"The Pavilion That Covereth Thy Hiding Place"

Faith, 

Please have a little in me, hey
I know you hate it when I stray
But I tried everything, I drank the wine and stained the sheets
I'm clumsy when I speak

Call, 

you never call me anymore
We're past the point of self-control
I'm giving back to you, things I thought were true
I know it's really nothing new

God, where the hell are you hiding?
My hands are in the air and I'm excited
I've been on the run, so I'm not coming Sunday
It's alright, 

I'll probably talk to you at midnight

God, I could never be like you
I can't change, I can't change and I don't want to
I've been on the run, so I'm not coming Sunday
It's alright, 

I'll probably talk to you at midnight

Fear, 

that's what it was just to be clear
You went and made everything weird
But that's another song, another night, a shot of rum
I guess what's done is done

Bright, 

I fall and stumble towards the light
I miss the days and nights
We wrestled in my bedroom, my knees will give out soon
I know it's really nothing new

God, where the hell are you hiding?
My hands are in the air, it's so exciting
I've been on the run, so I'm not coming Sunday
It's alright, 

I'll probably talk to you at midnight

God, I could never be like you

I can't change, I can't change and I don't want to
I've been on the run, so I'm not coming Sunday
It's alright, 

I'll probably talk to you at midnight
[Tyler Glenn – “Midnight”]

This is the part where I describe the unraveling of my Mormon faith.

I will admit to feeling a tension in telling this part of the story: I'm quite anxious to feel understood, but I’m not anxious to unnecessarily wound the faith of others. I see harm in so much of what the church does, and I want to protect people from that harm. But at the same time, I still have many, many friends and loved ones who feel (as I once did) that the church connects them to God, to Jesus, and to all that is good, in ways that nothing else could. I don't want to be a part of robbing them of that.

I have been open now for more than a year about the fact that I no longer believe the church is what it claims to be, but I still wince at the thought of others in the faith experiencing the hell that I went through in coming to the same realization.

To be clear, my reticence isn't so much borne out of a conceit that I have anything particulary novel or powerful to share. I'm also aware enough of belief perseverance and the backfire effect, which phenomena both suggest that a perceived attack on one's beliefs will usually cause the person to hold tighter to those beliefs (no matter how valid the criticism).

But even so, I remember the faithful space I once occupied, and I know how troubling it can feel — for someone trying to hold onto their faith — to endure even a mundane recounting of another's earnest loss of a similar faith.

So at the outset of this post, I again offer a caution: while this is not intended to be a general takedown of Mormonism — many others have done that work far more thoroughly than I could hope to — it is a candid exploration of how and why Mormonism fell apart for me. And I'm warning you now that I have deliberately resisted the urge here to spare details and specific citations, which I have often done before in an effort to protect others' faith.

In other words, if you are concerned that what follows could unnecessarily injure your faith, please consider skipping this post entirely. 

I understand; I've been there.

"Where is the Pavilion?"

Those familiar with Mormon scripture know that the title of this post comes from an important passage for our faith, Doctrine & Covenants 121. The section is an "epistle" written by Joseph Smith to the church while he was a prisoner in the jail at Liberty, Missouri.

Jared, Emily, Natalie, and Me - Liberty Jail (June 2016)

Joseph apparently wrote this (and its sister sections D&C 122 and 123) after he and some companions had been jailed in the basement of that prison for months. According to all reports, the conditions of that prison were cold and miserable, and the opening verses suggest Joseph had begun to feel abandoned by God:

1 O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?

2 How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?

3 Yea, O Lord, how long shall they suffer these wrongs and unlawful oppressions, before thine heart shall be softened toward them, and thy bowels be moved with compassion toward them?

[It is beautiful language from a man we are to simultaneously believe, only a few years before, "could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon."]

Emily and The Liberty Jail Replica (June 2016)

Within a few verses, God answers Joseph's lonely pleadings with one of the most moving passages in all of scripture:

7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

In my difficulties over the years, I cannot count how many times I turned to these verses to be reminded of God when I could not feel him (but desperately wanted to).

And in later years, Henry B. Eyring gave a companion address to the church, reinforcing the idea that God is always, always there — we just sometimes get in our own way trying to discern him:

God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible. Our own desires, rather than a feeling of “Thy will be done,” create the feeling of a pavilion blocking God. God is not unable to see us or communicate with us, but we may be unwilling to listen or submit to His will and His time.

I bet I listened to or read that talk over 50 times in the years after Eyring gave it. And by March 2019, I had burned into my soul the message that God was always there — I just needed to be willing to listen, or to submit to His will and timing.

I had also absorbed the not so subtle implication that if I couldn't feel God, it was always my fault, in one way or another.

A Plea For Help

In my last post, I left the narrative at my emailed plea to some friends, asking their thoughts on how to resolve my growing concerns with Mormonism's correlated narrative and authority claims. As I mentioned, I still expected there were satisfying answers (at some level).

My friends' responses were not what I had expected.

Both shared with me bits of their respective faith journeys, and both were (back then) still technically active in the faith. Neither, though, offered any support reinforcing the church's authority claims and correlated narrative.

One friend described confronting, years prior, some troubling details in Mormon history. He said this led him through a decade of exhaustive research into Mormon history and doctrine — all in an effort to put back together his increasingly "fractured" view of Mormonism. But, he confided, "I realized about a year ago that will never happen — in plain English, I definitively and painfully came to the conclusion that the church isn't what it claims to be."

Meanwhile, my other friend, Dave Vincent, shared that his attachment to Mormonism, since his youth, had never had much to do with the church's authority claims or correlated narrative. And yet, he still worked to find space within the faith for his worldview and knowledge of Mormon history.

He also offered this compassionate response to my inquiry, which quickly reduced me to tears:

And so I'd say to you: it's ok to be where you are. I want you to know: whatever path life takes you down, I'll be your friend. I know what's in your heart, and it's good. What you're thinking and feeling is valid. And only you can process it, and knowing you, you're going to process it in a way that makes you an even better person, regardless of the trappings of where it takes you.

I had not expected that reassurance, and it feels difficult to adequately convey here how much those five sentences meant to me in that fraught time period — how needed they were, how much they lifted me, and how they inspired me to want to be worthy of that vote of confidence. Even now, when I think about how much those words meant to me at the time, I tear up all over again. 

The CES Letter

In the course of Dave’s response, he made passing reference to some terms I didn’t recognize: “The CES Letter” and the “Kinderhook plates.” I didn't take much notice of them in my initial reading.

A few days later, though, with Michelle away on a trip to New York City (with my sister Alisha), I re-read my friend's email late on a Saturday evening. Those terms stuck out to me then.

