I’d pictured a maternal rebuke. Disappointment and tears. “I raised you better than this!” Incredulity. A guilt trip. We’d never be able to have another conversation that wasn’t about how concerned she was about me. She’d mobilize my father and siblings and the thought of the imminent, endless, sorrow-soaked interventions had made me squirm.
Instead, she said, “Well, kid, the older I get, the more I see that people just have to live their own lives and make their own choices. I’d be lying if I said I like this. I don’t. If you’ve really lost your testimony, it breaks my heart. But you’re my son and whatever happens, we’ll all still love you and that won’t change.”
When you believe in the LDS Church, when you “know it’s true,” we say you have a testimony of the gospel. When you lapse in your beliefs, you have “lost your testimony.” I love this idea; it makes it sound so simple to get it back. That you can retrace your steps and find your faith, or maybe if you close your eyes and concentrate, you’ll remember the last time you saw it. Now wheeeeeere did I put that thing?
I don’t so much feel that I’ve lost my testimony as that it’s broken and scattered. When I scrutinize my life, turning over the proverbial stones, all I find are pieces of myself. Under one stone is the memory of my dream about Alan walking with Christ. Another stone covers the memory of the boy at the end of a dark road in Idaho, crying out for help, then believing he received it. Here are the people I taught on my mission. Here are the many Sundays spent in church, the countless times I heard someone say, “I know this is true.” Here I am, offering the prayers of the past, kneeling, again and again, asking, pleading, and sometimes, feeling as if I’m merely speaking to an empty room. Here are the beliefs of my parents and their parents and theirs…
When I take the pieces of my faith, of the testimony I had, they don’t fit together anymore. They don’t create the bigger picture I used to fit into. I don’t know how to make them mean what they used to mean.
“Max,” she said, “did you tell Daddy what I taught you to say?”
Max leaned forward in his car seat and looked at me. “I love you with all my circle!” He made a circle with his hands.
“You too, buddy,” I said.
We got back to my house, changed our clothes, got Max some lunch, and continued talking.
“Josh, do you know what my favorite thing is?” she asked. “I mean, my very favorite thing?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s when the whole family comes for a holiday and you kids just sit around and laugh together. You don’t have any idea what that feels like for me. There’s nothing I look forward to more.”
“Yeah. I feel the same way.” So did the mother in The Corrections, I thought, but things didn’t go that well for her. “But just because I want us all to be together forever doesn’t mean it’s possible. Believe me, nothing would make me happier, but I just don’t think I believe that.”
“That’s okay. We’re not going to change each other’s minds today.”
“I really thought you’d be more upset.”
“Why is it that you think you can’t believe?”
“See, that’s what I mean. I think I might be able to believe, but you don’t say you believe, you say you know. I see it differently. I don’t trust my emotions like you do, and so we’ve got very different ideas about what it means to know something.”
“Well, maybe…would you say you love Max?”
“Of course!”
“You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s based on feelings. No, let me finish. All I’m saying is that there are different ways of knowing things. You know you love Max, but can you prove it? Not unless you make sure everyone has the same definition of love. But you know it. You do. Would you ever say, ‘I believe I love my son’?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, neither would I. We know. And when I say I ‘know’ the church is true, I’m speaking from a feeling that’s as real to me as the way I love you kids, and the way you love Max. I don’t go around telling people what they should do with their lives, but I know the truth of this well enough to know how I should live my own life. And you’re one of the most important parts of my life, and that’s why this matters so much to me.”
“I believe you, Mom. I just don’t feel what you feel. I’m not even saying I’m right. I’m just saying I’m not sure what it’s possible to know. I’ve never been more uncertain than I am right now, and it scares me if I think about it for too long. It’s kind of embarrassing, honestly. I feel like I’m a thirty-five-year-old man learning how to think clearly for the first time.”
“Unlike me, right?”
“See, you think this is hard for you, but you have no idea how painful it is for me. It’s lonely to be in this position. I can’t say things like ‘I finally feel like I can think clearly’ without implying that, because you still believe, you’re not thinking clearly. So it’s just easier for me not to talk about it at all, even with you, and that’s lonely.”
She laughed. “Well, the good news is that you’re wrong, so what do you think about that, sonny boy?”
“I think you’re old and rickety. And probably senile.”
She held up her hands in the familiar karate chop position. The left hand flashed out at me. I ducked.
She faked again and I flinched, which allowed her to rush in and hug me. “Well, if I’m not senile yet, I certainly will be, and I’m depending on you to take care of me. I love you, Josh, and I’ll always be proud of you. Whatever happens, we’re going to be happy when we’re together. There’s no sense in letting the Big Picture destroy the small picture. You really don’t need to feel defensive about this, although I’m sure that’s not as easy as I’m making it sound. It takes guts to take a stand the way you are, so don’t think I’m not proud of you doing what you think you have to do.”
