When asked, I chose to say nothing on my
own behalf, and did not plead to keep my membership. My bishop, a wonderful man,
sat beside me throughout the hearing. I don’t know the official logistics of
court procedures, but the bishop appeared to be acting as a character witness
in my defense. He spoke admiringly of my parents, saying they were a wonderful
contribution to the ward, but, oddly, the only thing he seemed to be able to
say in my defense was that I was very intelligent, something he repeated three
times during his presentation. I appreciated the compliment but was wondering
how that particular characteristic (putting aside the question of its validity)
was supposed to help me in this type of a court, one where my eternal soul was
on the brink for the deeply serious act of having consensual sex with another
unmarried adult.
I was judged guilty based on my personal
confession. The sentence was excommunication.
In closing, the officiator said he was
not asking anything of me that was not also required of him. He, after all, was
required to maintain a monogamous relationship with his wife. Masked behind his
indignant tone, I detected what appeared like resentment. I felt as if he were
taking the opportunity to vent a little frustration out on me with a
declaration of self-righteousness. He was strong where I was not.
Not only did his tone of voice surprise
me, but I was also puzzled by the fact that he said it at all. He certainly
knew I was well aware of the fact that the Mormon Church required him to live a
monogamous marriage. Why state something so obvious for everyone in the court
to hear? I think the law of chastity, requiring that he remain monogamous, may
have been causing him some frustration. Maybe it is these types of feelings
that cause many members to assume that people leave
the church so they can "sin" free of guilt. They think, If it wasn’t for the Church, I could do such-and-such and
not feel guilty. How that is supposed to work, I am not sure. I’m an atheist,
but I could not cheat on my wife without feeling guilty about it. I seriously
doubt that many Mormons put much serious thought into this common accusation.
This logic only works for
"sinful" actions that are uniquely Mormon.
Ironically, then, if the Church is false, an attempt to rid one’s self
of church-induced guilt would have to be judged as a worthy endeavor. For
example, it would not be sinful to hate doing genealogy, to hate reading
scriptures, to stay home from church, to strongly disagree with Mormon leaders,
to donate to worthy charities instead of paying tithing, and on and on. One is
free to come to their own conclusions about the rightness or wrongness of what
they do privately, either alone or with another consenting adult. If one claims
people leave the Church so they can feel good about oppressing the
disadvantaged or seducing other men’s wives, then they are concluding that
Mormonism has a monopoly on such morals, which is absurd.
Without Mormonism, would a responsible
person live by the rule: anything goes? Certainly not.
However, there is truth to the assertion that those who leave the Church will
suffer less guilt from doing, or not doing, those things the Church defines as
sinful to do, or not do. None of this has anything at all to do with the
truthfulness of the Church. That has to be determined separately. But if it’s not
true, why suffer from unnecessary guilt? Isn’t it worth the time to find out if
the Church really holds up under careful investigation? Is there a believing
Mormon in existence that doesn’t suffer from uniquely-Mormon guilt? Why suffer
through it if Mormonism is merely a man-made creation? Are the benefits of
membership worth it? For Mormons who say “Yes,” what exactly are the benefits
if it isn’t true?
Were I to sit in that court today, I
would not answer a single one of their perverted questions. I would ask for my
church membership to be cancelled.
As for the stake presidency’s first
councilor ending the court by saying that he required nothing more of me than
is required of him, I have a belated response: "I wasn’t married, nor was
my girlfriend, so your comparison was senseless. Even more telling, though, is
that The Church’s founder had sexual morals that would shock even people who
approve of my having had consensual premarital sex. Joseph Smith had ‘sexual
relationships with polygamous wives as young as fourteen, polyandry of women
with more than one husband, [and] marriage and sexual cohabitation with foster
daughters.’ (The
Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, pg. 89, by D. Michael Quinn) Did
any of you who sat in judgment over me that day even know that? If not, why did
you all choose to remain so ignorant of the history of an organization you were,
and perhaps still are, devoting a very large part of your lives to? Isn’t it
ironic, considering the behavior of the Church’s founder, that you sat before
me as judges that day and declared me unfit for membership."
I titled this “A Happy Ending” because I
am living as fulfilling and meaningful a life as anyone can expect in this
unpredictable world of ours. I don’t think that’s possible to do when one
devotes most of one’s time and energy to something that is false.
I can be contacted at: jack.b.worthy@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Footnotes:
*In Atheism: The Case Against God, George
H. Smith wrote: "To be moral, according to Jesus, man must shackle his
reason. He must force himself to believe that which he cannot understand. He
must suppress, in the name of morality, any doubts that surface in his mind. He
must regard as a mark of excellence an unwillingness
to subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to
more faith — and faith, Jesus declares, is the hallmark of virtue... The
psychological impact of this doctrine is devastating. To divorce morality from
truth is to turn man's reason against himself... To the extent that a man
believes that his mind is a potential enemy, that it
may lead to the 'evils' of question-asking and criticism, he will feel the need
for intellectual passivity — to deliberately sabotage his mind in the name of
virtue. Reason becomes a vice, something to be feared, and man finds that his
worst enemy is his own capacity to think and question. One can scarcely imagine
a more effective way to introduce perpetual conflict into man's consciousness
and thereby produce a host of neurotic symptoms."
**Mormonism is a patriarchal society with
very strict sexual moral codes. To ensure that members adhere to the rules,
they are frequently interviewed by their male bishops in face-to-face,
one-on-one meetings, and detailed questions about their sexual lives (including
masturbation) are asked of both sexes beginning at the age of 12. In The Demon-Haunted World,
Carl Sagan writes about the perverted aspects of
the inquisition that I think offer a relevant comparison. "There were
strong erotic and misogynistic elements — as might be expected in a sexually
repressed, male-dominated society with inquisitors drawn from the class of
nominally celibate priests. The trials paid close attention to the quality and
quantity of orgasm in the supposed copulations of defendants with demons or the
Devil... ‘Devil’s marks’ were found ‘generally on the breasts or private parts’
according to Ludovico Sinistrari’s
1700 book. As a result pubic hair was shaved, and the genitalia were carefully
inspected by the exclusively male inquisitors...." Of course I’m not
saying that modern day Mormonism is the equivalent of the Catholic Church’s
inquisition during the Dark Ages, but I certainly do believe that any patriarchal
society such as the Mormon Church’s lends itself to instances of abuse,
including sexual abuse. Other stories on this Web site seem to confirm this, as
well as numerous media reports of the Church’s attempts to cover-up instances
of sexual child abuse that were committed by priesthood holders.
Return to : https://www.exmormon.org
January 2004 - Updated Dec. 2007