So I googled The CES Letter.

At 138 pages (not including extensive references in hyperlinks and footnotes), The CES Letter is more of a book than a letter. As its author, Jeremy Runnels, lays out in the introduction, he composed the “letter” after his believing grandfather connected him with a Church Education System (CES) Director. The unnamed director apparently invited Runnels to share his concerns about the faith, which Runnels decided to write down.

It is an exhaustive, methodical work that highlights a range of concerns about Mormonism's claims of truth and divine authority. Notably for me, the preface opens with a photo of and quote from former First Presidency member J. Reuben Clark (whom the BYU law school is named after): “If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”

That reminded me of a quote I'd heard once from a friend in San Diego (offered as a friend of his was trying to save him from Mormonism), “True gold does not fear the refiner's fire.”

I braced myself and started read. We had the truth, so I had nothing to be afraid of, right?

Troubling Details

I won’t recount the entire letter here, but these were some of the points I found most troubling:

• The Book of Mormon text’s repeated mirroring of errors unique to the King James Version of the Bible. [Remember, the Book of Mormon is supposed to be an ancient record from ancestors of Native Americans, which record begins around 600 B.C. and ends around 400 A.D. By contrast, the King James Version of the Bible showed up in the early 1600s];

• The near complete lack of archeological support for the civilizations referenced in the Book of Mormon [this section even quotes my uncle, Dr. John Clark (an archeology professor)];

• Uncomfortable similarities in the plot points and themes between the Book of Mormon and View of the Hebrews, a book published in Vermont in 1823, as well as an 1819 book, The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain (a children's textbook about the War of 1812, the language of which mimicked the English in the King James Version of the Bible). [I would later hear and appreciate Dan Vogel's arguments that it was less important whether Joseph Smith had specific access to these books, since the plot points and themes in both — e.g., Native Americans as ancestors of ancient inhabitants of Jerusalem — were part of the cultural milieu of Joseph Smith's day];

• Jarring differences among Joseph Smith's four known accounts of his “First Vision” (e.g., the appearance of only one being in his earliest version, which later becomes two beings in later versions, as well as other, direct contradictions between accounts) [Notably, I had never seen any correlated materials with the four versions side by side. I realized this was on purpose. As they were, the correlated materials only ever seemed to focus on the similarities among the various accounts, while carefully glossing over (or explaining away) the inconsistencies];

• The text of the Book of Abraham — Joseph Smith’s purported translation of ancient Egyptian scrolls in The Pearl of Great Price — is not anything close to the actual translation of those scrolls;

• The Kinderhook Plates: purported brass plates (found by a farmer in Kinderhook, IL) that scientists determined in the early 1980s were a hoax (the church even acknowledges as much now). The hoax notwithstanding, Joseph Smith began translating these plates as though they were real, ancient records;

• Troubling details about the credibility of the witnesses Joseph Smith recruited to testify about having seen the “gold plates” (from which he purportedly translated the Book of Mormon), and the less-than-ideal process by which these witnesses apparently came to their written testimonies [almost nothing about the details of these testimonies bear the indicia of reliability].

I spent hours reading about these things, and those hours filled me with an increasing sense of dread. I also felt my stomach reflexively tightening, as if my body were preparing for physical blows. I had spent my life in the faith — more than 40 years by that point — but I had never heard of most of these concerns, and I had certainly never waded through any of the details.

But The Holy Ghost. . .

My thoughts battled the sense of dread by trying to hold firm to what I had known and felt: The Book of Mormon was too amazing for Joseph Smith — unlearned farm boy from Upstate New York — to have dictated it by himself. And more than that, I had felt the Holy Ghost (so many times) confirm the unique truth of Mormonism!

But then I reached the section of the letter on “Testimony & Spiritual Witnesses.” Here, Runnels calls into question the significance and meaning of the feelings I had always attributed to the Holy Ghost. For me, as I’ve written about before, those peaceful feelings functioned as my barometer of spiritual truth — just as the scriptures said they should. But when I followed a link to a YouTube video in the text, my stomach sank to the floor:

At roughly 14 minutes, the video describes a man’s efforts to bring his brother back to Mormonism after the brother confronted issues over the reliability of feelings he attributed to the Holy Ghost. In describing the man's effort to investigate and resolve his brother’s concerns, the video includes clips of “testimonies” from a woman in a fundamentalist LDS offshoot (i.e., still polygamous), several converts to Islam, and even a few cult leaders and members.

What disturbed me about each of the clips was that these people described learning about the unique “truth” of their respective faiths through a process that is virtually identical to what we teach in Mormonism (i.e., asking God in prayer and searching one's feelings) — the same process by which I had come to feel and know that Mormonism was God's “one true church.”

It ends by questioning whether these confirming feelings are really from God (and everyone but the Mormons are just getting them wrong) or from our own minds.

Spiritually Numb

That video, on top of all the other new, contradictory (threatening) information, left me numb and terrified.

It was sometime after 1 am when I finally put the computer down and tried going to sleep. I remember praying that night, looking to God for those familiar, reassuring feelings that Mormonism was still the thing that I had always believed and felt it was. Also that God was still the being that I believed and felt he was.

But during and after that prayer, I felt nothing.

The next day, I wrote this about the night’s research and where it had left me:

I went to bed very discouraged. The extent of other apparent influences on the Book of Mormon were disconcerting. So, too, the apparently completely incorrect interpretations of the Facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price. And the Kinderhook plates. And the undermining of the witnesses of the gold plates.

On top of that, though, what felt so unsettling to me was the undermining of what I’ve felt like has been a witness from the Holy Ghost.

So today has been a mess, and I’ve found I’ve been questioning even the existence of God.

In hindsight, the journal entry somehow still downplays how devastating that stretch of hours was for me.

And yes, up to that point in my life, I had never questioned the existence of God. But now those questions started worming their way into my consciousness. They were intrusive and unwelcome, as the prospect that God might not be there was as terrifying a thought as I had always imagined it would be.

A Final Visit to the Temple

The days of internal turmoil that followed felt like weeks, and the weeks felt like months. I don’t think that I had ever felt such internal conflict.

[The closest I had come was in the MTC, and that experience was more about reconciling myself to what I’d always known to be true. That was wrenching yes, but it was so much different than confronting the increasingly real possibility that the “truth” as I had known it and lived it for 41 years was not actually the truth.]

I was so anxious to resolve the dissonance, to authentically hold onto my faith — at least some of the core parts of it.

