I recall sitting in church on the lap of my Grandpa Sabey. I cannot recall the time of year, but it was presumably cold outside that morning, because I recall how warm and comfortable I felt in the chapel, despite wearing a tie. Grandpa whispered “sweet nothings” in my ear during sacrament meeting–his own phrase, not mine, though “sweet nothings” is an apt descriptor, because the particular words are nothing while the sweetness of kind attention is all. Except that the particular words did matter in my case, because it was the whispered “s” sound that made a delicious tickling in my ear, and that was my secret reason for asking for more sweet nothings. I enjoyed singing the familiar songs and seeing the familiar faces. I don’t remember anything particular from that meeting beyond these details–but I do remember being touched by particular teachings and songs and testimonies in other meetings, even as a very young child.

Some of the stories I then found moving I now find problematic. For example, the heartbreaking parable of the older boy who takes the younger boy’s whipping for him after the younger boy steals the older boy’s dinner. As flash fiction, it is effective, and it nicely captures the competing demands of law and order on the one hand and pity for hungry bread thieves on the other. As an analogy for the Atonement, however, it is, I now believe, extremely dubious.

But overall, my initiation into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was sound in every way–a happy embrace by the tradition of my ancestors since the mid-nineteenth century, conveying God’s hope-giving truth and his loving expectations.

Touching stories and music and grandpas who whisper sweet nothings in the warmth of the meeting place is, of course, far from unique to my religious tradition. Perhaps every religious tradition is capable of providing legitimate spiritual experiences as well as aesthetic and social enjoyment. This presents a double problem—how to distinguish legitimate encounters with God/Truth within one’s religion from mere aesthetic or social enjoyment, and how to justify, beyond family loyalty or mere familiarity, a belief in the truth of one’s religion relative to other religions. This essay does not purport to have any definitive answers. It simply presents some of my own personal struggles and resolutions and reasons for belief. Continue reading →