At a dinner party a couple years ago, I had the opportunity to converse with an old acquaintance from a previous ward named Beth. Beth had been one of the premier bachelorettes of that previous ward and it was obvious why. She was young, attractive, competent, and she had that ‘chill’ personality around guys that usually only comes when a girl grows up with brothers. She had recently graduated from a good school with a nursing degree and was really enjoying her first nursing job at a local hospital. Her sense of humor was on point and she was full of dreams to achieve this and that, travel here and there, and live a truly excellent life. At 21 years old she was off to a blazing start.

So we’re sitting in a small group having dinner in my apartment and she updates me on life. She’s on a great track at work, she has been dating a little bit, and she’s getting into great shape physically by learning to play new sports. Oh, and she recently decided to put all that on hold and go on a mission. This was a surprise. I asked her why she’d want to leave behind all the good things she had going for her, especially considering she was never really a deeply churchy person–the sort who really wants to share the Gospel message as a missionary (those people are actually really rare in my experience). She acknowledged the surprising nature of this decision and began to tell a story. It went something like this.

‘Life has been really good for me. I’ve been succeeding at work and have been enjoying my personal life. I’ve been crazy busy and caught up in this and that with little time for anything else. I go to church and I do my visiting teaching but that’s it as far as church goes. A couple weeks ago I was at a mall when I ran into one of my old seminary teachers. I really liked him–he was really nice and great at teaching. We chatted for a few minutes and he asked me about my life. He asked if I’d considered serving a mission. This caught me off-guard. The truth is, I hadn’t considered it at all. I’d been so caught up in my own life that I hadn’t thought about serving the Lord. The next day I talked to my mom about life and she too asked if I’d considered serving a mission. What a coincidence, am I right? Both of them brought up a mission when it literally hadn’t been on my mind at all. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I think this is God telling me that I need to serve a mission. It’s like in the Book of Mormon where the people prosper and forget God, then they get a stark reminder and come back to him. I’ve been prospering and neglected my duty to God so God sent me a message by having two people ask me about a mission around the same time–serendipitous right? So I put in my papers and should get my mission call sometime next month!’

The conversation progressed to where she hoped to go on her mission and then onto other topics, but I couldn’t get over the story she told and how it led to her decision. It’s like she listed all the good things in her life–things to hold on to and reasons to not serve a mission–then jumped a gap to deciding to serve a mission. I didn’t see how the story justified it. After all, her story leaned entirely on an interpretation of events that wasn’t exactly watertight, and it also seemed to snap into alignment with a Book of Mormon narrative arc a little too easily.

Firstly, the events she took as a sign from God weren’t all that improbable. There are better or at least equally good explanations for the seeming serendipity of her mother and her old seminary teacher both asking about a mission in separate conversations around the same time. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe a conference talk in the Ensign that they both recently read primed them to ask such a question to Beth? Maybe it was part of the Sunday school lesson the week before so it was fresh on their minds? We typically take things to be a supernatural ‘sign’ in direct proportion to how unlikely they seem. And these events weren’t terribly unlikely. This wasn’t an Alma-the-younger-status event, where the heavens opened and the ground shook and an angel spoke in a booming voice commanding Beth to serve a mission. That would’ve been suitably improbable. And why interpret this as a message from God that she had to serve a mission? Maybe she just needed to contemplate it and let that act of contemplation realign her general priorities in life? There’s a problem in Mormonism with correctly recognizing manifestations of ‘God’s Will’.

Secondly, her interpretation of events as part of an overarching narrative in her life is a curiosity to me. Who says there’s a narrative at all? Who says things don’t just happen randomly? Why must we think of our own lives this way? We live in a probabilistic universe. I’ll dwell on this later. She not only saw fit to trace a narrative in her life and place the events of the previous two weeks in that narrative, she also seemed to track the forward trajectory of said narrative and use it to essentially forecast what the correct decision for her would be. Given the archetypal nature of human stories, it isn’t hard to trace a character arc and guess what will happen to a character next. But real lives aren’t stories, so why would she try to trace her own character arc in order to make the ‘right’ future decision? Why would the coherence of a particular decision to a particular narrative justify that particular decision? Beth matched events in her own life to a Book of Mormon narrative and then made the choice that she felt best cohered to that narrative–serving a mission. This is a fallacious justification and I’ve decided to call it the ‘Appeal to Narrative Cohesion’. I think it’s actually very common, especially in Mormonism.

My two issues with Beth’s justification are the two main points in this essay. One: Mormonism amplifies the natural human tendency to ascribe supernatural significance to purely coincidental or probabilisitic events–this is the ‘God’s Will’ problem–and Two: Mormonism leads people to set those events in a narrative that might be entirely imaginary, arbitrary, and/or irrelevant to their lives. They then invoke cohesion of certain choices to that narrative as justification for those choices. This is the fallacious ‘Appeal to Narrative Cohesion’.

The third point, which will surface throughout, is that the previous two points are bad and make Mormon peoples’ lives worse on the aggregate. We’ll start with a more general definition of the issue.

I define the ‘Appeal to Narrative Cohesion’ as a sort of conscious fitting together of causally unconnected events into a single narrative whose cohesion itself is invoked as justification for a choice or belief. As if the cohesion of a course of action with a perceived narrative is itself a marker of the truth or correctness of that course of action. Cohesion itself is perceived primarily through similarity to other narratives we’re already familiar with (see the archetypal nature of stories for more on this). ‘This choice fits the present story as I see it so it must be a good choice.’

On the topic of ‘God’s Will’ and serendipity, the extent to which seemingly unrelated events and choices can be connected in the human mind can hardly be overstated, especially with a religious frame. Something like seeing a shooting star at a key moment of cognition on a choice can influence that very choice. “I was thinking about if I should pursue this investment opportunity and at the very moment I looked up to the night sky I saw a shooting star arc across the heavens and I knew what I should do.” This curious associative habit in the human mind seems to be baked right in. We’ve all experienced it.

Nikola Tesla famously spoke of the chaotic nature of human behavior in saying “A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature.” This is a naturalistic psychological analog of the famous idea in chaos theory that ‘A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe’–the so-called ‘butterfly effect’. There exist phenomena in nature so causally complex we have no hope of understanding them fully. The causal chains are so subtle and can start so small that the first domino might even be on the quantum level and therefore entirely probabilistic as far as we understand. These are ‘chaotic’ phenomena. We, as humans, don’t fully understand the nature of our decision-making, and we would be wise to acknowledge that upfront. It’s chaotic.

As humans, how do we navigate the chaos of the natural world? We break it down into orderly structures that make sense to us. We find patterns and we take special notice of anything that violates those patterns. For example, most night skies don’t have shooting stars, most times you go to the mall you don’t unexpectedly run into old friends, and most fortune cookies don’t have your lucky numbers on them. When these patterns are violated, we take notice in a very instinctive way. This pattern-violation circuitry in our brains is evidently meant to keep us safe from predators, and rightly so. 99 times out of 100 the tree branch looks brown so when it’s green we really need to notice quick because that means there’s probably a snake on it. 99 times out of 100 the grass rustles with a specific sound so when it rustles differently that 1 time you’d better notice quick because there’s a chance there’s a lion in there bearing down on you. We seem hyperaware in certain circumstances when any sound or shadow can morph into a stalking predator. I think we’ve all experienced this at times of great fear.

The point is, we have threat detection circuitry that seems to be deliberately overtuned because it’s better to be wrong 90% of the time and right when it counts than right 90% of the time and wrong when it counts… Sometimes, if the timing is right, we ascribe supernatural significance to these non-threatening pattern violations. I have no idea why this is but it’s a well-established part of the human experience. Call it a side-effect of the threat-detection circuitry mixed with the inherent religiosity of the human mind. Anyone would acknowledge the natural probability, though slim, of event like the following:

‘The precise moment you walk into your new house that you just bought, a black cat falls off a nearby ledge and through an open window to land on its feet under a ladder in your living room in a manner that produces almost immediate eye contact with you when it lands.’

This can be accounted for in terms of pure probability, but even the strictest of scientists would struggle to shake the feeling that their new home endeavor is cursed by such a combination of bad omens. As another example, if I’m walking down the street wondering if I should do something, and someone two streets over just happens to yell out ‘Yes! Do it!’ for some indiscernible reason, that will probably influence my decision even though I consciously understand that it’s just a coincidence. I think we can all empathize with this. So how is this especially relevant to Mormonism and where does the narrative appeal come in?

It’s all about the insertion of an ‘omnipotent and omniscient being who cares to interfere in personal human affairs but will always do so through incredibly subtle means and always has your best long-term interests at heart’–AKA the Mormon God–into the mix. Insert such a God into the mix and all of a sudden there’s a new factor in the probability calculation. All of a sudden, events that were previously purely probabilistic can now be ascribed to this invisible being, if that’s how God is understood to act. Previously random events can now be interpreted as signs of ‘God’s Will’ for your life specifically. Within this frame, there’s now a chance, at any given moment, that ‘something random’ is actually a sign from God. It’s this ‘decoding’ of ‘God’s Will’ in chaotic phenomena that underlies the ‘Appeal to Narrative Cohesion’ that I think is uniquely problematic for Mormons. We all have a tendency to make this appeal from time to time, but Mormons do so a lot more often and to greater effect for better or, as I will argue, for worse.

In the Mormon frame, ‘God’s Will’ is invoked as a sort of omnipotent guiding hand in every person’s life with a deliberate end in mind. In other words, God has a preconceived story lined up for your specific life, and in following God’s Will you effectively bring your decisions into alignment with the narrative God is trying to author. Mormons talk about aligning their life with ‘God’s Will’ as a sort of higher act of faith and commitment. Often this means forsaking things they want in order to walk the path they believe God would have them walk. Ordinary people don’t have this frame and endless quest to align with God’s narrative. The idea of ‘Destiny’ is similarly operative in the lives of non-Mormons, but it’s not nearly as powerful as the invisible hand of ‘God’s Will’ for a Mormon.

There’s a crucial difference between a secular person finding a narrative in life and a Mormon doing the same. An ordinary person has no good reason to believe that the narrative of their life is destined to end well or will even lead to any happiness at all. It’s something they must identify and pursue–they must make their own destiny in effect. A Mormon who believes that God is actively guiding their life DOES have a belief that their life is destined to end well and that they WILL ultimately be brought to happiness. In fact, they often believe that the happiness they find down the ‘God’s Will’ path will be greater than anything they are even capable of comprehending at present.

Mormons are often led AWAY from what they desire by the illusory hand of ‘God’s Will’ with the promise that God’s desires for them are greater than their desires and dreams. In other words, faced with A: a clear path to fulfilling their personal desires and achieving their kind of happiness–determining their own destiny–and B: a path they perceive to be ‘God’s Will’ even if it leads in the opposite direction, they will often choose path B. This is the rational choice if you fully accept the three premises that ‘God’s Will’ 1: is active in your life, 2: is recognizable through serendipity/the ‘spiritual feelings’ one often gets in serendipitous situations, and 3: will lead to the greatest possible happiness.

The implications should any of the premises be false, especially number 2, are rather disastrous. If humans’ perception of ‘God’s Will’ is actually just a routine (and deeply biased) function of the pattern-finding part of the brain, one would be liable to make a significant choice thinking it was ‘God’s Will’ when actually it was just serendipity, like seeing Jesus’s face on a piece of toast or in a cloud. As a criterion for making choices, ‘God’s Will’ is a pretty risky one when you consider the probabilistic nature of the universe IF you grant that it’s possible to mistake serendipity for ‘God’s Will’. Better hope you don’t see Jesus’s face in the clouds at the wrong time…

Making decisions this way introduces probability into one’s life in a way that can be deeply destabilizing. Imagine you had two paths for a given choice–Path A was the path that made sense and matched with your understanding of your goals and how to get there. Path B made you feel fuzzy inside when you thought about it, or perhaps the exact moment you considered Path B you looked up and saw a shooting star. Those are, or at least could be, two markers, to the religious mind, of ‘God’s Will’ in the moment. A message from God! Even non-denominational, ‘spiritual’ people, overcome by the serendipity of the shooting star, would often choose Path B. Why is Path B bad? The consequences aren’t guaranteed to be bad, but it’s always a bad choice when made for a bad reason.

