Protected: Version 2

It’s been roughly four years since I made peace with some of my beliefs and feelings, but it turns out I’m still me. And my mind doesn’t stop easily. So since then my brain has continued to slowly work through a lifetime of information and experiences; connect dots and finding better ways to explain what I feel.

So, on this random anniversary, I thought I’d put these feelings down if for nothing else as a snapshot of for future Gregg to reflect on.

Let’s jump in

I have never been much of a superstitious person. Since the age of maybe my early teenage years-ish, I can’t remember ever feeling like ghosts or magic or the supernatural were anything more than stories. I had no experiences in my time on this planet that suggested they were real. Yet, if someone would have looked at the first few decades of my life they would be extremely confused by what I just said. Why? Because they would see this sort of magic and thinking almost everywhere.

They may hear me say I don’t think ghosts are real.

But then they’d also see me pause, dozens of times a day, wondering if the thought I just had was a ghost communicating with me.

They may hear me say I don’t think magic is real.

But then they’d see me say what looks like magic words over a tiny bottle of oil, put that oil on someone, say more words, and believe that this could heal them.

They may hear me say that I don’t think psychics are real.

But then they’d see me go into a worthiness interview with the belief that the man sitting across from me can discern what I’m thinking.

They may hear me say I don’t think people can cast spells on things.

But they they might watch me say a very specific phrase over tiny cups of water, only to repeat it because it only works if you say it exactly right.

I remember describing some of my feelings around the church as a sort of tension. One way to describe that (at least as I now understand it) would be a tension between what appeared to me to be reality – magic and the supernatural appear to just be stories – and the fact that my religious life was filled with these things without me consciously realizing it.

So what changed? When did I start to realize that what I was calling spiritual was actually what I’d call supernatural in other contexts?

I’ll try to answer that with a story.

Inspired by my awesome sister, I did a 40 Before 40 list. On that list was the goal to (finally) visit the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah. Before I did, I tried to read up a little on their doctrines and beliefs. For example, I read about how Krishna was able to return to his spiritual home through the power of yogic concentration shortly after his death. Sound familiar? What was interesting, though, was how my brain instantly put this story in the category of myth. It wasn’t even a question I asked, it seemed obvious. They were describing a supernatural thing. People don’t just magically do that. So…myth.

But hundreds of millions of people likely believe this story is literally true, right? Just like a member of our church would believe that Jesus ascended to his throne shortly after his death. So what’s the difference?

I think the biggest is probably a matter of what we learn as children. The ol’ Proverbs 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I had not been taught from an early age about Krishna just like Hindus weren’t taught about Jesus. Interestingly, the human brain has trouble distinguishing something that is familiar from something that is true. And so, to me, stories about Jesus seem as true and normal as stories about Krishna do to them. And, likewise, the stories of Krishna probably seem as unlikely to me as the stories of Jesus feel to them.

Slight pivot but I promise it’ll come together.

If you heard me try to describe my feelings a few years ago you might be wondering how this ties into some of the things I said about church history. For example, I talked a few times about how, when I finally studied things the church was publishing like the Saints Books or Gospel Topics Essays, I found myself face-to-face with a version of the church that I hardly recognized. In my journal I once described this experience like this:

“It feels like I lost the beloved golden retriever from my childhood and these apologists have knocked on my door saying they’ve found my dog and keep insisting it’s the same dog. But the dog on the other end of the leash they’re holding a shih tzu.”

In other words, I realized that the story I’d been taught growing up wasn’t quite real. Instead, there was this other version of the church. A different church. A church I hadn’t been taught about and, just like my brain responded with the story about Krishna, when I found myself looking at this church with new eyes? Well, I saw what look like…well…magic. It has always been magic, but I just couldn’t see it before. But by this time I’d already built a life worldview around magic not being real because that’s what made the most sense given my life and experience.

Once I saw the magic, it was hard to unsee it. So instead of feeling true, a lot of these things felt a lot like stories.

And that’s a good way to give a short, succinct answer to what I feel these days.

The older I get, the more I learn, and the more I try to be fair and honest about

I think that, more than likely, many of the stories we tell in church are probably just that, stories. These aren’t bad stories and they are absolutely stories that give incredible meaning to people and their lives, but they feel more and more like…well…stories.

We love stories in the church. We have stories for everything, but we aren’t ones to Google whether a faith-affirming story is real or not. Last week Callie came home from church and mentioned how, when learning the story of Moses, her teacher said they’d found chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea and a specific glass-like rock on the shore where the pillar of fire came down. I can remember tons of stories like these growing up that seemed so fun and cool and amazing. Lamanites being resurrected while pioneers plowed fields, mysterious gaps left in temple plans that happened to perfectly fit elevators, people seeing the three Nephites…I’m sure you can think of others.

I loved those stories.

The trick, of course, is that most of these stories are just stories. Fun, great anecdotes for a lesson or talk, but probably not literally true.

I already knew that stories like these were probably myth a decade ago, but the line I had drawn between story and truth kept the core narratives, the big stuff, all in the camp of truth. As time went on, however, everything started to look like Krishna’s ascension. It all started to look more like stories.

Could Joseph really look at a rock in his hat and see words glowing on the surface? I don’t know. Is God an actual powerful being or simply a powerful idea that lives in our minds? I don’t know. Did Jesus literally walk on water or were those stories that bubbled up between his death and the writing of the New Testament? I don’t know. I don’t know where the stories end and the truth begins…or if it begins. And I love that. I find incredible joy and awe and delight in just taking life as it is instead of trying to squeeze every single experience and fact into this box we call religion.

Even though I started this journey to figure out which side was right, somewhere along the way I lost interesting in finding the answer. Uncertainty, for me, has been more beautiful and filled with more growth and learning than I ever had when I was certain.

And I love that.

I’ll wrap this up with a short poem I wrote about this part of my life.

Quiet Brook

If you hear certain shouts

From sides perched high on opposing cliffs

Each sure they’re right

And you wonder where I am

Look for the quiet stream

Follow it around a corner until the shouts fade

The crowds disappear

There you’ll find me

And others

Sitting beside a pond

Smiling gently at where we used to be