Why I was a Good Mormon… Why I was a Bad Mormon

This is a bit of a confession.  This is not the story of my disaffection.  This is the story of my life in fragments that I feel are indicative of my journey.  I think back on all of these steps frequently.  I wonder how free agency was supposed to work differently.  I wonder if there was any possibility whatsoever that I could have stayed in the Church my whole life.  It goes without saying that there is much missing here.

I feel like it is important that I not recast my life story as one continuous slide out of the Church, away from faith.  It would be a great disservice to myself, and the people I love, to try to revise my personal history to seamlessly fit my present convictions.  Likewise, many of us will agree that whitewashing is a great disservice as well.  I want to be honest, even honest about my sins.

  

I do feel like you can look at those pieces and give a general indicator of whether they point to faith or away from it, so I have provided indicators as I see them.

Some people will read this and focus on my sins and satisfy their righteous judgment at my apostasy.  Some will see my sincere faithfulness and sympathize with my efforts. 

We are all wrong when we try to measure out the pieces of a life and come to simplistic judgments about the net balance of those pieces.

Good: I remember when I was eight, at my baptism that coming out of the water I felt so happy, sort of glowing happy.

Bad: I was more than a little put out that I had to share my baptism ceremony with a little girl in the ward.

Good: I sort of worshipped Joseph Smith.  I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t struck by the story of his religious search, by his earnest testimony of having seen a vision; he knew it, and he knew that God knew it.

Bad: I remember starting to have fantasies about women and their bodies in kindergarten.  I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by female nakedness.

Good: I LOVED to sing the songs in primary.  I was in primary for the golden age of new songs (Armies of Helaman, Where Love Is, Love is Spoken Here), and I sang with gusto, on key, with my whole heart.  When we would visit other wards, the primary choristers were disappointed to learn that I wasn't going to be a permanent addition.  

Bad: As a young Boy Scout, when they told me I couldn’t bring a cassette player on campouts to play music, I brought it anyway.  By the time I was 14, I was firmly antagonistic towards the scouting program.  I refused to finish my Eagle with only two merit badges and my Eagle project to go.

Good:  The first time the Bishop asked me if I had a problem with masturbation, I had no idea what he was talking about.

Bad: Pretty soon I figured it out.

Good: For about 20 YEARS, I felt really, really bad about it.

Bad: That never stopped the behavior.

Good: I loved to go to the temple for baptisms for the dead.  I honestly tried to feel the presence of the spirits receiving their ordinances. 

Bad: I had my first real kiss at nearly 16 and never looked back.  I never felt guilty at all about serious make-out sessions.

Good: I never went past second base with any girl until I was married.  Somehow, I had the presence of mind to stop a few from going farther with me.

Bad: Over time, as an adult, I have resented my lack of normal sexual experiences as a kid (which my wife has repeatedly reminded me is both silly and useless).

Good: I had more than one strong spiritual experience that I felt was a confirmation of Joseph Smith as a prophet.

Good: I went to EFY at BYU as a teenager, and LOVED it.

Bad:  My best friend and I went there with our Young Men’s president’s suggestion to have a competition to kiss as many girls as possible there.  I lost… but didn’t get shut out.

Bad: I went to a high school for the performing arts, and developed friendships and love for many teachers and fellow students who were quite obviously homosexual, setting me up for serious cognitive dissonance later on as I would begin to seriously think about the doctrines surrounding the family and homosexuality.  I played a small part as a gay soldier in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues.

Good: I went to early morning seminary and learned the scriptures.  I am a well-above-average scriptorian.

Bad: I eagerly looked for opportunities in seminary to say ass, damn, and hell when reading the scriptures.

Bad: I loathed the musical The Music Man.

Bad: I absolutely adored edgy, questionable musicals like Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, and City of Angels (I was in all three in high school).

Good: I started to apply to Princeton out of high school, but after praying about it, I felt like I was supposed to go to BYU.

Bad: My favorite novel in high school was On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  I reveled in the stories of tearing across the continent in sex-soaked prose.  My favorite poet was Charles Bukowski.  I loved the old man and his horse, and red wine, and whores.

Good: At BYU I had an amazing Book of Mormon class taught by Vern Sommerfeldt.  It was from that class that I learned to love the Book of Mormon. 

Bad: I HATED my time at BYU.  I was depressed most of the year. 

Good: I was as earnest a missionary in Italy as you could find.  I put my whole heart and being into the work and loved it.  It was easily the best two years of my life.

Bad: In Italy I was faced every day with feminine nakedness everywhere I turned. 

Good: On my mission, I read MANY conference reports, and developed a real love of General Conference. 

Good: I read Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson and had a nearly pentecostal experience in really understanding the atonement for the first time.

Good: I remember reading a first presidency message by Pres. Hinckley about a young Asian man that gave up everything to join the Church.  “It’s true isn’t it? Then what else matters?”  That story stuck with me, knowing that nothing else mattered as long as it was true.

 Bad: I bought Italian suits and shoes and bootleg CD’s of my favorite bands on my mission; filling my suitcase for the journey home with the contraband and bottles of perfect, unfiltered olive oil.

Good: On my mission I decided to abandon my dream of being an actor, feeling strongly that I was to return home and move back to (dreaded) Utah.

