I will call this writing just musings on my spiritual life. My mother was very religious and I was raised as a Mormon in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS. At about eight I was baptized and eventually became an elder in the LDS church. Church attendance was regular until going into the Navy at age nineteen. Part of the reason I continued attending was that was a great place to mingle with girls. The LDS creed was based on the Book of Mormon that they believe was revealed to Joseph Smith by the Angel Moroni. The Bible was used but it had secondary billing, and we were told to “believe in the Bible as long it had been translated correctly”. This told us not to trust the Bible completely. Today I believe they have changed this creed for the better. Back then I did read the Bible and accepted it.
My father may have never entered a church, but he was a fine man. I look upon him as even more noble than my mother although she was a saint and a wonderful mother. Her first husband died of cancer and left her to raise three kids. She worked in a boarding house in San Francisco until she met my dad. He married her and took responsibility in helping to raise the kids. At the time they were married he was well off financially as owner of a successful automobile agency. This changed when some woman hit the car he was towing, was injured and sued, taking all of his money.
With little recourse they moved to eastern Idaho and lived with mother’s relatives until they could get a home of their own. I was born in this big barn-like shack. They told me that it got 54 below zero the first winter. My half-sister and her husband took turns staying up at night to keep the fires going in the wood stove and the kitchen range. The house was not insulated I was told so the cold came right through the walls. They said they had to stuff paper in the cracks. I visited this house a few years ago and it was still standing on a hill in a field. Eventually we moved to Boise and mother became active in the LDS church there, and got me to attend.
In the Navy I attended church sporadically with civilian friends in the community where I was stationed. The most important church I ever entered was at our marriage ceremony in Tacoma. I don’t remember how often we attended services while in Seattle, but when our kids were old enough, we took them and became regulars. This continued when we moved to Vancouver, B. C. There we joined the United Church of Canada, an amalgamation for economic reasons of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalists churches. Our whole family attended most Sundays except when we were taking vacation time away. I became part of the church board and was very active in other ways. The church was great for us as we were able to meet people and many church goers became good friends.
A few months before we moved to Toronto, the church board decided that they had had enough of the pastor. The attendance was decreasing each Sunday and many people viewed him as an evil man, not at all someone they could lean on, or even want to be associated with. We looked into the procedure of removing him and were told it would be difficult if not impossible under church rules. However, we found a way after a few months and installed a fine man who began quickly to rebuild attendance and create real interest once more. Unfortunately we were not there long enough to enjoy his tenure. This episode soured me on the worth of man’s institutions if a bad person could gain such a position. I realize now that I overreacted and should have seen the overall good, but for reasons hard to explain I didn’t.
We joined a church in Mississauga, the town lying west of Toronto where we had our home. We also met some fine people there and the kids attended as well. However I was traveling a great deal trying to build the business of Reichhold Canada. Being away many week days led me to feel that I would like to spend weekend time on recreation with the family. Thus we slowly drifted away from church attendance. In fact there was a period of a few years when I wondered if anything in the Bible was factual. There seemed to be too much scientific evidence that the story of creation was a fable. The facts of evolution seemed to dispute the Bible and indicate that man evolved from the sea. Today I don’t believe it is necessary for a religious person to disregard evolution, also called biological changes with time, because it is happening and there is a tremendous amount of scientific facts to support it. However it also follows that we don’t have to assume that man evolved from sea creatures. We can believe that he was created by a divine spirit.
Also we don’t have to take literally that the earth was created in six days, since a biblical day could have been a million years or more and not twenty-four hours. It is of course possible that God did the Creation in seven earth days. If we try to accept every word of the Bible as literal in our own interpretation, then we could have problems. In some churches I understand that if you do not accept every word then you are an outcast or an atheist.
Another thing that soured me somewhat on religion, not belief in God or Jesus, but in the institution, was observing how it has created so much strife in the world all through recorded history. In Europe, China, the Middle East, and even among North American natives such as the Aztecs. Clerics and high priests wielded power over the people and created the concept of human sacrifice to appease what we know were false gods. Today there are something like 130 wars going on all the time and many because of differing beliefs about religion. Each proponent is convinced that their beliefs embrace the only truths and that anyone who differs is wrong and immoral and should be punished.
Another discovery made me wonder if the planet earth is really unique. With modern telescopes scientists have said that there are over four billion stars or suns in our solar system, and that there are at least this many more solar systems out in space. Logically it could lead a thinking person to the conclusion that by the laws of chance there must be millions of other planets in a similar proximity to their sun as our earth. Then one wonders if at least some of these aren’t inhabited with beings like our earth. Among some religions, at least in Puritan times, such thinking would be called blasphemy. I think about all of these things and wonder, but it does not now affect my beliefs. Anyway there is no way the idea will be proved at least on earth, so one might as well conclude that God created and then chose this planet and it only. Whether this is right or not doesn’t matter to me as I know that God is with us on this planet.
I came back from the time that I was uncertain that there was even a god, to accept that there is. In my life, there was just too much evidence that I was helped and guided by a divine spirit, which I attributed to prayers of my mother and others, to refute God. Therefore I have said prayers almost every night for at least the last twenty-five years. Having said this, I am sorry to admit that I was unsure of Jesus’ place in all of this. My early learning was that He was the Lord, but when I drifted away from the belief in God, of course I also stopped believing in Him. It is a sorry position to have taken and I hope I will be forgiven. I now intend to try to do everything that I think He wants me to do.
The above is the saga of my religious life, and I pray that I am now on a course to right all the religious wrongs in my life and to help others to know about Jesus. It will take a mighty effort on my part, but I am working on it every day.