Those of you who know me know that I stopped attending, and professing belief in, the Mormon Church two years ago. Those of you who don’t know me so well are invited to search up the “Church for Atheists” thread I posted last year for a slightly condensed account of my departure from Mormonism, and the reasons behind it.
At any rate, until a few months ago, my leaving the faith of my upbringing was largely an internal exercise: partly mental; partly emotional; partly, for lack of a better word, spiritual; but almost entirely personal in its origin and its repurcussions. Until this year, that is. This is the year my oldest son, Michael, will turn eight - soon, in fact; June 11 - and be eligible for baptism into the Church. As such, his Sunday School class this year focuses heavily on preparation for baptism, the reasons for it, and the covenant it is supposed to entail. For the average LDS child, raised in the Church, baptism is a time for celebration. For Mike, it’s his first encounter with the hard reality that his dad is not a part of the church he attends. For me, it’s the first time I’ve had to confront the fact that my decision to leave the Church has effects outside of myself.
In the past two years, I’ve been extremely careful not to undermine or contradict what my ex-wife is doing in taking the kids to Church. Now, however, the time has come when even my four year old asks why I don’t go to Church. Michael is distressed; he knows that boys are supposed to be baptized by their dads, and he senses that that is not going to be the case for him. It hurts my heart to see how much it upsets him. Two Sundays ago he cried because I wasn’t going to Church with him. I know very well how badly eight year old boys want to not be different from their friends, and I know that being baptized by the bishop or some other man from church will make him different in a painfully obvious way. I want to spare him this pain so badly that I considered, for a time, doing whatever was necessary to be able to baptize him myself.
I realized that would have been the cowardly course of action, merely postponing a reckoning that will have to come sooner or later. If not now, when would it take place? When Michael was about to turn twelve, and receive the priesthood? When one of the other kids was about to be baptized? No, I owe it to myself to stand by my conscience, even now that it hurts. More than that, I owe it to Michael. My son deserves to know how I feel and think. I look back on my own upbringing, on how I never had that flash of inspiration, that burning in the bosom, that is supposed to signify the truth of Mormon belief. I wanted so, so badly to believe, and when I couldn’t force myself to believe, I turned the blame back on myself over and over. For so much of my childhood, and especially my adolescence, I lived under the weight of knowing that I’d never be good enough. That my lack of faith was because I wasn’t living worthily to receive a witness from God, wasn’t praying hard enough, or wasn’t listening to the Holy Ghost. Until I was 15, I honestly believed that everyone else at church was feeling something that I wasn’t party to, because I was somehow unworthy of it or insensitive to it. I played along because I was terrified other people would realize it, realize that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t one of the good ones.
How badly, now, do I wish that someone had taken me by both shoulders and told me that it was all right not to believe. It would have to have been someone very close to me; even my best friends, who were non-Mormon and seemingly happy, didn’t register with me. I think it would have to have been one of my parents. Knowing now that my mom never really believed in Mormonism either, but went along for 25 years because of deference to my dad, I’m overcome by sympathy and compassion for her, but even more overcome with bitterness. How could she not have told me? What difference might it have made for me to know that I could be a good person, a worthwhile person, without pretending to feel what everyone else felt? I wish Mom had had the courage to put her Buddhist beliefs out there for her children to learn about and experience. I wish Dad had had the confidence in his own beliefs to allow her to do so. Maybe I would have embraced them. Maybe I would have rejected them - I do now, in large part. But I would have known without a doubt that two good people, who loved each other and loved me, could believe different things about God. That knowledge is what I owe my own children, and it starts with Michael, this month.
In Mormon belief, eight is the “age of accountability,” when a child can finally determine right and wrong using his or her own conscience and inspiration. I’ll pick up that gauntlet. I plan to take Michael aside, away from his mother and brother and sisters. Without tearing down his mother’s religion, but without mincing words either, I plan to tell him why I won’t be baptizing him. I intend that he come away with a full understanding of what is happening and why, but more importantly, I will make certain he knows that I love him no matter what he chooses to believe or do in life.
sigh
Wish me luck? 
) since I was the 4th child born with in 3 1/2 years. My older brother was baptised first, and started fasting on the first Sunday each month, as well as all the other rituals which go along. I still remember what time it was when I was baptised.