This is some stuff I wrote this summer, when I was first trying to figure out how I felt about the Church, and first coming to terms with the fact that my testimony might not be all I had assumed it was. I’ve edited it a little bit for clarity. Don’t necessarily assume that I still agree with all of it, but by and large it still reflects my thinking.

My first problem is with theology. As in, we don’t have any. Ask any two Mormons what we believe about salvation through Jesus Christ and you’ll get different answers. Statements issued by the First Presidency notwithstanding, we are not by any means united in our beliefs about Jesus Christ. The thing is, individually we don’t know what we believe collectively, as a Church, about Jesus. And that’s fishy to me. And I think it’s a problem with lack of theology.

In the name of restoration, we’ve lightly tossed out the work and thought of some brilliant minds who were absolutely dedicated to God and Jesus Christ. Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, whatever. Lots of people. And we say the word “theologian” like it we say “whore.” It doesn’t feel right to me.

Theology is an academic subject that is thousands of years old, and over time it has developed a specialized vocabulary. Specialized vocabularies are important because they let you talk about a subject with precision and say what you really mean so that the hearer understands it. We can’t talk about Jesus Christ and say what we mean in the Church because we don’t have the vocabulary to do so. The vocabulary exists, but we have systematically rejected it from day one (or maybe we systematically rejected it over time, I don’t know- it’s irrelevant to this point). Even better, we actually make light of the theology of the past twenty centuries, and the only time we ever hear an established theological term is when James E. Talmadge is refuting it.

For example,when it comes to justification (the process by which our sins are justified, or made okay), do we believe in infusion or imputation? Infusion means that Christ’s atonement pours a measure of his righteousness into us in order to make up the slack, to cover the distance we need to hit the right level of righteousness or holiness in order to qualify for sanctification or salvation. Imputation means that Christ’s atonement actually switches out his righteousness for ours, and ours suffers and dies with him, while his righteousness substitutes for ours totally, in order to qualify us for sanctification/salvation.

Which do Mormons believe?

Many Mormons would tell you infusion, but they wouldn’t use the word. They’d quote that “after all we can do” scripture. At least two Mormons (me and the guy that wrote Beleiving Christ) believe in imputation, agan although we wouldn’t use the word. Is it important? Maybe not. I’ll tell you this: Protestants believe in imputation and Catholics believe in infusion, and the Protestant/Catholic schism is pretty big. I know it’s not the only dividing issue, but it seems a fundamental one.

But Mormons don’t know which one they believe (or rather, they all think they know which one they believe, but it turns out it isn’t the same one). If we ever talk about it, it winds up a mess of semantics because we’re trying to pick it apart without using a common vocabulary. In the meantime, we haven’t actually developed our own vocabulary for talking about theology, as far as I know.

Why not? That sort of brings me to my second point. No debate. We do not debate in this Church. We do not disagree. Debate and disagreement are inappropriate and discouraged. That means we all sit around pretending we believe the same things (even being smug because “aren’t we lucky that we have revelation to clear up all the confusion we see in other Churches!”) when we don’t! We don’t believe the same things, not when it comes to the most important thing, Jesus Christ!

There’s this idea in the Church that all questions have been answered (at least all of the important ones, maybe not stuff about Kolob and things “not necessary for our salvation”), and we all agree about everything, so let’s strengthen each other. In theory I guess it doesn’t sound bad, but in practice I don’t see it, and instead I see Mormons being some of the shakiest Christians about what they actually believe about Jesus Christ.

In any case it’s frustrating because in a sense I feel like too many questions have been answered, and in doing so they’ve only opened up weirder questions. And we congratulate ourselves on how logical it all is because we have the answers that everyone else lacks, when the fact is that our answers sometimes lead to further conclusions that are, well, weird. I wish I could come up with an example. Usually it’s stuff about the creation or the Fall or God in the eternities. And you can say that those aren’t important to our salvation, fine. So why do we have so many answers about things “not important” but we still not only don’t know about the atonement, but we don’t even know that we don’t know about the atonement.

Anyway, that’s kind of a tangent. My point is that I think we are poorer for the lack of debate. Heated argument may not be the most spiritually uplifting thing, but debate and discussion is how we figure it all out. Why don’t we debate, define our terms, discuss at length, and then pray about it to see which side is right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Study it out in our minds and then ask God?

