Green Oasis

I had an odd reaction to The Mormons Are Coming, posted yesterday on Salon. This was the first time in a long time that I truly felt like an outsider to Mormonism. I felt as though I had never been Mormon. I looked with outsider’s eyes at the peculiar things Mormons do and sensed the otherness that is such a part of being Mormon.

The article brought up old memories of what it was like to be a Mormon child. Somehow the article connected me to memories of being embarrassed to be Mormon. When I was a child, I remember looking around at the faces in sacrament meeting thinking “These really are peculiar people.” I sensed that being Mormon meant that I was strange.

I was an outsider with strange ideas. The gentiles would question me about why I didn’t drink soda, swear, or play on Sundays. I sympathized with the gentiles because Mormon ideas seemed a bit strange to me too. Yet I was Mormon, so I stuck up for those ideas.

Today as I read the article, I remembered that same feeling of peculiarity. I felt the kind of shame in the pit of my stomach like I had been left out of the others’ games and jokes, like I was outside the group. I felt the pain of being different. I finally understood why some call being Mormon an ethnicity.

A prescient Charlie Chaplin on the hope for a better world. (via Truthdig)

When I was very young, not even in school, a recurring nightmare troubled my sleep. A wolf with demonic eyes would stand on its hind legs and chase me relentlessly. I still feel the shadow of fear to this day when I think about it.

I shared my nightmares with my mother. She suggested that I pray about it, asking Heavenly Father to remove the nightmares. I prayed as she suggested, and the nightmares went away. I felt comforted that God was answering my prayers.

I now sit in church meetings as an outside observer. I often ponder on what brings people to sit in church for three hours on a Sunday. There must be some real benefits to induce them. What is real about the religious experience despite the unreality of God?

Comfort is one answer. There is real comfort available in religion. I received comfort when I prayed that my nightmares would end. Mourners receive real comfort when they imagine their deceased loved ones received into a paradisaical afterlife where they in turn will meet their dead when their time comes. It is reassuring to believe that an all-powerful being is directing our lives for our good.

Community is another answer. We flock with birds of a feather. Religion brings like-minded people together on a regular basis and encourages them to become a community. Human beings are communal creatures, and religion helps to fulfill our need to feel connected with others.

Transcendent experiences are a third answer. Adherents of religions throughout the world have real experiences involving overwhelming peace and a sense of connection and transcendence. These experiences fulfill our innate need to find a greater meaning for our life than brute survival and reproduction.

Answers to our questions are yet another benefit of religion. Curious by nature, we hate not knowing the answer to a question. Real, truthful answers are hard to come by, but we can be sated with answers that have the semblance of reality. Why does the universe exist? No one rightly knows, but it’s nice to have an answer that assuages our curiosity as long as we don’t scrutinize it too closely.

Direction is the final answer that I will mention. Without goals to work toward, life becomes a tedium of recurring cycles without end. Without purpose, we languish in a meandering existence that goes nowhere in particular. If our life doesn’t serve a greater purpose, then why live at all? Religion gives us ready-made goals to work for. We don’t have to scrounge around for our own.

Religion provides real benefits irrespective of the truthfulness of its claims. The faithful often cite these benefits as evidence in favor of those claims. A placebo has no curative benefit beyond the patient’s belief therein. The benefits of religion cannot easily be ascribed to the existence of deity. Perhaps belief in something—any plausible lie—will do.

As I’ve been reading Jewish Atheist, I’ve been struck by the similarities between the Orthodox Jewish community and the Mormon community. The social dynamics created by seeing one’s own people as chosen by God and seeking to be “in the world but not of the world” play out in much the same ways in both communities. Orthodox Paradox, a recent article in the New York Times, brought that home.

The author, Noah Feldman grew up in an Orthodox community and attended 12 years at an Orthodox school. He later left Orthodoxy and married a goy, Dr. Jeannie Suk. They attended his 10-year high school reunion while still unmarried. They both stood in for a group photo of the graduating class and their spouses. When the photo came out in the alumni newsletter, both he and his girlfriend had been edited out.

Since then, the alumni newsletter has failed to publish news about this alumnus and his family, failed to treat him like other alumni presumably because of his choice of marriage partner. The editors of the alumni newsletter seem to feel that acknowledging the life of this non-Orthodox alumnus would be an endorsement of his choices.

I’ve seen shunning in the LDS community which partakes of the same spirit:

PUBLIC AFFAIRS: At what point does showing that love cross the line into inadvertently endorsing behavior? If the son says, ‘Well, if you love me, can I bring my partner to our home to visit? Can we come for holidays?’ How do you balance that against, for example, concern for other children in the home?’

ELDER OAKS: That’s a decision that needs to be made individually by the person responsible, calling upon the Lord for inspiration. I can imagine that in most circumstances the parents would say, ‘Please don’t do that. Don’t put us into that position.’ Surely if there are children in the home who would be influenced by this example, the answer would likely be that. There would also be other factors that would make that the likely answer.

I can also imagine some circumstances in which it might be possible to say, ‘Yes, come, but don’t expect to stay overnight. Don’t expect to be a lengthy house guest. Don’t expect us to take you out and introduce you to our friends, or to deal with you in a public situation that would imply our approval of your “partnership.”

There are so many different circumstances, it’s impossible to give one answer that fits all. (Same-Gender Attraction)

I can empathize for everyone in this situation. The community must choose between showing unconditional love for one of its own and living according to rules it believes are God given. The outcasts feel rejected for their choices which reflect the most intimate parts of who they are.

As a former Mormon, I found myself nodding in recognition as I read the author’s experience in and out of the Orthodox community.

Though modern Orthodox Jews do not typically wear the long beards, side curls and black, nostalgic Old World garments favored by the ultra-Orthodox, the men do wear beneath their clothes a small fringed prayer shawl every bit as outré as the sacred undergarments worn by Mormons.…

The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world. When followed precisely, as I learned growing up, they accomplish exactly that. Every bite requires categorization into permitted and prohibited, milk or meat. To follow these laws, to analyze each ingredient in each food that comes into your purview, is to construct the world in terms of the rules borne by those who keep kosher. The category of the unkosher comes unconsciously to apply not only to foods that fall outside the rules but also to the people who eat that food…

…the erotics of prohibition were real to us. Once, I was called on the carpet after an anonymous informant told the administration that I had been seen holding a girl’s hand somewhere in Brookline one Sunday afternoon. The rabbi insinuated that if the girl and I were holding hands today, premarital sex must surely be right around the corner.…

Marrying a Jewish but actively nonobservant spouse would in most cases make continued belonging difficult. Gay Orthodox Jews find themselves marginalized not only because of their forbidden sexual orientation but also because within the tradition they cannot marry the partners whom they might otherwise choose. For those who choose to marry spouses of another faith, maintaining membership would become all but impossible.…