Religious Faith Quandaries

Probably my favorite show on any media is one that can be listened to on NPR Saturday afternoons at 2:00pm, or for me podcasted and listened to at my convenience, This American Life . The radio show is organized each week around a theme, having multiple stories around that theme, about usually ordinary people in America, but usually, these ordinary people are having very extra-ordinary experiences, very different from my own. So, I usually thoroughly enjoy these glimpses into other people's lives. A few episodes ago, they did a show entitled Nobody's Family is Going to Change. The title they took from this book. Each story revolves around the idea that it is sometimes pointless to get someone else to change.

One of these stories documents the relationship between a brother and a sister: the brother a recent charismatic born-again convert, the sister, a lesbian. And it is this conflict, between religious certainty and more of a rational skepticism, and a general tolerance of each other's point of view, that I want to spend some time discussing. Because at some level I can really relate to this conflict, having my own personal experiences with it.

But first, let me give you a summary of the show. The story is narrated by the sister, and she describes how while they were growing up, before he left home for college, the two were extremely close. However, in his freshman year in college, as a result of some major emotional struggles, culminating in an intensely personal, spiritual, emotionally charged experience, the brother converts to Christianity and joins a charismatic church. As a result of this conversion, he completely embraces his faith to the degree that he drops out of school and moves to a farm in Alaska owned by this church to live a communal lifestyle with other believers, abandoning his family in the process. Meanwhile, his sister embraces lesbianism, and moves to Europe with her girlfriend. In time, she finally makes a visit to the farm to visit her brother, trying to figure out what happened to him, to make an attempt to reconnect their once close relationship, and to convince him to accept her choices as much as she hopes to accept his. She even made a movie about this trip.

It was fascinating to hear their conversations in real-time as she attempts to get him to accept her as she is, which is impossible for him to do. In fact, earlier, he made a trip to visit her in Europe, shortly after his conversion. Needless to say, he was judgmental of her situation. What's also fascinating is how she describes the differences each took in dealing with their problems, her time spent working through problems with a therapist, his consultation with the Bible to find answers.

This whole dynamic is interesting. According to the narrator, before his conversion, he was very non-homophoboic, very accepting, and they were very close. However, as she makes the attempts to visit him and talk with him, she discovers the details of his conversion. How his freshman year was unusually difficult; how he was struggling with depressive thoughts; how he has this religious, very spiritual experience; how through this experience, he felt in a very direct and undeniable way, God's love for him; how through additional experiences he was led to this charismatic church; and how through a relationship from this woman who kind of mentors him, he decides to move to the farm.

You see, what is fascinating here is that he becomes a Christian because of an emotionally-charged spiritual experience. I am not sure the extent of the intellectual process involved, it seemed obvious that he studied the Bible pretty intently thereafter, but it seems definitely secondary for him. Nonetheless, he seamlessly adopts all of the doctrines of the church almost without question.

And that's what is interesting to me, that when you experience spiritual conversion to a faith, to a church, and establish both an emotional and a spiritual connection to a particular sect, the intellectual conversion just sort of follows. So, of course he would come down hard on his sister's lifestyle, because it's in the Bible plain as day and I'm sure his pastor preached a sermon on it one Sunday, and it all made sense, and of course it must be true because God led him on this path.

I must confess I don't know these people, I only heard a brief summary on a radio show, so I'm extrapolating here, but stuff like this has happened to me and I bet it has happened to you. In fact, in many ways, I can relate to this phenomenon more so than most because of the religious faith I belong to. Growing up in a non-Mormon town where I had a lot of non-Mormon friends, and being the sort of combative know-it-all kid I was, I got into plenty of religious debates, and I always felt like I was at the disadvantage. You see, the Mormon faith makes some pretty big claims on divine revelation, prophets, priesthood, and being the only true and living church. It's in the first section of the Doctrine Covenants, our church being "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually—". So, in a debate on church doctrine, all one of my detractors had to do was find one example where my church was wrong, and the major premise of my church falls apart as well.