The whole method for discovering truth in the Church sidesteps critical thinking, and people will actually tell you that critical thinking is the devil’s tool. They won’t say it in so many words, but they’ll say that intelligence and wisdom are only worth a damn if they lead you to the same conclusions as the teachings of the Church. Aren’t intelligence and wisdom gifts from God? Shouldn’t they go hand in hand with inspiration? Why does inspiration only count if it leads you to the same conclusions as the Church, but otherwise it’s the devil misleading you?

It winds up being like this: “Study it out in your mind but only insofar as you reach the appropriate doctrinal conclusion (because otherwise you’re being misled by the devil), then pray to find out if that conclusion is true, and if you get a ‘yes,’ it was from God and if you get a ‘no’ it was from the devil, or just from your own emotions.” Isn’t that sort of an a priori thing? I mean, that method is guaranteed to lead you to conclude the Church is true. It would lead you to believe anything is true that you applied it to, wouldn’t it? I don’t think that’s a good way to get to the truth at all.

It seems from my extremely cursory research that there are many takes on modern Revivalist Druidry.  Probably the most common is a straightforward interpretation of Druids as the priesthood of the ancient Celts, and thus the Revivalist version is also exclusively Celtic in flavor.

On the other hand, I get the impression that there are also strands that see Revivalist Druidry as an attempt to link together a broad ancient Indo-European religious identity, which is much more interesting to me than anything decidedly Neo-Celtic.

On the other hand, it makes me wonder, are there connections to Hinduism?  If Druidry is supposed to represent the religions of the Indo-Europeans, it can be easy to forget the “Indo” part of the equation, and that that end of the megatribe never had their religion systematically annihilated like the European side did.  Theoretially then, not only should modern Druidry seek out connections with Hinduism, but it would follow that reconstructed religious practices and beliefs should show some kind of connection to Hinduism, attenuated by space and the centuries though it may be.  I haven’t looked into it, so I couldn’t tell you if  any serious thought and work is being done in this vein.

Lisetning to Enya and playing ancient Celt under the oak trees?  I couldn’t see myself seriously adopting it as a way of life and spirituality.  Seems flaky to me.  Or maybe I just don’t identify specifically enough with my Celt ancestry.  Maybe that kind of thing would be someone else’s bag of chips, but not mine.

But Druidry as a revitalized European branch of a legitimately Indo-European  faith system?  Now that starts to make my hair stand on end and gets me seriously exctied.  I wonder where I could go to find out more?  Any Druids out there want to point me in the right direction?

Last night, I prayed,

God reveal yourself to me, and let me know You. 

If that means to know You through Jesus Christ, in the pages of the Bible, in the communty of Christians, or in the ritual and liturgy of the Church, then let me know You that way. 

If that means to know You through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, then let me know You that way.

If that means to know You in silence, in peace, in integrity, and in lisetning to the Light, then let me know You that way.

If that means to know You through the trees, through magick, the awesome power and majesty of nature, and through the beliefs of my most ancient ancestors, then let me know You that way.

If that means to know You through His holy word as revealed through his prophet, be it Moses of Muhammad, then let me know You that way.

If You are the Tao, or Brahman, or  Ahura Mazda, or simply the consciousness of the cosmos, let me know You in whatever way you would have me know You.  If that means to know You through whatever path or faith or religion You might choose for me, then let me know You that way. 

If You exist at all, I pray that I might know You.

But I did not get an answer.

Well, I might have lots of problems, and maybe one of them is bigger than this one, but for now this feels like my biggest problem.

It is this: I am still holding out for a Testimony of the True Church.

I have already concluded at least for the meantime that I believe the Mormon church is not at all what it claims to be, and thus is not, at least in the way it claims, “The True Church.”  So that’s not what I’m talking about.

This is hard to articulate, and I expect that I will miscommunicate it terribly.

I have this mental block.  I can tell myself all I want that it doesn’t matter what church you go to, as long as it brings you closer to Christ.  I even believe it most of the time, intellectually.  It makes sense to me, in light of the way I understand Christianity and the teachings laid out in the Bible.  I can accept it into my schema.  In fact, it actualy makes a lot more sense to me than any kind of denominational claim to exclusive Truth.

