One of my biggest frustrations with Mormonism is that I feel like it has left me spiritually crippled.
For example, on the one hand, I’ve spent my whole life believing that the only valid way to find truth was through mystical experience. That’s become a fairly deeply-ingrained thing. I find myself virtually unable to accept religion or spirituality of any kind unless it comes with a spiritual experience to back it up. Any conclusion I come to or truth I think I uncover, I’m not satisfied with it unless I’ve “received a testimony” of it. Even if I rationally think that approach is not useful, we’re talking about an instinctive response, the result of a lifetime of spiritual dogmatism. The other side to this unpleasant coin comes from the fact that because Mormonism claims that spiritual experience is the only validator for truth and that anyone can and should receive such an experience, Mormonism often goes to great lengths to define the most subtle emotional state as “the Holy Ghost.” The approach is so inclusive and the Holy Ghost gets defined to broadly that it’s pretty much impossible to tell the missionaries about a good feeling you’ve ever had about anything (other than something that’s straight-up sinful) without them concluding for you and trying to convince you that it was, in fact, the Holy Ghost confirming the truth to you. Because I am aware of that, I’m uncomfortable with looking too hard and trying to define mystical experiences into existence, because I know for a fact that if I set out having already decided that I’m going to find a mystical experience, I’m going to find one by definition if nothing else.
So on the one hand, I am extremely skeptical of mysticism (especially subtle mystical experiences), and on the other hand I feel like only mysticism can show me the right way. The result is spiritual paralysis, absent a mystical experience that is unrealistically grandiose and unlikely to happen. and it’s because of Mormonism.
There’s more- Mormonism has left me with a legacy of looking for the “one true church.” I’ve spent my life in a logical framework where such a thing can and does exist, so it’s hard for me to get away from that way of thinking. I rationally think that probably there is no One True Church, but my instinct still tells me to look for it. Not because “I know deep in my heart that it’s true,” but simply because it’s the way I was brought up to think.
Mormism, an extremely demanding religion, has also left me with another paradox. On the one hand, it has left me skeptical of a faith system that isn’t demanding, because it seems to me that a real faith system, one that is True, must be one that demands virtually everything. At the sae time, my expericnes with (and in particular with coming out of) Mormonism have left me with an intense fear of spiritual commitment. The result is again a paralysis. I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of diving into the deep end and being one hundred percent committed to something, because the last time I did that it turned out to be in many ways a sham, and in the end I ended up walking away. At the same time, I am completely unimpressed with wishy-washy belief systems that pick and choose or are too vaguely-defined, because I grew up with a very concrete dogma that is now my standard for religious truth. Mormonism promotes all-or-nothing thinking, so I have a hard time feeling like anything in the middle is even worth my time, but at the same time, my experiences with Mormonism have left me extremely fearful of and very adverse to dogmatic extremes in any direction. So I may rationally conclude that the reality is somewhere in the middle, but my conditioning rejects that.
There are other examples, I’m sure. Essentially, I have all these preconceived notions about what religion is supposed to look like, but I’m fearful and averse to religions that look like that. D’oh! What am I supposed to do? Honestly, I blame Mormonism for most, if not all, of my spiritual angst over the last year. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot of good in Mormonism. But I feel like leaving it has left me spiritually crippled. I guess the only way forward is through all of this mess. To mull things over, work through what I can, and look for those few spiritual aproaches (or nonspiritual approaches) that I can work with for now, and move on to more as I work through stuff.
I guess that’s what I’m trying to do now. I couldn’t really even bring my belief in God and Jesus Christ out of Mormonism with me, because they were so entangled in the thought matrix that I had grown up with that I really couldn’t extricate them and have anything left to work with, no matter how much I wanted to. Thus, leaving Mormonism meant a long, slow spiral into atheism. Once I got to atheism, I decided I didn’t really like it there , so if I wanted to get anywhere else I really had to start from the ground up.
I guess another way to look at it is to see it as a positive thing. It means some angst and frustration now, but in the end, as I work out all of the knots, I get to completely start over fresh and build something up from nothing. Maybe that was the only option other than just returning to Mormonism.
Sailing to Byzantium 
There are reports of mystical/spiritual experiences in every religion and even apart from religion. This tells me that you can pretty much discount most of them as something that is programmed in our mental hardware to happen given the right stimulus. This does not imply that all mystical experiences are merely brain hiccups. I believe that God does sometimes communicate truth in mystical ways, but more often it is by completely rational and natural means. Moreover, I don’t believe that the role of the Holy Spirit is to create mystical experiences for us, but rather to help us discern which experiences represent truth and which really are brain hiccups or are from other untrustworthy sources.
The notion of “all-or-nothing-for-the-one-true-church” presupposes that certain church founders were capable of understanding 100% of the truth 100% of the time. The fact that we have so many different denominations even within the Christian church indicates that this is not the case. However, I do believe that truth lies in the Gospel and when I look at the denominations of orthodox Christianity, I marvel at the level of agreement and cooperation and the ways we are united rather than wring my hands over the relatively minor differences and the stories of conflict. Doctrine does matter, but In the end, it’s all about Jesus and if the fruit of your life is something that you would give as an offering, worthy and acceptable to Him, then who am I to argue what church you should attend.
Great post. I think you really explained your dilemma to yourself (and all of us) really well.
I heard a philosophy professor explain in regards to knowledge: “We have a duty to believe as many true things as possible and to deny as many false things as possible.”
Godspeed as you find a meaningful way to both accept truth and deny falsehood.
Thanks, Dando.
Well, we are brothers when it comes to this topic. After Mormonism all other religions are pale and bland to me. If it’s not true then no religion is … and I don’t think this is simply a reaction to the all or nothing nature of Mormonism but an acknowledgement that if Mormonism didn’t get “all or nothing” right then no religion did. It’s an acknowledgement of the appeal and potency of the Mormon message: that there is an objective reality which human beings have an obligation to discover and abide.
I no longer believe in Mormonism or any other religion, but I believe in that objective reality more than ever and it is there that I place by hope.
Thank you for the post, Kullervo.
Mormonism has not left you a spiritual cripple. If anything, it has given you a basis from which to grow. God is real and good and you are the image and likeness of God and therefore you are an immortal and not just a mortal. Now you can think more from a spiritual basis instead of from material sense. Because God is Love, just as Jesus taught, we obliged to be more spiritual and loving and to become more unlimited and universal in our thinking. Life is Mind in operation. Mind and Spirit are synonymous, as the ancients as well as Jesus himself understood it. And because our salvation is meant for the here and now, which is where we will forever be, we must improve ourselves through love and greater spiritual understanding. Because God is Spirit, we are already at-one with Him and His goodness is available to us without measure. If we feel separated from this goodness, it is we who are doing this to ourselves, which is a direct teaching from the Master. As we grow spiritually, mysticism will vanish. This is what Christian Science teaches and helps us to prove. But whatever label you put on it, the Truth that Heals is the Truth that Heals. Period.
My Zen upbringing had just the opposite effect on me. While I’m also suspicious of organized religions, I am comfortable with paradox, and in fact when I’m confronted with an ‘absolute’ truth, I feel compelled to dig around in it until I find the logical contradiction at the bottom. Once I locate the paradoxes, I feel like I’ve reached the root of it, and can relax. 🙂
There is no belief system which both (a) makes statements about itself and (b) is internally consistent — not even mathematics, as Goedel showed. Good feeling may not be a good guide to truth, but Logic isn’t, either.
Do you ever read these comments?… 🙂 If not, I’ll drop you an email.
Of course I read these comments! Even the ones on old posts.
I agree about mathematics and logic, for what it’s worth.