Path B is fundamentally a function of probability while Path A is a function of one’s ability to evaluate concrete choices and consequences, at least in the near-term. Path B is the equivalent of choosing ‘The Mystery Box’ over a brand new boat (a fortunate Path A) on a gameshow, just because the mystery box has some seemingly serendipitous connection to good fortune in one’s own life in a manner that, to the Mormon mind, would suggest God’s direct influence. ‘The mystery box is colored green and silver and just yesterday my mother was talking about how green and silver are the primary colors in our family crest that she found while doing family history work at the church building. This is a sign from God that I should choose the mystery box!’ Choosing Path B is taking a risk that the pattern-violation you’ve observed (most boxes don’t have your family colors on them) isn’t just a coincidence and is in fact a message from God. This is not only a risky choice because you might miss out on a boat–it’s risky because you will likely be unable to accurately evaluate that choice once you’ve taken it. Why? Because the human mind is very good at making choices fit a pre-existing narrative AFTER the fact, and if that narrative includes God wanting you to pick the mystery box over the boat, you’ll find a way to conclude that its contents are better than a boat 100% of the time, even if they actually aren’t.

Let’s say it contained a bag of pretzels. So you chose a bag of pretzels over a brand new boat. Any reasonable person would be mortified by the realization. But in the Mormon frame, it must be the right choice because it was ‘God’s Will’. So from the moment you saw the pretzels, as a Mormon, you’d be racking your brain for an explanation of why the hell God would give you pretzels when you could’ve had a boat. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine how, in the Mormon frame, that could be spun as the right choice though. At the very least it could be considered a call to humility by God, but the mind is capable of far more creative contrivances.

For example, let’s say I got the pretzels and in the midst of my confused attempt to decode this rather disappointing message from God, I realized that I used to eat the same pretzels when I was a kid and I remember eating them at the house of an old friend who I hadn’t spoken with in years. I creatively take this as a prompting from God to contact that old friend and we end up having a pleasant discussion that concludes with plans to remain in contact in the future. Warm and fuzzies all around. I’m then grateful to God for helping me see that friendship and love is far more valuable than any boat or material possession, and I renew the pledge to value friendship in my own life. This might sound like a happy ending and I can certainly spin it or any number of alternate endings to the pretzel choice as such, but all I’m really doing is painting over a timeline that could’ve actually been much better.

By telling that version of the pretzel story, I’m also slightly denigrating myself with the implication that the pretzels had something to teach me that I was already lacking in. Maybe I was already a perfectly good friend and didn’t need any reminders of the value of friendship. By making the association of the pretzels with contacting the friend, I implicitly accept the idea that I’m lacking in some way–that I need to improve as a friend. Why else would God give me the friendship pretzels if not to remind me that I need to be better as a friend? This might actually be completely false. Perhaps I’m already an excellent friend and what I ACTUALLY needed was some way to bring my friends together and create community connections in a way I struggled to before. Like, I don’t know, a BOAT to take people out on so we could cement our friendship with more joyous shared memories. I could tell a million stories about how the boat was the choice that led to greater happiness and wisdom and even friendship and love.

This human capacity for endless exposition on the hypothetical and the mundane is uniquely featured in religious contexts, be it in finding ‘God’s Will’ in a past choice or in interpreting a few lines of scriptural text. Sam Harris satirizes the latter to great effect in his book The End of Faith wherein he takes a random recipe from a cookbook and ascribes deep spiritual meaning to it. I’ve reproduced it below for your reading pleasure:

“One can interpret every text in such a way as to yield almost any mystical or occult instruction.

A case in point: I have selected another book at random, this time from the cookbook aisle of a bookstore. The book is A Taste of Hawaii: New Cooking from the Crossroads of the Pacific. Therein I have discovered an as yet uncelebrated mystical treatise. While it appears to be a recipe for wok-seared fish and shrimp cakes with ogo-tomato relish, we need only study its list of ingredients to know that we are in the presence of an unrivaled spiritual intelligence:

• snapper filet, cubed
• 3 teaspoons chopped scallions
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• a dash of cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 8 shrimp, peeled, deveined, and cubed
• 1⁄2 cup heavy cream; 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 teaspoons rice wine; 2 cups bread crumbs
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil; 2 1⁄2 cups ogo-tomato relish

The snapper filet, of course, is the individual himself —you and I— awash in the sea of existence. But here we find it cubed, which is to say that our situation must be remedied in all three dimensions of body, mind, and spirit.

Three teaspoons of chopped scallions further partakes of the cubic symmetry, suggesting that that which we need add to each level of our being by way of antidote comes likewise in equal proportions. The import of the passage is clear: the body, mind, and spirit need to be tended to with the same care.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper: here we have the perennial invocation of opposites—the white and the black aspects of our nature. Both good and evil must be understood if we would fulfill the recipe for spiritual life. Nothing, after all, can be excluded from the human experience (this seems to be a Tantric text). What is more, salt and pepper come to us in the form of grains, which is to say that our good and bad qualities are born of the tiniest actions. Thus, we are not good or evil in general, but only by virtue of innumerable moments, which color the stream of our being by force of repetition.

A dash of cayenne pepper: clearly, being of such robust color and flavor, this signifies the spiritual influence of an enlightened adept. What shall we make of the ambiguity of its measurement? How large is a dash? Here we must rely upon the wisdom of the universe at large. The teacher himself will know precisely what we need by way of instruction. And it is at just this point in the text that the ingredients that bespeak the heat of spiritual endeavor are added to the list—for after a dash of cayenne pepper, we find two teaspoons of chopped fresh ginger and one teaspoon of minced garlic. These form an isosceles trinity of sorts, signifying the two sides of our spiritual nature (male and female) united with the object meditation.

Next comes eight shrimp—peeled, deveined, and cubed. The eight shrimp, of course, represent the eight worldly concerns that every spiritual aspirant must decry: fame and shame; loss and gain; pleasure and pain; praise and blame. Each needs to be deveined, peeled, and cubed— that is, purged of its power to entrance us and incorporated on the path of practice.

That such metaphorical acrobatics can be performed on almost any text—and that they are therefore meaningless—should be obvious.“

(Again, the above is from Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith.)

The ‘narrative acrobatics’ that Mormons often engage in to justify their own choices and make peace with their lives are often just as silly, or at least as arbitrary, as Sam Harris’s cookbook example. ANY choice or series of choices can be interpreted in a way that aligns those choices with ‘God’s Will’. Any mental state or past event can be retconned to fit a narrative that includes a divine guiding hand. And ANY serendipitous event can be coopted to fit ANY course of action.

This one of the fundamental problems with the appeal to narrative cohesion. There are an infinite number of narratives to cohere to when the narrative comes from your imagination. You can tell a story that will justify ANY decision in almost ANY circumstance. Even the most serendipitous signals of ‘God’s Will’ can be taken north, south, east, or west depending on the story you fit them in. If they weren’t terribly vague maybe you could narrow it down but even then you’re still liable. Let me demonstrate.

Beth could’ve told a different story. She could’ve talked about how she has been learning to make her own decisions in life as she matures into an adult. As she’s building a life, she experiences two separate injections of a foreign idea–serving a mission–from her mother and from a former seminary teacher. As she contemplates the mission option, she translates the serendipitous timing of the two messages to be a signal from God. She realizes that, in keeping with the narrative of learning to make her own decisions, God has introduced a foreign idea to test her capacity to trust her own feelings. She hadn’t previously felt like serving a mission, so why should she allow others to influence her towards it now? Why should she conform to the narrative others might try to impose on her life? The very foreignness of the idea is taken to be evidence for its invalidity in her life and Beth decides not to serve a mission, thanking God for helping her along her journey of self-determination.

This is a story in which all the same events cohere just as well to the narrative–the only difference is the narrative itself, and we’ve already demonstrated that narratives are arbitrary. An ‘Appeal to Narrative Cohesion’ here yields two different results with the same serendipitous inputs and is thus an unreliable and fallacious method of justification in human decision-making.

That reality should make any religious person think twice before ascribing ‘God’s Will’ to their choices or to events in their lives. Whether you believe in God or not, you must acknowledge the potentially disastrous consequences of mistaking naked serendipity for the Will of God when making significant choices in life, and even further in matching those events to a narrative that might not be relevant or accurate. It might not be so frivolous as a boat vs. some pretzels…It might be choosing one career over another, or marrying a certain person vs. finding someone new, or sacrificing a lifelong dream on the altar of religious responsibility. Your godly appeals to narrative cohesion, having helped you into a mistake, can then prevent you from repairing that mistake because of the ultimatum inherent in the whole premise of ‘God’s Will’. If you think the path you’re on is the literal Will of God, you won’t be able to evaluate your past choices in a way that will help you make better decisions in the long term. Because they were the right choices by definition! ‘God’s Will’ is not open to criticism. If the outcome isn’t good you’ll just be really confused and even more likely to make similar mistakes in the future. And if you make a habit of this–allowing serendipity and appeals to narrative cohesion a seat at the decision-making table–you might find that you’ve engaged in random-walk motion for entire decades leaving you far from where you once dreamt of being.

The final insult of this trend in Mormonism is the implication that even if you end up getting nothing of what you wanted in life, no matter how unhappy you may be, following ‘God’s Will’ in every instance was STILL the best choice because whatever you lack in this life will be returned to you ten-fold in the life to come if you remain faithful. Can you imagine anything more insidious than such a dream-eating ideology? As a non-believer in the Mormon God (or any God like unto it) I think it’s horrible, but even a believer must admit that, given the inconsistency of the ‘God’s Will’ signal and its unfortunately association in the human mind with simple pattern-finding, such an idea is at least potentially dangerous.

Fortunately for Mormons, much of ‘God’s Will’ as it is popularly understood includes life choices that are generally wise to begin with. ‘Be charitable, get married, have a family, take your place in a community, etc’. Mormons are often very happy people as a consequence–no doubt about that. But they’re also often deeply unhappy, especially the unlucky ones who might’ve followed ‘God’s Will’ just as well as the others but for whom serendipity was not so kind a guide. If they’re lucky, ‘God’s Will’ might’ve guided them to a good place in alignment with their dreams and desires. If they’re unlucky, their life might’ve entirely passed them by. Many Mormons reach the midpoint of their lives as husks of their former selves, having discarded all their dreams on the path of ‘God’s Will’. They are machines running on fumes, persisting weakly on the promise that the next life will make up for the visceral disappointments of this one. ‘Endure to the End’, that core Mormon mantra, is a tragic testament to the lived reality of many, many Mormon people. ‘Life is something that must be endured’–like an exhausting and ever-painful marathon–‘so that the prize might be won once you’re dead.’

This makes me extremely sad and I fear for the people I love whose devotion to ‘God’s Will’ is their go-to criterion for decision-making–those for whom appeals to narrative cohesion (with a narrative largely out of their control) are a primary factor in how they make life choices. I worry that in seeking to find God’s hand and decode his ‘signals’ in everyday life that, as a matter of probability are sometimes just coincidences, they will make choices and walk down paths that take them far from their actual dreams and desires. They might be pulled this way and that by serendipitous happenings and false signals and lose sight of their dreams along the way. Do this long enough and they’ll forget they had any dreams of their own to begin with. They’ll constantly look for the logic of it all–the master narrative being carried out–but will find nothing of substance. Thus they will conclude that this life was just a test anyway and their suffering, though seemingly meaningless, will all come together once their eyes close forever and the mystery box finally opens.

I’ve observed this with people in my own life. I’m in no position to make a judgment about whether different life choices would have been better for these people, but I can say with confidence that their decision-making-compasses are broken. Because after all, a compass that only works 50% (or any other non-100% percentage) of the time is a worthless compass.

An ex-girlfriend who I was very close to did life narration to an extreme. She told the story of her life up to the point we met in a very convincing and thorough manner, as if there was an author of her life with the end in mind all along whose machinations she had uncovered and could recite as fact. In telling her life story she justified her past choices–often radical departures from previous aims–with the idea that she was always incomplete or mistaken in some regard that needed to be rectified with a course correction. As if God, the presumed author of her story, was always trying to teach her something and guide her along her own character arc. This arc was never quite what she had previously thought it was going to be. If in the past she was working towards one thing but decided to pivot and pursue another, she’d say in retrospect that she actually needed to do something else because God was trying to teach her something new through that thing. In other words, that her choices were always in alignment with destiny–that she was always moving forward towards some supernal goal even as she zig-zagged from one path to the next.

