Fence Sitting, Religion, & Cognitive Dissonance

Wolverine: Magneto's right: there is a war coming. Are you sure you're on the right side?
Storm: At least I’ve chosen a side.

-X-Men (2000) 

Sometimes the worst thing anyone can be is a fence-sitter, a person who doesn’t pick a side or worse, someone who only wants the benefits of both sides without the messiness of actually committing to one side completely.

One of the reasons I left the church was because there were parts of the religion I couldn’t agree with. These included the idea of a theistic god, the condemnation of homosexuality, and practice of confessing sins to a bishop, among others. Because I couldn’t accept parts of the religion, I couldn’t accept the religion in its entirety, neither could I claim to be a member of that religion. Yes, there are parts of the church I believe in and have incorporated into my own belief system such as brotherly kindness, charity, self-improvement. But in its entirety, the LDS religion is something I cannot accept as a whole. So I don’t. If I were to still claim to be LDS, there would be serious contradictions between things I believe to be personally true and the things that my religion say are true. Living with these contradictions, with cognitive dissonance in general, is something I cannot do no matter how hard I try. (Don’t know what cognitive dissonance is? Yes you do. You just don’t know it yet. Go here)

That’s really the way organized religions work, especially the LDS religion. To be a true member/believe, you must accept all parts of the religion. You don’t get to pick and choose depending on what’s convenient. It’s an all or nothing kind of deal. That’s one difference between the religious and the spiritual. Religious people accept ALL parts of an organized faith. Spiritual people can take parts of different faiths, religions, belief systems, etc. that they find to be true and incorporate them into their lives in order to find happiness and be better people (mind, there are plenty of other differences between religious people and spiritual people, as well as different kinds of spiritual people. This is just one example).

To claim that you’re Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Muslim, or Mormon requires that you believe in every aspect of that religion. If you live your life in a way that is contradictory to your ascribed religion, one of two things is true: you are not active in your religious belief or you have found a way to justify your actions when they are in contradiction to your religion. Either way, you are still not being completely faithful to your religion and, therefore, are somewhat of a liar whenever you claim it as your own.

So what’s to be done? Well, that really depends on the person. I’ve said before that people need to find a way to live their lives that works for them, that brings them happiness. God knows it’s taken me so long to find my own way. Who am I to knock someone else’s way? But this whole idea of claiming to be a devout member of a religion when it’s obvious that your life is in direct contradiction to that religion just baffles me. I don’t see how it can happen, how a person can not go insane from the constant cognitive dissonance they must experience. Maybe they don’t feel that cognitive dissonance. Maybe they’re happy just the way they are, by either ignoring those feelings or finding ways to justify their actions. Just because I couldn’t stand it doesn’t mean someone else could.

I left the church because I couldn’t continue to live with the feeling that what I considered to be “truth” and what my religion said was “truth” were in contradiction. I abandoned all I had been raised with and set out to find my own truth. It’s been one of the most difficult tasks in my life. And I’m still not done. I’ve got a lot more things I’ve got to figure out. And I’m not saying that my decision to leave the church makes me better than the people who choose to stay. Again, I’m a fan of whatever makes people happy & doesn’t hurt others.

I guess I’m slowly learning that when it comes to finding happiness & truth in regards to religious beliefs, things are a lot more complicated than I initially thought.

Love you.
Mean it.