My fight with Love and God

In the LDS church there are many age-related milestones. When I child turns 8, he or she is baptized. 12 is the age when boys first receive the priesthood, or are ordained to be able to use God's power here on earth. At 16, young Mormons are able to start dating members of the opposite sex. However, for most Mormon males, there is an age which is more heavily anticipated (and feared) than any other, the age of 19. It is at 19 that young men are eligible (or obligated) to leave their families and served a full-time 2 year mission for the Church. This mission is self-funded, and most returned missionaries (RMs for short) describe it as the most difficult 2 years of their lives. Women can also serve missions, although their service is not mandatory and a woman who doesn't serve a mission does not meet the same discrimination that a man normally does.

As stated in my last post, my teenage years were filled with occasionally musings as to the validity of the church. A year or so before I turned 19, these musings turned into an all out obsession. If I was going to sacrifice 2 years of my life, I needed a good reason. For a short period, I started to engage in behaviors that were unbecoming of an active, practicing member of the LDS church. This phase didn't last too long as I decided that if I wanted to know if the church was true, I needed to live its rules as a test.

About 6 months before it was time to start applying to serve a mission, I began to prepare (in the Church's way) for this task. I was attending BYU at the time and started to read the Bible and the Book of Mormon daily. I attended all my church meetings and tried to immerse myself in the lessons and discussions taught there. As recommended by my Bishop, I studied talks given by church leaders about missionary service. My bishop also recommended reading Preach My Gospel, the guidebook used by Missionaries which is full of lessons to be taught to people looking to join the church, which I did several times. Throughout this period, I still felt uneasy about serving a mission. Studying all these materials made me more confident in my ability to teach people about the church, but I felt uncomfortable thinking about trying to get people to join an organization which I could not 100% endorse. I discussed these doubts with several friends and church leaders and essentially received the same advice from all of them: "Just go on a mission and you will receive a testimony of the truthfulness of the church as you are serving." That still didn't sound great to me, but I felt tremendous pressure from my parents, church leaders, and friends to go, so I hung on to the hope that I would finally find faith as I was working as a missionary for those two long years.

After application, missionaries are assigned to go to different parts of the world to teach others about the Church. I was assigned to a country in Europe and first spent 12 weeks in the Church's Utah-based Missionary Training Center learning a foreign language and practicing teaching skills that would be used as a missionary. Many people had told me that the time spent in the MTC would be the time when my testimony of the church and faith in God would grow the most, so I looked forward to my time there as an opportunity for such growth. I was horribly disappointed. The center seemed little more than the Church's version of military boot-camp. 14 hours of study a day coupled with lectures that seemed to focus more on strictly obeying mission rules than on being good people left me physically, emotionally, and, especially, spiritually drained.

Once I left for Europe, things improved. My parents had taught me to work hard, and I spent the next two years doing just that. While I may have been physically involved in the work, my mind became more and more estranged. The things the church told me I should focus on seemed more and more foreign to me. Why was I supposed to be telling people that the most important thing in life for them is to be dipped in water? Why when people ask for food or money am I forbidden to give them any and instead must offer them "spiritual food"? Why am I supposed to study the Book of Mormon every day when all I see are holes in its logic? Why does it seem that most of the other missionaries are working hard out of fear, rather than love for what they are doing? Why do all my prayers feel unheard and utterly pointless? These kinds of questions were constantly on my mind, however I had committed to serving a two year mission. I prided myself in never falling back on a commitment, so I persevered for two long years.

Am I glad I served a mission? Yes. Suffering through 2 years of hardship taught me to love the comforts that most of us in the United States enjoy. Living far away from my family in a foreign country taught me responsibility and made me a stronger person. From struggling to learn a foreign language I learned the importance of hard work. By serving a mission, I gained many skills which will benefit me for the rest of my life.

However, upon return from my mission, I was more convinced of the untruthfulness of the Mormon church than when I left. Now I was faced with the problem of deciding what to do with the rest of my life.

To be continued...