I think the earliest sign that the whole Church Thing wasn't for me manifested itself to me as a teenager still at home. I'd often be 'too tired' or 'feeling gross' to roll out of bed and get all dressed up early on a Sunday. And as a teen, hey, getting up early on a weekend is obviously not an enjoyable task in the first place (especially when you're waking up at 6am every weekday for seminary). But if I was a bit more self-aware at the time, I should've been able to notice that my lack of motivation might've been indicative of something more substantial lurking beneath.
Eventually I moved away from home for the last time, to pursue work in another province. Under a warm blanket of indifference I didn't attend much church. I'd go for the odd meeting - sneaking in the back hoping that I wouldn't have to actually engage with anyone. I was fiercely lonely at the time and disconnected from the greater world, but having to shake hands and make repetitive small talk from behind a fake smile seemed to be an even worse fate. When a religious culture is built on extroverted engagement, any strange face is fresh food. Inevitably you'll be asked where you're from, and the last thing you want to explain time and again is that you actually live just a few blocks away. It reveals that you're (gasp!) an inactive member.
I worked an entry-level job at a small company. At one point I even took a evening charcoal drawing course at ACAD. I made it through the whole thing, then for the last two classes I discovered that we'd be doing some figure studies. Which, lo and behold, meant drawing actual live models. That were nekkid. It shouldn't be surprising that a Christian upbringing kinda skews your perception of nudity: I was so uncomfortable at the notion of seeing an unclothed human in the flesh that I skipped those last two classes.
Life ebbed and flowed. I worked for a few years before enrolling full time at ACAD. Once paying significant tuition for drawing courses that tied directly into the Almighty GPA, I came to appreciate what a beautiful thing the human body was and how it wasn't (gasp!) inherently sexual. I saw man parts and lady parts and it was all just... a non-issue.
Somewhere in here, I became regularly involved with the LDS singles' ward. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, this is a Sunday session made up entirely of youth/young adults from 18 to 30 that have yet to be married. Gotta get them kids starting families, apparently. After all, that is the only way to receive the highest level of salvation and be with Christ.
Aside from the distinct feeling that you're now starting to live your spiritual life from within a meat market of companionship, it was an alright place to be. The bishopric was a lovely set of gentlemen that really seemed to care for their young (and sexually-repressed) congregation.
It needs to be said that there is a 'second-class' of citizen within the church. And that is, most definitely, young single men of mission-serving age who have not served a mission. Women aren't 'duty-bound' to serve a mission, you see, so they're all good. Returned missionaries are a very hot commodity - they usually get married off within six to twelve months of being home and move on to a regular family congregation. And it's no wonder most young women hold out for one of these men; they've had a spiritual experience, served their church and lord and fellow men, and are equipped with a superior spiritual arsenal. It doesn't matter where they went or future prospects, they are the complete package.
This whole 'second-class citizen' thing really isn't plainly spoken of in the church, but I can assure you it's true. Someone who hasn't served a mission must have something wrong. Not damaged goods, per se, but questionable.
So being a single, rather introverted, non-mission-serving-Mormon young man... was a tough go. I remember walking to church early and then strolling around the block so that I could enter at the last possible minute. Anything to minimize being engaged by people you don't have much in common with under a sugary coating of fellowship. But eventually people caught wise to me. The bishopric gave me a calling as the building caretaker. This meant I locked up at the end of the day and had to organize groups to clean the chapel. It was perceptive to give me a non-social duty - it made sure I was regularly attending, and in a capacity that wouldn't totally overwhelm and drive me away.
During this time, my bishop spoke with me about receiving the next level of the priesthood. And the truth came out: I admitted I didn't have a strong enough testimony. This was an oddly freeing realization to have and communicate, because for a long time I knew that I just didn't quite have the same thing inside me that brought my other brothers and sisters to heartfelt tears of joy. I was missing... something...