In the days and nights that followed, however, I felt spiritually numb. I could not feel Heaven as I prayed, and the scriptures felt increasingly dry. For some reason, at the time I had most needed reassurance of God's existence, a pavilion was now hiding him from me.

That following Wednesday, March 27, 2019, after a night of little sleep, I made an impromptu decision to head to the temple. I would "experiment upon [the] word[]" (Alma 32:27) and take my difficulties there, as I had done many times before.

[I mis-remembered initially in my last post, when I described there what I then thought was my last temple visit].

On the drive to the temple, I thought of Dad, especially when my music playlist randomly brought up the hymn "Goin' Home" — a song synonymous with Dad ever since the funeral.

As I sat through the temple session, I looked at it through the new lens of all the questions I now had. At the time, I was still teaching youth Sunday School, and I had been focused on how Jesus's New Testament miracles avoided any specific patterns — to me that implied that Jesus met (and helped) people wherever they were at in their faith. So I figured that God could probably do that for me in the temple, maybe despite the Masonic weirdness (that, I had to admit, I still couldn't make heads or tails of).

I did feel a calm as I sat in the session, but I couldn't discern now whether the feeling was God or simply a function of 90 minutes of quiet meditation.

Later, as I sat in the celestial room to pray, I wept (I seemed to be doing that a lot). That night in my journal, I wrote of the experience: "As I sat there contemplating everything, I felt like God had met me where I was at, and that He delighted that I had gone to such lengths to seek and be near Him."

The feeling was short lived, though, and did nothing to heal my difficulties with the faith.

Longings

A few days later, I wrote in my journal, "I don’t know what to make of things spiritually." I reasoned, though, that the God I had come to worship would probably be ok with that:

It occurred to me today that the God I have worshiped would patiently help lead me through this, if He’s real (and He would be patient and understanding of my use of the word “if”). I feel like I’m just trying to salvage that at this point. I want to believe in Him. I want to believe in Jesus. I want to believe in some version of the restored gospel.

The next day, Sunday, I spent a part of Sacrament meeting writing down the beliefs I desperately wanted to hold onto:

I want to believe in a loving, all powerful God who gives us agency and sent us to earth to learn and who looks forward to our return.

I want to believe in Jesus Christ and grace and what I understand of the Atonement, a power by which we're able to learn and benefit from our mistakes without having to be permanently hindered by them.

I want to believe that our difficulties and suffering here have meaning, that there is something akin to eternal progression and eternal relationships.

I want to believe I'll see my Dad again.

But as I finished my list, I also had to acknowledge "all that feels so much less certain for me now than it did a few months ago."

Feverish Research

In the months that followed, I searched feverishly for answers — both to my issues with Mormon history and doctrine, as well as the persistent feeling that God had left me.

I continued, of course, with a daily study of the church's correlated materials. But I also scoured blog posts, listened to podcasts (across the spectrum of Mormonism), and read books specifically tailored to those in Mormon faith crisis. Those books included faithful treatments (among them, Patrick Mason's Planted, and a re-reading of the Givens' The Crucible of Doubt) and also the autobiography of Hans Mattson — a former area authority for the church in Sweden who ultimately left the faith.

Mattson’s story of spiritual desperation and faith crisis resonated deeply with me.

On almost a daily basis, my journal entries from this time period reveal an internal tug-of-war. One day I would write with optimism that I "felt like I could make it in the church — and that I wanted to." But on another, with clear signs of depression, I observed that "[f]eelings of faith and trust feel so hard to come by. I don’t know what I can believe in, and right now it doesn’t feel like much of anything."

It was not unusual, in fact, to cycle through that range of emotions several times within the same day. On April 16, 2019, I wrote about feelings that could have easily described any given day: "I feel so up and down on a daily basis on matters of faith. I want some steadiness."

Crumbling Ground

When I would confide bits of my internal turmoil to others, I often described feeling like the spiritual ground I had stood on for so many years (ground I had been certain was firm) had crumbled beneath me, leaving me in free fall. 

As I searched for answers to break my fall, I would eventually land some distance lower. At this new landing spot, there was a momentary thrill (and relief!) at thinking I had finally settled on solid ground.

But then I'd start to inspect this new spiritual foundation — how could I not inspect it?! — only to find more cracks. And before long, that ground, too, was crumbling beneath me. Soon enough, I was in free fall all over again.

This process played out many times over the course of several months. I always resisted it, as that feeling of falling was always terrifying.

[One thing believers often misunderstand is how unwelcome this deconstruction process is — how anxious those of us with doubts usually are to hold onto belief. That's part of what makes derisive comments like Nelson's "lazy learners" quip so laughably off base; I’d never been as diligent a seeker of truth in my life.] 

In the end, this process would unravel more than just Mormonism for me, though I will confine my writing in this post to that subject.

It would be near impossible to retrace all the steps that led me out of Mormonism, but I summarize below the most important markers along that trail.

The Holy Ghost

The most pressing issue for me was the “attack” on the Holy Ghost that started with that video. Were those feelings from God? Or from me? And if from God, why were cults and non-Christian religions preaching the exact same method as Mormons for discerning divine truth (to confirm the singular truth of their belief system)?

The same method, mind you, by which I had “felt” that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was God’s one true church.

Also, why had those feelings now left me?

“If Any Man Will Do His Will. . .”

The day after reading the CES letter, I confided in a few close friends. These friends had left Mormonism but retained some belief in Christianity. I wanted to know from them: what did they think now of the concept of the Holy Ghost? Of Jesus's New Testament teachings about it?

My friends were encouraging, but none of their answers satisfied me, and nothing explained the spiritual drought I was feeling. I mean, I wanted to believe, and I had long believed! But now, no matter how earnest I was about inviting the Holy Ghost, I could not feel it. 

This pavilion covering God made no sense to me. I hadn't done anything wrong: I had been earnestly searching for the truth and simply encountered contrary information. This scenario was exactly where the Holy Ghost was supposed to be most helpful — in facilitating the discernment of spiritual truth (and error).

In fact, more than once during those weeks, I wrote down and pondered the promise in John 7:17, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

I held fast to the idea that those good feelings would (and should) return as I kept doing all the things.

For instance, a week after I read the CES Letter, I wrote this to some friends:

There's more than a small part of me that still hopes that if I keep doing what I'm supposed to in continuing to read [The Book of Mormon], even in the wake of these doubts and concerns, that God will "manifest (again) the truth" of it to me [Moroni 10:4]. I think I'm hoping for that with a lot of things that I've held to.

