Friday, April 13, 2007

I'm going back to church

I have this strange urge to call up the bishop of the ward I used to attend. I would like to see if he could use his "mantle of authority" and any other 'spiritual discernment' in order to explain church doctrine and history to me so that it makes sense. I attempted this 4 years ago, with a different bishop (whose day job was Assistant Librarian at a local college). He lost all credibility when his only words of advice were: read, study and pray....be humble....submit to the will of your husband....suffer the trials you are given, etc. At the time, my children and I were living in an abandoned farmhouse with no furnace, just a wood stove for heat, and one of the foundation walls completely torn out, plus numerous problems with inadequate water supply and faulty electrical wiring. My "priesthood holding" husband was slowly tearing the place down all around us, and not repairing or replacing anything he tore out. I was loosing patience and about to leave him, when my bishop intervened, and told me that I needed to be a supportive spouse and let him direct our family through his "priesthood". I got this same answer over and over: READ, STUDY THE SCRIPTURES, PRAY DAILY, BE HUMBLE, HONOR THE PRIESTHOOD, and everything would work out. So, apparently, because the problem didn't get resolved, it was because I wasn't doing these things to the best of my ability.

Now, four years later, divorced and moved away, (into a house that isn't 13 miles from a gallon of milk), I have been wondering if the current bishop's advice would be the same, or if he had any sort of enlightenment or "priesthood power" that he could invoke and use to reason out the many doctrinal inconsistancies and conflicting historical accounts that abound outside of Mormonism. I am interested to know what a business professional person acting as a counselor to 200+ souls in his geographical vicinity would say to me as a former believer, and how he could convince me that I have made a mistake and need to come back to the fold.

I have often pondered this question, not because I believe that leaving was the wrong decision, but because some of my family believes it was the wrong decision. I don't know why anyone would continue to insist that I could come back if I so chose to do so, even knowing what I know now, and having been outside of it for 4 years. How do you unsqueeze a tube of toothpaste? Is there any way for me to take all of the information I have gathered and learned, and completely do away with it in order to conform to the Mormon way of life and be accepted back into the fellowship of the ward? Could I become acceptable to my family again if I were to somehow renounce all of my "evil ways" and submit to the authority of the restored church?

I think that would be a very interesting conversation....

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