“I’m not taking a stand, Mom. I’m just saying I don’t know. But I love you too. I was the luckiest kid.”
“No, Max is the luckiest kid. Now that I’m a rickety, senile old lady I’ve got enough money to spoil him like I couldn’t with you all.” She went outside. When I joined them a few minutes later, Max was hanging upside down on the monkey bars while she pretended to shoot lasers at him from her fingers. “Dad!” he screamed. “She’s getting me!”
I am so lucky, I thought again. And every time I had this thought, it was so intense and clear that it felt like a revelation, even though I’d always known it.
The problem with epiphanies is that they can’t sustain you forever. They are as fragile and ephemeral as the words in Charlotte’s webs. After my dream about Alan and after that night spent praying in my car, I know that I felt clarity and assurance, and a sense that things would be all right. I felt loved. I remember that. And if I could snap my fingers and feel that way again five minutes from now, then I would snap my fingers, triple time. But I don’t know how to bring those feelings back. And I also believe that I no longer need the comfort those feelings gave me. I get the same reassurance my family, from my friends, from my books, and my training.
That night, after Max was asleep and my mom had gone to bed, Janette asked if my mom and I had talked about anything interesting.
“I told her how I feel about the church right now,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “I’m sure that wasn’t easy.”
“It actually wasn’t that bad.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then: “Josh, would you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“I know it probably won’t change anything, but would you be willing to talk to our bishop about how you feel, and just see if he has any suggestions?”
“Suggestions as far as what?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I’d appreciate it if you’d be willing to go.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t know our bishop well. I’d only had one other conversation with him, a “get
ting to know you” chat three or four years ago. This time, he put me right at ease by saying, “If I can help, tell me, but you don’t owe me an explanation for anything.”
Well, crap…he’d ruined all of the snappy answers I had come up with to refute the accusations and disappointment that he would aim at me. My anxiety and defensiveness fading, we talked.
I told him that my emotions are so chaotic that I can’t even begin to trust them enough to draw conclusions about an objective reality, let alone use them to tell anyone else how they should live. I told him that I’m no longer sure of what we can know, but that I can’t say I know things I don’t anymore. I told him that when I go to church I sometimes envy those who seem so sure about everything, but not often.
I prepared for the castigation. Now he would say, “Hmm…What aren’t you telling me?”
Instead, he said, “Josh, there’s no magic answer. I can’t make you feel anything you don’t. Nobody can. I think you should keep trying, if you want to, and be more patient with yourself. We’re all doing the best we can. If it’s good for you, keep asking your questions, and let me know if I can help. I appreciate your honesty and I’m glad that you feel like you can talk to me about such difficult things. Do you have any other questions?”
“I don’t think so. Wait—can I tell you a story?”
“Of course.”
“When I was maybe twelve years old, we went to Disneyland. On that trip we went to the beach. I was really excited. So we got there and I ran toward the water, but when I got up to about my ankles, my body just, it’s weird, but it just shut down. My heart rate went way up and I was cold and my stomach was flipping out. I backed out of the water and it faded. This happened every time I tried to go in, although I finally got up to my waist. I thought I’d probably just read too many books about sharks, but when I told my parents my dad said that when I was three, he and I had almost drowned in the ocean during another vacation. I was in his arms when he got caught in a tide and pulled out farther and faster than he realized. He said that a lifeguard pulled us out after we’d gone under. I don’t remember this at all, but my mom said, ‘I bet that’s what’s happening. You remember it.’”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yeah. And even though I can’t remember it, it’s obviously still in my head, although I have no problem going in the ocean now. That’s kind of how church feels to me. Despite me telling you I don’t know, and even with all of the arguments I could make about faith and reason, the fact is, I’ve been hearing this stuff every single day for most of my life, including my early years. It’s all still in there, so while I can make a plausible case for doubt, I’m not totally free in my head, like there’s a physical, gnawing fear of being cut off, or being wrong, or cast out, or whatever. Does that make any sense?”
He nodded. “Yes, and I can’t really speak to that. It sounds to me like you’re doing what you can do. I’m here to help if I can.”
He was so kind and open that all I could do was hug him and say, “This didn’t go at all how I pictured it.”
Things don’t always go this well for skeptics in the church.
There’s a story in the Book of Mormon about a man named Korihor. Korihor goes around telling everyone that there’s not going to be a Christ or Savior, that there’s no such thing as sin, and that they should all start enjoying themselves more. He says that you can’t really know things that you can’t see. Some people listen to him and get up to all sorts of shenanigans, and others cast him out and ban him from their towns. He has a lengthy debate with a righteous man named Alma in a classic atheist-versus-believer smackdown. Korihor demands a sign. Alma says, “One sign, coming right up!” and Korihor, the poor bastard, is struck deaf and mute. Now he confesses that he always knew there was a God, but a devil had appeared to him and tricked him into doing his bidding.
