Hard-won Spirituality

M. has preferred to remain anonymous at this time. The following post, heart-felt and honest, also functions as her introduction to the Middle Space community. 

When people ask me what religion I belong to, I always tell them, “I’m a Mormon.” I then immediately qualify that by saying, “but I’m a very liberal Mormon.” Sometimes this comment elicits blank stares, sometimes people will ask me what I mean. But every time I say it, I feel a churning inside me, some resentment that I shouldn’t have to say it at all mixed with anger that the religious leaders I believe should know better don’t.

I grew up with parents from mixed-faith backgrounds. My mother was raised Southern Baptist, and had a Jewish grandmother. My father was raised Mormon, but his father had joined the church as a young adult and was never active until my father was around 12 years old. His original religious background was as a Christian Scientist. As a result, I knew firsthand what other religions believed, something that was strengthened when I went to college and tried to get a religion minor with my liberal science degree. My parents were very devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they also taught us to respect other religions, something that I have always tried to do. They wanted us to be understanding of our non-member families, of course, but they also firmly believed that we should love one another unconditionally. I mention this because I want to clarify that I’ve experienced other religions and know that spiritually speaking, I don’t believe that they have the gospel the way that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does. This is important for me.

Being a Mormon surrounded by mostly non-Mormons wasn’t a problem, spiritually speaking. I loved going to church, learning the scriptures, and learning about my ancestors as my mom did genealogy the old-fashioned way. You know, trudging through cemeteries doing rubbings of tombstones and looking for obituaries in newspaper archives. But life can and does throw you curve balls, and mine threw many at me. I never quit loving the gospel, but I began to see that there was a disconnect between the gospel and the culture – or, in other words, the way people in the church tried to impose what they believed were gospel teachings onto other people. It wasn’t until my life went completely off the gospel tracks, though, that I truly saw what it meant to be active in the gospel and not active in church.

My husband and I went through a very difficult trial, and I immersed myself in scripture study. I faithfully went to the temple, to church meetings, held family prayers. I had to do these things on my own because my husband refused to participate any longer in church-related activities. Since I was determined to do the best I could for the sake of my kids, I made sure that I went above and beyond to keep myself in as spiritual a place as possible. This was a very hard time in our lives. No matter the amount of prayerfully begging the Lord to help my husband find his way out of the dark place he was in, no matter the time I spent in the temple, nothing changed – except me.

I changed because all that intense studying of the Book of Mormon, faithful prayer, and regular temple attendance made me realize something important. We are doing things wrong.

Anyone who has read the Book of Mormon knows the story of Christ’s visit to America. In 3 Nephi we are told that Jesus Christ appeared to the Nephites. He blessed the children, taught about the sacrament and prayer, and blessed his disciples. After his visit, there was peace in America. Why was this peace possible? We like to generically say that it was because everyone was following Christ, or that they were so filled with the spirit after that time that they could do nothing but live in harmony. But 4 Nephi gives us clarification. There we learn that after Christ’s visit to the Americas, no one was rich or poor. People shared everything, so that everyone had what they needed. The disciples performed miracles. The people were honest with each other, they fasted and prayed, and they were happy. They were able to sustain this happiness and prosperity for 200 years. Halfway through the chapter we learn that the people became very rich and proud again. And then what? Well, the short version is that everyone lived wickedly, they fought wars with each other, and both Lamanites and Nephites were wiped out. There are other examples of the prosperity cycle in the Book of Mormon and, of course, the example I just gave is a very simplified version of events. That’s all we need for my story.

Here’s what I mean about how we are doing everything wrong. We are clearly and plainly told, and given multiple examples of, how to live our lives the way Christ would have us live them. We are told to love unconditionally. That is, to love everyone without judgment. We are told to be humble, and to care for the sick and the needy. We are told to bless the lives of others, to give, to share, to open our arms. Yet, we do not. We preach it, but we do not live it. And that is where I cannot reconcile myself.

We cannot do those things while preaching that some of God’s children are less than because they are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Or while preventing some members from using medical marijuana because it is not prescribed by a doctor, ignoring the massive opioid epidemic in our country, caused in part by over-prescription by doctors. We cannot open our arms to the sick and the needy, yet qualify it by saying we will only help the sick and the needy in our own community. We cannot bring others to Christ by telling them that they are loved unconditionally yet turn our backs on them while they are stopped at the border, prevented from entering the country even when they are following the legal course of action we have asked them to follow. We cannot ignore the homeless epidemic, or the vast numbers of people who cannot get health care in this country. Remember, in 4 Nephi, no one was rich or poor. Everyone had what they needed. That was the result of Christ directly intervening in their lives. We cannot be hypocrites. How can we go before God and tell him that we lived our lives as he would have us live them if this is what we are doing?

That’s a personal question, of course, that everyone must figure out for themselves. For me, I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and I know that for the most part, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has it right. They screw up here and there – for example, I will never believe that the ban on Black Latter-day Saints holding the priesthood was anything other than racism on the part of Brigham Young – but the foundation is there. It’s just that the people themselves need to be sure that they are doing what Bishop Gay reminded us about in his recent conference talk. We must do as Jesus did, and “go through Samaria.” (John 4:4) We’re taking the easy way out if we focus our efforts solely on what’s comfortable for us, and ignore those who are suffering.

My husband and I recently ended our marriage after 30 years together. There was a lot of prayer involved on my part, and a lot of pain and anguish on both of our parts during the 15 years prior to our divorce. I regret intensely that things turned out that way, but I have become a better person because of the efforts I made to become more spiritual while my husband was struggling. This hard-won spirituality came with an obligation, though, because I now cannot sit silent while others are in pain and suffering simply because instead of living the gospel, people are living the culture of the church.