IT'S JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT.
I'm twenty years old. Sitting in a stranger's home in California. I'm wearing the white shirt, tie, and black name tag of a Mormon missionary.
Elder Stoddard
The Church of
Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints
My companion is leading the discussion, and I'm doing my best not to zone out. I haven't yet fully started on my personal path out of this particular religion. Hell, in this moment, I am balls deep in it. Giving it away for free, to anyone who'd let us in the door. I have however, started asking myself the questions that would get me going down that road.
There are all sorts of neat little psychological tricks we play with ourselves. Especially when facts and belief don't line up. It's called a double bind, and I am not very good at it. I know a lot of people who are. In fact, most of the people that I've been surrounded by my entire life, are veritable masters. Not me though. Right now, in this house in Northern California, that smells of cat piss, and stale kitty litter, I am asking myself all of the questions that we were taught in our youth, to not ask. To simply accept on faith. Right now I am putting faith and fact together, and coming up with a whole handful of bullshit. This bothers me, because if it's not true, then what the fuck am I doing here? This is not comfortable. In fact, this is distinctly troubling. I am in my mind, questioning not my faith, but the very nature of faith. I'm not wondering if I have faith, I'm questioning it's place in thought, reason, intelligence, curiosity...I'm questioning the very philosohpy of faith itself.
I am pulled out of my thoughts, by a familiar sound. I look at my companion who is still talking. "Bearing his testimony", in the common church venacular.
He is also doing that thing with his throat, where is seems like he's trying not to cry, but also starting to lose that battle and crying anyway.
"I know this is the true church", he says.
Since my brain is still lingering on my own more private thoughts, everything inside me rises up and screams "HOW?"
How do you know?
I want to stop everything right there. I want to take him by the face, and look him directly eye to eye and beg him to tell me HOW? How? Please. Please tell me...because I don't. I don't know. I can't say I know with any degree of honesty....
and that's the crux of it all. I've been saying it all along.
I know this church is true.
I know this church is true.
I'd like to bear my testimony. I know this church is true.
That line. That sentence. Repeated over and over and over again, by every member eveywhere, all the time.
I know this church is true.
I know this church is true.
I'd like to bear my testimony. I know this church is true.
From the time we begin to learn to speak, we are led up to the pulpit. Placed in front of strangers, and have those words whispered in to our ears to be repeated for the congregation.
Over and over. Month after month. Year after year.
I know this church is true.
I know this church is true.
I'd like to bear my testimony. I know this church is true.
And my own hypocrisy slams me in the stomach. I feel sick. I can't breathe. I've been warned about that too. That sick, can't breathe feeling we get sometimes when we ask too many questions, or doubt the truth of it all, is Satan. That's his power, trying to overwhelm you.
Oh yes. Someone, a very long time ago, figured out that when two truths conflict, and one has to go, and reason finally overcomes unreason, there may likely be a strong physical reaction. They figured out how to explain that reaction, in such fashion that is will be supported by the standing mythology.
And I want to on my knees BEG my companion to tell me how he knows. How do you know? You say you know, but HOW do you know...because I ALSO say that I know, and I sure as shit DON'T know. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's all a load of shit, and if it IS true, then this is the absolute most important truth in existence, and if it isn't true, then what is? What are we doing? What does it mean? How do you know? Are you lying too? Because...
Because I'm lying. I don't know.
I don't know this church is true.
I don't know this church is true.
I'd like to bear witness and testimony, that I don't konw anything, and I am a liar.
Instead I smile. I clutch my scriptures. I nod my head. I agree with what he says, and when the time comes, I say the prayer before we leave.
AND THEN A STEP TO THE RIGHT.
I am 27 years old, I am alone in my car, coming home from work, stuck in traffic, and my brain breaks. Over the years, I have become less active in church. I don't enjoy being there. I don't like the repetitive boredom. I don't like the us versus them attitude I feel every week. I have become much more interested in more intellectual pursuits. Lately I've been reading a lot of Socrates. Plato. Nietzche. I've just finished reading the Tao Te Ching, and the Discordia Principia. These are words and ideas that I can relate to. Far more than anything that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young ever committed to paper.
However, I am new to Vegas, and as happens with any life change, my wife had suggested that we start going to church again. Start over. Get back to the root of it all. I agreed, and have been for a while. It's boring, but as long as they leave me alone it's bearable. The problem is, recently they've asked my wife and I to teach the eight year old primary class. Funny thing is, I really do like the little fuckers. They're full of life and curiosity, and have really warped sense of humor. But...
But...
But the powers that be, want me to lie to these little hellions. I don't really have much of a problem teaching them basic Christian concepts like loving one another, and kindness to others, but they're at an age now, where I'm supposed to tell them shit that I don't believe. I've been able to kind of ride the fence of not believing, but going along with it, in order to not make waves...seems a LOT of people do that...
But now I can't. Now I'm supposed to indoctrinate these young, impressionable minds, with mormon truth's that aren't. I've been trying to reconcile some way to do this. How do I keep my wife happy, while also trying to find a way to disseminate information to kids, while also trying to live my own truth...and...
and...
I am alone in my car, coming home from work, stuck in traffic, and my brain breaks. The double bind, unbinds. I hear the crack. Reality in front of me shatters like glass, falls to the ground, and in front of me, I now see the world again. Exactly the same, and brand new. I laugh. It is not a gentle laugh. It is the laughter that would be weeping, if I were the type who cries. I am not. There is joy in the laughter yes. There is freedom. There is the weight of the universe, now lifted, but there is also the pain of 27 wasted years. All punching me at once. I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh, and I cannot stop. I am happy, and I am devistated. And I laugh. It came from nowhere, and isn't going anywhere. It is loud, and it hurts. I realize, that for my entire life, I have been inside of the world's greatest joke, and right now...in this instant...I finally understand the punchline.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. - William Hazlitt
The foundation of reason, the single block upon which knowledge can be built is the very simple premise,
What is, is.
Only what is, can be known. It is impossible to know what isn't.
What is, can be seen, measured, tested, verified, reviewed, and repeated.
After what is, is verified, then you can build. You can structure. You can extrapolate. You can predict. Sometimes, you can even assume.
If you build on what isn't, then what isn't will crumble.
And so to build a bridge into the unknown, it becomes imperative to first establish what is. Once we have firmly planted on is, then can we travel in to what may be.
And my god did I laugh.
And I pulled in to my driveway.
And although I was wearing the same clothes, and seeing out of the same wonky eyes, and carrying on my face, the familiar crooked grin...I was no longer me. Now I was I AM.
After nearly three decades of heavy religious study, sometimes getting into the real deep shit, I finally understood I AM.
"Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together — ." He croaked something in Martian and smiled. - STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
And I walk in to my apartment. I am new. I am reborn. Baptized in brain break and laughter. I have shrugged off every teaching. Every rule. Every sin. Every single thing, that my church had tried to tell me that I could or couldn't do, and knew instantly that I now had only one rule.
For myself, I have only one rule.
Do not, with intent, initiate harm.
That's it. That is my rule.
I will never allow my desire to become the obligation of another human.
I will never cast moral judgement on another human.
I will never shame another human.
I will never tell another human what to do, what decision to make, or how to behave.
This is my life. I will do what I want.
It's your life, do what you want.
I will build my actions, and knowledge first, on what is, and then go from there.
And I will love.
Because goddammit...
what else is there?
I tell my wife that I will no longer be going to church. I am not Mormon anymore.
What are you?
I AM.
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