Joachim
Austin
Lori
Steadman
English
312 Summer 2016
June
26th, 2016
Religion: it’s an inherently
controversial topic that can either strengthen a family or drive a wedge in the
middle of it. By definition, faith is a set of assumptions, an assertion of
answers to questions that we have no current method of answering by ourselves.
As such, rationalism can only take us so far in these philosophical pursuits;
the rest of the journey lies in the individual experience, beyond the realm of
empirical analysis. In the LDS church, there is a strong emphasis on the
cultivation and sharing of personal testimony, both for full-time missionaries
as well as for ordinary members. A member with a strong testimony will relate
the spiritual phenomenon in the church with his or her religious convictions,
while an outsider may associate the same event or sensation with a different
set of experiences that are more familiar to him or her. Neither side is
vulnerable to a flawless rebuttal, which is why religion remains a subject of
social and political debate.
My brother and I have been very close for the last 10 years or so,
and we see eye to eye on almost every topic – except for religion. I’ve been
choosing to hold to the LDS faith that my father joined with when he was young,
but my brother has decided that religion is overall a negative force in the
world, one that humanity would be better off without. As my father has been a
strong member of the church his whole life, we were both raised and taught
under the auspices of church values. As with any family, ours had its fair
share of difficult trials, including the shifts of divorce and the adjustments
of remarriage. My brother, being the oldest and facing unaddressed but serious
nervous system issues at the time, went through the most trouble and
experienced the greatest animosity towards the rest of our family, primarily
our father, than any of us children. He attributed a large amount of his
disagreeable behaviors to his religious convictions, and thus found fault with
many fundamental mechanics of faith and religion in general. I had known a
little about the disagreements that caused him to distance himself from the
church but we usually steer clear of religious discussions because of our
disagreements, but under the premise of the interview it turned out to be a
positive experience for both of us.
My brother’s point was this: the assumptions of religion often
supplant more reasonable conclusions, which leads to unfavorable behavior. He
described to me one of the more defining experiences that contributed to this
view which occurred when he was about 20 years old, something that I hadn’t
been aware of previously. At that time he was staying with my parents in
between college semesters and was being driven home from some appointment by
our stepmother Wendy. During this short trip she asked him a few basic
questions about his day; because of the scope of the questions, and because he
was feeling ill that day, his responses were fairly short and simple. Several
minutes after arriving home, Wendy entered his room and expressed her concern
that he had been disrespectful towards her by not talking more in the car,
unabated by my brother’s apologies and explanation of his state. My father soon
joined the interaction, siding with my stepmother and adding significantly to
the severely negative emotional sensation of the experience. My brother
explained that he was well aware of the importance placed by the church on the
obligation of husbands and wives to support their spouses in their parental
roles, and of the conviction of my father in the religious experience that led
him to marry Wendy. He argued that my father’s strict adherence to faith
created a needless and extremely unpleasant precedent that interfered with his
personal development during this period of his life. In other words, following
the assumed knowledge that the ideals of the church are based off of can often
lead to the rejection of fundamental and practical considerations, which tends
to result in much less positive outcomes.
In the explanation of his views on
religion, my brother also cited the church’s social policies when it comes to
gender identity and sexual orientation. In his view, the testimonies of those
who do not identify as heterosexual or of their born biological gender are as
valid as those who do; which is to say, he believes these states are largely
inherent rather than chosen. Because of this, labeling one of these
inclinations as superior and forcing legal exclusivity on the matter is a form
of needless discrimination. This conclusion can be reached, he argues, by
assuming that these other people are as capable of recognizing the patterns and
sources of emotions as you are, and that they are more interested in
self-realization than in some sort of malicious agenda; in short, “you have to
assume that they’re just like you”. The official rhetoric of the church in the
last several decades has postulated a different set of assumptions based on the
experiences of people other than the ones under scrutiny. The adherence to
these assumptions by the church members in California during the Proposition 8
period, as well as the members of other denominations in many other publicized
events concerning the LGBT community, was an affront to basic human rights and
demonstrated how the fundamental mechanisms of religion can appreciably and
negatively impact the lives of large groups of individuals. My brother, who is
four years older than me, says this was one of the most difficult things he
dealt with when I was serving a mission in San Fernando, California during that
time.
I look up to my brother in many ways
and trust his opinion on most subjects, and I enjoyed the opportunity to get a
more in-depth explanation of his disillusionment of the Church. In this
particular subject I sympathize with one of the central elements of his argument:
hastily-made assumptions may indeed easily lead to undesirable results.
However, as an active member of the church I recognize that there are key
concepts that he hasn’t come to terms with, such as the profound effects of the
Atonement, which would make the actions of the church more reasonable to him. I
also believe he has misunderstood several important points of doctrine in the church.
I asked him afterward if he had read the entire Book of Mormon or the Doctrine
and Covenants, to which he replied that he never had. As the interview was to
be without my input, and in consideration of the touchy nature of the subject,
I did not pursue a lengthy rebuttal afterwards. I did feel in the end, however,
that the experience was uplifting for both of us and perhaps a subtle step in
the path to regaining his testimony.
