I See That This Must Be
Coming back from the wilderness with help from Eve
Therapy
In early 2020, it didn’t take my therapist long to recognize my obsession. I compulsively returned to the same subject over and over. Eight months earlier, I had been rebaptized into the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
That’s all I wanted to talk about.
Early on, when it seemed like I was more frustrated than uplifted by my religious experience, he was confused by the deep commitment I felt to the church. I seemed to hate it more than I loved it.
He introduced the concept of MUST-urbation. A mindset of thinking I MUST do or think or be something. Repeatedly, I spoke of frustrating situations that I wanted to resolve. I must I must I must.
If you don’t think God requires you to stay, why don’t you just leave?
Fair question from a therapist who’s not employed by the church. I appreciated his independent perspective. But he didn’t yet understand me.
Feeling required or compelled is something you do out of fear of consequences. I’m not there out of fear. I knew what I was getting into. I’m there because I love God and I believe he asked me to. Like a hard favor I’m happy to do for a friend I love.
Do you believe God invited you back to this church for a reason?
That’s a tricky question. An easy “yes” in one sense. But I can’t approach it with some sneaky agenda. Collectively, Mormons think they’re right. By this, I mean they think their prophets are always right. Having a different perspective just makes them defensive.
I don’t want to assume I’m right even if I feel I am. I want to be open to change. But there is this collective sense of “right”. It’s weird. Even if people don’t feel this way in private, they feel obligated to speak like they do at church. Or simply not speak at all.
There’s not a mutual sense of learning from each other’s experience. Whatever is in the manual or the latest conference talk is considered “The Truth”. Even if it contradicts itself in crazy ways. It feels like we’re all inside some computer program. When I don’t speak according to the program, a big error flashes and the machine starts smoking. It makes me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. I don’t try to speak as if my view is the only right way to see something. But it feels that way to me.
Do you need people at church to validate you to have a positive experience?
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wanted it. I’m a people pleaser. I love helping people. I like being trusted and respected and feeling close with people. I don’t like feeling like there’s an invisible force field that keeps me out when I approach it with sincere desires to do good.
Over and over, we rehash these conversations. The strategies for managing things make sense and are helpful. So is the medication I wish I had discovered decades ago. But it feels like something is missing.
Maybe it’s what every Black Mormon in Utah feels when they attend their mostly-white ward. Maybe I just want a sense of unity that I can’t have. I don’t get to reserve my right to be non-traditional and get all the benefits of club membership. Maybe I just need to grow up. Maybe I just need thicker skin.
I knew all of this when I chose to reengage with Mormonism. I was ready for it, in theory. Like contestants on Alone who are full of confidence and bravado before spending a few hungry days in the freezing rain. The daily slog of actually doing it gets exhausting.
Wilderness
The wilderness isn’t always lone and dreary. Sometimes it’s just what you need, even if it’s tiring. Christ skipped church for a few weeks in the wilderness for some alone time with occasional visits from his dad and Satan.
Since June, I’ve been in a wilderness. Sometimes clarifying. Sometimes confusing. I trust God, even if I’m not sure how to proceed.
It’s like when my legs and chest are burning on a steep hike. Stopping to catch my breath doesn’t mean I’m quitting. I just really need to recover before I can move forward.
Even if my church has a “no breaks allowed or you might endanger your celestial glory” sign. Sometimes my church doesn’t understand wilderness. God does.
As I wander in the wilderness, my mind keeps returning to Eve. Eve understands wilderness.
I just really love Eve.
Eve
Perhaps broader Christianity sees this painting as Eve in all her shame. She’s slumped, the evidence of her transgression lying beside her. In Latter-day Saint theology, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was both forbidden and necessary.
This was a transgression of the law, but not a sin in the strict sense, for it was something that Adam and Eve had to do!
— Joseph Fielding Smith
I feel like a Mormon who is both forbidden and necessary.
The serpent told Eve that the fruit would make her wise. God didn’t tell her this. He told her and Adam in no uncertain terms, “Don’t eat the dang fruit!” After he said, “You two go have some babies!”, which required eating the fruit.
Wait, is it just me or was Satan more helpful than God in this myth? Is God a trickster? Is Satan just a misunderstood rebel who’s really a teddy bear beneath that scaly surface?
In my experience, God doesn’t get all jealous or angry when I voice such thoughts. He knows I’m not questioning him, but the stories about him. To me, there’s a big difference between a God described in an old myth and the Real Deal.
If we take scriptures like the garden myth too literally, it doesn’t just put us in a straightjacket. It puts our Gods in one too. It can make him/her/them seem ridiculous and petty. Like the Gods on Thor: Love and Thunder.
I’m not dismissing our important myths.
If we don’t take the scriptures and literature and myths and stories and art seriously, we lose a chance to comprehend transcendent, magical truths; words and ideas filled with power. We see life only in the mundane terms that lack vision or imagination or revelation.