That plan, though, wasn't working so far. And I had to acknowledge that the church's recent, varied attempts to address (quell) doubts were backfiring now — they were making it harder for me to trust that the church knew how to help me through this:

But, contrary to what's supposed to happen when we check all the right spiritual boxes, the questions and concerns keep mounting. And that's where I've found most of the church's efforts to address those with doubts as being the exact opposite of helpful. In fact, they've accelerated the whole process for me.

For the last few weeks, I've been wrestling with even more basic, terrifying questions:  Is there a God? Is Jesus real? His Atonement? Life after death? What meaning, if any, can I draw from all those experiences with the "Holy Ghost"? Am I really questioning things enough to put terms like the Holy Ghost in quotes?

A little more than a week later, on April 8, 2019, I confided to these same friends that I was still having trouble feeling anything as I did the things I was supposed to:

I'll also share this personal observation that, while I've continued to be dutiful in things like reading from the Book of Mormon daily, much of my religious practice has become rather dry. In other words, I'm finding it harder to feel the Holy Ghost by checking the same boxes I'm used to checking (that have brought me moderate success in that regard in the past).

And the next day, April 9, 2019, I made these difficult observations in my journal:

I've commented to a few people today that the Holy Ghost has felt more distant as I've started to confront questions and doubts. That feels so unfair — so counter to the truth-discerning role it's supposed to play. Then, on the last leg of my commute to work, the hymn "How Firm a Foundation" came up. It stung me to listen to. My foundation feels so infirm.

. . . .

I have spent the last 22 years of my life studying Mormon scripture and just trying to find charity and peace. I realized today that I've probably never seriously questioned my testimony of the church or God. I feel like I don't have the time or energy to study philosophy or become a historian. I feel lonely. And I feel like I've got a long, lonely slog ahead of me.

“A Careful Examination”

The next day, April 10, 2019, a friend pointed me to an article that proved important in reconciling the spiritual feelings I had attributed to the Holy Ghost. From the Mormon blog site Rational Faiths, the article “Testimony, Spiritual Experiences, and Truth: A Careful Examination” methodically breaks down, at a summary level, some of the problematic aspects of the church’s teachings about spiritual experiences and the role of feelings (i.e., the Holy Ghost) in discerning truth. The article even discusses parts of that troubling video I had seen weeks earlier.

While not inherently dismissive of belief or spiritual experiences, the article points to psychology for several alternative explanations for those warm, confirming feelings. These alternatives seemed to explain the commonality of these feelings across belief systems. For example, the article highlighted the following:

• The “emotion of elevation” (i.e., the burning in the bosom) — an altruistic feeling we often experience when witnessing “moral beauty” (which feeling can be replicated in a laboratory);

• Inner speech or experience (which is highly suggestible) as the feeling of “pure intelligence flowing through you” (Joseph Smith's description of the Holy Ghost);

• The extent to which “answers” to prayer and other spiritual experiences can be produced and manipulated by confirmation bias;

• The illusory truth effect (a tendency to believe even false information after repeated exposure) and mere exposure effect (a preference for things that are familiar) and the way the church uses propaganda techniques and (likely) well-intended manipulations to foster belief (e.g., Boyd K. Packer’s famous teaching that a “testimony [of Mormonism] is to be found in the bearing of it! . . . Can you not see that it will be supplied as you share it?”);

• Conservatism bias in updating our beliefs, preferencing older information (just because we’ve sat with it longer); and

• The circularity of Mormon “truth” tests (i.e., how would one go about demonstrating that this method of feeling truth through the Holy Ghost is valid in the first place?).

The article opened my eyes. Though nothing about it required me to immediately accept these alternatives as “true,” I now had several alternate explanations for what I had previously understood to be incontrovertible spiritual experiences. And frankly, I had to acknowledge that some of these alternatives were more intellectually satisfying, especially in light of recent experiences.

For instance, as I described in my second post in this series, my testimony of the Book of Mormon had come after reading it extensively as a young adult, with the feeling/realization one day that I had “always known” it was true.

Now? That experience sounded indistinguishable from the illusory truth and mere exposure effects.

Maybe my experience was still genuine, but it was telling that the church made no effort to distinguish (or even acknowledge) such faux spiritual experiences from the real deal — not when they still yielded the “right” answers.

[Though to be fair, neither Jesus nor Paul made such efforts in the New Testament either.]

So when my friend later texted me, asking about my takeaways from the article, this was my response:

Several things: (1) that my testimony of the Book of Mormon likely came about via the ‘illusory truth effect‘ (tendency to believe info to be correct after repeated exposure); (2) That the emotion of elevation explains a great deal (all?) of my experiences with the Holy Ghost (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — just not the truth witness I used to think it was); (3) self-generation, the power of suggestion, confirmation bias, propaganda, and repetition are real things, things pushed heavily in our church (not in those terms), and not really controlled for in attempting to discern what’s from God. It’s all self-perpetuating.

I further observed that the article helped “untether me” from some spiritual experiences that were causing me cognitive dissonance. The downside, though, was that it was also forcing me to re-examine meaningful spiritual experiences that I really wanted to hold onto.

But on the whole, given how depressed I had felt in searching for answers, the fact that I seemed to be moving toward answers (even if unpleasant) offered a modicum of comfort. As I noted to my friend:

“I should probably be floored by this, but I think I’ve been so low lately that I find it rather comforting to see it laid out like this.”

WOOD vs. STEEL Tools

The uncertainty and search for answers should have been chaotic enough for me in that time period. But there was more: there was also the guilt that accompanied my doubts.

For instance, this is how I described my morning on April 24, 2019:

That I've allowed myself to doubt truth claims, particularly last night, made this morning especially difficult as I dealt with a tremendous amount of guilt — guilt for having questions in the first place, guilt for questioning the truthfulness of the church I've effectively dedicated my life to, guilt for entertaining the possibility of stepping back or stepping away. The feeling was that it's my fault for being here, especially as I think about how people will react.

That morning, I reached out to a few friends to express those feelings. One of them later sent me a YouTube video and blog post, with the rather tongue-in-cheek title “Fix Your Faith Crisis with This One Weird Trick!” This post, by Jonathan Streeter, proved to be very important for me.

The post begins by describing the components of a faith crisis and asking the reader to imagine having a loved one in a different high demand religion than yours — a religion that you would understand to be demonstrably false (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses or Scientologists).

In that case, a faith crisis for your loved one would be a good thing. And as your loved one navigates that crisis, you would want to provide them tools that would both reconcile them to the truth and liberate them from deceit.

Furthermore, it would be important that these tools “must not placate the individual to get them to accept a lie, and [they] must not impeach the truth.”