Bad: God led me to my bride-to-be well past midnight, putting to bed the silly notion that the Holy Ghost goes to bed at 12.

Good: Although we were wildly horny, we somehow managed to make it to the temple without major incident.

Bad: I was definitely copping a feel outside the temple right after the ceremony.

Good: I told my young bride, who was happy to slide on the issue of wearing our garments at night, that I felt strongly we should.

Bad: I immediately discovered, to my tremendous disappointment, that all of the complexities, temptations, and problems around sex that I thought marriage would magically fix, did NOT get magically fixed.

Good: When we still didn’t have any kids, I proposed that we not watch any more R rated movies (a serious spiritual concession for someone who loves movies as much as I do).

Bad: Several years later when we were starting to have kids, I decided I couldn’t come up with a strong rationale why blind adherence to a standard about movie ratings made sense.  I couldn’t figure out a way to think about movies and literature separately, and I certainly couldn’t figure out how to reconcile all the things I loved about life with a life in cloister.  So we stopped.

Good:  In spite of the above statement, my favorite scripture was Adam’s declaration, “I know not, save the Lord commanded me.”  My wife put it in calligraphy for me and framed it as a special present.

Bad:  I would never have accepted the premise that evidence could (or should) be conclusively contradictory to the truth.

Good:  For virtually our entire marriage until this year, we paid tithing on the gross and kept fast offerings at around 5% of our gross income, believing that God would be generous with us if we were generous with Him.

Good: I never once broke the word of wisdom until after I left the Church.  I never had a drink of coffee or alcohol, never smoked, and never got high.

Good: I seriously wanted to be consecrated.  When Prop 22 was going on (the first version of Prop 8), we squashed any internal turmoil and went to meet with the Stake President, determined to give whatever he asked.  When he asked for $1000, I told him he could have more if he wanted, that we would give everything the Lord asked.  He took the $1000.

Bad: After we had kids, I remember the moment when I decided I didn’t want to sing in ward choir any more.  I wasn’t struggling in my testimony, I just didn’t enjoy it.  It felt like the real moment when I started to take my consecration off the table.

Good: I named my first son Joseph because of my love of Joseph Smith.

Good: I requested to be an early morning seminary teacher, and taught my heart out for four years.

Bad:  There was never a time when I didn’t strongly feel that the most wonderful things in life are the imperfections and flaws.

Good: When we didn’t have kids, we drove the hour each way to the San Diego temple twice a month.  We consistently went once a month until the last few years when I really started to have issues.

Bad:  When I turned 28 I decided if I didn’t get a rock band together, it would never happen; so I did.

Good:  I LOVED the temple, especially the veil and initiatories.  The first time I went through the veil I had a wonderful spiritual experience that has never left me.  Even now, I think about the veil fondly.

Bad: I started a company to work in the action sports industry and we threw parties at work for hundreds of kids with live bands.

Good:  When my (non-member) partner got a stripper for the birthday party of one of my seminary students and brought alcohol for our Christmas party, I decided I had to get out.  It wasn’t a good scene for a young, faithful, seminary teacher with little kids.  I told my partner I had to get out.  My wife and I prayed about it and felt inspired to move back to Utah.

Bad:  At the worst possible moment, I got the idea to start a hedge fund.  I prayed about it and felt strongly that it was a good idea.  I raised $1 million in the third quarter of 2007.  In January of 2008, the market went ballistic and the fund hemorrhaged $500,000.  It is a gross oversimplification to say that I have not been willing to pray for guidance since.

Good:  I watched every session of General Conference for over 12 years.  I got the conference CDs and listened to them over and over.

Bad:  I have always loved rock and roll and pop culture.  I have never felt the least bit guilty about worldly or suggestive music.  I never felt bad about not feeling bad about that, since I figured if the Holy Ghost wants me to feel bad about it, I will.

Good:  Until this February, in my entire life, I probably missed Church less than five times just because I didn’t want to go.

Bad:  When I was starting to really struggle with doctrinal issues, I flat out told the bishop that if God required living in a bubble to qualify for the spirit, I wasn’t willing to do it.

Good:  I started to read Rough Stone Rolling specifically because I felt like I needed a boost to my testimony of Joseph Smith.  When I could feel that it wasn’t helping, I put it down.

Bad:  After reading The Tipping Point, I got hooked on sociology books and behavioral studies.  I began to think seriously about the psychological underpinnings of human decision making and motivations.

Good: While active, I never read anything that could be considered anti-Mormon or even questionable.  I knew that there was danger there.

Bad: For as long as I can remember, I had a nagging awareness that if the Church wasn’t so totally true, it looked an awful lot like a fraud.  I became more and more aware that it was a self-confirming system.

Good: I tried to comfort myself by imagining that the truth would have to appear that way; that faith was necessary.

Bad:  Things began to nag at me.  Noah’s ark would not leave me alone. 

Bad:  I started to listen to NPR and watch TED talks.

Good:  I truly believed that all truth had to circumscribe into one great whole. 

Bad:  I refused to compartmentalize.  In fact, I tried not to.  I tried to think of how doctrines would look from different angles, and how they held up as you peeled back the layers of necessary implication. 

Bad:  The results were not encouraging.

Good: I believed in it all very literally.

Bad:  When I couldn’t believe in it literally any more, I couldn’t believe in it at all.