In contrast, the Protestants have it easy. Most of them simply say that as long as you believe in Jesus Christ (and since most people in Yuma, AZ do), you have nothing to worry about. That churches here on earth are a man-made invention, flawed to be sure, mere tools to help us mingle together, strengthen one-another, but the truth lies only in the Bible and in our relationship with God. We largely agree on this point, but it's just our church takes the additional rather significant step that God in His wisdom and mercy talked to one fourteen year old boy back in the early 1800's and through him started a divinely directed church.

And our church, through revelation to prophets does have a lot of complex doctrines, not completely understood by anyone I know, which is exciting to have room to grow and expand in an organization. But it's tricky. Despite all of the doctrinal complexities inherent in the church, mainly members of the church are directed to keep it simple, rooted in simple expressions of faith, rooted in emotional and spiritual experiences. In our monthly testimony meetings, we are asked to keep our messages short and focused on simple expressions of faith in God, Jesus Christ, and in the Divine mission of the church on the earth. As missionaries teaching prospective converts, we stick to six simple discussions, based solely on core principles of faith, repentance, baptism, the Holy Ghost, scriptures, prophets, and revelation. We ask the person to pray, and as directed by their own convictions make the choice to act on the emotions and feelings they experience as they search. That's it.

But what's interesting to me, in the context of this essay, is what we don't do. A convert is never asked if they are comfortable with the church's polygamous history, or what they think of the historical controversies surrounding the Mountain Meadows massacre. Many times, a prospective convert will hear about this or other issues from a friend or pastor either before or soon after the conversion at which time they are forced to deal with it, but the missionaries never bring it up. And it's probably a good thing too because these issues are difficult to explain and basically get in the way of what's important, a person's personal journey to establish a relationship with Deity.

But contrast that with someone like myself who grew up in the church or someone who has been a member for many years. I have heard so many explanations of polygamy from these people and even have come up with a few of my own, none of them, to my knowledge, are officially church endorsed. But because the person has an emotional connection to the faith, they feel compelled to close the loop intellectually as well, and then talk themselves into some pretty crazy mental gymnastics in their attempts to do so.

I am only using the example of my faith because it is my faith, but we all have examples. Let's take politics. Isn't it strange to you that as soon as you declare yourself to be a liberal (for example), you almost always automatically become pro choice on abortion, anti-death penalty, pro progressive tax code, pro strict environmental laws, pro-increase the minimum wage, etc., etc., etc. Somewhere along the line, you probably had some sort of emotional conversion to the Democratic party, maybe a particular political leader was particularly inspiring, maybe the group of friends you associate with were influential, maybe your parents were Democrats and were raised you that way. But because of something more emotional than intellectual, you find yourself compelled to close the loop 100% of the way, and basically adopt the complete party line, hook, line and sinker. And your voting record bears it out.

This is not meant to be a criticism, it's incredibly easy thing to do. In fact, I have been a registered Republican most of my life and in those years I had a pretty consistent Republican-oriented voting record. I really can't remember ever voting for a Democrat until around 2004 or so. It was then that I registered independent, and have tried to vote that way. More recently, almost entirely because of Barack Obama, I registered Democrat, and found myself sympathizing more and more uniformly with the democratic side of the argument on so many issues. I have to keep reminding myself to stay independent in my thinking.

But there is another political component to my point. One of my first blog posts, I entitled it, "Are Democrats Smarter than Republicans", consisting of my personal political history. Well, one of the points I never really got to there and I'm getting to here, is that the Republican party has largely become the party of faith, while the Democratic party has become the party of intellectual reasoning.

The clash between the brother and sister of This American Life happens all the time in Congress, on Fox News, and in our communities. You are un-American if you don't wear an American lapel on your jacket and attend a church pastored by Jeremiah Wright. John Kerry was pillared in the 2004 debates for bringing up the idea of using a "global test" before we invade another country. And Bush's invasion into Iraq, as ill-thought out as it was, and this medieval like Crusades aspect to it.

Even the economic debates has this religious versus secular feel to it. The Republicans view always boils down to keeping the government out of the market and this almost religious faith that the free-market model will solve all of problems of poverty, family, and country. And the Republicans have been largely effective in labeling Democrats as elitist socialist, who want to grow government at the expense of our liberty.