Streeter then describes the difference between WOOD (“ways of overcoming doubt”) and STEEL (“seeking truth: education, erudition, liberation”) tools for addressing a faith crisis. WOOD tools assume the truth of a religion and only have the power to placate. This means that such tools would work no matter what high-demand religion your loved one is in. In other words, WOOD tools “can be used to specifically shut out the truth from a seeker in a false religion.”

Streeter then offers a few examples of WOOD tools as potential responses to a doubter’s troubling questions:  

• “It’s not important for your salvation, don’t think about it anymore”

• “We weren’t there at the time so we can’t judge the actions of our founder and early leaders”

• “We can’t judge behavior in the past by today’s standards. Things which seem wrong today weren’t so bad back then”

• “If God commands something, then it is right – even if it would otherwise be considered wrong”

• “We will find the answers to your troubling questions in the afterlife – until then we must simply have faith”

• “That is a mystery which God uses to test our faith.”

• “You should be more concerned about doing what we tell you is right than asking questions which tear down faith”

• “Our leader was only speaking as a man when he said that troubling or incorrect thing. You can trust what he says when he is speaking as our leader”

• “You cannot trust anything that is not published by our own official sources”

• “Your personal failure to keep our rules has led you to doubt. Start focusing on fixing yourself rather than tearing down our faith”

• “The answer to some questions are too precious or sacred to be given at this time”

• “If you pray harder and read more of our official publications, then you will understand. Your doubts are proof that you haven’t studied enough”

• “It’s okay to have these questions, but you should never share them with anyone else – just your leaders in private. You should trust the judgement of your leaders over your own”

• “Don’t listen to ex-members of our faith. They are evil”

• “You previously believed that this was true – you should trust that feeling and stop questioning it”

Again, from the perspective of trying to rescue a loved one from an obviously false religion, you would advise against that loved one relying on any of the above WOOD tools — these tools would keep your loved one trapped in their false faith. As Streeter argues:

Since such answers do not have the power to liberate someone from a false religion, then they should not be relied upon by anyone who is sincerely seeking after the truth – no matter what religion they are in.

He then observes that the “real goal” for those in faith crisis (like your imaginary loved one in a false religion) is to seek truth. As such, the goal would be to provide your loved one with tools that allow them to both seek truth and liberate them from deception, wherever that truth leads.

Enter “STEEL” tools, which include the following:

• “Look at any and all information you can find from both official and unofficial sources”

• “Talk to anyone about your questions and evaluate all answers”

• “Find out what other people who have had the same questions say – both current and former members”

• “Trust your own moral compass for what is right and wrong”

•  “Allow yourself to follow your conclusion, even if it means rejecting something that you previously thought was true”

Streeter notes that the list of STEEL tools isn’t nearly as long "because there are fewer mental acrobatics that have to be employed." Further, "[t]he seeker is simply advised to learn as much as possible from anywhere and use their God-given mind and conscience to follow where truth leads."

All of that lead up yields the “trick” to “fix” a faith crisis: “In examining doubts about your own religion you should only rely on answers to your questions which have the power to discern truth from error.”

Streeter's insights may not seem earth-shattering. They might seem obvious. But for me at the time, coming from my background of unquestioning Mormon orthodoxy, Streeter’s thoughts hit me like a clarifying lightning bolt. As I considered all of it in the aftermath, I recognized how the church and its leaders had almost unilaterally advocated for members to singularly use WOOD tools to address concerns about the faith (they even refuse to even allow that “doubts” are a permissible part of earnest inquiry).

Why? Why the fear of STEEL tools? Especially if we have unique access to the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is supposed to lead us to all truth?

Breaking Open

Something broke inside me the morning of April 29, 2019. Or, as I would write that evening, something “broke open.” Feeling newly liberated to pursue truth, wherever that search led me, I made the conscious decision that morning that I would no longer give the church and its leaders the benefit of the doubt.

They didn’t deserve it. And frankly, if the church really was “true,” it (and its leaders) shouldn’t need the benefit of the doubt.

Shortly afterward, I texted Michelle my most defiant thoughts yet:

I don’t think [the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] is true. I think I’ve been part of a high demand religion, that I was relatively good at being a member of, that’s not actually true.

We talked further that evening about where this liberation and defiance now left me, spiritually. As I wrote later in my journal, I wasn’t exactly sure. But it meant shifting my effort away from the primary goal of holding onto Mormonism — I wanted the truth, wherever that took me:

Michelle asked me tonight where this leaves me. I don't know. But I want to live with integrity. I want to follow the truth where it takes me. She asked how my father would feel. I said that I hoped he would encourage me to do what I think is right. She offered that if he knew what I now do, hopefully he'd do the same.

I also couldn’t help but feel that, if God were real, he would want me to pursue those very same ends. As I wrote weeks later:

On the drive to work this morning I felt, maybe more than ever, that if there is a God, He/They would want me to use my brain and heart to figure out for myself what feels true/right/good and not to farm out the thinking to others (e.g., Russell M. Nelson), though it can be useful to look to others to see if they might on to something.

Revisiting Joseph's Practice of Polygamy

As I've described before, I was already uncomfortable with even the idea of polygamy — a man being simultaneously married to more than one woman. So was the church, apparently, that only began acknowledging Joseph's practice of polygamy relatively recently (and even now, you'll almost never hear mention of it in church meetings). You certainly won't hear mention of Joseph's practice of polyandry — a man marrying another’s current spouse. But I had never bothered to explore the details, and my ignorance allowed for a kind of uncomfortable peace with church history.

But, as I turned my attention to the details of Joseph Smith’s polygamous practices, they were profoundly disturbing. Those troubling details included the following:

• the young age of some of Joseph’s plural wives (as young as 14);

• Joseph’s marriages to Sarah and Maria Lawrence, orphan sisters (16 and 18 years old, respectively) that the Smith’s had taken into their home;

• the manipulation and psychological coercion Joseph leaned on to induce many of these marriages (e.g., promising Helen Mar Kimball's family eternal salvation if she agreed to marry him; locking women in a room as they considered a polygamous proposal; claiming that an angel with a flaming sword had threatened to kill him if the woman didn't agree to the marriage);

• Joseph’s secrecy in hiding several of these marriages from his first wife, Emma (including those marriages to Sarah and Maria Lawrence); and

• the details of Joseph’s polyandry (including sending apostle Orson Hyde on a mission to Palestine and marrying his wife, Marinda, while he was away).

Beyond the morally repugnant power dynamics and consent-related issues, though, there is this damning fact: Joseph lied, repeatedly, about his involvement in plural marriage.

