Becoming Mormon

Most compicated religions have extensive training programs that begin practically at birth.  Consider the Jewish ritual of the bris.  A male becomes a Jew at eight days of life.  A Catholic is inducted in an elaborate ceremony involving a priest, a church, holy water, a name, godparents, and a public celebration.  The Mormon indoctrination really does begin very early, but there is an alternate path for those who wish to self-adopt the faith, and in a way, those who do so are celebrated as being more "special" than the ones who lazily plopped into the faith from their mothers' wombs because they had to search and recognize and work for it.  It was into this that I, and later my sister, willingly placed our hearts and minds. 

In retrospect, I wish we had had the internet, because my mother would have googled "Mormon," read up about the religion, and said "No!" to our request to participate.  She never joined because the Mormons put their men in charge, and she couldn't see taking that oath, and I don't blame her.  My father never joined, because the tithing would require him to figure out exactly how much is ten percent, making him thus accountable, and he didn't want to be accountable with his money.  He wanted to not know how much money he had.  I respect his utter honesty.  I would have figured it out, but what a great man to tell his fourteen-year-old child the truth about himself. 

The first step is the lessons, laid out like a legal interrogation wherein the obvious answer to each question, "Yes," lead inexorably to the next question, whose "Yes" would result in the obvious, logical conclusion that the Mormon Church is the One True Church on the Face of the Earth, and it is only reasonable to join up with the great enterprise.  It is reason, not emotion, that is supposed to lead one into the Mormon Church, and the final act of the lessons is an assignment to "pray" for revelation to confirm what Reason has taught.

I admit that I prayed for revelation on the subject of whether the church was true, and got NOTHING.  Zip.  Nada.  No answer.  Throughout my twenty years in Mormonism, I received many revelations--spiritual intuitions--that a particular course of action was appropriate with respect to serving the needs of the community.  The Mormon God does want his children cared for appropriately in the organization, and I respect that.  But I never got the green light from God in general that the Mormon church was the real deal for me. 

But I wanted it.  I was impetuous.  I had an alcoholic father and a mother who smoked, both of which were affecting me adversely, and I wanted a world where the grownups didn't smoke and drink.  I didn't really know that this entire superstructure of world view, thought, gender roles, politics, life plans, and hierarchy were part of the whole ball of wax, and that I was embarking on a path that was ultimately not going to serve me as well as something I put together myself, but I couldn't see that.  All I saw was a very nice structure that I could use to get out of the house.