Everyone attends the cafeteria of religion. Each choice of food or drink is a different doctrine or principle in the church. Food items are regularly taken off the menu and repackaged as a new food item. Sometimes the leadership removes a course completely. All the while the membership of the church is encouraged to eat everything present. Eat your fill and don’t forget to take a bite of everything.
I love the example of Cafeteria Mormonism that both believers and nonbelievers use. The obvious conclusion is right there in the concept that I have never heard spoken on. If we liken all belief to food in a cafeteria, how can we reconcile that not everyone has the same taste in food.
Spice, all the spice with every meal. As much heat as I can handle. I keep a bottle of sriracha in my refrigerator and small bottles of different hot sauces. My wife recently bought me a pack of different flavored spicy sauces to use with my meals.
A group of people walking into an all you can eat buffet, will undoubtedly gravitate toward different foods and flavors. Maybe they might share as a group some tastes and interests, but you cannot say that each of them enjoys the same food all the time.
Every member of the church is a Cafeteria Mormon. Without question, everyone picks and chooses the doctrines that resonate with them. Sitting through countless church meetings you’ll hear a wide variety of ideas and opinions on doctrine and philosophy. As a member I used to grumble and shake my head when someone got it “wrong.”
Unpalatable Mormon Food
Here are a few things about the church that even as a believing member I found unpalatable. I want to add a disclaimer that my list will be different than yours and that is OK. My experience in this life is also different than yours. Women and the priesthood never made it onto my periphery as an active believing Mormon. It is only when we listen to others and understand their journey that we can fully comprehend the struggles of other people.
- Evolution
- Biblical historicity
- LBGTQ policies
- Never Felt the Spirit while studying scripture
As a believing member or progressive member, it is impossible to reconcile these issue and maintain faith. I found myself theologically pushed to the fringes. I felt extreme guilt over the fact that I disagreed with the church, but the evidence and my anecdotal experience led me to hold firm in what I felt. This ties directly back into my post about Immanuel Kant and looking at the world through a Mormon lense. We often force everything we see and learn into the paradigm of this lense.
What should we do about this problem? What can members on the full spectrum of belief do about this system of thought that no longer works for them? To understand that, I want to discuss a Buddhist parable.
The Parable of the Raft
Let’s look at a Buddhist parable to understand Cafeteria Mormonism in a new way. We just established that everyone both believer and nonbeliever expresses degrees of autonomy in the integration of the church teachings into their lives. This parable is helpful to anyone on the spectrum of belief. As an added bonus, it helped my mind heal after finding the truth about the church.
The Blessed One said: “Suppose a man were traveling along a path. He would see a great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. The thought would occur to him, ‘Here is this great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. What if I were to gather grass, twigs, branches, & leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with my hands & feet?’ Then the man, having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with his hands & feet. Having crossed over to the further shore, he might think, ‘How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don’t I, having hoisted it on my head or carrying it on my back, go wherever I like?’ What do you think, monks: Would the man, in doing that, be doing what should be done with the raft?”
Alagaddupama Sutta: The Water-Snake Simile
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Cafeteria Mormonism and Carrying the Raft
Is there anything wrong with deciding what works and doesn’t work for you? What ideas or concepts live in our minds well after they’ve run out of usefulness. What rafts that helped us for a time are we walking around with?
The way I look at the Mormon church is a raft that carried me and taught me for a time, but I don’t need to carry it with me once I’ve crossed the river into enlightenment. The raft held me back as an adult and stifled my ability to think for myself. It forced me to place ideas within a framework that did not work. Think back to the green lense from the Kant example. As a Mormon I was literally unable to see truth right in front of me because I was conditioned to ignore it.
As an example from my list above, as I studied biology and evolution I discredited anything that did not come from the church, until I sat down with a professor at BYU-I. Listen to the podcast for more details on this. I came away from this conversation a progressive Mormon and did not realize it for eight years.
At first it is hard to look back without resentment and feelings of frustration, but in all honesty, the church is not a bad organization. Sure it needs to change many things, but at its core, the religion wants to do the right thing. As I recognize that, I can see it for the raft that it was that carried me through my youth. Now that I’m finished with it. I can put it down and continue on my path.
Healing After Change
I often wonder what life would have been like if I were never a member of the church. We all have our what if thoughts. It’s part of the human experience, but that line of thought is unhealthy. Put down the raft and continue on your path.
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