And thus, for a period, I was a Very Good Boy. With the bishop as a guide, I was regularly attending sacrament meetings, fulfilling my priesthood duties, reading the scriptures every day, and somehow abstaining from such self-guided bodily activities that are particularly difficult for young men to abstain from. For a period of... four? six? months, I had an honest yearning in my heart to develop a true testimony of Christ and come to a personal knowledge that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. As a popular passage in the Book of Mormon states,
I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.To set a frame of reference, during this time I was in my second year at ACAD. Which was brutal. I was doing about 80hrs of classes/homework a week. For the first time since I started school, I wasn't even working part time, which meant I was enjoying the same three extremely cost effective meals on repeat. I hadn't touched my gaming computer in months, I didn't hang out with anyone, I wasn't watching any shows, I didn't eat out. The entirety of my life was school and trying to be a faithful servant of God and seeking to be an upstanding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
And so I prayed with all sincerity and intent my heart had to offer. When I received nothing, I read more scriptures, and fasted more meals, and paid more tithing. And yet... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I was even lower than young men who never went on a mission. Maybe I just wasn't good enough. How come everyone else got these feelings? What was wrong with me?
An aside: the above passage, known to Mormons as Moroni's Promise, is generally boiled down to: Read, ponder, pray > Ask with sincere heart/real intent/faith in Christ. If the Holy Ghost testifies to you, you're all good. If he doesn't, then obviously you need to repeat steps one and two because something in your process is lacking. Nowhere in the formula is there a result where the church isn't true. The only two available outcomes are either a) the church is true, or b) you need to try harder to find out the church is true. There is only one exit from the loop.
My story now takes a turn for the cliche, because a girl happened to me. A precarious balance of scholarly pursuits and spiritual yearning was casually discarded, but unlike the weathered Hollywood tropes, this love story came with precious few redeeming qualities.
Those of you familiar with winter driving in Alberta (or most of the prairies, for that matter) are familiar with rock chips. Essentially, during the icy months, big orange dump trucks with an over-sized pepper grinding attachment coat all major roads with half a quarry's worth of fine salt, sand, and pebbles. Some of these particles aren't quite as fine, though, and soon lodge themselves in your windshield. A rock chip in the windshield is the time-honoured price motorists pay in exchange for appeasing the God of Commuter Traction.
And as the weather warms and cools and gets freakishly cold, that little chip turns into a spider. Before the season is out, the pressure of the glass and extreme temperatures causes one (or more) cracks to run the full length of the windshield, plotting a course right through your line of vision.
Unlike your average windshield, the chip caused by this girl turned into a run that, once reaching across the entire span of my vision, abruptly fractured the whole damn thing.
Okay, once more but without the drawn out metaphors: I broke the law of chastity, which states that any significant physical activity between individuals outside of marriage is a sin. To give it some conservative Christian Mormon-tastic context, this is about as terrible of a thing a person can do outside of murder or denying the Holy Ghost. I was officially a horrible, corrupt, worthless person.
And I didn't know how to handle that. Do you get excommunicated on the spot for such things? Would they notify your parents? The thought mortified me.
So I did what any good Mormon would do: I told my bishop. But then I did what any terrible Mormon would do: I told him I needed to step away to process things, and I promptly handed in my building key on the spot, turned around, and walked out. I had reached my breaking point.
The literary opportunity dangling in front of me right now is to say that the windshield had completely shattered, and I could finally see clearly again. That really wasn't the case though; my vision was more messed up than before, and now I was desperately swerving across four lanes of traffic.
I was in a relationship I wasn't equipped to handle, overwhelmed with school, and now there was a void where a foundation of pure purpose was supposed to sit (even if I wasn't 100% sold on it in the first place, at least it was something). Deep down I knew I didn't want to keep attending the church. And even if I did, I didn't know what kind of hurdles I'd have to jump to return, and the shame that'd entail. Forget the whole missionary thing, now I was legitimately damaged spiritual goods.
I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted out of life. On some base level, though, I knew I couldn't continue trying to be a Latter Day Saint. After spending a lifetime of missing out and not quite getting it like everyone else, I was exhausted and broken.
-Cril
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