For instance, while he was secretly married to roughly two dozen women (besides Emma), he defended himself,

I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the Gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives. I mean to live and proclaim the truth as long as I can. This new holy prophet [William Law] has gone to Carthage and swore that I had told him that I was guilty of adultery. This spiritual wifeism! Why, a man does not speak or wink, for fear of being accused of this…I wish the grand jury would tell me who they are—whether it will be a curse or blessing to me. I am quite tired of the fools asking me…What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers. [emphasis added]

The more I learned of the specifics of Joseph’s practices, the harder it was to swallow the idea that God commanded (or even just sanctioned or tolerated) Joseph’s secretive and coercive efforts to take plural wives. And, beyond all that, that God tolerated Joseph’s lies and deception.

[Of course, there are Mormon apologetic efforts that try to work around Joseph’s deception — mostly trying to defend him on technicalities and God’s lack of guidance on how Joseph should go about taking on between 34-40 wives. These defenses are not compelling. Or at least, I did not find them compelling once I was able to look at things more objectively — once I no longer needed Joseph to be a prophet and man of God. I had, after all, been raised on this understanding of honesty and deception from the church's Gospel Principles Manual: “We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.” Also, from the Book of Mormon, I understood that “the Lord God worketh not in darkness” (2 Nephi 26:25). “Darkness” to me had always seemed synonymous with deception and unwelcome secrecy.]

The Book of Mormon

I’ve mentioned before that the Book of Mormon — the “keystone” of my faith in Mormon Christianity — was the last pillar of my testimony to fall.

On March 31, 2019, I wrote to some friends, confiding that "trying to process criticisms of Book of Mormon historicity and language and other contemporary influences has been so rattling for me lately."

Even so, I still felt "unresolved" about the Book of Mormon:

I don't know what to make of the genuinely troubling questions into its origins and authorship. But there's also so much in there that's brought me closer to God than anything else I've read. And I still genuinely struggle with the thought that Joseph managed to put it together himself. I've read some from at least one person who believes its divinely inspired fiction. Maybe, but even that robs a great deal of the meaning I used to find in the stories of people I'd believed were real.

Early on in my faith crisis, I felt anxious to hold onto belief in the Book of Mormon, and I was open about that fact.

New Perspectives on Translation

In mid-April, a friend sent me video links to an April 2017 conference at Utah State (put on by the progressively faithful “Faith Matters” organization). The conference was titled “New Perspectives on Joseph Smith and Translation [of The Book of Mormon]”

I watched nearly every session, which included some of the biggest names in progressive Mormonism (including a few who were in our Cambridge ward during my years at Harvard Law School). All of the presenters and panelists seemed both smarter and more thoughtful than I was, and they all talked about the Book of Mormon from a faithful perspective — that, one way or another, it was a divinely inspired document.

Much of the purpose of the conference, though, seemed intent on advocating away from a “tight translation” model (that the Book of Mormon effectively represents a verbatim translation of ancient records) toward a “loose translation” theory (divinely inspired, but far more flexible in terms of sourcing of the language Joseph Smith used).

The thought of even allowing for a “loose translation” theory of the Book of Mormon is progressive. That is to say, it’s not something I’ve seen any tolerance for in Mormon orthodoxy and the correlated materials. But it is an outgrowth of faithful efforts to address the fact that analysis of the language in, and influences on, the Book of Mormon reveal it to be a demonstrably 19th-century document.

Frankly, most of the discussion at the conference was over my head at the time, but I appreciated the effort. Even more, I appreciated the faith underlying that effort. I came away from the conference feeling like the “loose translation” theory might reconcile my growing issues with the Book of Mormon, and I wrote as much that evening to a friend:

I’d sure like to be able to come out of all this with some conviction of divinity in all this (particularly in the Book of Mormon). It’s hard now because I’m smarting from the heretofore demonstrably false narratives I’d held to until just weeks ago. If I do find God in all this, I don’t think my faith will look anything like where I’ve been and what I grew up with. And I also don’t see how it could look much like the orthodoxy mostly preached at General Conference and, by extension, my regular Sunday meetings.

Problems With Loose Translation

For me, though, the “loose translation” theory wouldn’t hold upon close inspection. For one thing, that’s not at all what Joseph Smith and the church represent the book to be. So if the Book of Mormon is the product of a divinely inspired loose translation, it is (another) divinely-sanctioned deception.

Further, as a podcaster later pointed out, the whole idea of loose translation renders D&C 10 nonsensical (wherein God purportedly tells Joseph that he’s not permitted to re-translate the lost 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript — the unstated assumption of the entire revelation being that Joseph would otherwise be able to dictate an identical 116 pages — because “wicked men” had altered the words of the original transcript [and apparently, in the days before typewriters and computers, folks otherwise wouldn’t be able to easily discern alterations in a hand-written ink manuscript]).

By late April 2019, I felt like the Book of Mormon was the last pillar of my uniquely Mormon faith that I could hold onto. I was still reading from it daily (doing my part to earnestly check those spiritual boxes), but the daily efforts were still a spiritually “dry” experience.

Around that time, I finally reached out to a trusted friend to ask him specifically about his thoughts on the Book of Mormon. We talked for nearly an hour on a Saturday afternoon, and I offered him the main defense I was still holding onto — that there was no way Joseph Smith could have dictated the Book of Mormon himself.

That night I noted in my journal that my friend “seemed to deconstruct most everything I’d been holding onto regarding the divinity of the Book of Mormon. Sigh.”

But more than just take his word for it, this friend pointed me to sources to begin my own research.

I still kept up my dutiful daily reading. For instance, on April 23, 2019 — the same day I read the Streeter piece on WOOD vs. STEEL tools — I described feeling “chaos” internally after reading from the Book of Mormon:

I feel in chaos with my faith (this morning reading Ether 11-12, I again found it so hard to believe that the Book of Mormon was simply and oral performance in what would amount to a pious fraud). Honestly, I don't know where [my faith] will end up. 

On May 8, 2019, while Michelle and I were vacationing in Germany (and staying with our friends the Vincents), I finished another reading of the Book of Mormon. It had been nearly two months since the CES Letter, and I still felt nothing:

“I finished the Book of Mormon this morning. It didn’t feel like a celebratory moment or achievement the way it had before. It didn’t feel like much of anything.”

Performing Revelation

On the long flight home from Europe, I finally got around to reading some of my friend’s recommended sources. The first was the 2016 PhD dissertation by William Davis. The dissertation explores Joseph Smith’s dictation of the Book of Mormon as “one of the longest recorded oral performances in the history of the United States.”