Even my part in the story was solidly established soon after I appeared on the scene. I initially liked the idea–she believed God had brought me to her because I was exactly the sort of person she needed at that exact point in her life–because it solidified my position as her boyfriend. But as time went on I grew uncomfortable with the thought that our relationship was a product of currents in her life beyond her control. Was her choice to be with me truly something she desired and chose in a deliberate, timeless sense because of who I am, or would a new narrative chapter in her life carry me out the way it carried me in? It’s unsettling to consider that the person you’re with makes decisions to fit a narrative when that narrative is fundamentally considered out of their control. I always got the feeling that she’d make decisions based on emotion in the moment–her barometer for measuring ‘God’s Will’–and fit them to the God-given narrative after the fact to avoid cognitive dissonance. I worried that this tendency had made her unable to accurately evaluate her past choices, thereby increasing the chance that she’d make bad ones later on. I hope that I’m wrong when I say that she has made bad choices in her life that will make happiness more difficult to attain in the future. One of those bad choices–perhaps the worst–was sticking with me for so long.

There were a lot things that happened in our relationship that seemed, in a serendipitous way, to show that we were ‘destined’ to marry. Even silly things like going to a wedding together and catching both the bouquet and the garter weigh heavily on a narrative-focused mind. I won’t describe any more but there were many seemingly serendipitous things and if we were to marry we would’ve had a nice story already lined up for how it all happened and how little occurrences and details along the way were all ‘destiny being revealed’. I believe she stuck with me much longer than she should’ve–through years of off-and-on communication and dating–in large part because our narrative was so compelling. Because us ending up together was the only ending to the whole story that made any sense. Because it was the only ending that would bring narrative cohesion through it all.

I couldn’t let her go either, and for the same reason. I always wondered if life would bring us back together for all our earlier experiences–the good times, the fights, the breakups and the reunions–to tie up neatly in one coherent and meaningful story (note the passive nature of this sentence–as if life or destiny or God was the actor and I was simply the ‘subject’ of my own story. I was still Mormon at the time.) I think we all desire narrative cohesion in our lives, and some of us are lucky enough to get it. But that’s just it–it’s luck. It’s probability. Maybe the romantic partner you have a great story with also happens to be a good match. This Ex and I weren’t a good match. I wish we had been but I truly believe that we are better off with other people. Our narrative wasn’t the relevant factor there–our personal chemistry and mutual goals and conflicts were. That’s the reality of marriage to another person. No story, no matter how good, can sustain a marriage for an entire lifetime. I regret not ending things sooner and I have to imagine she does too. I believe our mutual desire for narrative cohesion prevented us from making the right call and the consequences are painful to consider.

In this case she believed that God had brought me to her, and every other note of serendipity confirmed our ‘destiny’. That wasn’t all–we did love each other–but in reflection I really think that what kept it going well past its expiration date was the hope that the frayed ending of our multipart story would somehow get tied up neatly–all plots concluded, all conflicts resolved, all arcs completed. No one likes things too open-ended. We like endings that wrap things up just like a good story. Did I know how things would be wrapped up? No. Was staying in my Ex’s orbit (and she in mine) for years a Path A or a Path B? I think it was a Path B.

I believe that it’s a huge and all-too-common mistake for Mormons to live like God will write their story for them–as if the path to their best possible life is one they aren’t even capable of choosing. After all, if God will lead to you happiness greater than you can imagine, what’s the use in even trying to pursue happiness on your own? Why bother to pursue your dreams when those dreams themselves ‘pale in comparison’ to what God has in store?

I can only imagine the mental burden of a Mormon who believes they have dutifully followed ‘God’s Will’ their entire lives–for decades–only to find themselves alone and/or unhappy. Miserable, even. Think of the gay men and women who have lived lives of tortured repression within Mormonism with the hope that ‘whatever’s in the mystery box is gonna be great and totally better than what I really want.’ Think of all the opportunities missed and dreams left to die because a random shooting star or some heartburn at an unfortunate moment led some young man or woman down a path they mistakenly took for ‘God’s Will’, be that getting married too young to the wrong person, choosing one job over another, taking a bogus investment opportunity over a safe bet (hello Provo, investment fraud capital of the USA), or any other instance where reason might have prevailed.

Think of all the people who chose Path B and got pretzels when Path A and a boat was perfectly good and right in front of them. I’ve seen it a lot and I believe it’s born out of this idea that God is the painter and you are the canvas. I believe that is FALSE. You are the painter and You are the canvas. If you cede your decision making to the woefully unclear Will of a God whose signals are virtually identical to coincidence and/or natural feelings in your body, and if you tell a coinciding story of your life in which YOU aren’t the author, you might as well just worship RNGesus. It’s all gonna come down to luck anyway.

The Mormon church was founded in 1830 in Fayette, New York, by Joseph Smith. Seven years later, in distant Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen published the third installment of his Fairy Tales Told for Children. This installment contained two short stories: The Little Mermaid (yes, the one that became a Disney movie) and The Emperor’s New Clothes. The latter deftly illustrates a social phenomenon often called ‘pluralistic ignorance’. Pluralistic ignorance is present to some extent at every level in any society, but I’m going to make the argument that it is uniquely present in Mormon culture. In fact, The Emperor’s New Clothes is such a good allegory for modern Mormon culture and the timing of its creation is so perfect it could almost be called prophetic. I have a few caveats and plenty of examples to make my point, but let’s start with the story. The Emperor’s New Clothes is very short and I’d encourage you to read it yourself, but I’ll provide a short summary here anyway.

++++ Once upon a time there was an Emperor deeply concerned with appearances. There came into town two weavers who claimed they could create the most beautiful and elaborate clothing in the world. The Emperor is intrigued and when he engages them he is told that their clothing is not only the finest in the land, it is invisible to anyone unfit for their office or unusually stupid. In other words, the clothing they make is invisible to fools and liars. This sealed the deal for the Emperor, who considered this an added benefit. “Those would be just the clothes for me…If I wore them I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools. Yes, I certainly must get some of the stuff woven for me right away.”

The Emperor commissions a set of clothes and while they’re being made he has his advisors go check on the progress. The Advisors, well aware of the clothing’s special qualities, internally panic when they realize they can’t see the fabric on the looms. Worried that their failure to see it will disqualify them from their lofty positions, they nod along eagerly with oohs and ahhs as the two weavers, con-men in action, describe in great detail the color and elaborate patterns. The two weavers were only pretending to weave, working day and night on empty looms and pocketing a great deal of money.

The Advisors return to the Emperor and tell him of the sublime beauty of his new clothes. Word spreads throughout the land about these clothes which are invisible to fools, and the city gathers in anticipation of the first royal showing. When the time comes to get dressed, the Emperor himself can’t see clothing and panics, saying to himself “Am I a fool? Am I unfit to be the Emperor? What a thing to happen to me of all people!” as he says out loud, “Oh! It’s very pretty…It has my highest approval.” Nothing could make him say that he couldn’t see anything. So the Emperor goes out before the people wearing nothing but no one dares state the obvious for fear of being seen as a fool. I’ll just quote the last few paragraphs of the story for the conclusion.

“Everyone in the streets and the windows said, “Oh, how fine are the Emperor’s new clothes! Don’t they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!” Nobody would confess that he couldn’t see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

“Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.”

“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.” ++++

Social scientist Jens Ulrik Hansen’s summary of the pluralistic ignorance manifest in the story is perfect: “no one believes, but everyone believes that everyone else believes. Or alternatively, everyone is ignorant to whether the emperor has clothes on or not, but believes that everyone else is not ignorant.” This is a phenomenon I observed so frequently in Mormon culture I’m tempted to call it the ‘hallmark social failure of Mormonism’. I will do so with some caveats.

First of all, to be clear, I’m not saying that there are no true believers in Mormonism. There are absolutely Mormons who believe to their core and don’t perceive any contradiction or incoherence in church doctrine or practice. The Mormon orthodox are real and have significant cultural influence. I’m even willing to bet that the vast majority of higher church leadership is in this category. Individuals in this group will proclaim with no reservation the absolute surety of their beliefs and will do so without deceit and without doubt. These people are not the participants in pluralistic ignorance so much as they are the first movers–their words and actions set in motion the great social forces that create the phenomenon itself. They are the butterflies whose wing flaps create a hurricane. In the story these would be the first townspeople to cry out triumphantly “The emperor’s robes are the finest ever worn! They are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!” Even though they’re a small minority in Mormonism–probably around 5% of active Mormons in my estimation–they set the tone for the entire culture. They set the bar high for everyone else. How the orthodox manage to declare so early that they see the emperor’s clothes is a mystery to me but there does exist an easy explanation: they really do see the clothing. This leads me to my second caveat.

Though in The Emperor’s New Clothes it is an integral plot point that the emperor is in fact naked when he trots out in front of the crowd, I’m not saying the same thing about Mormonism. I will not be taking a stance on whether the ‘Mormon Emperor’ actually has any clothes on. I won’t insist that my personal opinions on things like the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus, the legitimacy of the Mormon Prophet and his authority and whatnot, are valid. I will not say Mormonism is false in this post. I might imply it, but it’s part of my argument that the truth of Mormonism doesn’t actually matter when it comes to The Emperor’s New Clothes and Mormon culture. If the claims of Mormonism were true their truth would only really account for the behavior of the orthodox minority and not for the remaining majority in Mormon culture. The behavioral trends I’ve seen in Mormon culture are the direct downline of profound pluralistic ignorance on multiple fronts which I will show with a multitude of examples.

Lastly, I won’t cover the beginning or the end of the story in my comparison with Mormon culture. The setup with the conmen and the townspeople all realizing that the emperor is naked at the end don’t have a place in my comparison. What’s important is not those details of the story but the way in which an obvious truth gets concealed by the attestations of a select few that then echo out through a closed society. It’s the social phenomenon that fits, not the circumstantial elements of the story.

So what am I getting at here? How is this story relevant to Mormon culture? It boils down to this: Mormons profess a multitude of beliefs and experiences that, when drilled down upon, have no substance. If you question a Mormon on certain points, you will find little to no consensus on where they come from or what they even mean. You will hear historical folklore with no context or knowledge of the sources, doctrines with no scriptural basis or internal coherence, shared experiences that don’t seem to exist on the individual level, and specialized language that only ‘implies’ and carries no actual meaning. Like the Emperor’s advisors, most Mormons can only guess about the meaning or basis of things about which they may have just expressed great confidence. They’ll repeat things said by other Mormons–the same tropes, the same stories, the same words–yet be unable to back any of it up under scrutiny. The few that manage a convincing explanation–usually the orthodox–can’t even keep it consistent. To some the answer is purple, to some it’s green, and to some it’s yellow. The utter lack of consensus is the red flag here. Some things, like the basis of an integral Mormon doctrine or the historical veracity of a foundational story, have little to no room for creative interpretation if we’re in the ballpark of truth. Whether the emperor has clothing or not is not a subjective question. The ‘subjective nature of experience’ is a cheap fallback for any of the examples I’ll provide.

As I’ll show, tradition has become doctrine, fable has become fact, and language has lost its meaning in Mormon culture. But how? The answer is found with the emperor and his new clothes. The same social forces that promote certain ideas and stories to the point of universal acceptance also crush their criticism and questioning. People don’t want to feel like fools and they don’t want to appear unworthy. They don’t want to stir the pot and engage in taboo behavior because the threat of social ostracization is severe. Those who abide by the unspoken rules rise in the social hierarchy and are promoted to positions of authority and power. Their influence trickles down to saturate the next generation with even greater respect for these rules, conventions, or beliefs, and even less understanding of their origin. In an individual this produces a mindset that eventually ceases to question reality at all, even internally. In a culture this produces a stifling environment where nothing is challenged, heads are bowed, and affirmation is granted without a thought. Language becomes procedural, ornamental, and vapid. Organizations become bureaucratic, predictable, and dogmatic. This is the reality of modern Mormon culture at almost every level. Time for some examples.

Any active Mormon these days will have heard of the ‘supernal importance of the sacrament’. General and local authorities alike have recently placed great emphasis on this Sunday ritual, even going as far as calling it the ‘single most important ordinance in all of the Gospel’. They say it ‘renews covenants made at baptism’ and thereby retains its weekly importance throughout one’s life. It’s a compelling reason to come to sacrament meeting every Sunday. At this point it has been repeated enough that most Mormons would agree–it’s the ‘most important ordinance and renews baptismal covenants’. Ask them where this ‘doctrine’ came from though and you won’t get a consistent answer, if you get one at all. As it turns out, this idea has no basis in scripture whatsoever and is in fact directly contradicted by doctrines like celestial marriage. There’s no evidence that this idea was part of the early church which makes its ‘supernal importance’ rather suspect. The baptismal covenants and sacramental prayers themselves don’t reference each other at all, and the whole idea of ‘renewing the baptismal covenants by eating bread and water’ seems to have come out of nowhere.