In fact, most of the Democratic arguments I read are much more moderate. Most support the free market, but see its limitations in certain areas, so they support regulation, and government constraint, and to help "smooth over the rough edges" of the free market.

Now I'm not saying the Republican point of view is necessarily wrong and the Democratic view is right. I definitely see the religious point of view healthy and necessary in the political sphere, and I largely disagree with some attempts to eliminate religion from the public conversation. And sometimes, the more simple, religious approach is also the right approach.

To wrap up, I want to talk a little more about something personal to me that really fits into this theme, the issue of homosexuality. This issue has so many elements of religion and secularism and it rips the two right down the middle, motivating politicians to amend constitutions, and religious groups to push legislation. To many religious groups, including my own, this is a clear cut case of taking a morale stand against something that is morally wrong. But if you take the religious argument out of the equation and look at it with only your secular eyes, the Democratic argument makes more sense. There does seem to be rather strong evidence that points to strong gay feelings in certain people at early ages. And to suppress those feelings seems to lead to a lifetime of heartache. Admittedly, I'm completely naive on this issue.

The Mormon church has made some pretty emphatically clear statements on gender and sexuality. In fact, just a short time ago, it published The Proclamation on the Family where it says in no uncertain terms:

"Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."

and

"We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife."

and

"The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity."

Pretty clear stuff. And I do feel a religious, spiritual, and emotional connection to the doctrine behind these statements. But I do know people that I highly respect that have close gay friends, and largely because of those friendships believe in their heart of hearts that their sexuality is an intrinsic part of their identity. In fact, I have met some of them, and would agree these people seem to be good in every possible sense of the word.

And also consider this story about transgendered six year olds. How, I want to know do you square this example with the statements in The Proclamation of the Family?

I guess my point is you just don't. In a recent Paul Graham essay entitled Lies We Tell Kids, he says, "Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don't think this is a coincidence. I think they've deliberately avoided learning about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know everything. Now I know I don't."

That's all he says about that, and he moves on to the next thought. That idea is fascinating to me because it rings so true. It reminds me of this poem from a book written by the recent American poet laureate, Ted Kooser, on pornography, entitled a Deck of Pornographic Playing Cards, and it goes like this:

We were ten or eleven, my friend and I,
when we found them under a bridge,
on top of a beam where pigeons were resting.
Someone had carefully hidden them there.
On each was a black-and-white photo,
no two cards alike. We grew quiet and older,
young men on our haunches, staring at
what we feared might be the future.
The pigeons flapped back to their roosts,
rustling and cooing. The river gurgled
as it slipped from the bridge's cool shadow.
There were women with big muzzled dogs,
women with bottles and broom handles.
Stallions stood over the bodies of others.
The women smiled and licked their lips
with tongues like thorns. We grew old.
We were two old men with stiff legs
and sad hearts. We had wanted to laugh
but we couldn't. We had thought we were boys,
come there to throw stones at the pigeons,
but we were already dying inside.

The image of these boys growing old in that moment of accidental knowledge is pretty startling for me, and I think that is the point maybe. That maybe it is important to understand some things, but better not to understand many other things. That it's more important to feel love, to feel spirituality and emotional connections with heaven, than it is to get caught up in debates that have no answers.

What makes the Proclamation on the Family so powerful for me is that it emphasizes strong families that are lasting and enduring. I just don't think it's especially helpful to use it as hammer to pound an anti-gay argument down someone's throat. We all make very personal decisions on these issues, and it can be very difficult to make sense of why one person chooses a lifestyle completely different from our own.

So, I think in day to day living, in our association with our friends and peers, it's pretty clear that we should follow principles of compassion, empathy, and love. In matters of public policy I wish there was more room for politicians to simply say, "you know this is a tough issue and I'm just not sure what the right answer is".

Really, truly, what is the best way to deal with abortion or gay marriage. The answer is probably to error on the side of compassion and tolerance, not being afraid to compromise to get stuff done, to admit that we live in a wonderful country filled with incredible people having all sorts of religious, spiritual, and intellectual points of view and it's our opportunity to understand one another in the spirit of friendship and humility.