Note:
I wrote this essay a month ago while our family was vacationing on the Oregon coast. I’ve left it in its original form despite the recent events regarding the pending disciplinary actions of my two friends, John Dehlin and Kate Kelly. I’m not sure if this post still has relevance now or not.
A LETTER TO AN APOSTATE
by Michael Barker
I came to a hard realization last night after a phone call. Those closest to me that struggle with the LDS Church and are in a serious faith crisis… well, I’m completely impotent in helping them. Nothing I’ve offered has allowed them to reconstruct their faith in a way that is meaningful to them and will allow them to still engage in the LDS Church institution. Nothing. They all leave.
My wife tried to console me as I held my head in my hands, sitting on the closed toilet lid. I shook my head:
“None of the tools I try to offer have done any good.”
“But Mike,” she replied, “Think of all the positive responses you have gotten from people that have read your essays. Think of all the times someone has said, ‘Thanks, I needed to hear that today.‘.
“That may be true, but the ones closest to me – my friends, my family – they all leave. They all leave.”
“Well, if your goal is for them to stay, then yes. But they have their agency. You have advocated loving them; loving those that leave.”
“They all leave.”
“Do you think I will leave?”
Introspection
This conversation has caused some introspection on my part. Why do I even care if someone stays or leaves? Here are some possibilities:
- I am concerned for their souls.
- I just want to be right.
- We are friends and a big part of that friendship is/was the Church.
Let’s look at number one: I am concerned for their souls. Honestly, this isn’t something I think about, even for myself. For me, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more about the here and now. It’s about alleviating the suffering for people now. It’s about loving people now. The eschatology of the LDS message is of secondary importance to me. So, number one on the list, isn’t true for me.
Number two has some truth to it. I am, by nature, a very rigid thinker. I am a black and white thinker. It is difficult for me to see the other colors, but when I do, the world is more beautiful. The color spectrum of my life and the lives around me are much more brilliant than the two extremes of the color spectrum; black -which absorbs all color and so is colorless to our eyes; and white which reflects all color and so is colorless to our eyes.
I like to be right. I have an ego. Hell, one cannot be a blogger and not have an ego. Let’s be honest here. An important lesson I have learned, have advocated, and usually forget, is it is more important to be kind than to be right. When trying to decide between mercy and judgement, choose mercy. My friends that have left, I love them. Really, I love them. I am truly happy that they are happy. One can be happy without the LDS Church. Many are happier once they leave the Church. This leads me to number three: We are friends and a big part of that friendship is/was the Church.
This is probably from where my pain comes. If I am honest and look at those friends of mine who have left the Church, and that aren’t family members, the only reason we became friends was because of our LDS ward. None of them share my same interests. Okay, I really have only one interest, mountain biking. I’m a mountain bike junky. So, take their membership away, and what are we left with? We are left with our friendship with no strings attached. But this is where the difficulty lies.
I have seen on internet forums the pain of those who have left the Church because all of their LDS “friends” abandoned them when the decision was reached that the Church “wasn’t what it claimed to be.” It hurts me that they were abandoned. Because of this, I realized something. If I want to remain friends with those that have left, this is going to take a lot of work. If I’m not seeing them at Church every Sunday, we are going to have to put some extra effort into our friendship. So I make phone calls; I send emails; I send text messages:
“Hey, do you all want to go out to eat this Friday?”
“Hey, do you all want to meet up for lunch?”
Usually our schedules don’t quite sync, but that’s okay – maybe next time. I want to be their friend. I don’t care if they drink. I don’t care. I want to be with them. But, it takes so much work. To be honest, I wish they would call me to invite me to do something; it hurts that they don’t. I’ll keep trying because they are my friends.
So, my advice to those that have left? Be kind. I know we that still attend Church can be outright a-holes to you. I condemn that behavior. Let’s be honest though, you too sometimes come in and poop all over everyone’s wonderful picnic. You can also be an outright a-hole.
Find happiness. The sooner you can leave Mormonism alone, the sooner you will be happy. It’s hard though. I get it. It’s in your blood. It’s in your DNA. You can’t just shake it.
Find and maintain some type of spiritual practice. This one might be off-putting, but allow me to explain. If you think about it, Buddhism is really an atheistic religion. I’m not saying this to bolster some type of apologetic claim for Christianity. Just think about it though. They do not worship a god, yet many maintain the spiritual practice of meditation. So, you as a non-believer, find some practice that feeds your spirit, your mind, your consciences, your whatever the hell you want to call it. Find something and do it.
Lonely
I had dinner the other night over at a member’s house. Including me, there were five of us. One of them had been given the church speaking topic of “Doubt”. My ears perked. I said, “I have some great quotes that might be helpful if you want.”
Crickets.