I’m sure some orthodox crusader could find an Ensign talk from 30 years ago that implies something similar but I cannot accept such a low standard of proof for such an extreme idea. The ‘modern prophet’ answer is generally dodgy anyway because, as I’ll discuss later, the standard for prophecy has itself declined dramatically in the last 100 years. If the ‘supernal importance of the sacrament which renews covenants you made at eight years old’ has no basis in scripture, why is it repeated so often? Because deep down nobody knows where it came from (or even what it means in the context of other doctrines) but they assume it’s legit because nobody else is questioning it and they either don’t want to appear a fool for asking or they can’t be bothered to care because of their low standard of meaning in language. Where did the idea originate? I might assume it has its genesis in declining sacrament meeting attendance numbers. It’s a convenient idea to promulgate if you want people to come to sacrament meeting more often. But that’s an aside for this and for all other examples. The point is that no one knows where it’s from or what it ultimately means, yet they repeat and probably even believe it.

Another example is ‘i learn something new every time I read the scriptures’. Let me be clear–I’m not hating on the scriptures here. I’ve had many wonderful experiences reading from the Mormon canon and I truly believe there are pearls of wisdom therein. They’re just sparse. The idea in Mormonism that every time you open the scriptures and read you’ll be edified and gain new knowledge is, to me, ridiculous, but it’s commonly accepted within Mormon culture. I couldn’t count on one hundred hands the number of times I’ve heard something similar from the pulpit or in Sunday school. ‘Every time I open the scriptures I learn something new.’ Oh really? Let’s hear it. ‘Well, uhhhhhhhhh…[insert copout answer here]’. I’d be willing to accept that the emperor really had clothes here if people could give me answers without changing their words, but they never can. ‘You learn something new every time you read the scriptures? How do you manage that?’ ‘Well, you see, there’s just gems of wisdom everywhere and, uh, I mostly just feel really good when I read the scriptures and it opens my mind to receive revelation on a host of unrelated topics.’ You might as well just be meditating at that point, or staring at a statue of the virgin Mary. Scripture-reading as a form of meditation is the fallback when Mormons are pressed on this. From ‘I learn something new every time I read’ to ‘I feel good inside and God touches my heart every time I read’ is a common copout and a red flag.  So why do Mormons keep saying the first one? Because it’s a very fashionable thing to say and it implies that you are deeply wise and spiritual. Or at the very least, like the emperor’s advisors, you aren’t terribly UNwise and UNspiritual. Once enough people start saying it, everyone has to nod along even if the idea is preposterous, or else risk social judgment.

Another similar example is the idea that General Conference is super meaningful and prophetic and life-changing. Gauging by the way Mormons treat it in the short and long term, it’s really not. Most members see it as a welcome day off from normal church and don’t watch all the sessions. Those who do will likely remember an interesting story or powerful piece of oration but it will quickly pass from memory, only rising to the surface again for a trite and hastily prepared home teaching message or as sacrament meeting talk filler. As a cultural event it’s of great import–the spectacle of a full conference center, the marvelous Mormon Tabernacle Choir and magnificent organ, all of church leadership perched magnanimously on tiered thrones, the beautiful floral arrangements…it’s all quite wonderful. But as Mormons let’s not kid ourselves. The talks are all recycled versions of earlier material. There’s no prophecy in General Conference like there was in early Mormonism, nor are there extemporaneous 2 hour sermons like in Brigham’s days…It’s all predictable and pre-meditated. Every talk is screened in advance by the correlation committee and nicely scrubbed before being added to lds.org. Many Mormons will come away saying they feel ‘inspired’. Inspired to do what? Keep living exactly the same way? Commit to living an even better life? What a coincidence, I felt that way after watching the Dark Knight the other day. I guess Chris Nolan is a prophet too. Why do Mormons insist that General Conference is special and unique and revelatory? Because someone at some point said so publicly, it caught on, and no one questions anything in Mormonism.

I think this and other examples point both to the existence of social pressures in the church that disincentivize questioning and to a general degradation in the quality of Mormon language–a lowering of the standard of meaning. I could stand up in any meeting and say that I felt Elder Uchtdorf’s recent talk was ‘truly prophetic’ and that I ‘experienced volumes of personal revelation’, and no one would bat an eyelash or think to question me on it. Why the hell not? Wouldn’t they want to know about Uchtdorf’s prophecy? Wouldn’t they want to know what God revealed to me? I certainly want to know about prophecy, why don’t the Mormons? They either don’t want to know or they subconsciously understand that words like prophecy and revelation don’t really mean anything anymore, so it’s not even worth asking. The social pressures and the lowered standard of meaning feed on each other and both create the ’emperor’s new clothes’ environment. When confronted with a certain string of meaningless words in a church setting, a reflective member might think ‘I don’t really understand what this means or how it fits in with other things I’ve heard, but everyone else seems to get it so I must just need to think about it more. Maybe I need to read my scriptures and get more spiritual.’ The lack of meaning drives the doubt, and the doubt feeds the confusion and insecurity. Blind acceptance and imitation is the easiest path out, so the member takes it and the pluralistic ignorance perpetuates itself.

‘The power of God is the same now as it was in Christ’s time. The Apostles then are just like the Apostles now, and there are miracles now just like there were then.’ That’s another prominent idea in Mormonism that, upon investigation, has no foundation. I’ve talked to countless Mormons about this and there is absolutely no consensus about what this actually means. The Apostles then and the Apostles now are the same? Back then there wasn’t even a church and they traveled without purse or scrip and preached all the time…And they were all hand-selected by Jesus and were special witnesses of his crucifixion having been there when it happened. The Apostles today spend all their time in the church office building heading various committees within the greater church bureaucracy. And there aren’t even 12 now, there are 15. And they get paid a great deal of money and fly first class. Furthermore, Peter and his homies walked around literally curing blindness and raising the dead. How can you say that the modern apostles are similar at all? Where are the miracles? Where is the special witness of Christ? They testify of Christ in the same way ordinary members do–because of a warm feeling in their hearts. Dallin H. Oaks has said outright that none of them have seen Jesus–sorry to burst your bubble there. This is yet another instance where Mormons say things that make no sense. Not all Mormons would say this, but none will challenge it at church. None dare make like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes and state the obvious truth.

Here’s another one: sustaining of church leadership. In the early days of the church this actually meant something. Congregations were more democratic and significant changes required the approval of the membership. Objections were not uncommon. These days an objection is like a naked person running onto the field during a football game. Everyone just kind of averts their eyes and says “Eww, what’s that person’s problem? Do they just want attention?” When asked, everyone knows that sustaining leadership doesn’t mean anything but everyone does it anyway just because they don’t want people to wonder why they aren’t raising their hand. It’s just plain easier to raise it and bite your tongue if the meaningless bothers you. I’ve been there. In recent years, higher church leadership has put out the idea that if you raise your hand to sustain a leader and don’t follow their direction exactly that you’re violating some sacred covenant with God. Like with the ‘sacrament meeting is the most important ordinance’ idea, this is suspiciously convenient in the modern climate. And it too doesn’t make sense. Sustainings are done in enormous batches, sometimes including thousands of leaders that you don’t even know. You don’t have the option to sustain or object to individual leaders, so what are you supposed to do? Refuse to sustain the whole batch just because you take issue with one person in it? Why are you asked to sustain people you don’t even know? Or more importantly, why do Mormons sustain people they don’t know so consistently? Social pressure is a helluva drug.

I have some heavier examples but I’d like to take a break to discuss how Mormon culture is uniquely prone to the emperor’s new clothes phenomenon. First of all, testimony meetings are the perfect platform for orthodox members to set the tone and other Mormons to imitate. Testimonies themselves have their own set of common phrases and tropes–ask any Mormon. The word ‘know’ is particularly triggering when used in testimonies because it contradicts the whole gospel frame: ‘You can’t know anything and therefore must have faith. Faith is the greatest virtue and ‘knowing’ something means you don’t need faith in it. The whole purpose of life is a test of faith.’ As the same phrases and tropes get used, they lose their meaning but everyone keeps using them. Once a month members get to stand up in front of the congregation and feel some heightened social pressure to stick with the narrative. They rarely depart from it.

Another important factor is the culture of church leadership. Those who depart from the narrative rarely get promoted, and at the higher echelons there exists a real cult of personality. Apostles visiting an area are treated like celebrities and whole arenas will fill with people eager to hear their message even though it’s never anything too different than a hundred publicly accessible talks given in other places. It’s more like a rock concert–the people don’t come to hear the same old music, they come to be in the presence of the performer. When Apostles speak, no matter what they say, the default mode for Mormon listeners is pure receptivity. It doesn’t matter if it makes no sense or contradicts earlier statements or even if it’s straight up factually wrong and a lie–because an Apostle said it, it must be believed. The dissonance created in a thinking believer’s mind when an Apostle’s words don’t make sense shouldn’t be underestimated. Unfortunately it seems that Mormons too fall prey to that uniquely human tendency: in the face of cognitive dissonance between their understanding about truth and meaning on one hand, and the contradictory, vapid statements of church leadership on the other, they’ll adjust their understanding rather than reject the statement. In other words, rather than judge the words of an Apostle as ‘meaningless’ or ‘contradictory’, they’ll change the very standards of meaning and coherence themselves so as to escape the cognitive dissonance and save the Apostle from unfavorable judgment.

One subset of the church leadership problem is the obscurantism of ‘too sacred to share’. Rather than confront honest questions about their credibility as special witnesses of Christ–‘Have you seen Jesus or not?’–Apostles will deflect and say things like ‘I’ve had experiences too sacred to share publicly that have confirmed to me that Jesus lives and is the Christ.’ or ‘I too have had a moment like Joseph Smith where I sought the truth with faith in God and received revelation that made me know that God lives and loves us and Jesus is his son.’ Not very Apostle-like, at least in the traditional sense. What are they actually saying? No one really knows because it’s deliberately vague and meant to only suggest that they’ve seen Jesus without confirming it. Except for the part where Dallin H. Oaks said he wasn’t aware of any Apostles seeing Jesus, but that was said in a private meeting and leaked later so we’ll cut him some slack there. The idea that some things are ‘too sacred to share’ with the body of the church reinforces the notion that there exists knowledge that average Mormons simply aren’t allowed to have. The knowledge is deliberately withheld from them, presumably by God, and they just have to deal with it. This is akin to the idea that the emperor’s new clothes are only visible to the wise and pure of heart. Those who can’t see the clothing assume that they are unworthy, and this puts a fear in their hearts that compels them to pretend. This has profound consequences with how Mormons confront doubt or confusion or contradiction anywhere in Mormonism. They are primed to assume that there exists knowledge that would resolve the issues but that they just can’t have it or won’t until they die. Perhaps they just aren’t worthy to have it yet. ‘Well, I don’t see the emperor’s clothes now, and I probably won’t because I’m such a sinner and a fallen creature, but I will after I die and go to heaven, so I’ll just trust and go along with it for now and say the clothing is beautiful. Or at the very least I won’t say he’s naked.’

I even consider things like the ‘sealed portion of the Book of Mormon’ to be part of this. The idea of continuing revelation and ‘truths yet to be revealed’ is fundamental to Mormonism and this puts peoples’ doubts and questions on an infinitely long timer. Perhaps a significant number of Mormons are deeply confused about how so much stuff makes no sense and doctrines contradict each other and words themselves seem to have no meaning BUT they assume that their faith is being tested and that answers and ‘further knowledge’ are just around the corner as long as they keep trying to be righteous, so they sit quietly and don’t make a scene. ‘Everyone else is content waiting, why shouldn’t I wait too? Am I unworthy and unfit for God’s kingdom? Why do I doubt when no one else does? I better not make it obvious.’ And thus their concerns and questions never make it to the surface. And every townsperson continues the charade.

For most young Mormons, the first real ‘corner’ they can’t wait to get around for answers is the temple. And boy is it disappointing… Let me be clear, I love the temple. It’s a peaceful place and the ordinances therein are often quite beautiful. It has profound cultural importance and meaning. But it is not a place of learning. Young Mormons are told that the temple is a ‘house of learning’ and that many mysteries about the nature of the world are revealed therein. They are deliberately given the impression that they will be learning a great deal and having important questions answered. I remember being deeply excited to go through and become initiated into higher knowledge. I also remember how shocking it was to stumble into the celestial room for the first time thinking ‘That’s it? What the hell was that?’. Mine is not an uncommon experience. I’ve been over a hundred times and I’ve talked about this with many Mormons. The most significant questions in Mormonism and in life do not have an answer in the temple. If they do, it isn’t apparent to the majority of active, believing Mormons. Those who claim to ‘learn something new each time they go’ (such a common expression it’s almost a trope at this point) can never back it up and always come off sounding like a townsperson in The Emperor’s New Clothes. That the temple is a place to learn the mysteries of the universe is an idea which, by the standards of consensus and coherence, would appear to be false. The temple used to be a place of learning back in the day when there were meetings held there, back when Mormonism was still vigorous and revelatory and risk-taking, but it isn’t anymore. I wish it was, but it just isn’t. I tried as hard as anyone to pull continuous meaning out of it but in the end I had to be honest and admit that its value came only from A: me fulfilling what I perceived to be a duty to God and B: the celestial room is beautiful, quiet, and the chairs are comfortable–it’s a nice place to meditate.

Another uncomfortable example I alluded to earlier is the obvious lack of prophecy in the church. The word ‘prophet’ in Mormonism is one of the best examples of the ’emperor’s new clothes’ phenomenon. It’s in the titles of leaders used at their sustainings (‘raise your hand if you sustain this person as a prophet, seer, and relevator’), it’s part of virtually every testimony (‘I know that [insert name of current President of the Church] is a true prophet’), it’s part of the modern Sunday School curriculum (Teachings of the Prophets) and I even sung about it as a child in Primary (‘Latter-Day prophets are number one! Joseph Smith, then Brigham Young!..’). Everyone talks so much about ‘prophets in the latter day’ yet no one bothers to ask the crucial question: where is the prophecy? You see, it’s ‘generally understood’ that there is prophecy in the church and to express doubt on this point is deeply taboo. As an active Mormon, before I really confronted the question, I just assumed that even if I didn’t know specific instances, surely someone did so I didn’t need to worry about it. When I started really digging I realized that no one can point to a single instance of prophecy. The only consistent answer I received was that modern prophets’ organizational decision-making in terms of how they manage the enormous ‘Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ (the legal and financial name of the church, if you weren’t aware) certainly is prophetic. This is 100% a copout answer. It’s equivalent to saying, when asked to describe the emperor’s clothes, that ‘Even if we can’t see them now, I bet if we got entry to the palace and checked out his closet, there’d be loads of beautiful clothing in there.’ The Mormons I talked to never bothered to take it a step further and ask about which significant organizational steps can be considered truly prophetic*, because that isn’t the purpose of their answer. The purpose is to provide an answer that is unfalsifiable as a last resort against doubt. Because evidently there is no ‘prophecy’ to point to and use of the word is purely ornamental at this point. Again, it wasn’t always this way in Mormonism. Mormon Prophets used to prophecy, but at some point they just stopped and I guess they didn’t want to relinquish the title. So it keeps getting used.

*The only example I’ve ever heard is ‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World” being a ‘prophetic counter-play’ to the modern gay marriage push in the U.S. This might hold if the proclamation came out decades in advance of the movement, or even a few years in advance. But it didn’t. In 1993 Hawaii’s supreme court ruled that same-sex discrimination in the granting of marriage licenses was unconstitutional. The Church then released a statement in 1994 declaring opposition to same-sex marriage. In 1995 the church released the family proclamation which was indeed strategic, as it was used in an amicus brief to petition the Hawaii supreme court a couple years later, but it can’t be considered prophetic. Some sources say it was actually drafted in concert with a team of lawyers. Like all of the significant changes in church policy in the last 100 years, it was plainly reactive.

Mormon history is fraught with such examples, and the emperor’s new clothes phenomenon reemerges yet again in Mormon cultural engagement with historical problems. When I returned from my mission, Mormon history was the talk of the town. Hans Mattsson, the Swedish General Authority, had recently resigned, and his story was on the radio and even in the New York Times. As a leader, he had been confronted with a host of difficult questions related to the history of the church. The stake presidents and bishops beneath him had passed up a host of issues from the local membership–questions they were unable to answer. Things like Joseph Smith’s polygamy or treasure digging. Not only did Hans Mattsson not have any answers, he wasn’t even aware of the questions before they were brought to him. Disturbed, Hans took the questions to church headquarters in the pursuit of answers. What happened next is well-known within the ex-Mormon community and is a profound instance of pluralistic ignorance being made bare. Enter “The Swedish Rescue.”

In response to the growing discontent among Swedish church leadership about historical issues, the church’s lead historian and his assistant sent a document to fix things that didn’t actually address any of the problems and instead just offered a philosophy on how to handle individual members’ doubts from an emotional and spiritual perspective. This was not well-received because it seemed like the church was just trying to side-step the real issue–the history–and offer emotional support. This wasn’t what the Swedes wanted, so the church took it a step further and sent the official church historian–the man who *should* have all the answers–to hold a fireside.

Attendance at this fireside was restricted–it wasn’t open to ordinary members and only local leadership attended. It was kind of a disaster. The Swedes got really frustrated when the historian just repeated the same apologetic answers they were already familiar with. It got somewhat contentious as the Swedes realized what was happening. This was damage control. There weren’t any answers, there was just spiritual direction on how to manage the crisis. The cherry on top was what happened at the end. The area president prohibited the members from speaking with anyone about what had been discussed during the meeting, and he gave all in attendance an ultimatum on whether to stay in or leave the church. Either stay, shut up about the questions, and help manage the crisis, or leave. I can only imagine the feelings of the stake presidents and bishops in attendance when the reality set in that there were no answers–in effect, that the emperor did in fact have no clothes after all. They had assumed, right up until that moment, that answers did exist. They attended the fireside with full faith that the issues would be resolved, because surely the church historian, a man who knew all the questions *yet remained active in the church* would be able to help them. This is a microcosm of the general attitude in Mormon culture towards the history of the church.

There are many, many problems in the church’s history. It’s a recent issue only because the information wasn’t available before. The internet has exploded a number of historical problems that the church had managed to keep hidden for decades, and the consequences of this explosion are still playing out. When the church makes such ambitious truth claims and tells such a grandiose version of its own story, it sets up shop in a glass castle that’s extremely vulnerable to criticism. At least, that’s how it appears to me. There are still tons of members unfazed by the history and I’ve often wondered why. I think a lot of members are like the Swedes pre-fireside. They know most of the issues and don’t know the answers but they believe that somebody does. They assume that someone somewhere knows the answers, so they never really confront the questions. They take comfort in others’ perceived knowledge and leave it at that.

There are a surprising number of members who don’t even know the issues at all. They have a general knowledge that issues exist but they’ve never bothered to find out what they are, despite how easy it is to find them. I think these members don’t look for the questions for the same reason that the others don’t look for the answers: they assume that someone has the answers, or more precisely that there are members out there who know all the questions/issues and remain active, so the issues must not really be issues after all and it’s therefore not even worth looking into. It’s largely a fear response, and justifiably so. When they see friends and family depart from the fold because of the history, they perceive a real threat. Rather than confront the threat themselves, they take solace in the existence of people like Richard Bushman, a well-known historian of Joseph Smith who remains active in the Mormon faith. ‘If Bushman, who surely knows way more than me AND way more than my friends and family who left the church, is still active, then there must not really be a reason to be inactive on the basis of the history. I, therefore, don’t even need to engage with it and can continue to live happily.’

There’s something profoundly sad about that to me–that members would trust people they don’t even know over their own friends and family when it comes to the history. This is another manifestation of the emperor’s new clothes phenomenon. Members don’t know what the answers are, and they might not even know what the issues are, but they believe that there exists a person who both knows them and remains active in Mormonism, so they stay active too. In church meetings this predominant attitude makes discussion of the issues taboo. ‘Everyone here knows that the history isn’t a real problem, Jerry, so why do you keep bringing it up? Go read Richard Bushman or Marlin Jensen, they have the answers.’ Or perhaps they don’t. The Swedes discovered this the hard way, as did I and many of my friends and family. The time came for me when I could no longer take shelter in pluralistic ignorance, and when I stepped out from the veil of assumption the reality became apparent: there are no answers.

On to a different example. The first example I provided about the sacrament being ‘the most important’ is an example of what I’d call ‘dogma masquerading as doctrine’. And it isn’t the only one. A couple other ideas have achieved de facto doctrine status through the positive feedback loop of pluralistic ignorance. In traditional Mormon circles such ideas would be called ‘false doctrine’. There’s no more powerful voice on the topic of false doctrine in Mormonism than Rock Waterman, author of the blog ‘Pure Mormonism’. He has been highly influential to me on this point and goes in-depth on the examples I’ll list, so I’ll link some of his articles for those who will be dissatisfied with my brief treatment.

‘Obedience is the first law of heaven.’ How many times have I heard that in church in the last ten years…Far too many. They say that if you repeat something enough times it becomes true. That’s certainly the case here. The idea is false doctrine, directly contradicted by Jesus in the New Testament and not to be found in any modern scripture. It’s a nice little line to quote at someone straying from the path and it’s certainly memorable, so it has its semantic uses, but the only reason Mormons believe this is because no one challenges it. Everyone believes because everyone believes, not because there’s a real basis to it.

‘The prophet is literally incapable of leading the church astray.‘ This is another idea which from a scriptural perspective is preposterous. It implies that either the prophet, a mortal man, is perfect, or else God will interfere with his agency and not allow him to speak in error if he’s ever about to make a mistake in leading the church. Once this is repeated enough times without being challenged, people just believe it. Previous Presidents of the church like Brigham Young spoke explicitly about their own fallibility and told every member that they had to receive a personal confirmation from the spirit about their legitimacy. There was no talk of Brigham being ‘incapable of leading the church astray.’ Rock Waterman dismantles that idea thoroughly so I’ll stop here.

There are a lot of uncomfortable elements of Mormonism/experiences in Mormon culture that people gloss over because of their pluralistic ignorance. “This really bothers me but all these people around me don’t seem to be bothered by it so it must be my problem. I must be missing something.” The temple is one place where that’s plainly manifest, especially for women, who are often shocked to find frank misogyny in temple ordinances. I am close friends with multiple women who describe their first temple experience as traumatic and disturbing, and the only thing that kept them from leaving was the social pressure of others in attendance who didn’t seem to be experiencing it the same way. One girl swore she’d never go back and to my knowledge she never has. Over time, most Mormons get used to the bizarre cultishness of certain elements of the temple and they themselves become the social pressure-emitting pylons that suppress the concerns of the newest batch to come through.

Things like modern polygamy are similar. Mormon men can be sealed (married) to multiple women at once as long as only one of them is alive. Many modern church leaders are still sealed to their deceased wives alongside their new living ones. Women, on the other hand, can’t be sealed to multiple men, and divorced women often have to fight to get un-sealed. The default policy is to leave women sealed to her ex-husbands until they get a new one. This is plainly misogynistic and it bothers many women but it doesn’t get discussed in part because women who are bothered by it experience the emperor’s new clothes phenomenon. They assume they’re the only one with the problem when they observe Mormon women around them who appear happy who aren’t complaining about polygamy or even talking about it. Lots of little issues like this go undiscussed because of pluralistic ignorance.

That’s it for my examples. I’m going to guess that the primary objection to what I’ve written will be “Just because you didn’t perceive meaning in these things and just because YOU don’t see the emperor’s new clothes doesn’t mean that no one else does!” Fair enough. I was a devoted Mormon but far from the MOST devoted, and I do have a more cynical outlook in life generally. I talked to a lot of Mormons about this but maybe I just happened to hit an unrepresentative group. All I can say is the following: “It would appear that the emperor in fact has no clothes because the people who claim to see the clothing can’t agree on what the clothing looks like. Most people don’t even have an idea. In fact, most had never even thought about the things I’ve pointed out. I personally can’t see the clothing and evidently most Mormons can’t either.” Anyone can defeat my argument for themselves if they can honestly account for my examples in a way that will cohere with other members’ explanations. In the Emperor’s new clothes there are people who describe in great detail the attire of the newly arrayed Emperor–the issue was that all their descriptions were either conflicting or they were deliberately vague so as to not conflict with anything. If there can be no consensus among the informed believers, there is no truth at all. At least not in the literal sense.

At the beginning I called pluralistic ignorance the ‘hallmark social failure of Mormonism’. Throughout my examples I also alluded to the idea that Mormonism wasn’t always this way–it has changed a lot since its early days. This is the primary failure of Mormonism in my view: it cannot, in its modern form, live up to the standard of its earlier days. It’s a social failure because Mormon society has allowed the standards to be lowered. If they haven’t noticed it’s because pluralistic ignorance has cast a veil over their eyes. The church has changed along with the times–it has liberalized, it has ceased the extremely risky practice of prophecy and miracle-working, it has backed off in its animosity towards evolution, and it has become deeply bureaucratic. The church has been molded into a product fit for mass consumption and acceptance in a liberal, secular society. This isn’t what Mormonism used to be, and it wouldn’t have happened under the direction of early Mormon leadership. Over generation and generation, pluralistic ignorance has blinded Mormons to the change in their church and it wouldn’t have happened if more members had braved social censure to challenge changes that others accepted blindly. Granted, the church probably wouldn’t still be around if it hadn’t adapted to the modern world, but that’d be ok as long as members had also adjusted their understanding of the church to go along with its adaptation. But they haven’t. They speak as if Mormonism is the same as it always was. The language structure of Mormonism (the phrases, the tropes, the specialized vocabulary) hasn’t changed even though the foundation of that language–the original Mormon church–has washed away beneath it. People don’t talk about it–they don’t even realize it–because their own society has clouded their eyes to the truth. This is the social failure, and no story accounts for it better than The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Modern Mormon culture is plagued by pluralistic ignorance and the only hope lies with ordinary members. The leadership (the emperor’s advisors) is too invested to ever make a change from the top down. Ordinary members need to raise the standard of meaning in language and de-stigmatize tough questions. They need to call out nonsense when they hear it and demand clarity from teachers and leadership. They need to be honest with each other and take social/emotional risks. And they need to be realistic about what the church really is now, not just endlessly nostalgic about what it used to be.

The following is a lightly edited copy of a document I wrote near the end of my ‘faith journey’ out of the Mormon church. It was originally written April 2018. Names and certain places have been changed to respect others’ privacy.

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There has been a significant change in my life related to my faith in the LDS church, its teachings, and in God generally. The basic element of the change comes down to how my faith has always functioned. Imagine an old-fashioned balance, like you’d see in front of a courthouse. On one side is all those things that make me think the church is what it claims to be. The other side is all those things that make me think otherwise. In this analogy, the weight of the various objects that are added to either side are not constant—they differ based on the circumstances. If I think X is miraculous then when it goes on the scale it will carry more weight than if I think it isn’t as miraculous. If an inconsistency in church history or a problem with doctrine is significant at the time, it will shift the scales immediately. All of these things change in time based on my own state of mind, but there’s another element as well.

The weights of the various items are often consciously adjusted to fit the circumstances of life at the time. For example, as a missionary it was expedient for me to ensure that the scales were always tipped one way for the sake of my psychological health. Pro-church experiences always went on the scale heavy, while anti-church experiences were always mentally trimmed down as much as possible prior to their addition to the scale. In this way I allowed the balance to function with a little tampering. We all do this, consciously or not. Returning from my mission to attend a church-owned university, I was in a similar circumstance. It was socially expedient for me to favor the pro-church side of the balance in order to maintain harmony. I was going to new wards, church activities, enjoying new callings, going on temple trips, etc. It was important that the scales were carefully and successfully managed. I’m going to extend this analogy a little further, forgive me.

Imagine now that the balance is in a room with a conveyor belt that carries new items into that room from outside. You are in the room adding things to the scales. Sometimes things come across the conveyor belt that you had no control over. A miraculous experience that just happened to you, perhaps a story of one, or an answer to a prayer, etc. Or maybe a disturbing fact about church history that you happen to hear, or a bad experience with church, etc. Those are all things that might come down the line for you to pluck off and add to the scales. Sometimes we deliberately leave things on the conveyor belt, usually bad experiences. We just let them accumulate in the corner and don’t really let ourselves think about them. We’re afraid of how much they might tip the balance if we added them. Now, most of what comes across that conveyor belt is random—it’s just what life serves us—but we can exercise control over it with our actions. Constant prayer and scripture reading, for example, are meant to keep a stream of positive experiences coming down the line for addition to the balances. Temple attendance and church callings are similar—they keep things flowing down the conveyor belt. If you choose to study church history, then you’re ensuring that a host of items come down the conveyor belt that will be added to the anti-church side of the balance. That is, if you’re honest.

A lot of Mormons seem to confront church history, and think themselves courageous, without actually considering it. They’ll read about Joseph Smith’s polygamy or the problems with the BoM or other factual inaccuracies of correlated history, then feel proud to come away ‘unscathed’. Like they’ve dipped their toe in the arctic ocean and consider themselves bona fide members of the Polar Bear club. What they’re doing is letting a lot of anti-church material come down the conveyor belt without actually adding it to the balances. They might pick things up and feel their weight, then just set them back down on the belt and let them accumulate in the corner. After a lengthy stretch of anti-church items have gone past, they’ll examine the balance and exclaim with joy that their faith has remained intact. Those people are either dishonest or they are cowards. Or perhaps they do add things to the balance but the balance is rigged—it is deliberately held to one side no matter how much weight is added. I imagine that many bishops and other church leaders are in that position, especially 70’s and apostles. Their balances have been calcified over long careers and frozen in the pro-church direction.

It’s completely possible to live an entire life with the balances shifted in the pro-church direction. Many people have demonstrated this. But only by carefully controlling what comes across the conveyor belt or by rigging the balance. One is a life of careful censorship, the other of rigid mental inflexibility. Both are dishonest. In the name of psychological and social expediency, I lived that way for a few years after my mission. When I decided to finally live honestly, everything changed. This is the story.

I served my mission in Japan. On the whole, it was a great mission. I made lifelong friends, loved learning about the culture and food, enjoyed learning the language, and was thrilled to be there. I had a few distinct faith-building experiences, and my personal study was often very enriching, but in terms of the work it was very sparse. Very few people interested in the church over there, even fewer willing to be baptized or seriously commit to the Mormon life. 99% of the lessons I taught were to people I never saw again, who were likely just listening to be polite. 100% of the people I found through housing (knocking on doors) didn’t progress as investigators. I think I knocked on at least 50,000 doors over those 2 years and I recall being let into only a handful of homes. Maybe 4 or 5. I observed a lot of unhappiness amongst members over there. Some of the most miserable people I interacted with were members, and that was hard to overlook. I couldn’t help but notice that the members of the Nakamatsu branch were haggard and exhausted. Overwhelmed by church responsibility and the feeling of futility that accompanied any missionary efforts. Nakamatsu branch had been 70 members strong 10 years prior, and there were 7 active members when I came. The feeling in the Shidaya ward was not good. Dark, stressful, and again it just seemed like the church sucked the life out of people. Not everyone, but a few. Matsuda branch was generally good.

I met quite a few people who weren’t LDS who impressed me with their goodness. Yoshimatsu was one. He had been a friend of the missionaries for quite some time but had turned down baptism. He mostly was just an English class student. Incredibly nice man—did more for the missionaries than the rest of the Nakamatsu branch members combined. In interacting with people like Yoshimatsu over the course of my mission, I came to the significant conclusion that if people like Yoshimatsu didn’t make it to the highest heaven, and I, or any other member in Japan, did make it, then there was no justice in the universe. In pondering the doctrine of baptism, I came to believe that though my purpose as a missionary was to baptize, the actual ordinance of baptism wasn’t really important. Some people would be fine without it. In fact, some people would be better off not getting baptized. That’s a somewhat heretical conclusion for a missionary to draw, but that’s what I came to think. Some missionaries swung the opposite way and would say things like “These prideful Japanese people keep turning us down and throwing away their shot at eternal life. If they don’t accept it, they’re damning themselves. And good riddance!” I couldn’t draw that conclusion and be honest about their goodness at the same time. Then there’s the whole ‘get baptized at your own risk’ sort of thing. The official doctrine of the church is that it is better for someone to have never learned about the gospel at all than to learn it, get baptized, and fall away. Given the huge inactivity rates in Japan and around the world, I worried that by baptizing people who weren’t 100% ready and committed and understanding their baptismal covenants, I would be effectively damning them when they inevitably left. I thought that for a short period of time, at least, before I realized how absurd that was and promptly ceased believing in it. So even though baptism was my first purpose being there as a missionary, it was during that time I concluded that baptism itself didn’t matter. It couldn’t, at least not as the doctrine described it.

Looking back, I think this was a meaningful development. There’s an air of self-importance and sanctimony that many missionaries and members carry. I think I carried it for portions of my mission. In accepting the truth about baptism, any delusions of grandeur about the work I was doing were dispelled. This was coincident with me becoming a leader in the mission which let me redefine my purpose a little. I put energy and love into the missionaries below me and worked hard to make life easier and better for them. The relationships I formed with my fellow missionaries were by far the greatest fruit of my service. I still feel like I’m processing the mission experience at some level. I probably always will. The mission shifted me away from a position of ‘literal truth’ in regards to the church. I couldn’t square my observations with church declarations like ‘the gospel brings people ultimate happiness’ or ‘if people reject the savior, they’re damned’. It simply wasn’t true in my experience. Consider this the cracking of the foundation of church literalism. There’s another significant crack that developed while I was a missionary—the false narrative.

There were a few things that happened on my mission that ‘red-pilled’ me about the historical narrative of the church. Perhaps the first was the during my companionship with Elder Derek Stone. I had been emergency transferred into his area to replace his previous companion who was having panic attacks. Looking back, I understand why. Stone was a few transfers older than me and he was on his last limb as a missionary. I never heard exactly what happened that caused the emergency transfer, but it had something to do with Stone blowing up at his companion—a young, naïve, emotionally unstable missionary named Bunson—then going to the gym and pounding the crap out of a boxing bag for over an hour while Bunson quivered in the corner. Stone could be an intimidating guy. Bunson couldn’t take it, so the mission president saw fit to remove him from the area and transfer me in. I had more in common with Stone and the president trusted me to make Stone’s life easier. It was an interesting transfer to say the least. Stone didn’t want to do much missionary work and teetered on the edge with his mental health. We went to the gym frequently and sometimes just sat in the park to relax. We’d teach English class and go on bike rides and both of us were sick for a large portion of that transfer. Stone’s father was a serious ‘apostate’ and had sent Elder Stone an mp3 player loaded with podcasts about Mormon history. I think they were Mormon Stories podcasts or something. Stone would listen to them during personal study and occasionally mention little things he had heard. He was polite about it—he never dumped on me—but it was definitely disturbing. He’d say things like ‘Joseph Smith’s family wasn’t persecuted because they were so holy and everyone else in town was possessed by Satan…They were in debt to loads of people and engaged in sketchy activities like claiming to use seer stones to find treasure’ or ‘The Book of Mormon has had thousands of changes made to it since the 1st edition.’ I internalized those things and I didn’t doubt their veracity, I was just good at compartmentalizing them. In later transfers I had genuine faith crises about Joseph Smith, but there were other triggers as well. Hearing Stone talk about church history got me to start internalizing the idea that the official narrative of the church is false, or at least deliberately deceptive.

The other notable occurrence on this path was me discovering the ‘History of the Church’ books in the mission office. About halfway through my mission I was sitting in the mission office while my companion, a district leader, was being interviewed by the mission president. This was one of few times where being alone wasn’t considered a big deal. I was in the mission office after all… What could possibly happen? Well, I was a very serious studier on my mission—I read Jesus the Christ three times and the bible twice, along with a handful of other books. I wandered into the mission supply room while my companion was being interviewed and I saw on the shelf a dusty old set of books called ‘The History of the Church.’ I was excited by this because I remembered that I’d seen them cited before in church publications and the D&C so I picked one up and opened it to a random page. As I recall, I opened to someone’s recollection of Joseph’s ‘escape’ from Liberty jail. It was about how he was essentially broken out of the jail in the middle of the night and jumped in a carriage that sped him away, and apparently at one point he forgot Emma and left her behind in his haste to get away from the jail. This gave me pause because I had never considered how Joseph left Liberty Jail. I assumed he’d been released once the judge realized his grave mistake in jailing The Prophet. Joseph making a midnight escape was exciting but kind of shocking—it wasn’t in keeping with the character of Joseph portrayed in the Joseph Smith movies produced by the church.

I flipped through to another part of the book and read about Joseph’s time in Carthage shortly before he died. There I read about how when the mob charged up the stairs, Joseph’s brother Hyrum braced himself against the door and was shot in the face through the door. Joseph then took out a gun, stuck it out the door, and shot back, apparently mortally wounding a couple of the attackers. This too gave me pause. ‘Wait, what?.. Joseph had a gun in Carthage? And he shot people in the face through the door before ‘running’ to the window?’ This was also completely new—not portrayed in church media AT ALL. This was disturbing to me. It didn’t have a profound immediate effect, but it stuck with me. I had to do a lot of praying and studying the scriptures to make peace with that, but I think it had a more permanent effect I wouldn’t fully understand until after my mission: it showed me clearly that the church wasn’t honest about its history. I knew then that there was probably a lot of things like that in The History of the Church and I knew that someday I’d have to learn it all. I knew that my mission wasn’t the time, so I put Rough Stone Rolling on my to-read list and put it out of my mind. It wasn’t expedient for me to dwell on it too much because it might ruin my mission. I’m glad I waited, because my mission was wonderful.

I consider these to be ‘red-pilling’ events in the sense that they changed my perspective fundamentally. I didn’t learn that much from Stone’s offhand comments or my short foray into The History of the Church—just a few little things from church history—but I did come to understand, internally, that things weren’t as they seemed. I was set to learn more when the time came and I knew I had to tread carefully.

I enjoyed the remainder of my mission and felt deeply fulfilled by the relationships I established with my fellow missionaries. The high point of my mission was being a Zone Leader where I could just travel around to different companionships and spend time with people I loved. I relished every opportunity to stop street contacting (because deep down I knew it was fruitless and I disliked it). I remember being on the street with my companion Elder Eli and receiving a text message from Elder Okada in an adjacent area asking us to come immediately because his companion had locked himself in the bathroom. I was thrilled—blessed with another opportunity to do something I really enjoyed and cared about: helping other missionaries to be happy. No further faith crises occurred, even during my most difficult companionship with Elder Kusabe.

I returned from my mission at the peak of the church history firestorm when things like Joseph Smith’s polygamy broke publicly for the first time. Hans Mattsson, the Swedish General Authority, had just left the church and had his story published in the New York Times. I heard Mormon issues being discussed on National Radio. I heard it discussed in whispers at church and even on the streets of my university. I had the opportunity to fly around the U.S. shortly after I returned and visit my siblings who are all older than me. I spent 2 days with Eliza, my sister-cousin, and her husband Carl. Carl had borne powerful testimony of the church at my mission farewell and together they were some of the staunchest members in my family. When I stayed with them they were at the peak of a ‘faith crisis’ and they tried to be polite and respectful with me but I learned a lot there as well. Things like Joseph Smith marrying women who were already married and even marrying mother-daughter combos. These things destroy the church narrative. My faith remained intact at that point, mostly because I wasn’t empathetic enough to consider the full import of things. I also had a strong wall up. But I did come away from that experience knowing that if I was going to continue to go to church, I needed to know all that stuff. As soon as I returned home, I purchased Rough Stone Rolling and began to read.

The trip around the country to visit my siblings is also very memorable because of how different everyone looked. I feel like my natural cynicism had been cultivated by the mission—it was as a missionary that I got a backstage look at church and was introduced to drama between adults. This probably deserves an entire post of its own, but suffice it to say my eyes were opened to things I hadn’t ever observed before. Things I hadn’t even considered. I was such a child before I went on my mission. That in combination with the fact that I lived among the Japanese for two years and didn’t see white people made it such that when I went around the country visiting my siblings, they all looked different than I remembered. Both in appearance and in behavior. I think I was seeing their Caucasian faces for the first time in a long time, but also seeing their behavior in a completely new light. I observed my sister’s marriage and interaction with her husband in a way I hadn’t before. It worried me. I saw my brother-in-law’s behavior as immature and problematic. I saw their decision not to watch PG-13 or R movies as the downstream effect of a YM/YW program that likely stunted their growth and kept them in a state of perpetual childhood in some ways. I saw the stress of childrearing draining my sister of her vitality. It wasn’t all bad—I also saw her inner strength in a way I couldn’t before. I saw the love of her children and their beautiful childlike innocence. I had similar experiences with other siblings. This is all to communicate the change in perspective I experienced coming home from my mission. I saw almost everything in a new light. This came to include church itself and later produced a feeling of great dissatisfaction.

Returning to school, I launched right into Rough Stone Rolling. I got about 200 pages in before I felt satisfied. I felt I had learned enough for that time and I allowed school and sociality to subsume my every waking moment. I suppose I felt that I’d done enough and could put it back on the shelf. It would’ve been a mistake to continue reading because it would’ve been too disruptive. It wasn’t expedient for me to continue reading, so I just let the first 200 pages digest slowly. There’s too much content to discuss in detail here, but I learned enough to see how whitewashed the story of Joseph’s early life was in church manuals. His family’s obsession with magic and their perpetual indebtedness were definitely new. It wasn’t faith-shattering for me, it just opened my eyes a little more. The slight divergence it caused for me mentally then would have visible effects over the next few years. It’s difficult to know the truth and make constant company with the ignorant. Sunday school would become increasingly frustrating and my patience with nonsensical teachings gradually died out. I remember one particular Sunday school a couple years after returning from my mission in which the teacher asked the question “Who is the best example of a great teacher from all scripture, or from anyone you know?” Socrates popped into my head and I considered saying it. Of course the first answer was Jesus. But then someone else said ‘God’ and the teacher was like ‘Yes, of course, obviously God is the greatest teacher.’ I was stunned. What the hell does that even mean? I had never been so taken aback by a stupid answer that way. Everyone in the room, teacher included, just accepted that like it was the obvious answer when in reality it makes no sense. I was shocked and all at once I was done subjecting myself to an hour of such drivel every week. No one even engages with the ideas or lessons because they’re so vapid. And no one calls teachers out when they say silly things or even teach false history because it’s not kosher. Most Mormons understand this.

This is a problem within church culture that many will acknowledge but few really care about. It’s easy to just sit through a vapid lesson and zone out without stirring the pot. There’s a lot of social pressure that can come down on you if you contradict the teacher or say something controversial. It’s just not kosher. Most people just go on autopilot. The standard of meaning is very low in the church. Words like revelation, know, believe, truth, and testimony have all been repeated so loosely that they scarcely mean anything anymore. Mormon apologetics takes this even further by saying for example that ‘translate’ doesn’t really mean translate, prophesy doesn’t mean prophesy, and seer doesn’t mean seer. It’s really ridiculous and in the few years after my mission I became increasingly dissatisfied with it. Church became less and less meaningful as I opened my eyes to the truth. It was shallow, the culture is oppressive, and to me it felt pointless.

Some years after returning from my mission I took time off to start a solar company. This had me move away from my college town to a nearby suburb where I lived for about 7 months. During that time my roommate wasn’t active and would’ve been in an older age bracket anyway so I attended church by myself. Social pressure to attend was removed but I still did because I felt like I should. Around this time I started listening to little clips of really intelligent people talking about modern issues on Youtube. Somehow I found Sam Harris and got really into his stuff. Then I found Christopher Hitchens. His use of language was always pleasing and the courage and force with which he spoke on a variety of topics impressed me greatly. I heard a little bit of Jordan Peterson at that point as well. I came to crave hearing them speak and I came to admire Chris Hitchens the man. He was courageous, witty, kind, charismatic, educated, and he seemed to really have his head on straight. He was an outspoken atheist, and Sam Harris is as well. But he wasn’t obnoxious and insulting, at least not in the unfair, unpleasant way that many modern atheists are. He was polite but unforgiving when his interlocutors made no sense or said something morally out of line. I loved him and Sam Harris because of their commitment to truth and logic, as well as the compassion they demonstrate towards their fellow humans. They raised the standard of meaning for me and it became more difficult to sit through Sunday school or Elders Quorum. Why sit there zoning out when I could listen to a rich, hour-long lecture by Harris or listen to a debate with Chris Hitchens? Same applies to other thinkers. Why waste my time sitting in these classes straining at a gnat trying to get inspired by the dull, often factually misleading source material of the lessons?

I resolved at that point to finish Rough Stone Rolling which I had kept shelved for some time. The book is very dense and difficult to explain, but it certainly was impactful. Not entirely in a negative way. Bushman paints a favorable picture of Joseph and he doesn’t say much about polygamy. Not that he’s deliberately skipping over things—I think he just didn’t have confidence in the source material many anti-Mormons draw upon in their caricatures of Joseph. I also bought and read Hitchens’ seminal work on religion, god is not Great, which I found compelling. I feel it’s important to note that my admiration of Hitchens and Harris didn’t stem from some internal attraction to atheism. That they were atheists wasn’t important—what was important is that they made sense. The words coming out of their mouths always had meaning, and they commanded respect. I didn’t just believe everything they said—I wasn’t an atheist then and I’m still not. I disagree with both of them on many things, but I respect and love both of them for the men they are.

One thing that Hitchens did for me was break down a wall I had inside preventing me from taking seriously certain issues with Christianity that I had glossed over earlier in life. The idea that God would help me find my car keys while letting horrible atrocities occur in less fortunate parts of the world isn’t just problematic, it’s arrogant and despicable. Hitchens woke me up to this with his unforgiving, impassioned speech. To believe the Christian story (and especially the Mormon one), you have to believe that God let most of humanity suffer in ignorance for thousands of years before deciding to save a select few in our modern time. What could be more arrogant than to say that of all the people that have ever lived, we here in America, or in Utah, are the ones who deserve the truth of God? It’s easy for most Mormons to just gloss over this and ascribe it to the mysteries of God, but if you read Hitchens he won’t let you do that. He’ll make you look it in the face and acknowledge it. That’s one thing that Hitchens helped me do. I realized after reading god is not Great that being Mormon would require me to embrace the logical contradictions and problems—to abandon the silly notion that Mormonism is rational or that its version of the story makes sense. I realized that I’d have to abandon rationality entirely when it comes to religion. Hitchens shattered the illusion that any western religion is rational. It doesn’t make sense. Is that a big problem? Not really, as long as you’re willing to sacrifice reason on the altar of faith. I was, for a time.

It was also at this time that I started to understand the teachings of Jordan Peterson. At the time of writing, Peterson has become famous and soundbites of his are all over the place. I think his message has been adapted for the mainstream to a certain extent, but there still exists a wealth of his older material—class lectures, bible analyses, and older speaking engagements. Old-school Jordan Peterson. This is what I first started listening to. I’d seen a few clips of him on Youtube talking about psychology and myth and I really liked it so I started investing time into his longer lectures. This also deserves an entire blog post in itself, and will probably materialize at some point, but for now suffice it to say that Peterson’s teachings were an integral part of my faith journey. He made one singular crucial contribution with importance that can hardly be overstated: he helped me understand that I wouldn’t have to relinquish the beauty of religion and spirituality that I had grown up observing and appreciating. I could in fact find greater beauty and meaning in new interpretations of those experiences I’d had. In other words, my religious experiences weren’t illegitimate and didn’t need to be discarded if I were to leave Mormonism and orthodox religion generally. This unlocked the door for me to seriously consider acting upon the conclusion I had been gradually reaching ever since my mission: the Mormon church is not the one true church it claims to be.

After nearly a year away, I returned to school for the summer and resumed work on my degree. It was a strange experience and ultimately a good one. I was surrounded once again by people my age out and about doing good things and the thoughtful silence that permeated my experience in the other suburb was now replaced with the constant hum of activity. I acquired a short-term lease at an apartment just south of campus and I only had one roommate, a young guy just off his mission named Camdon. He was too busy returning to real life and too excited for all the new opportunities to really engage me in serious discussion but that’s probably for the best because he and I are at very different places in life and he likely would’ve found some of my views about religion and society somewhat shocking. The gap in our understanding about life was dreadfully apparent. His youthful optimism rubbed off on me in a good way but also reminded me how naïve the truly orthodox usually are. I attended church dutifully and it was largely enjoyable though characteristically devoid of meaning. This was also at the tail end of my very good friend Jack and his wife Ally’s transition out of Mormonism. I had heard from Jack about their decision to leave and it was on my mind, but it wasn’t really surprising. He and I had discussed a few things that went on my shelf but as before I just wasn’t going to engage in it seriously until I felt the time was right.

One very fateful thing happened that summer that served, in part, to push me just about over the edge with my decision to learn about church history. Camdon and I attended a stake dance party which for some reason was held in a parking lot close to our apartment. While at the dance I spotted a familiar face passing through the crowd. It was a guy who I met at a friend’s house two years prior. I remember him because he was really agitated about religious things. He was in the middle of a faith transition at the time. I called out to him and said “Hey, you’re Devon. I met you two years ago.” He looked at me bewildered and we had a short chat during which I mentioned the Sam Harris podcast which I love. He looked surprised and asked me if I wanted to room with him for the upcoming Fall semester. It was sudden but I said ‘Yeah sure’ and we exchanged numbers. Funny how such a crucial moment in my faith journey was so serendipitous—the sort of event an orthodox Mormon would likely attribute to God.

Devon and I weren’t able to find a suitable place to live for the fall so he stayed where he was and I signed a contract at Windsor Park. In the process of looking for housing we got to know each other better and had a lot of conversations about politics, religion, history, and a host of other things. It became clear to me quickly that when it came to Mormon doctrine and history there was a lot I didn’t know. While I was at Windsor, I finally decided to do a deep dive into Mormon History. I had been putting it off for a long time but I finally felt like I needed to seriously consider the full scope of information available in print and in podcast. And boy was it a deep dive…The church history box is like a box from Harry Potter that looks like an ordinary box—I knew it was hefty going in—but turns out to contain an entire warehouse full of things. I learned quickly that the rabbit hole goes very deep. Very, very deep. And I dove in head first. I found Mormonthink.com and started reading through their articles. They present the LDS and the critics’ position in a manner that I genuinely think is fair. Unfortunately for the church, the apologetic answer to most every problem is very weak. I also subscribed to MormonStories podcast and took recommendations from Jack and Devon on good episodes. Soon it came to dominate every moment of my free time. I would stay up late into the night pouring over the lengthy Mormonthink pages. I’d put my headphones in and go for a 2 hour walk through the suburbs just to listen to a Mormonstories podcast. In the car, at the gym, at the grocery store, getting ready for bed, between classes…Always listening to a podcast. One of the first Mormonstories podcasts I listened to was a man discussing his interview with a general authority, Cristoffel Golden Jr. The way the man was treated and the psychologically manipulative tactics employed by Golden Jr. were shocking to me. That was one of the first moments I felt outrage. Not an overpowering, all-consuming anger but a feeling of deep discontent that this thing happened. It was the first of many such feelings as I listened to story after story of people grappling with faith problems and dealing with the consequences. Rejection by family, gaslighting by leaders, abusive language and social ostracization…And at the core of it all: no answers to questions. No resolutions for genuine, well-intentioned doubt about church doctrine and history. What I heard was stories of people being jettisoned and shunned by society for daring to question honestly—for daring to pursue truth.

The words of my favorite college professor came to mind, “You must always follow the truth, no matter where it leads.” Those words stuck with me and returned to me at this time. I became genuinely obsessed with the disturbing things I was learning about the church’s history. It’s difficult to describe but suffice it to say the rabbit hole goes very deep and most people who think they ‘know the history’ really don’t. I thought I did because I had read Rough Stone Rolling. Not so. During this time I also read the famed CES Letter, Letter to an Apostle, and other notable works. I listened to all of Grant Palmer’s Mormonstories episodes and read everything online I could find written by him. I listened to a live lecture by Michael Quinn. I went to a meeting of post-Mormon adults who meet monthly or bi-monthly to discuss matters of life and faith. That was also very impressive. My first meeting there was with Tom Christofferson, gay brother of D. Todd Christofferson, LDS General Authority and Apostle. He spoke about his experience as a gay man and it was so meaningful. I attended that meeting with Devon and a couple of his friends who were familiar with the post-Mormon and ex-Mormon scene. That was also refreshing and important—being able to talk openly about things with someone other than Devon. This was when I started to diverge significantly from the traditional LDS path. I decided my kids won’t be brainwashed in Primary, became even more annoyed by the deception of the brethren on matters historical, and turned my cynical eye more completely towards the low standard of meaning in the church. I still lived as an LDS person. I didn’t drink alcohol or coffee (and never had prior) and didn’t go solicit a prostitute either. These were gradual changes and I was careful not to let myself swing hard in any direction.

When it comes to my faith transition, this period was definitely meaty. It tipped my mental balance pretty convincingly. There’s nothing quite like the first few dives into church history. But it wasn’t all this, as I’ve tried to illustrate. If anything, the things I learned during this roughly 2-month period were just a series of nails in the coffin. I felt a strange sense of peace—a deadly calm—reading through it all. I knew what it meant and I was stern and cold inside as I processed it. I didn’t immediately proclaim the church false—I had too many experiences and things to process before I could say anything like that. But I could definitively say that the church was dishonest in the way it advertises itself and that the brethren routinely lie (or are themselves oblivious) about the history of the church. I could say that the way the church handles scandals within itself and the way it treats ‘apostates’ makes it very cultish, and many of its beloved stories are pure fiction. There wasn’t one big thing that ‘broke my shelf’, as they say. No one issue holds great weight, but together they’re absolutely damning. If the reader doesn’t understand what I could mean, may I recommend reading all of Mormonthink.com, listening to 100 MormonStories episodes, reading CES Letter and other documents, and then polishing it off with a smattering of articles from other websites accessible by Google. Until you do, it will likely be hard to understand just what I mean when I say things like ‘the rabbit hole goes very deep’. I willingly unleashed a stream of items that came pouring down my mental conveyor belt so fast it was like a full-time job to manage all of them. All the issues I considered legitimate were added to the scales and when all was said and done the scale was virtually buried, and almost entirely pinned in the ‘Church is UnTrue’ direction.

It’s worth noting here that nothing I read and internalized can legitimately be considered ‘anti-Mormon’ in the propaganda sense. Protestant churches producing pamphlets about how Mormons worship the devil and grow horns is anti-Mormon. Truths from the journals of its very founders are not. The church has done a decent job of labeling anything that makes members get a pit in their stomach as ‘anti-Mormon’, coopting the supposed influence of the Spirit to be peoples’ guide when judging what they should and shouldn’t read. Unfortunately, the sick feeling one gets when seeing the unpleasant truth about something or someone they love is exactly the same feeling an orthodox Mormon will get when learning about church history for the first time. It’s sickening, and that feeling isn’t ‘the Spirit’ warning you to stay away. It’s a natural human reaction to a serious threat. That’s the feeling I felt when I decided to end my period of self-imposed ignorance. That’s the feeling I felt when I decided to exit a form of childishness by watching R-rated movies. Fear. Dread. Perhaps a little guilt for doing what you’ve been told you’re not supposed to from the time you’re a child. Happens to be very similar to the feeling I felt when I walked up to my first street contact as a young missionary in Japan that didn’t know the language. Just gotta power through it. Always follow the truth, no matter what.

No serious person, having read about the history of the church to the extent I have, could claim that it’s all ‘anti-Mormon’. And no honest person could deny that it’s a minefield of faith-destroying problems. Getting through it with your faith intact is not virtuous—it’s not a sign of strength. It’s the sign of an unhealthy mind in which the backfire effect (see Wikipedia for that one) is all-powerful. The church has created an ideology and culture that is virtually immune to any criticism and any historical issue, almost by definition. This slippery flexibility is exploited to the absolute extreme by Mormon apologists these days who will say things like ‘translate’ doesn’t mean ‘translate’, it means ‘composed out of thin air with some corporal inspiration in the form of unrelated textual aids’ so it’s totally not an issue that Joseph Smith said he ‘translated’ the Book of Abraham when the papyrus actually has nothing on it related to Abraham at all. Ironically, the unfalsifiable nature of Mormonism is what deprives it of meaning. Modern Mormons don’t understand this, but old-school Mormons did. They knew, like Ezra Taft Benson emphasized, that if evolution was true then Mormonism was false. They were willing to risk their faith. Modern Mormons know that’s a losing battle so they take no such risks. The church will be true no matter what, and that’s the crucial flaw. That’s the handicap. Mormonism nowadays is like a merry-go-round. If you try to stay on it, you’ll just go around and around and get nowhere when you try to process critiques and historical issues. Even though it’s scary, you just have to get off. Then, as your perspective straightens and the vertigo clears, things start to make sense. Words regain their meaning. Truth becomes a genuine virtue again. And free will or ‘agency’, which the church gives supernal, superficial importance, finally has value. Gentiles become brethren, religious enemies become fellow travelers in the journey of mortality, and the ‘God-given’ glory of intelligence is unrestrained by dogma and incoherent doctrine. Life gains more color as it changes from ‘endure to the end’ to ‘love it while it lasts’.

I managed to get a spot in Devon’s house for Winter semester and we became roommates. I started meeting ex-Mormons and extending a new social network. Our third roommate, Matt, also happened to be ex-Mormon which Devon and I consider extremely fortunate. Again, serendipitous to the extent one would think to credit God. Shortly after moving in I elected to stop attending church. This was possible because I never transferred my records to a new ward. They were essentially left in limbo which was great for me. A couple months later we acquired a coffee machine and I had my first cup of coffee. It was great. I like it a lot when I feel like it, but I rarely feel like having it. I made plans to go to Japan and while in Japan, to have my first alcoholic beverage. One could consider this either profane or ironic, or both, but I’d like to think it will be a toast to the country that helped me grow up and see the world with new eyes and to the people I pestered about becoming Mormon. I don’t mock my mission—it was and forever will be a fundamentally sacred experience. I just interpret it in a new light.

My journey out of Mormonism is still ongoing and will be for quite some time. I still reside in the Mormon bubble and Mormonism is a frequent topic of conversation. I blog on Mormon issues and am immersed in a Mormon culture. But I don’t intend to be wrapped up in it forever. I don’t know what life will be like once I’m completely gone, and it’s kind of scary, but I believe it’s the right direction. Since my official choice to leave, I’ve had discussions with many close friends about things and have been pleasantly surprised to find many in a similar boat. It has been great to talk to old friends about these things and come to find that the church won’t get in the way of the pure love between us.

Mormons, especially leadership, will often infer causation where there is only correlation when it comes to people leaving the church. “Did you stop reading your scriptures? Stop saying prayers? Stop going to the temple?…Oh well that explains it. If you hadn’t stopped you’d still be active.” There’s something comical about that to me. It’s like saying “Oh if you hadn’t stopped passing, setting, and spiking a volleyball, you’d still be on the volleyball team.” Things like reading scriptures or saying prayers over food in the name of Jesus are uniquely religious, and when you cease believing, they lose meaning. When they lose meaning, there’s no use in continuing them. That’s it. I continued praying for months after my faith in the LDS church was gone, until one night I realized that it was just a habit and wasn’t adding anything to my life. Preaching that ‘people leave the church BECAUSE they cease such activities’ is a non sequitur, but it’s important that Mormons continue believing that for two reasons. One, it gives active members an out—an easy explanation for why a formerly faithful person would leave. It threatens the integrity of the whole endeavor when people drop out; people need an easily digestible explanation. And two, it ensures that remaining members will continue to do those things out of fear of ‘spiritual death’. There is rarely an easy explanation for a formerly faithful member of the church choosing to completely leave, but Mormons are content thinking they understand the phenomenon. Anything deeper than that basic understanding would threaten their faith, and I think most Mormons know this. Which is why they’ll rarely ask why you left.

One question I’m sure to receive is ‘What do you believe now that you don’t believe Mormonism? Do you still believe in God?’ That’s a question I don’t have an easy answer to. It’s something I think I’ll be figuring out for the rest of my life, but I can say this: I didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater when I left. I think I processed things carefully and ended up in a good place. I’m not angry at the church. I’m not angry at God. I think God exists but that he or ‘it’ is nothing like Mormons are taught. I’m not angry at my parents or youth leaders for raising me in a cult. To the contrary, I’m very grateful for the Mormon upbringing I’ve received. There are so many good things about it and I reflect upon it with utmost fondness. But like Santa Claus it just isn’t real and pretending it is won’t benefit me or my future family going forward. I want to pursue truth wherever I find it and prepare my future children to enter the world with the clearest minds and strongest hearts I can help them cultivate. I want to stand on my own two feet and encounter the world without thinking I know the answers in advance. The church puts you in a wheelchair and says you need it to move. You’ll know it’s a lie if you can muster the courage to use your legs. It will be painful and you will fall, and I can’t tell you it’s the best thing to do because who the hell am I, but here’s to hoping it’ll be worth it.

Cheers,

CJC

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