Irreverence

Q: “People might take you more seriously if your tone wasn’t so irreverent.”

🔥Typically, in describing our experiences with deconstruction, I’ve chosen words that are unusual, casual, or even abrasive. 

🗝 I’ve done this as an act of reclaiming my language, because high-control groups (including LDS Mormonism) typically curate their language and develop their own jargon, so as to easily sift “insiders” from “outsiders.” A custom vernacular also serves to make otherwise-problematic ideas or doctrines more palatable by couching those ideas in abstracted phrases or titles that soften the impact or meaning of their subject. 

😬(For example, instead of saying “God hates gays” like some  other Christian denominations, Mormons say, “God has stated clearly that marriage is between one man and woman and anything less than that is against God’s Law.” In light of our history with polygamy and the total absence of anything regarding LGBTQIA identities in the sayings of Jesus, the Book of Mormon, or the D&C, this statement is startlingly un-self-aware, but I digress.)😬

👥👥👥This shared jargon is one reason testimony meetings are so predictable and so important for group cohesion–they are opportunities to reinforce the code words and core tenets of the group to each other. In other words, they are opportunities to gain social capital by publicly demonstrating our “in-ness.”

👉Thus, when everyone stands to offer the same words in the same way, and even the same cadence, it is not only accepted, it’s smiled upon–encouraged. “Be brief” the Bishop often reminds the congregants, “focus your remarks” etc. 

It is a rare and brazen person who breaks this mold with an extended story, a pure “thank-you-mony” or an open-ended concern.  

👀We all understand this system and how it works, which is why we coach our children to access this social capital, by holding them up to mic and whispering what they should “know” in exactly the same way. 

🎤 “I know the Church is true.

I know that _________ is/was a true Prophet of God.

I know that Joseph Smith restored the Priesthood.

I know that we’ll be blessed if we _______(obey a Church rule),

(optional) I love my family.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” 

💓In a system where this type of curated speaking is used, the familiarity of the group’s insider-jargon becomes a source of comfort and reattachment (aka “feeling the Spirit”) to the group. In many ways, it doesn’t even matter what someone is saying, the important thing is that the same jargon and patterns of speech are being used. It is a subtle reminder deep within our brains that we are among allies. 

Thus, in the interest of 🔥shaking 💥the conversation☄️ awake⚡️, I have erred on the side of overly-casual and irreverent. 

I know how to be reverent and speak the in-speak–it’s my native language. 

I am also aware for the first time of how vulnerable our minds are to the subtle threats, superficial affirmations, and systemic manipulations that can come through such group speak.😥

(By the by, there is also a danger of falling into ruts of group-speak on the Post-Mormon side of thinking. I also find it valuable to transgress the Exmormon jargon, because only in that space of original language can I find ways to hold the humanness of all our Mormon and Post-Mormon experiences.) 

😶‍🌫️However, choosing primarily the casual or “irreverent” language has some serious drawbacks, too, because it fails to communicate how deeply our faith crisis is rooted INTO my Mormonism. For me, this faith crisis was not something that happened to my devotion from the outside, but rather something that grew out of my devotion from the inside. 

🤯I didn’t need “anti-Mormon” literature, Post-mormon podcasts, or Exmormon friends and Reddit to introduce my deconstruction–in fact, I only ever listened, made friends or talked seriously with people who had left, after my deconstruction was mostly complete. And that deconstruction happened just like all of my experiences within the Church: from listening to the Spirit, following Priesthood blessings, going to Church, studying my scriptures, going to the Temple, listening to General Conference. 

➡️➡️Our deconstruction has not been separate from our membership in the Church, it’s been the culmination of it. ⬅️⬅️

We had to ask ourselves allllllll the questions:

👁How important do we really think that agency is? 

👁Do we trust that God can handle the hard questions? 

👁How much do we trust the Spiritual impressions that we’re receiving about polygamy, racism, the LDS apologetic interpretation of history, etc? 

👁Do we trust the Spirit more than we value acceptance from a Church community? 

👁Can we validate our (and others’) spiritual growth within the Church, while also recognizing it as fraught with problems? 

It’s hard to describe how confusing this experience is. 

📐It is, at once, the most devastating and exhilarating thing to be following in the archetypal steps of Eve or Moses or even Abinadi or Moroni by following the Spirit onto unknown plateaus of spiritual awareness, while at the same time, becoming aware that most of those characters and/or the actions from them were almost certainly fictional. 

✨It is bizarre to be following Spiritual confirmations that lead to questioning the origin or existence of Spirit at all. 

📜It is mind-bending to be trying to apply teachings of some modern Church leaders to invest in our spiritual growth and diligently pursue answers to our questions about the Church through scripture, only to be funneled back into the Jesus condemning hoarded wealth, or the Nephite civilization decaying under the fungus of Secret Societies and inner-ring elitism.  

🌤I have found some ways of trying to understand this phenomenon (the works of  Carl Jung have been extremely helpful), but when it comes to my tone for these posts, I have attempted to play verbal pictionary–laying down a word here or a phrase there, to try and convey how multi-colored and big the experience of a faith crisis is. 

But just in case these concepts have gotten lost in weeds, let me say:

🌈this is the most important Spiritual trek I have yet taken. 

🌈It has led to both more joy and more sorrow than I ever experienced in the Church. 

🌈It is a roller coaster and a free fall into an abyss and discovering our own wings all at once.

🌈It is so scary, so weird, so interesting, so fun, so holy. 

🤷‍♀️I’m still processing, still trying to figure out how to rebuild. It was never part of the Church plan to leave and so, it was never part of my plan, either. 

🤟However, since it is very likely that everyone in my circle of contacts will be wrestling with these concepts at some point in their own faith journeys or the faith journeys of their children, I continue to lay down the words, in the hopes that cracking this forbidden subject open will allow your journeys or the journeys of your loved ones to feel more seen, more heard, and less alienating, whenever or however they happen. 

🌱Words are limited tools for expressing this, but they are the most capable tool I have.