“Ya, we are seeing a real paradigm shift in the Church right now, with regards to faith and doubt.”
Crickets.
At that moment, I realized my ward still sees me as being on the fringe. I am to be tolerated.
I think this is from where my pain comes:
I am not fully embraced and accepted by my ward nor my more traditional-believing Mormon friends.
My friends that have left the LDS faith (and in many instances with whom I feel the most comfortable) at times, seemed to have forgotten about me.
And my heart aches. It aches for that lost companionship. Companionship that was lost when I first opened up my mouth to offer a dissenting opinion in Church. Companionship that was lost when my friends and family left the Church.
In the words of the Preacher:
“…vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:1)
Miguel Barker-Valdez
Miguel is a Guatemalan-American Mormon living in the Northwest with his family. He is one of the proprietors of the Rational Faiths blog.
All posts by Miguel Barker-Valdez
Amen. I wouldn’t change a word.
As I walk a similar road to the above mentioned I find the life of Jesus Christ and some of the great martyrs drawn to me. It doesn’t remove the pain or obstacle, it only enhances a part of their lives I never imagined. I don’t know if that is the purpose for my experience in these matters, but it causes me to hope that this loneliness of being between will be of some value in the long run.
I’ve tried often to cross either line – going back fully and pretending the problems/doubts don’t exist or walking away. Both leave a discomfort or dishonesty in my heart. So here I am the gal in the middle – and internally deeply alone.
Man mike you said what I have been thinking. I haven’t watched people I know leave but there are people from my past that have. the church used to be common ground. Now we have to build up new common ground.
Thank you for the honesty and the soul.
That was a great post, Mike, and very healing to read. Thank You. And, so you know….I’m also a mountain biker. I’d love to get in a ride or two with you!
Aw Mike – I love your heart.
I don’t know if there’s any answer to this problem. I think sometimes when people leave the church it’s easier for them to not keep up the friendships because it’s a constant reminder of the ties to that community – if that makes any sense. That’s not always the case, of course. Some people are longing for those friendships.
Good for you for trying to maintain them. You’re right – it’s a whole lot of work. Even maintaining friendships from a ward when you move away is a lot of work. We have some strange things about being friends with people just in our ward, eh?
Michael, thanks for this post. I sometimes think that especially maintaining male friendships is a larger difficult societal issue. Church often creates the relationship for us, and without that being forced, I think it can be hard to cultivate. Far too often I feel as you do that I’m the one initiating the socializing, even with fellow church-goers.
Reading about your experience makes me want to try harder.
RE: loneliness
The other day I was thinking about the first passover. The angel of death – for all intents and purposes, God’s will and spirit – passed over the Children of Israel. In this case, God did not “touch” his people. It was an event of non-interaction, non-intimacy. I find it interesting to think of the passover in these terms. Sometimes, God does not touch us. Sometimes, God passes over us.
A simple quote from one of my favorite Christian writers, Sir Thomas Browne: “thy will be done, though in my own undoing.”
I know the pain of being half in and half out. After conference last time every conversation about Ordain Women went bad. Very bad. I am mostly attending, while my wife is seldom attending, my son is never attending, and my daughter is fully practicing. I just don’t measure up for any of them, not really believing enough in my ward and too believing for most groups on the internet.
I used to say that it was easy to be either fully in or fully out, but really hard to be half in and half out. I had no idea I would ever be living that or how true it actually turned out to be.
For better or worse though I think the real truth is not on either end, but in the middle, so I’ll continue to stick it out, because the best surfing is neither all in close to shore or all out in the ocean, but at the point where the waves are breaking.
I guess for me the church has never been my source of friends. I grew up in a place with few members so my best friends were always not members of the church. My best friends in the world still are not members of the church. I don’t go to church for social acceptance or social connections. I understand those who do, but I just don’t. I am not a fan of forced friendship or being assigned to be someone’s friend as is often done in the church.
If I moved today from my ward I wouldn’t miss the people too much. The majority are very nice and decent folks but I wouldn’t lament over them or want to come back to visit them. Maybe not being a “Facebooker” helps me also.
I know Mike that you long to be accepted, along with your questioning, your doubts, etc. I would say that you are accepted by some and not by others. That is the way it will likely always be. Some people will always see you as “fringe” and others will see you as a good person with a good soul who is working out his salvation wrestling with God just like the rest of us.
Questioning can be troubling for those who feel like they have it all worked out. Public questioning is challenging to those folks because if things changed, their ideas that they had all figured out would change and they would have to struggle. I guess I am getting off the topic here but let me say that I believe that there will come a day when all that is “cultural” in the church will be stripped away in favor of what is “doctrinal.” It may not come in our lives but it will come.
Poignant. Great advice regarding spiritual practices – they’re really for everyone, not just theists. It’s hard being stuck between two dogmatic groups.