Valuable at least as much for the footnoted citations as the writing itself, Davis’ work significantly eroded the strength of the argument I had long clung to — that Joseph simply wasn’t capable of dictating the Book of Mormon.

Some of the salient facts that stood out in his research included the following:

• A formal and informal education system in Upstate New York that prized oratory, oral learning, and oral memorization (including recitation of extended passages of the Bible);

• Joseph’s Methodist training in extemporaneous oratory and participation in debate societies;

• A cultural milieu that leaned heavily on the “unlearned oracle” trope — the idea that a mouthpiece for God was be deemed more credible the less education they had; and

• Joseph (and others in his family) leaning into that trope by misrepresenting the extent of Joseph’s schooling and education.

On that last point, I noted above Emma’s statement that Joseph supposedly “could neither write nor dictate a well-worded letter; let alone dictat[e] a book like the Book of Mormon.” [Though in fairness to Emma, some historians believe she made this statement with her tongue firmly in cheek.] 

There is also this statement from the church, citing Joseph himself:

In 1832, while dictating an account of his life, Smith claimed of his childhood that his indigent circumstances, “required the exertions of all that were able to render any assistance for the support of the family; therefore, we were deprived of the benefit of an education. Suffice it to say, I was merely instructed in reading, writing and the ground rules of arithmetic, which constituted my whole literary acquirements.” “History of Joseph Smith by Himself,” Church History in the Fulness of Times, 29–30)   

Davis’ research reveals that Joseph actually had the equivalent of at least 7 years of formal schooling, possibly up to 10. And that is without accounting for the extent of Joseph’s informal schooling, which included the fact that his father, Joseph Smith, Sr., had been a professional school teacher (as had Joseph's maternal grandmother).

While none of the above insights were definitive about the origin of the Book of Mormon, they certainly ran contrary to the church’s correlated narrative. And after reading Davis' piece, I could no longer say with certainty that Joseph couldn’t possibly have dictated the Book of Mormon.

What was even more revealing to me, though, was the additional evidence of Joseph’s apparent willingness to stretch the truth, this time on the relatively minor details of his educational background.

I had long since stopped expecting perfection of God’s prophets, but I still expected honesty.

One Last Time?

In mid-June 2019, with my belief in the metaphysical origins of the Book of Mormon waning, I decided one morning to try to give the book one last read — one more chance for God to fulfill Moroni’s promise in Moroni 10:4-5 (that God would “manifest the truth [of the book] unto [me], by the power of the Holy Ghost.”).

Just to be sure.

This time, though, I couldn’t even make it through one chapter. The few minutes I did spending reading the first pages of 1 Nephi actually left me anxious and angry. The entire exercise felt oppressive, a far cry from the promised peace of former days.

By that point, it had apparently become too much to pretend it might be ok that beloved Book of Mormon figures like Nephi, Jacob, Alma the Younger, King Benjamin, Abinadi, Helaman, and so many others probably weren't real people. And that stories like the sons of Helaman, desperate and starving in the wilderness in between battles against a seemingly unconquerable army, were just figments of Joseph's vivid imagination. Or to contemplate that Joseph had likely made up Moroni's touching soliloquy on humility in Ether 12, along with scores of other passages and stories that I had "liken[ed] unto myself" and clung to in my own (frequent) desperation. 

That morning, the overwhelming emotion after starting into the book was a feeling of betrayal. I had given so much of my life to reading, pondering, assimilating, memorizing, defending, and otherwise “hold[ing] fast” to the Book of Mormon. Now, three months after I’d first encountered information challenging the book’s origins and authenticity — three months into my spiritual drought in the wake of that information — I didn’t want anything to do with the book. It felt like violence to force myself to keep reading.

That was when I finally gave myself permission to set the book aside. In fact, that was the morning I finally gave myself permission to set aside the church’s counsel of daily indoctrination (scripture study).

Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet

Around the same time, I started into Dan Vogel's research on Joseph Smith. After listening to a few of his interviews on podcasts, I began reading his lengthy biography, Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet.

At 744 pages, the book carefully explores Joseph's early years (through to his time in Ohio). Vogel devotes most of the book’s chapters to a meticulous review of the Book of Mormon and the events in Joseph’s life surrounding his dictation of specific parts of that Mormon scripture.

Vogel’s analysis of the Book of Mormon almost embarrassed me in the way he points out oddities, incongruities, and anachronisms in the text, nearly all of which I had never detected before (despite dozens and dozens of faithful readings).

Though no longer a believer, Vogel's perspective on Joseph Smith embraces the generous view that Joseph was a "pious fraud," at least in the earlier years of his life. That is, Vogel argues that Joseph knowingly worked deception, but that Joseph believed he was deceiving for a good purpose (i.e., to bring people closer to God). Further, Vogel argues that much of this deception, including Joseph's early visions and other metaphysical claims, was an outgrowth of efforts to heal religious divisions in his home — to move his father toward organized religion.

For a relative novice like me, Vogel’s research and arguments proved compelling. If nothing else, they were more persuasive than the increasingly frayed narrative that I had been conditioned to swallow and defend for decades.

Treasure Digging

Vogel’s voluminous research is rife with examples of Joseph’s shifting accounts of metaphysical claims, but it was one of the simpler bits of research that made matters plain for me.

In Joseph's own history (canonized in the Pearl of Great Price), Joseph indicates his history with treasure digging was a one-off experience with Josiah Stoal. According to Joseph’s account, Stoal had "heard something of a silver mine" left behind by ancient Spaniards and had hired Joseph simply to help dig it out. Then, after a month of digging, Joseph claims he finally prevailed on Stoal to give up the endeavor.

Joseph concludes the passage, "Hence arose the very prevalent story of my having been a money digger." [JSH 1:56].

The thing is, even a rudimentary bit of historical research demonstrates Joseph is clearly minimizing here — “minimizing” being a softer way of describing when someone lies by not telling the whole truth about their conduct.

Contrary to Joseph’s version of events, his early years apparently included an extensive history of treasure digging — at least 18 such digs, according to Vogel’s research.

Moreover, Joseph was not simply the hired hand he had claimed to be; he, in fact, held himself out as a young oracle (typically using a peep stone) that would point the gullible to locations of purported buried treasure. And he would go further, describing the guardian spirits watching over this treasure, as well as the magical/occult measures necessary to ward them off (which measures always failed, for one reason or another).

Implications of a Lie

To be sure, Joseph’s misadventures as a scryer are troubling enough — especially upon learning that he used one of those same peep stones to translate the Book of Mormon. For me, though, the difficulties believing Joseph Smith was a prophet multiplied exponentially when I realized that Joseph felt both the liberty and license to lie about his extensive connection to treasure digging.

