I feel as though in the last 48 hours, my old faith has been resurrected from the dead... albeit, in a new form, and made of a different, purer substance than before.
The Mormonism that was left in my system has fermented over the last few years, and now it is bursting forth in a transformed way.
Am I a Mormon? I was asked that today. I answered that Mormonism is no longer a religion to me. It is a philosophical system. Today, there are those called Mormons, who are members of the Church headquartered in Salt Lake, but those are roughly divided into three types of people.
The 99... These are just Protestant Christians, with minor adjustments.
The 1... These are Mormons in the historic sense. They understand what Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were teaching. They have faith in it or struggle in an endeavor to have faith in it. They try sincerely to make it work as a system of theology. But, they are naive.
Me... I understand what Joseph and Brigham were teaching and I embrace their philosophy, but I also understand what they were doing - or seek to do so. The grand scheme... Man on his journey through the eternities, worlds having come and gone before, gods and goddesses, exaltation after exaltation, becoming a Holy Ghost, becoming a Savior, becoming a God/Adam and populating your own world... This is all beautiful but it is not a literal theology, it is beautiful science fiction with deep lessons to it. Perhaps it is illustrative of all theologies. I do not believe it in the literal sense. But I prescribe to it now... I embrace it for the beautiful thing it is. I want to find more beauty, and to create more beauty.
My new motto, I jestingly toast, "to wives and wisdom!"
There are very few True Mormons in the world. True Mormons do not believe. They don't need to. They know. They know that it isn't literal. They know that the Church isn't True. Not the current Church in any remote sense, for they've thrown away the seeds of the philosophy and clung onto a modified mythology which they attempt to embrace as though it is a faith system like others.
Mormonism teaches us that we are Gods and Goddesses. We get to be creators, but that doesn't mean populating a new world in the literal sense. It means we are creators of universes worth of ideas and accomplishments, it means that we can make eternal changes in the course of the future, and that we can attain exaltation of eternal lives in thought and in deed.
Let us return and report our labors of the sixty-two thousand six hundred and fifty fourth day.
