Alanis Morissette and the Reasons We Stay
We all have our reasons for staying in the Church (or not). Alanis helped me understand that.
Alanis Morissette’s album “Jagged Little Pill,” from 1995, is a masterpiece. Its biggest single was the musically unremarkable, linguistically disputed “Ironic”; more memorable was the atomic-bomb-meets-pop-song “You Oughta Know,” the radio version of which set the standard by which all future bleeped-out F-bombs would be measured.
But sneakily, the best song on the album isn’t any of its six radio singles. Instead, the album’s best track is “Forgiven,” now the 10th-most popular song (out of 14) on the album. The song has everything: a terrifically angry vocal performance, attacks on the patriarchy, ambiguous sexual references, and criticism of both organized religion and faith itself. It’s a shame that it was never released as a radio single, but it’s possible that its overt statements about religion were too much for the masses.
To be clear, I don’t know what this song is actually about, and wouldn’t have hope of finding out anyway—I don’t know Alanis well enough to ask. But I can tell you what I get out of it. Consider it pop music eisegesis.
The verses have some pointed things to say about growing up in a religious guilt culture, unfair gender dynamics, etc. But it’s the chorus that jumps out to me—not just because of its mid-90’s alt-rock sensibilities, but because there’s something relatable in the lyrics:
We all had our reasons to be there
We all had a thing or two to learn
We all needed something to cling to
So we did
We all have our reasons for being here, in the Church (or out of it, as the case may be).
We tend to assume that there’s a single route for joining the Church: First you read the Book of Mormon, then you follow Moroni’s promise, then you get a confirmation that the Book of Mormon is true, and then you join the Church. I’m certain that some people join the Church through these steps, because I saw it on my mission. But there were also people that I taught and baptized that didn’t have any sort of remarkable experience with Moroni’s promise, and for whom reading the Book of Mormon was not a priority.
We also tend to assume—because we’re taught so in Primary—that staying in the Church follows a similar logic: If you know the Book of Mormon is true, then you know Joseph Smith was a prophet, which means Russell M. Nelson is a prophet and this is the Lord’s Church. I’m sure this is true for some people, but the experience is far from universal. For many people who live on the edges and fringes of the Church, this is a line of logic that skips too many steps to be useful.
The reasons I am active in the Church today are different than they were 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and even a few years ago. I relate to some thoughts from Susan M. Hinckley, in a recent episode of the fantastic At Last She Said It podcast:
One of the most freeing things to happen in my personal faith life, and one of the most empowering things in terms of helping me stay, was the realization that I actually have a choice—because I had spent a whole lot of my life not realizing that I could actually say no. And without no, there is no yes.
I’ve had a testimony of the gospel for as long as I can remember, but it was always accompanied by a default state of attending church and being a Good Latter-day Saint. I had the same experience as Susan—although I’ve never articulated it quite so eloquently—in that discovering I could say no made it all the more powerful when I said yes.
She goes on:
I think that happens in part because many of us who have been lifelong members never actually said yes. I mean, as an eight-year-old, you “made the choice” to be baptized. But really, how much choice is an eight-year-old really making? So when you never really said yes, and you certainly don't believe that you would have the option to say no, and so without no, there is no yes. And now when I say yes to church engagement, it's because I want to say yes. And that is an entirely different thing from just doing it and going along because that's what good LDS women do. I'm going to be honest and say that's the space I was in most of my life.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with attending Church as a default setting; in fact, I sometimes wish I could go back to that. But having to choose—getting to choose—to attend each Sunday and be a part of this Church because I want to is like entering a new stage of testimony. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is chosen, eyes wide open.
This is similar to Richard Rohr’s concept of the two halves of life. The innocent, never-questioning “first half of life” testimony is replaced by something with depth we simply couldn’t picture before:
Moving to the second half of life is an experience of falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness and we are consciously connected to the whole.
For some people, this experience is described as a “faith crisis,” while some describe it more as a faith “advancement” or “evolution.” While I wouldn’t flatter myself to say that I have experienced everything described in the quote above, I can say that my faith has advanced; I can certainly say that it has evolved.
That has been challenging, but rewarding. As Richard Rohr also says, “Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”
Ultimately, we all have our reasons to be here. Yours are probably different than mine, and when you look around on Sunday they’re probably different than the people in the next pew over. Whatever your reasons are, they’re valid, and they’re yours. They might change, and they probably should. But they’re still yours.
As Alanis said, we all have a thing or two to learn. And sometimes, we just need something to cling to.