Why? And what did it mean that God’s supposed mouthpiece — “the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, [who] has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it” [D&C 135:3] — was repeatedly dishonest?

It took me longer than it should have, but eventually my thoughts reverted to my work as a prosecutor. In that role, much of my job involves assessing criminal cases and readying them for trial (trial before 12 members of the community where my side always retains the burden of proof, and that burden requires convincing all 12 jurors "beyond a reasonable doubt").

Part of my work includes preparing witnesses and gauging their credibility. Also, preparing to cross-examine defense witnesses, including often the defendants themselves (if they elect to testify).

I fear saying this publicly will jinx me, but thus far, in my nearly 15 years as a prosecutor, I have yet to lose a case where I have caught the defendant in a lie.

The reasons for that are probably intuitive to most, but for me, it boils down to two things: (1) catching someone in a lie almost always destroys their credibility as a witness, and (2) people generally lie when they have something to hide.

So, when I'm fortunate enough to catch a defendant in a lie, one of the focal points of my closing argument is to spend time exploring with the jury what the defendant was trying to hide with their lie(s) (evidence of their guilt) and why (to avoid getting caught). 

This faith crisis of mine wasn’t exactly a trial scenario, but my research had now caught Joseph Smith in several obvious lies. So, invoking my simple approach, I asked myself, “What was Joseph trying to hide with these obvious lies?”

The truth of his education and upbringing, his extensive involvement in treasure digging, and later, his marital practices.

Then, the follow-up question: “Why did he lie — repeatedly?”

I won’t pretend to know all the reasons, but at the very least, Joseph clearly believed the truth — of his circumstances and practices — was not sufficient to persuade people of his metaphysical claims and divine mandate. He thought lying would help persuade people he was God’s prophet.

For me, the fact that Joseph believed he needed to lie, and that he was comfortable with lying, told me enough.

Not a Credible Witness

I realized that Joseph Smith was not a credible witness — even if I wanted to believe him. It further occurred to me that, if he were a potential witness in one of my criminal cases, I could never put him on the witness stand; the significant changes to his stories over the years, in addition to his repeated, demonstrable lies, meant that he would never survive a competent cross-examination.

Perhaps there is some meaningful incongruency in my analogy, but if there is, it's lost on me. Federal criminal cases can certainly be high stakes, but those stakes still rather pale in comparison to matters of eternal salvation and exaltation, right? So if anything, I would expect God to be even more selective about the witnesses of his work than I would be in mine.

Would God really make the eternal destiny of his children dependent on taking an otherwise unreliable witness at his word? Would God really expect me to trust my life to the purported revelations and authority of a man that was demonstrably dishonest?

No — at least not the God I had worshipped.

[Of course, my former self might have argued that the Holy Ghost could help me discern spiritual truth, even from the most unreliable of witnesses. So perhaps there’s the rub: I no longer had any confidence the Holy Ghost was what I thought it was, or if it was a real thing at all. And if it was real, my strong inclinations toward truth, integrity, and goodness were moving me away from Mormonism. And really, if God would choose a serially dishonest person as his mouthpiece (even if that person is a pious fraud), then he’s not the God I thought he was. Nor the God he claims to be.]

Make it Make Sense

My increasing clarity on the above point helped me finally resolve a host of issues that had strained my proverbial shelf as a believer:

• Joseph’s shifting accounts of his First Vision;

• the myriad issues with the reliability of the “witnesses” of the gold plates [again, if proper witnesses of these plates were such a big deal to God, why are there so many issues surrounding the circumstances of the purported “testimonies?” If he wanted to, God must have known how to make sure these witness accounts were ironclad. And if the answer to all of those issues is something about demonstrating/exercising/testing "faith" — then why the hell would God bother with witnesses at all? What good are witness testimonies if they can't withstand even a modicum of scrutiny? If we're supposed to take those on faith as well?];

• Joseph's use of a seer stone (one of the same stones he used to “see” buried treasure and guardian spirits in earlier years) to translate the Book of Mormon;

• the problematic historical, textual, and racial issues in the Book of Mormon, the same book Joseph Smith had boasted “the most correct of any book on earth”;

• the (mis)translations of The Book of Abraham and Kinderhook Plates;

• Joseph’s apparent backdating of the priesthood restoration timeline; and

• Joseph’s morally dubious “revelations” and efforts to compel women into polygamous and polyandrous marriages (while hiding the nature of those relationships from the world, and often from Emma).

Employing STEEL tools as best I knew how, by the time I finished Vogel's book (in early July 2019), this much seemed clear to me: The Book of Mormon was still remarkable, but it is not what it claims to be. 

Also, Joseph Smith was not a prophet. Pious or otherwise, he was a fraud, a charlatan.

Conclusions

If Joseph Smith wasn't God's prophet, this meant, too, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn't what it claims to be.

The more distant I get from the church (the less I need it to be what I once thought it was), the more obvious that has become. It has certainly helped explain the church’s long history of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia [and why God never sent to his subsequent prophets more angels with flaming swords to stop the harms inflicted in his name].

It also helped me understand why a faith that claims unique (and compelling) divine truth, and further claims to prize agency, has serious, serious lingering issues with informed consent.

Still, these were anything but welcome conclusions for me, except in the fact that they had the ring of truth. [In fact, this is how I described the day that I finished Vogel's book: “I feel lousy today. I feel lost. I feel stuck. I feel lonely.”] And actually, given how much of my life I had invested in Mormonism and its cosmology, these felt like the worst possible conclusions.

I had not set out on this effort because I “hope[d] that [I could] find a flaw in the fabric of a prophet’s life or a discrepancy in the scriptures.” I had been trying, desperately, to save my faith. I set out believing that we had the truth, and that “it could not be harmed by investigation.”

As I've alluded to before, the disillusionment I felt in the face of these unwelcome answers brought on a range of emotions, which most closely resembled the various stages of grief. There was certainly nothing close to the smug delight or devilish sense of triumph that church leaders ascribe to those of us in crisis.

All along (and still), I really just wanted to do what was right. I was still trying to earnestly seek God and feel reassured of his presence, but it felt like he had abandoned me. There was still a pavilion blocking him, and it had been in place ever since that fateful Saturday night in late March 2019 — after I first confronted the terrifying possibility he might not be there. 

Here's the thing, though: the length and extent of my earnest efforts to seek God on his terms had made it clear to me that, whatever the reason for the pavilion, it wasn't my fault.

So, where did this leave me?

As I noted at the outset of this post, it left me in Hell.

It was a different version of Hell, though, from the one I grew up afraid of.