On faith

I was contacted last week about writing a faith-affirming essay to be included in a volume for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons).

I cannot write the essay they want. Instead, I would write this one. 

***

In November, in Philadelphia, an atheist from Israel asked me, a Mormon from Australia, if I believed in God.

And I said I did not know.

"Ah, so you are agnostic," he said.

"No, an agnostic thinks that no one can know if there is a God. I just personally don't know if I believe in God today."

***

God has spoken to me. When I was a young teenager, I felt a wash of the spirit after reading the Book of Mormon for the first time. A few years later, on my own and lonely, I asked God if he would please send me strong visiting teachers, to be my friends. And God told me that that wasn't going to happen; I needed to build up my resilience to loneliness. Once I asked God if I could go on a date with a crush, and God smiled and said sure, but nothing will come of it -- this guy isn't for you. And once, afraid and alone on an overnight train from Germany, I asked God to please send me someone -- a girl -- who spoke English who could help me make it to the airport on time in the morning. God sent a girl about my age to my rail car, who was on her way to be an au pair in Ireland. But she had no idea how to get to the airport. So I found the way for both of us. God was laughing with me then. He was telling me that I needed to recognize that I was capable, and step up to help others.

Those were all small things. What of the bigger things? My Mormon faith told me that women should never work outside the home. And my mother testified that that was true. And my grandmother testified. Women were meant to sacrifice their talents to their husbands and families. When I received several full scholarships to PhD programs all over the country, I asked God if I should sacrifice these gifts? Even without a husband? Or choose a PhD program? But which one? And how to choose? And God was silent. In anger, months later, I asked God why he hadn't helped me make the decision. And God told me that he trusted me to make hard decisions. He trusted me.

***

How could I not know if I believe in God, when God has spoken to me so many times?

God spoke to Lucy Walker. When she was a young teenager, after the unexpected death of her mother, a religious leader more than twice her age sent her father away on a mission, and invited Lucy to live in his home, like a daughter. Soon after, he told Lucy that God commanded her to be his plural wife, in secret, and she must agree overnight to the union or she would be damned. Lucy spent the night in prayer and agony. But in the morning she was visited by peace and light and a sure understanding that the man was a prophet and she would be his plural wife. When you and I read this story, we recognize classic child abuse. Lucy saw it as the pinnacle of her religious experience and the foundation of her testimony. God told Lucy to marry her abuser.

God spoke to the young men who used civilian airplanes as weapons, and killed thousands in September 2001. Those young men sacrificed their very lives for God, knowing he would bless them with a glorious afterlife. But you and I know they were only terrorists.

Who is this God who speaks, condoning child abuse and murder?

***

I grew tired of being angry. I grew tired of having to give different answers to my child's questions every Sunday after church. I knew all the right answers to the Mormon temple recommend interview questions, but I could no longer with integrity give the right answers simultaneously to question number three, affirming my belief in the restoration of the Mormon church, and question number nine, was I honest. So I moved jobs. I let my recommend lapse. I still attended, played the organ, taught the women's meeting. Tried. But grew tired of being angry. I grew tired of the fact that no one cared if I came. They cared if my son came. They cared if my husband came. But even though my son and husband only came because I came, no one cared about me, the woman.

So one sunny summer Sunday afternoon, waiting for the tram to take us home from church, my husband responded to my anger with his own quiet words. "You don't have to keep going. Maybe it's time to take a break."

And I looked him in the eye and said, "Maybe it is."

***

God has spoken to me since my Mormon temple card lapsed. One afternoon, walking home alone from work in the park near my apartment, I argued with God privately, a one-sided conversation in my head. How could I continue to support the Mormon church, I asked God, when their policies towards their people were so cruel? When they willfully suppressed the talents of their women and the futures of their LGBTQ members? When they had been on the wrong side of every social issue since the nineteenth century? I told God that I couldn't fit in that space anymore, not unless my heart was torn out and replaced with a completely different heart.

"That's it," said God. "You need a new heart."

***

How does one obtain a new heart? Does one stay up all night praying, like Lucy? Or does one sacrifice one's life, like a terrorist? What about the things the Mormons say to do? To read scriptures, to pray harder? Those things have I done all my life, and yet I have this heart here in my hands. Jesus said to the young man in that situation to go and sell all and give to the poor. But I have a family to feed. And a husband who wouldn't let me.

Perhaps one takes a step back in life, to pause. To think. To evaluate. And then one keeps moving forward. Because God won't make the hard decisions for you.

In July, visiting my parents in the Mormon community where I grew up, I attended church at my Home Ward. My former young women's leader spoke. She related her experiences as the wife of a missionary. As she spoke, I felt the Spirit descend upon me, thick and tangible, and I knew I was in a good place, and this was where I belonged.

Simultaneously, I received a Revelation. This Spirit, this tangible, physical, physiological response, was a superpower of evolution. It led the teenagers from broken homes to face their empty futures, abuse, self-inflicted death, with peace and light and understanding that they were serving a Higher Good. That this would be how they Mattered. And their tribes, their clans, their people -- they survived and belonged and grew closer and powerful with the sacrifice of these lesser people. The Spirit is a massive evolutionary advantage for the homo sapiens.

***

I used to speak to God daily. But my prayers have changed. I don't want to speak to God the disappointed father. If there is a God, I hope he still trusts me.

***

Here, at the end of this essay, I think a little about my readers. Some readers will see my anger and my pride and shake their heads in judgement, and know that I am wrong to step away. And those readers are correct. Some readers will see the abuse and the irrationality of religion and shake their heads in judgement and know that I am right to step away. And those readers are also correct.

I am not agnostic. I know that people can know that there is a God. Lucy knew. The terrorists knew.

I just don't know if I know. And I cannot trust the Spirit.

For now, I have to walk forward within the constraints of my life, and act with integrity and morality. And initiative. More initiative, I think.

This is my faith.

Thank you for inviting the essay.