Well, this contrition doesn’t fly. Korihor, cursed and reviled, eventually becomes a beggar, and in a scene of breathtaking vagueness, he is “run down and trodden upon, even until he was dead,” while among a group of people called the Zoramites. Holy crap!
I’m no Korihor. In terms of signs, I don’t know what I would even ask for. I can’t say that there’s not a God. I can’t say that there is. I can’t say that I know the church is true. I can’t say that I know it isn’t. All I can say is that I don’t know. And I don’t know if it’s possible to really know. Right now I have as little interest in creating skeptics as I do in creating believers. I have even less interest in being so skeptical and sneering that I am “trodden upon, even until I am dead.”
That’s a joke.
But truly, saying “I don’t know” in this church is tricky. This isn’t church that you only go to on holidays or weekends. This is all day, every day. It’s a culture and a lifestyle. You demonstrate faith and devotion not only through your actions, but also with your thoughts. Sunday meetings are only part of it. Home teachers are supposed to visit families each month to share a message and see how the family’s doing. If you’re a man and you stop coming to church, you can expect a friendly visit or phone call from the elder’s quorum presidency. If you say you don’t know, then people will know that you don’t know. You’re not going to be set adrift while other church members know that you are struggling. That’s something I love about the church. When I’m at church, I really feel like we’re all in this life together and that we’re responsible for helping one another. It’s a wonderful reminder each week that there are groups of people out there that really care about one another. I could make one hundred phone calls right now and say, “Hey, I’m moving tonight and I haven’t boxed anything up and it’s going to be a ton of thankless work,” and I’d probably get at least that many people to come help me.
When people tell me—when I’m at work, I have a face, or maybe a voice, that just says “confide”—that the church is a controlling, greedy, sinister monster that’s only interested in brainwashing people and subjugating women, I say, “I don’t know that church, but I can understand why you’d have a problem with the church’s history.” I know happy, generous people. I know my compassionate bishop. I don’t see rubes and sheep. I’m way too ignorant and fallible and unsure to sneer at other people who are just trying to live the best way they know how. I see people who want the world to be better than it is and who are willing to work for it.
I just can’t work at it in the same way they do anymore. I can’t trust my emotions as confidently as they trust theirs. It sounds like a cop-out at this point to say, “Well, maybe I don’t have the gift of belief,” but maybe I don’t. Maybe I never did. I can’t remember. If there’s a personal God, I have to believe that he knows my heart, and why I have to do what I’m doing right now. Why I have to live according to what makes sense to me, and not according to what is sacred to others.
Even though she says she’s glad that we’re now talking about it openly, my conversations with Janette aren’t easy.
After my conversation with the bishop, Janette asked me how it had gone. I gave her the recap and tried again to summarize my doubts. She looked sadder and sadder and then said, “Josh, I won’t stop believing for you.”
In my mind, I’d said, “This concerns me, and this concerns me, and here’s how I think about this, and here’s why I’m not sure that this means what I thought it means,” and what she heard was my attempt to persuade her to join me in a mad flight from faith. I was thinking out loud, but voicing my concerns was threatening and I’ve seen this many times: Wondering about the church can make someone feel like she’s being attacked or that she’s listening to something dangerous.
“I’m not asking you to,” I said. “And, you know, I can’t believe just to make things easier for you. It’s not a choice I can make just like that. When I try to pray, or I try to read the scriptures, I get nothing. I don’t feel anything. The things that used to work just aren’t working. I don’t know what else to say about that.”
“Josh,” she said. “
It’s a choice. You choose to believe, or you choose not to.”
“But then you could just decide to believe anything and act like it was true.”
“Yes. Maybe. But you can choose to believe something that feels right to you.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing, because I’d expect you to lose respect for me if I just went through the motions, because that’s what I’ve been doing, and I’ve lost respect for me. I have to step back for a while and see what I think without being in the middle of it.”
“Okay,” she said. “I can live with that. But what are we going to tell Max?”
“You know, how people think is so much more important to me than what they think. If you’re okay with me telling Max how I think about things, and how I’ve gotten to the point I’m at now, then I’ll feel like he’s getting a chance to learn how to think. Once he knows how to think, he can decide what to think. I just want him to be aware that there are choices.”
“And what do you expect me to tell him?”
“I just want you to be honest with him. We both just have to be honest with him. Tell him exactly what you feel and what you think. I will too. That kid has to have our support, whether he’s faithful or not. I just want it to be his choice.”
“So do you feel okay about everything? About us?”
I took her hands. “Yes. That might be the one thing I’m totally sure of. You and me. I’m lucky that I’m in a marriage where we can talk about this. We’re both willing to talk about it.”
“I feel the same way, and I don’t think it needs to be a huge problem.”
“Me either.”
What I’ll tell Max is that I love his mom, his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles and cousins more than anything. I’ll tell him that they are my life, and they are a life worth living. When he asks what I believe, I’ll tell him that I do believe in many of the tenets of the church: