I’m not Latter-day Saint anymore-- here’s what I want to be known for instead. Part 1
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I go long stretches of forgetting I even have this blog, then I feel the need to express something and, like Musk’s attempts at rocket technology, it thrusts into my mind; I have a spate of creativity and write posts, then it inevitably falls back down and crashes into my unconscious never to be seen or heard of again for at least six months. Pride cycle but with writing, amiright?
This time, the need to express myself has to do with my ongoing faith journey. It’s been a while since I’ve touched on this-- honestly I’ve been mostly private about it, discussing it in one-on-one conversations or otherwise closed and controlled situations, in part because I wasn’t ready for a broader conversation about it, but also in part because I feared the ramifications of being more open about how I feel. In many ways, I’ve always felt private about the details of my faith life-- I hated being a missionary for a lot of reasons, and feeling like I needed to inject my most intimate experiences with Spirit into conversations with unappreciative strangers was a big one. But at this point, my privacy about this important matter is not serving me or my relationships. I was latter-day Saint all my life, and many if not most of those I know and love came into my life because of the Church and its professed gospel-- my attempts at ignoring this glaring elephant in the room has gotten to the point of dishonesty. This blog post is an exercise in honesty, excruciating honesty, vulnerable honesty, in the hopes that I might be seen as I am now in a way that may be radically different from who I was in the past.
As the title of the blog post says, I am not Latter-day Saint anymore. I don’t wish to be one. I don’t wish to be known as one. My belief system and identity have fundamentally shifted to such a degree that the Church’s basic framework about itself, right down to the Christ in its name, no longer have much bearing on my thought process or my way of relating to the world. It’s scary to say this-- the Church puts a great deal of emphasis on obedience and adherence to its teachings and pretty openly disparages those who reject it, no matter the reasons-- but it nonetheless needs to be said, regardless of consequence.
I am agreeable to a fault-- not today, not here, not on this subject. There are many reasons why I stepped away from the Church that fundamentally boil down to one: there is an insurmountable gap between what it is and the Spirit of love that I became acquainted with while operating under its strictures. I encountered this gap most profoundly as a gay Latter-day Saint. I exhausted myself in pursuit of a name and place at the LDS table and never found it despite those efforts. I blamed myself for this for many years-- it’s God’s church, how could it be so fundamentally wrong? It must be me-- but there came a point where I realized that there was nothing within the realm of my personal agency that could surmount the gap, because it was the Church’s to surmount, not mine. This gap manifests in other ways, of course, such as the institution’s alignment with business and power interests at the expense of the poor and Christ’s teachings, but those are peripheral to me-- the most important, the most fundamental, and the most relevant to my journey is that there was no accessible place for me despite all my years of trying.
I can imagine people saying something along the lines of “But Bryce! The Church is Christ’s and there’s a place for everyone! You can always sit next to me at church!” And this is what I say to that expression of generosity: I know I have a place with you. But you are not the Church. The Church, despite its claims of universality, is not meant for everyone. And not just in terms of personal righteousness, either-- I am not talking about expectations of worthiness for membership. Those can be very problematic, but it goes deeper than that.
It’s hard to explain if you are not in a position like I’ve been, but the fundamental point is that the Church was made by straight people, with straight people in mind-- and it doesn’t take kindly to those who fall outside of that construction. Its approach is as if it were trying to force a 6’ 5” man in a construction job to wear expensive size 9 sandals all the time, including work, then shaming him for rejecting the proffered gift.
Let me explain what I mean. I’ve heard it expressed by an apostle (I believe it was Bednar) that the Church’s entire purpose is so that families may live happy at home. He means straight families: man, woman, children. That is not an option available to me in the way they conceive of it. “But Bryce! Your family loves you, your parents are happy with you! The gospel helped with that!” Indeed they do, and indeed it did-- but I hear of few that are satisfied with staying at their parents’ house all the rest of their lives. There comes a point in the Church’s and broader society’s construction of normal life progression that a man leaves his father and mother, and cleaves unto his wife, and they become one flesh. I am simply unable to do this. I do not have the capacity to cleave unto a wife and become one flesh with her. I have that capacity with men-- I do not with women. I never did. “But Bryce! You don’t have to have a typical family! You can have your friends, your parents, your siblings-- you don’t have to get married to be happy in life!” At this point, I’d ask you to please stop gaslighting me. I know what the Church expects. It is intimately woven into its most central teachings, as expressed in the sealing ordinance: the covenant vow of marriage is the pinnacle expression of human relationships. The way my body currently permits me to love is not factored into this equation. “But Bryce! You can just marry a woman, like everyone else is supposed to!” And be in a celibate roomate-ship for the rest of my life? Would you be willing to do that? If the Church asked its straight members what it effectually asked of me, none of them would stay for long.
“But Bryce! The law of Chastity is the same for everyone! It’s the same expectation!” This sentiment reminds me of a meme I once saw on Facebook. It was a picture of two dogs, one of them much smaller than the other. They had both gone through presumably the same pool of mud-- one was dirtied up to his knees, the other all the way to her throat. No, folks, the Law of Chastity isn’t “the same for everyone.” Even though it’s the same verbiage, the way it translated into my life is not the same as it does for straight members of the Church. The Law of Chastity permits straight members the hope of finding sexual and romantic expression with someone they are attracted to-- in fact, it encourages it! For me as a gay man, it completely closes the door on that possibility. The price of Church membership was that I would never experience that. Ever. The despair that caused nearly killed me.
Even with that harrowing implication, I attempted to accept this complete loss of hope as some kind of Abrahamic sacrifice, a show of complete faith and submission to Jesus-- but the parallels are shallow. Abraham’s sacrifice was only expected once in his life, and once he demonstrated the requisite faith, the expectation to sacrifice his son was withdrawn-- he was given a ram in the stead of his son. I had to take the sacrificial knife to my hope for romantic connection every single day, sometimes multiple times per day, and look up to the heavens with bloodied hands and say thank you. I hope you never have to experience the level of despair that caused.
“But Bryce! God will never give you anything you can’t handle without his help!” This is one of the most maddening sentiments I’ve ever encountered, and this is why: I sought His help! In every way I knew how. I prayed fervently. Begged. Pleaded. For anything: for a change of heart, a more willing hand, an ally. For hope, for help, for change-- to be made straight, to be made capable of bearing with “temptation,” something. Anything. And I read and worked and went to weekend retreats and studied scriptures and attended church and served others and did ALL THE THINGS in order to bring those prayers to fruition, just like the Church had taught me. I did this for years. YEARS. Those efforts were never answered in any way that made it possible for me to stay in the Church. If anyone had demonstrated the requisite faith for such a miracle, I did. It never came. I do not believe this sentiment-- do not say it to me.
The thing is, if the Church was anything it claimed to be, I might have been able to stay. But the Church does not bother itself with the needs of people who do not fit into its structure, and I didn’t. If you don’t need or want the same expensive size 9 sandals it offers to everybody, it is your fault. It claims as a covenant obligation of its people to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and neither of those happened for me within the Church’s structure in any way I recognize as such.
“But Bryce! Stop complaining! You should forget yourself and serve others!” I tried this too. The bucket eventually started coming up empty, because the Church I trusted to aid me was not offering recharge. At what point do you simply stop throwing the bucket down the shaft and acknowledge that the well is dry? And if the well is dry, should you sit there and thirst to death waiting for it to refill? No thanks.
There are few words I can use to describe the kind of pressure I was placing myself under in order to do what the Church expected of me. It was constant, daily, immense pressure. The only solution I could find to my struggle with homosexuality was to go to war against it. But if you go to war against basic biological drives, you will lose. And I lost.
Yall, I did everything within my power to stay in the Church. Everything. There was no stone I left unturned in that pursuit short of reparative therapy, which I believed for good reason would harm me if I engaged in it. And eventually these efforts exhausted me. This is a burden one cannot carry on their own, but the Church more or less expected me to carry it on my own. It gave me a rowboat and an oar and said “See you across the Pacific!” There’s only so far one can go before their strength gives out. These feeble knees were never strengthened by the Church. These hands hung down and were never lifted up. Eventually, I lost hope that they would ever come to my rescue. My faith succumbed on the frozen plains. When I had finally had enough of the pain and heartache, I completely lost faith in the Church, and my faith in the Jesus I had importuned for deliverance went with it.
To the credit of all my Latter-day Saint family and friends-- I was never directly mistreated. Some of my gay friends have been pretty severely abused by the Latter-day Saints in their lives, but I was not. I am very grateful for this. Many of you remain among my dearest loves, exemplifying the Jesus you follow, and I respect your convictions. This isn’t about attacking yours-- it’s about claiming mine. If your involvement in the Church helps you be a better person, I am all for it! I also don’t expect you to agree. I only ask that you recognize that it doesn’t help me for completely valid reasons: and, to honor and acknowledge who I am now, and not what you might wish me to be.
Which is what, exactly? If am no longer Latter-day Saint, or even Christian, what exactly *am* I? Part two will answer that.
This time, the need to express myself has to do with my ongoing faith journey. It’s been a while since I’ve touched on this-- honestly I’ve been mostly private about it, discussing it in one-on-one conversations or otherwise closed and controlled situations, in part because I wasn’t ready for a broader conversation about it, but also in part because I feared the ramifications of being more open about how I feel. In many ways, I’ve always felt private about the details of my faith life-- I hated being a missionary for a lot of reasons, and feeling like I needed to inject my most intimate experiences with Spirit into conversations with unappreciative strangers was a big one. But at this point, my privacy about this important matter is not serving me or my relationships. I was latter-day Saint all my life, and many if not most of those I know and love came into my life because of the Church and its professed gospel-- my attempts at ignoring this glaring elephant in the room has gotten to the point of dishonesty. This blog post is an exercise in honesty, excruciating honesty, vulnerable honesty, in the hopes that I might be seen as I am now in a way that may be radically different from who I was in the past.
As the title of the blog post says, I am not Latter-day Saint anymore. I don’t wish to be one. I don’t wish to be known as one. My belief system and identity have fundamentally shifted to such a degree that the Church’s basic framework about itself, right down to the Christ in its name, no longer have much bearing on my thought process or my way of relating to the world. It’s scary to say this-- the Church puts a great deal of emphasis on obedience and adherence to its teachings and pretty openly disparages those who reject it, no matter the reasons-- but it nonetheless needs to be said, regardless of consequence.
I am agreeable to a fault-- not today, not here, not on this subject. There are many reasons why I stepped away from the Church that fundamentally boil down to one: there is an insurmountable gap between what it is and the Spirit of love that I became acquainted with while operating under its strictures. I encountered this gap most profoundly as a gay Latter-day Saint. I exhausted myself in pursuit of a name and place at the LDS table and never found it despite those efforts. I blamed myself for this for many years-- it’s God’s church, how could it be so fundamentally wrong? It must be me-- but there came a point where I realized that there was nothing within the realm of my personal agency that could surmount the gap, because it was the Church’s to surmount, not mine. This gap manifests in other ways, of course, such as the institution’s alignment with business and power interests at the expense of the poor and Christ’s teachings, but those are peripheral to me-- the most important, the most fundamental, and the most relevant to my journey is that there was no accessible place for me despite all my years of trying.
I can imagine people saying something along the lines of “But Bryce! The Church is Christ’s and there’s a place for everyone! You can always sit next to me at church!” And this is what I say to that expression of generosity: I know I have a place with you. But you are not the Church. The Church, despite its claims of universality, is not meant for everyone. And not just in terms of personal righteousness, either-- I am not talking about expectations of worthiness for membership. Those can be very problematic, but it goes deeper than that.
It’s hard to explain if you are not in a position like I’ve been, but the fundamental point is that the Church was made by straight people, with straight people in mind-- and it doesn’t take kindly to those who fall outside of that construction. Its approach is as if it were trying to force a 6’ 5” man in a construction job to wear expensive size 9 sandals all the time, including work, then shaming him for rejecting the proffered gift.
Let me explain what I mean. I’ve heard it expressed by an apostle (I believe it was Bednar) that the Church’s entire purpose is so that families may live happy at home. He means straight families: man, woman, children. That is not an option available to me in the way they conceive of it. “But Bryce! Your family loves you, your parents are happy with you! The gospel helped with that!” Indeed they do, and indeed it did-- but I hear of few that are satisfied with staying at their parents’ house all the rest of their lives. There comes a point in the Church’s and broader society’s construction of normal life progression that a man leaves his father and mother, and cleaves unto his wife, and they become one flesh. I am simply unable to do this. I do not have the capacity to cleave unto a wife and become one flesh with her. I have that capacity with men-- I do not with women. I never did. “But Bryce! You don’t have to have a typical family! You can have your friends, your parents, your siblings-- you don’t have to get married to be happy in life!” At this point, I’d ask you to please stop gaslighting me. I know what the Church expects. It is intimately woven into its most central teachings, as expressed in the sealing ordinance: the covenant vow of marriage is the pinnacle expression of human relationships. The way my body currently permits me to love is not factored into this equation. “But Bryce! You can just marry a woman, like everyone else is supposed to!” And be in a celibate roomate-ship for the rest of my life? Would you be willing to do that? If the Church asked its straight members what it effectually asked of me, none of them would stay for long.
“But Bryce! The law of Chastity is the same for everyone! It’s the same expectation!” This sentiment reminds me of a meme I once saw on Facebook. It was a picture of two dogs, one of them much smaller than the other. They had both gone through presumably the same pool of mud-- one was dirtied up to his knees, the other all the way to her throat. No, folks, the Law of Chastity isn’t “the same for everyone.” Even though it’s the same verbiage, the way it translated into my life is not the same as it does for straight members of the Church. The Law of Chastity permits straight members the hope of finding sexual and romantic expression with someone they are attracted to-- in fact, it encourages it! For me as a gay man, it completely closes the door on that possibility. The price of Church membership was that I would never experience that. Ever. The despair that caused nearly killed me.
Even with that harrowing implication, I attempted to accept this complete loss of hope as some kind of Abrahamic sacrifice, a show of complete faith and submission to Jesus-- but the parallels are shallow. Abraham’s sacrifice was only expected once in his life, and once he demonstrated the requisite faith, the expectation to sacrifice his son was withdrawn-- he was given a ram in the stead of his son. I had to take the sacrificial knife to my hope for romantic connection every single day, sometimes multiple times per day, and look up to the heavens with bloodied hands and say thank you. I hope you never have to experience the level of despair that caused.
“But Bryce! God will never give you anything you can’t handle without his help!” This is one of the most maddening sentiments I’ve ever encountered, and this is why: I sought His help! In every way I knew how. I prayed fervently. Begged. Pleaded. For anything: for a change of heart, a more willing hand, an ally. For hope, for help, for change-- to be made straight, to be made capable of bearing with “temptation,” something. Anything. And I read and worked and went to weekend retreats and studied scriptures and attended church and served others and did ALL THE THINGS in order to bring those prayers to fruition, just like the Church had taught me. I did this for years. YEARS. Those efforts were never answered in any way that made it possible for me to stay in the Church. If anyone had demonstrated the requisite faith for such a miracle, I did. It never came. I do not believe this sentiment-- do not say it to me.
The thing is, if the Church was anything it claimed to be, I might have been able to stay. But the Church does not bother itself with the needs of people who do not fit into its structure, and I didn’t. If you don’t need or want the same expensive size 9 sandals it offers to everybody, it is your fault. It claims as a covenant obligation of its people to mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and neither of those happened for me within the Church’s structure in any way I recognize as such.
“But Bryce! Stop complaining! You should forget yourself and serve others!” I tried this too. The bucket eventually started coming up empty, because the Church I trusted to aid me was not offering recharge. At what point do you simply stop throwing the bucket down the shaft and acknowledge that the well is dry? And if the well is dry, should you sit there and thirst to death waiting for it to refill? No thanks.
There are few words I can use to describe the kind of pressure I was placing myself under in order to do what the Church expected of me. It was constant, daily, immense pressure. The only solution I could find to my struggle with homosexuality was to go to war against it. But if you go to war against basic biological drives, you will lose. And I lost.
Yall, I did everything within my power to stay in the Church. Everything. There was no stone I left unturned in that pursuit short of reparative therapy, which I believed for good reason would harm me if I engaged in it. And eventually these efforts exhausted me. This is a burden one cannot carry on their own, but the Church more or less expected me to carry it on my own. It gave me a rowboat and an oar and said “See you across the Pacific!” There’s only so far one can go before their strength gives out. These feeble knees were never strengthened by the Church. These hands hung down and were never lifted up. Eventually, I lost hope that they would ever come to my rescue. My faith succumbed on the frozen plains. When I had finally had enough of the pain and heartache, I completely lost faith in the Church, and my faith in the Jesus I had importuned for deliverance went with it.
To the credit of all my Latter-day Saint family and friends-- I was never directly mistreated. Some of my gay friends have been pretty severely abused by the Latter-day Saints in their lives, but I was not. I am very grateful for this. Many of you remain among my dearest loves, exemplifying the Jesus you follow, and I respect your convictions. This isn’t about attacking yours-- it’s about claiming mine. If your involvement in the Church helps you be a better person, I am all for it! I also don’t expect you to agree. I only ask that you recognize that it doesn’t help me for completely valid reasons: and, to honor and acknowledge who I am now, and not what you might wish me to be.
Which is what, exactly? If am no longer Latter-day Saint, or even Christian, what exactly *am* I? Part two will answer that.
Bryce, I don't need to wait for part 2 to answer that. You are someone with a kind and generous heart, a desire to serve, and the courage to heal and grow. You are my friend.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry your experience in the LDS Church was so negative. What I've learned as a counselor is that human limitations in love always flow from doubts about the self—about whether we are acceptable, worthy, or loved. And until we can each answer those questions completely in the affirmative, our ability to love others is limited as well. Unfortunately I believe this is true of every group, tribe, faith, religion, or church. None of us can love others until we first love ourselves. Given our jumbled mess of wounds and insecurities, this is a difficult task indeed, and all of humanity suffers from this inability to various degrees.
I'm not worried about your soul. Keep growing, loving, serving, and healing, and eventually your path will converge with all others who seek the same. Unconditional love is the goal and the path to it looks different for everybody, but those who arrive at this ability will all end up in the same place.
Russ P.