Eve is a great example. She reminds us we can’t progress beyond our innocent little gardens and become the grown-ups God intends without knowledge of both good and evil. Even if it causes some people at church to exclaim:
Joe! Do you not remember that God commanded us NOT to partake of that fruit!
Knowledge of Good and Evil
I think Joseph Smith was really right about a few things.
It’s the nature and disposition of almost all people, including Mormon prophets, popes, politicians, CEOs, software engineers, mechanics, bakers, landscapers, homemakers, construction workers, Trump, Biden, and the rest of us, once we get a little authority, to use our power to hide our sins and serve our own interests.
In addition, having an incomplete understanding of God is the reality of the human experience. It’s seeing through a glass darkly and being required to make choices with limited understanding.
Religion, when it’s working well, encourages us to choose love, meekness, patience, longsuffering, diligence, honesty, knowledge, faithfulness, and so many other divine attributes. All while knowing that we’re constantly pushing against forces like laziness, anger, lust, greed, ignorance, and duplicity.
Eve reminds us of this completeness. This imperative for real knowledge.
Did I mention I really love Eve?
Adam-Come-Lately
The serpent approached Adam first. He quickly rejected the fruit because God forbade it. He intended to obey all of God’s commandments (as he understood them).
To me, Adam represents the church. The weight of traditions that change more slowly. Not because of God’s timing, but because no single leader has the ability to change things at Eve speed, even with a personal revelation. Leaders don’t spend 40 years insisting something is true (polygamy is celestial marriage, Blacks are cursed), then just turn on a dime and say they were wrong. At least not together, in public.
The idealists among us don’t want to think our church is governed by a political process where the younger apostles may need to wait for older ones to die before their views can be heard or persuasive. We’d like to think good people will always reach the same conclusions. But this isn’t the case.
If Adam, Jr. thinks the looooooooooong name of the church is super important but Adam, Sr. wants to do a marketing campaign with the snappy short name, Adam, Jr. simply has to hope he doesn’t die before his day in the sun. Assuming that God favors the thinking of those who live longest seems like a tidy explanation more than a divine guarantee of truth.
William James described a central function of religion as defining boundaries between the sacred and profane. Adam’s commitment to keep all of God’s sacred commandments with exactness blinded him. It caused him to see something sacred (eating the necessary fruit) as profane. Until Eve helped him see differently.
Eve! Do you not remember that God commanded us not to partake of that fruit!
Do you not remember that Father commanded us to multiply and replenish the earth? I have partaken of the fruit and will be cast out. You will be left alone in the garden.
Eve, I see that this must be!
Christ repeated this teaching. Breaking a law like the Sabbath was sometimes required to do far more important things like healing the lame, rescuing an ox from a pit, or taking your niece to breakfast while her military hubby is deployed in another state.
By divine design, God endowed Eve with a conscience that guided her to truth before Adam could see it. Kudos to Mormon Adam for listening to her even when his first instinct was that she had gone off the rails.
I think Adams only do this when they know and love Eves. Adams who hang around with Adams all day start to believe they’re little Adam-gods. Like the advice given to Elder Uchtdorf when he became an apostle, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” of fawning admiration from members around the world!
The garden myth illustrates inspired female leadership in a sea of male egos that assume priesthood means that God only speaks authoritatively through them. See Elder Ballard’s book, Counseling With Our Councils for good examples of this.
Eve represents courageous truth-seekers of all genders. Of course, being a hero doesn’t mean she’s always been understood. Most of Christianity has seen her as the one who messed up big time causing centuries of scripturally-sanctioned male domination.
[See also, curse of Cain.]
Eves know the difference between idolized ink on paper and a living, loving God.
Did I mention that Eve inspires me?
Coming Back from the Wilderness
Yes, I could leave the church in protest of aspects that frustrate me, but I don’t want to.
I would rather find God within my tradition, and maybe even help bring God with me on occasion. I would rather seek knowledge of both good and evil. I want to be anxiously engaged in a good cause with this family.
I can do like Timothy said and be an example of a [non-traditional] believer. I can emulate Peter’s passion that included chopped off ears and lasting contributions. I can remember that even doubting Thomas had a role. Or be comforted by Moses’ inability to articulate his ideas as well as he would like. Or be like Paul, one who loves people who are different even when the “We’ve actually met Jesus in person so we know better” club thinks he’s wrong.
I want to be an Eve who loves God and has courage and seeks knowledge, even when it can be so stinking hard. I want to be an Eve who loves Adam, even if I don’t want to confuse him with God.
I want to be like my mom, a true Eve. After a long Zoom discussion with a few family members, I felt misunderstood and frustrated. She had just listened. My dad asked if she wanted to add anything before the call ended. She simply said, “I love you no matter what.”
That! That’s the kind of Christian I want to be! The kind of Mormon I want to be! That’s the kind of person I feel God wants me to be!
Even if my church sometimes mistakes me for a serpent or a wolf or a cockroach.
I think I’m ready to come back from the wilderness.