On days when I am feeling less Christian, I can apply the same reasoning to religion in general.  What Jeff Lilly and Malaclypse the Younger say about it seem completely reasonable to me: that all religions are “true,” and that it is simply important that you commit to a belief system in which you grow and draw closer to God (however you choose to personify him/her/it).

The idea that one religion, much less one denomination of one religion, has a singular claim to absolute truth seems immeasurably unlikely, if not naïvely arrogant.  I just don’t buy it.  No religion seems universal enough to be universal, and those few that do are generally not very credible anyway.

So my course should be obvious.  Depending on whether I decide for Christ or not, I should pick a denomination or religion that rings true to me, that meets my needs and seems closest to the truth as I understand it, and go with it.

So why can I not do that?  I have several good candidates in mind (Episcopalianism/Anglicanism, Quakerism, and emerging Evangelicalism are all comfortable and appealing in different ways, and if I wasn’t going to be Christian, I’ve got Asatru, Druidry, and perhaps Buddhism after a longer more serious look); why don’t I just pick one?

I feel like I have a mental block, a stubborn thing laying around in my brain that I can’t get rid of.  It’s like a little goblin in my head that insists on Absolute Truth.  It won’t let me pick a good religion; it will only let me pick The True Religion.  I try to tell this stubborn mental block that there is no True Religion, but this stubborn mental block doesn’t seem to care.

Even worse, this stubborn mental block will only be convinced of Absolute Truth when it is presented with some kind of Incontrovertible Mystical Experience.  And it can’t be logically flawed, either.  I try to tell the mental block that logically airtight Incontrovertible Mystical Experiences are not only really hard to come by, but in the end they aren’t as good a foundation for religious belief as deliberate faith and commitment are anyway.  But the mental block does not seem to care what I say or think.  It stubbornly insists on only accepting a church that is proven Absolutely True by Incontrovertible Mystical Experience, with no logical flaws.  End of discussion.

Do you see my conundrum?  What am I supposed to do?  I have a standard for religion that is completely unrealistic, and one that not only guarantees that virtually all churches will fail, but that probably won’t result in a lasting commitment anyway.

Why is the mental block there?  Why won’t it go away?  It clearly smacks of Mormonism, which is no surprise since I have been a dedicated Mormon for most of my 28 years. But what does it mean?  Am I simply so conditioned by Mormon-logic that I am more or less ruined spiritually, since Mormon-logic ensures that no other church could ever possibly pass its rigged and biased “test” for authenticity?  Or does it mean that something in my soul, deep down, knows that Mormonism is true, and will thus never really be satisfied until I come back?  But the problem with that is, now Mormonism even fails the mental block’s test, since my mystical proof is not at all incontrovertible, and I feel like Mormonism is completely  full of holes, a veritable theological/philosophical swiss cheese.

When I was still an active member but my brother Racticas was in the process of leaving the Church, I supported him on the grounds that since Mormonism is absolutely and exclusively true, he would not find spiritual fulfillment anywhere else and so he would eventually come back.  Is that what this is?  Am I proving my own hypothesis?   Or is spiritual fulfillment waiting for me somewhere (or even everywhere), as soon as I’m willing to take a leap of faith and plunge in instead of perpetually wetting my toes in the shallows of religious commitment?

Or is it merely a case of “once burned, twice shy?”  After years of Mormonism followed by the life-changing crash of walking away from it, maybe I’m just too timid to easily pick a new religion and start again.  Is my mental block really a Mormon-flavored manifestation of a very reasonable fear of religious commitment?

In any case, what do I do?  I know I have no reason to rush things, but the more I think about religion, the more frustrated I get, and I’m afraid that if I don’t pick something and stick with it, I’m eventually going to throw my hands up in frustration and walk away a “committed” agnostic.  And I don’t want that.

I read this poem on the website of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and it struck me as interesting and significant.

What if
Jesus and Merlin were to meet
At twilight
In the garden, in the grove,
One looking forward to the Skull of Golgatha,
One looking back on the Sacred Head of Bran?

What would they say to one another,
These men, these gods,
Who live in time beyond their lives—
One forward, one retrograde?

