My Spiritual Journey So Far

This is going to be one of my longest posts ever, but if it interests you I hope you’ll keep reading. I debated about separating it into multiple posts, but decided that the benefits of including it all in one shot outweigh the drawbacks of being longwinded. You can always read it in bits and pieces if you’d like.

So here it goes.

I spend a good portion of my time and energy focused on spirituality and religion. Which is funny, because I don’t really consider myself to be particularly inclined toward religion. But I was born to parents who are and so it naturally became a part of my life too. Specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS or Mormon Church). My parents joined when I was five.

Some of you are vaguely familiar with the LDS church and will read this because you know me and are interested in knowing me better. Some of you are members of the LDS church and will hopefully be buoyed up by the thoughts that I share here. Some of you are probably wondering why a seemingly intelligent person even believes in God, never mind a religion as wacky as Mormonism.

Over the years I have really grappled with the idea of God and a life that extends beyond death. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to live in a world that was created by a loving God and to believe that we are all here on purpose rather than the alternative. This may sound paradoxical, but the world—especially all of the ugliness—makes a lot more sense to me that way. I know that a lot of scary and just plain irritating things have happened in the name of God and religion. But I absolutely reject that as a reason to not believe.

I don’t come by my faith easily. I have very deliberately chosen to believe in God and to exercise faith accordingly. And I have found that as I exercise my faith, I understand more about spiritual things. It gives me a great sense of peace and hope.

Why have I stuck with the LDS Church? Without meaning any disrespect, I find all religions “wacky” in the sense that they all require a suspension of disbelief. Burning bushes? Being raised from the dead? The devil? But the more I learn about core LDS doctrines in plain terms, the more I get it. And I recognize that the narratives and symbols and ceremonies that can seem wacky on the surface are elements that help people connect to a spiritual dimension that we can scarcely conceive through earthly eyes or describe with our limited language.

Here are some of the LDS doctrines that appeal to me:

• Agency. No one can be compelled to believe in God and the gospel of Christ and follow its teachings. We must be able to choose our faith freely or it serves no meaningful purpose.
• Christ’s atonement. The “radical” interpretation that the LDS church teaches makes more sense to me than other interpretations I’ve heard. Our eternal life is dependent upon both the grace of Christ’s atonement and the way we move through this life (our works).
• A living, involved God. We believe in a living God and in living prophets and in a restored priesthood (the power to act with the authority of God through the inspiration of the spirit of God—a power used, by the way, to serve one another, not to exercise dominion over one another). We believe in personal revelation—we can ask God ourselves to help us find truth and direction. We can seek the companionship of his spirit.
• A literal Heavenly Father. We are spiritual children of God and we existed before we were born. We have been given our bodies so we can become more like him (we were, after all, created in his image). We are here on earth to tap into that part of us which is divine. Our job is to learn how to use and, yes, enjoy our bodies in a way that is integral with our spirits, our divine nature.
• The nature of sin and repentance. No matter how much we humans, including us Mormons, continually want to reduce it all to a list of objective and measurable dos and don’ts, we miss the point if that’s what we focus on. Commandments are there for our benefit, not God’s—they are designed to help us progress spiritually and to keep us from doing spiritual damage to ourselves and others. At the heart of it we need to understand on a very personal level what draws us closer to God and what puts space between us and God. We try to think and act in the ways that draw us closer to God, understanding that we will sometimes (often?) fail. And when we do, we choose to once again draw ourselves closer to God through repentance. It’s not about hellfire and damnation, rules for rules’ sake and God exercising stern judgment and power over us. It’s about our spirits growing up, gaining control over ourselves and fulfilling the measure of our creation.
• Eternal progression. Growing closer to and becoming more like God is not just a life-long process, but continues after death. While we take the spiritual state we’re in with us when we die, we are not stuck there for eternity.
• Opposition in all things. We must know darkness to know light. We must know sorrow to know joy. To progress we risk double-edge swords everywhere. For example, the agency that is fundamental to our progression can also be used to perpetrate great evil. You can’t have one side without the other.
• Harmony between science and religion. We believe that God is subject to natural laws and that he didn’t create the world out of nothing; rather, he organized existing matter. We also believe that we are meant to learn as much about the world around us as we can. We humans have figured out how to observe with our senses and we’ve developed scientific method. I think God’s pretty proud of us for figuring out as much as we have so far, but I also think we’ll be amazed at what we can learn if we don’t limit ourselves to our five physical senses. For example, I personally don’t see a conflict between the theory of evolution and creationism. I just don’t think we see the whole picture yet.

While I’m open to learning truth anywhere it can be found, I refuse to get caught up in worrying about the “dark side” of the LDS church. I believe Mormons are human beings with all that entails for good or bad. I’m also pretty skeptical of anything I can’t judge for myself (either by witnessing it or being able to judge a witness). Think how often you read something in the newspaper these days that you know to be patently untrue or skewed to achieve a particular agenda.

Church founder Joseph Smith never professed to be perfect and said that he wouldn’t believe his story if he hadn’t lived it himself. None of our leaders past or present claim infallibility nor do they claim constant, crystal clear communication from God on every little matter. And any church, especially a new church with a completely lay ministry, is going to draw its share of incompetents and nutcases who may well work their way up the ranks before anyone realizes what they’re dealing with. Even then, God loves and wants to include people no matter how incompetent or nutty they are.

I choose instead to focus on my own personal spiritual journey and being actively involved in the LDS church helps me to do that. While I am not privy to the inner workings of, say, exactly where our tithing money is spent, I daily witness the rubber hitting the road—neighbors helping, loving and praying for one another and meeting together to worship and learn in a building that can only exist because we have paid our tithing. We certainly aren’t perfect. In fact, even our chapel with its random heating and cooling system isn’t perfect. But the more of us are striving to become better people and to draw closer to God.

Our idea of spiritual progression involves a lot of struggle and learning one thing at a time. If all of the church’s leaders and members and policies and procedures were immediately and permanently made perfect the instant the church was organized, that would defeat the whole reason we’re here on earth.

And if my spiritual experiences have been imagined and none of it’s true? I’ll never know—I’ll just be dead. But in the meantime, I’m living a life in a way that makes sense and really matters to me.