Churching Hard but Doubting Harder
—A Letter to LDS First Responders About Finding Spirituality Amidst a Lifetime of Being “Mormon”.
A local LDS Stake Leader was asked to write a letter to LDS first responders who may be wrestling with doubt in their faith. Coincidentally, so was he.
His words do not represent the organization of the LDS church but only reflect his personal journey of renewing his spirituality in a church that he has grown up in his entire life.
I grew up in the type of Mormon household where Dr. Pepper might as well have been Budweiser, “crap” was a swear word, and for a long time, I really thought popcorn grew on trees.
Actually, I liked growing up this way. I knew my parents loved me, they were good to other people, and it was clear they loved our religion. Things were simple, there was right and wrong, and there were rules, scriptures, and prophets. For me, it had a positive impact on who I was. I was also kind of naturally good at being religious. I enjoyed the structure, the community, and the culture. I gave my first sacrament talk when I was still in primary, got my Eagle Scout when I was still a deacon and taught adult Sunday School when I was a teenager, you get the picture.
For the next decade and a half, I followed the Mormon “script” – I served a 2-year mission, married in a Temple, had kids, a career, and of course, lots of church. I would be lying if I said that at the time, I wasn’t proud of the fact that I had been in leadership positions in every congregation we had been in as we move around the country.
My religiosity was high.
By my mid-30s, something began to happen – something that was hard to define, hard to articulate – I was losing my religious fervor. Looking back, there were some significant challenges that my wife and I faced, and it was a busy time with kids and work. Whether it was the suffering or the busyness, my groove of religious practice had become a rut. From the outside, I was still present at all the meetings, and I still intellectually had all the scriptural knowledge I had gained over the years, but somehow my actions felt empty.
I love the biblical story of the prodigal son. When the father sees his lost son finally coming home, despite the distance, the father runs to his son, has compassion, embraces, and kisses him. The prodigal’s past was inconsequential in his father’s embrace. The son was in the right place.
Sometimes we forget that, for the prodigal, the decision to come home was not easy. It wasn’t that he just ran out of money and decided to return to live in his father’s basement. His need to return home had to become greater than his ego. In the story, he realizes the depth of his own need when he wanted to eat the food he was feeding to the pigs. That desperation helped him decide that no matter the consequences, even if it meant no longer being a son, it was better for him to return home.
This parable parallels my own path. I felt a depth of spiritual need that forced me to challenge my religious ego.
I was experiencing real religious doubt. There was emptiness accompanied by questions not easily answered. I knew that for me my situation wasn’t going to be fixed by “just reading the scriptures more,” “just praying it away,” or “just churching harder.” I had been churching hard my whole life, this required something different.
Unfortunately, in Mormonism and in many organized religions, there is a bad relationship with the word “doubt.” We either put doubt in the category of sin or the category of things easily overcome through diligence. It’s hard enough to experience doubt. It’s incredibly hard when you feel that you have to pretend you aren’t. I believe we can do better for each other, no matter our faith.
I was scared of where this would all lead. I had invested a lifetime into religious practice. What would I tell my wife? What would my parents think? Does this mean that everything I had done was for nothing?
I didn’t know what was next, but I decided I wasn’t giving up. When the prodigal realized the depth of his need, he didn’t lie down in the mud with the pigs, he started walking home – no matter the consequences. My walk home wasn’t a pleasant journey, but it began my real wrestle. I thought I had wrestled with religious ideas in the past, but I was always kind of in “safe” mode. I never really put anything, like my actual beliefs, at risk. Like, the prodigal, I knew this journey had consequences, even if it meant questioning my belief in God and my membership in the Mormon Church. It was scary to think I may no longer “be a son” in these ways.
Today we would call my experience a “faith crisis.” I am still deciding if I like that phrase or not. Perhaps you are experiencing a faith crisis, something that consists of real doubt with real consequences on your beliefs. Given your profession, you have a front-row seat to many of the harshest realities this world bares down on humans. Explaining the reasons why such suffering exists is difficult, but searching for explanations while dealing with the depth and consistency of seeing these events as a first responder, requires a whole other level of mental and emotional fortitude. If you are experiencing doubt, know that this is evidence of your humanity, not a weakness.
Not being a first responder, I cannot speak to those details, but I hope that my journey and discovery of spirituality can be helpful.
If you are in a position of doubt or even just desire more spirituality – there is hope in moving forward. It’s hard. The path can feel lonely and dark at times, but I bet you are where you are because you embrace hard things. Please don’t stop on your spiritual path because of doubt.
Speaking of paths, a critical piece of information is that you are not off the path! You are on the only path YOU can be on – your own! Not even one single time does the phrase “path of righteousness” show up in scripture. Most of the time, the word path is actually plural, it’s “paths” – paths of righteousness, paths of wisdom.
I believe the greatest promise of pursuing a spiritual path is that having a spiritual mind takes each of our unique experiences, our individual path, no matter how devastating, no matter the detours, and transforms it into something beautiful.
A pivotal moment for me came while I was studying Buddhism. A Buddhist teacher provided an analogy for truth and religious practice. Truth is like tea, and our practice is like a cup. Like a cup, our outward religious practices are perceivable, measurable, and easy to label. But we can also become so concerned with this outward appearance of what our cup looks like that we forget the purpose of the cup is to hold the tea or truth.
I discovered that I had been walking around with an empty cup. A pretty great cup built over a lifetime, but at some point, my religious practices had become disconnected from filling my cup with the spiritual truths it was meant to hold.
This is where I decided to start rebuilding and rethinking my spiritual path. I wanted to create a spiritual identity stripped of platitudes. It would require less certainty and more curiosity; more love and less judgment. I was willing to totally refashion my cup, or in other words, change my religious practices to ensure they weren’t spiritually empty.
Today I can say the most terrifying part of my wrestle is behind me. My wife and parents still love me and, not surprisingly, have expressed doubts of their own. But now we walk arm in arm in growing and learning together.
I am still a doubter and, at the same time, a believer. My hope is that sharing my wrestle can help others see that they are not alone. That doubt is not a fault or failure to be ashamed of. That doubt can be an opportunity for honesty, courage, and real spiritual growth. I hope we can grant each other permission to doubt, to have questions, to wrestle with things that matter. That we can recognize that faith has both moments of calm and crisis, and ultimately, it’s a journey we all can walk together in love and support.
Ultimately, I chose to remain within the Mormon community for two reasons. The first is because of ideas, truths, that I deeply treasure such as – I am an infinite spiritual being, a member of a divine family, with the potential to become much more than I am today. The second, is this community provides helpful structures and connections with others to rebuild my cup to hold these truths. Overall, I am a new person spiritually because I have “pondered my path” (Proverbs 4:26) and reconnected the purpose of my cup to being filled with the truths I treasure most.
I try my best to love others by allowing them to be on the only path they can be on, their own. I believe there are many paths that can reach the top of the mountain. Like a real mountain, while there are many paths that arrive at the top, there is only one way to get there. You must go upward. Hike, ride a chairlift, take a helicopter – everyone must elevate. There is no other way.
I am grateful for Jesus to have shown me “a way,” a spiritual approach to life that is centered in love. And not just love for my neighbors but love for my enemies. He was complete in showing love to everyone, and I don’t believe He cares at all about a perfect cup.
For me, being spiritual in this way has bound up my broken heart and transformed my experiences for my good, especially when I feel undeserving. I wish you the very best in your path and in your spiritual discoveries!