“Let this Cup pass from me…” says the one.
“May the earth open and swallow me,
May the sky fall upon me,
May the sea rise and cover me,
May fires consume me…” says the other.

“Take this cup and drink from it…” says the one.
“This is the Cauldron of Inspiration and Wisdom…” says the other.
“Do this in remembrance…” says the one.
“I know the Cup
From which the wave has overflowed.
I know the end of the dawn…” answers the other.

What if they do meet
There in the grove, in the garden,
Two avatars—
One about to ascend,
One about to descend—
Each serving the Chalice in his way?

What if Merlin’s Affallanau and Jesus’ Rood are the same Tree?
One rides it to his destiny,
One sits beneath to prophesy.

What could they give to one another
These prophets circling in their Time-long orbits?
Could Merlin say: “The seed is planted, the tree will grow There is a thorn in Avalon that bears fruit in thy name.”
Would Jesus reply wistfully: “Kiss Nimue for me.
Tell her I love her beauty and her power.”

-RoMa Johnson, 2004

“Whether or not the Church is true” is unquestionably important for my salvation.  If the Mormon church is what it claims to be, then I need to know it so that I can participate and follow its teachings so I can go to the Celestial Kingdom and be exalted.  If the Church is not what it claims to be, then I need to know exactly what it is, so that I can decide to stay or leave.

Even the Church teaches the scriptural warning that “by their fruits ye shall know them.”  If the Church teaches false garbage, then that’s a part of its fruits, no?  If the Church claims to be a consistent rock of objective truth, but yet it’s doctrines change with the opinions of its leaders and the circumstances of time, then its claim is bunk, right?
If the Church teaches doctrines that are impossibly false, then that’s important for my salvation, because it means the Church is not true.  Maybe the individual, specific doctrine is arguably not relevant, but if that’s the case then Brigham Young or whoever shouldn’t have taught it in the first place.

If the Church can only give unsatisfactory answers to the questions that I have, and instead tries to tell me what questions I should be asking instead, then that’s obfuscation and evasiveness, and to me that’s not the mark of bold truth.  “Not important to my salvation” just doesn’t work for me anymore.

So, yesterday and today I’ve been pondering Druidry. And reading about it. I have some different things running through my head.

First, when I was a teenager and interested in such things, there was a time when I felt a connection ot the natural world. This wasn’t just a matter of liking nature, but I actually felt like the personified Wild, the world, whatever, had somehow singled me out for some kind of special connection.  It’s hard to explain, because it originally came out of the context of general occulty-goofing-around, but it was a sense that stayed with me long after I left the occult behind.

When I got serious about Mormonism and went on my mission, I just kind of locked all of that up in a cognitive closet soemwhere.

Furthermore, I haven’t spent much time in the woods or in the outdoors, in a decade.  I’ve lived in apartments and gone to universities and lived in large metro areas and I’ve been to busy to go out into the woods and just feel the wild places and the energy there.

Yesterday I became acutely aware of missing something because of that.  Partially because of that, and partially just because of the pretty snowfall, my wife and I packed up the baby and drove to Rock Creek Park, where we lit out into the woods and had a great time, and got cold and tired.  It was nice.

I didn’t have a mystical experience with nature, but I wasn’t really expecting to.  I feel like I’ve been a stranger to the natural world for too long, and I hardly expect to walk back outside and have it embrace me with mind-blowing spiritual experiences.  If that kind of thing even exists.  Plus, as much fun as it was being out there with my family, we were there for fun and to spend time together, not necessarily to commune or anything.

However, I am now resolved to go out of my way to get out into the trees more often.  And I’m resolved to do it in a serious and meditative way as well as a recreational way, on my own as well as with my family.  Unless of course I just change my mind again, like I do with religion every other damn day.

With nature and Druidry on my mind, I came back home and did some internet research.  If I had the internet as a teenager, I’m sure I would have joined some Druid group a long time ago.  I just didn’t know where to look, so I was trying to reconstruct Druidry on my own with my limited resources and limited knowledge, which meant that I didn’t really get anywhere.  But now, I have options, and that intrigues me.

I am not necessarily interested in things Celtic per se, which might raise the question “Why bother with Druidry then?  That makes no sense.”  But it seems that there are takes on Druidry that see it as a reflection of Indo-European indigenous religion in general, and that wakes me up and makes me take notice.  That hits something primal and fundamental inside me that hasn’t been hit in a long time, not since I was stoked about Joseph Campbell way back in the day.  I don’t know why.

That modern revivalist take on Druidry allows for the connection to Norse myth that I feel a desire for, while having an ethic and philosophy that I am more comfortable with than the philosophy of Asatru.

So, I’m idly thinking about taking a Druidry correspondence course, like the one that AODA has.

Of course, now I struggle with my religious morning-after problem.  What seemed cool and interesting and compelling one day seems just dumb and embarrassing the next day.  I don’t know what to do about that.  It seems to kick in no matter what religion or church or flavor of spirituality that I am interested in.  Also, I just may be too chicken to abandon Jesus.

I woke up in a horrible mood this morning. I’m mad at God. In general, I think that “being mad at God’ is a lame crybaby excuse, unless your life is really, really horrible. And mine isn’t. Honestly, my life is pretty good. I have a place to live, my material eneds are met, I’m in law school , I have a sweet and hot wife and a cute kid. So ostensibly I have no reason to be mad at God.

But I just don’t know what to do about religion. I think agnosticism is a cop-out, but I don’t know if I’m going to be left with any other option. I’d like to have a religion, to have a faith, but it seems like it’s just too hard, and I don’t know why it has to be that way.

I don’t know if it’s possible to really know. But I’ve let go of the religion I grew up with and for now I am not interested in going back at all, so I can’t just fall bak on tradition and custom. I remain unconvinced by Christianity, as much as I’d theoretically be open to being convinced. And I’m too chicken to go anywhere but Christianity for fear that Christianity is actually true and my life will go to crap if I turn my back on Jesus, and then when I die I will go to hell.

So I don’t know what to do. I get excited about a faith or a religious idea one day, and then I wake up the next day and think it’s ridiculous and feel goofy for lending it credence the day before. It’s a crazy rollercoaster of religiousity that gets me nowhere and I don’t know how to get off of it, other than just by throwing my hands up and walking away from the whole thing.

And I don’t want to do that.

Anyway, I’m pissed at life, the universe, and everything, and that includes God, because this stuff is just too hard. I’m not making it hard on purpose; I’m doing this the only way I can.

I got a life that most would love to have,
But sometimes I still wake up fightin’ mad
At where this road I’m heading down might lead;
I guess that’s just the cowboy in me

-Tim McGraw

Like I said before, my instinct is to lean towards Asatru, but I’ve been thinking about European paganism in general for the last couple of days.  I think I ought to look into it more, but I’m not really sure where to start.

Yesterday my lovely, sexy wife and I sat down for an important talk.  The thing is, she is a committed Christian, and at the moment I am not.  For now it’s no problem- I’m still searching.  But what happens if I ultimately decide on a non-Christian religion, or if I decide on no religion at all?

What do we do about things that we have always done together, like praying or reading the scriptures?  How much do we participate in each others’ religious practices?  How much would we be comfortable participating?  Most importantly, how do we raise our little boy?

Furthermore, the question/problem is different depending on whether I settle on a religion other than Christianity (like paganism or Buddhism or something) or whether I simply decide that I don’t know and that knowing isn’t possible, i.e., agnosticism.  Right now, hands-thrown-up agnosticism seems more likely, but I want us to be prepared no matter how this thing shakes out.

Mostly it was just good to talk about it and get the possibility out into the open and on our minds.  In some ways we had already approached the subject when I was struggling with Mormonism and my wife was still firm in her testimony.

What we’ve come up with for now is that however it works out, we’re always going to be supportive and respectful of each other.  We’re both basically open-minded people and probably wouldn’t mind participating in each others’ religions even if we didn’t believe the same way.  I may not pray to the Christian God, but I would have no problem bowing my head reverently while she does, for example.

As far as the baby goes, no matter what we do (even if the wife and I both wind up in the same place) we’re going to teach him to think for himself and make well-reasoned informed decisions.  All along the way we’ll help him, providing a framework for figuring things out for himself.  In other words, we’ll provide him with the tools he needs and then we’ll help him use them as much as is appropriate.