I’ve finally figured it out.

I know what I want to be when I grow up.

Sure, I’m 27 years old, but considering how long we live and how long it takes to get into a career, that’s more like a medieval 17.

Or maybe I’m just telling myself that to feel better about how far behind I am from where 21 year-old Anthony expected to be when he was 27.

Anyway. I have finally discovered for myself what I want to be when I grow up.

I want to be a kind, wise, old man.

I know it may seem silly. “You can’t really make money doing that.” I know. That’s not the point. I think we spend too much time on deciding what we want to do for a living, rather than pursuing what sort of attributes we wish to acquire as humans.

I have a draft of a post I was going to publish, but never got around to doing it. I didn’t feel right about it. I can’t even remember why. But maybe it wasn’t the kindest and wisest thing I could have posted.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that my heart has been emotionally sick. Yes, yuck, what a cheesy, Hallmark, dogmatic line–I can’t think of a better way to say it. I have been lost without my religion. But I can’t bring myself to coming back. I have been depressed without my old community. It gave me purpose, and I always felt God could use me for talking to other people.

But I don’t feel I can go back to being a full member of the LDS (or Mormon) church. Now that the veil of “giving the church the benefit of the doubt” has been lifted, I feel like they are trying to fit in with mainstream Christianity. But I wanted to be different and weird. I was proud of our strange beliefs and rituals, even if they were difficult to defend. But everything is being changed. The church seems to be going through an overhaul to be politically correct, as if to justify their existence. I don’t feel like that’s true religion. If they claim they are the original church restored in modern times, then why so much change? If God gave mankind the LDS church, and it was really ahead of its time, wouldn’t the church already had a policy for handling the children of gay couples? Should polygamy have continued to the present day? I feel the church is simply adjusting itself to become popular, instead of persuading others to believe in what’s right or wrong. I mean, if they’re right, they’re right, so why change?I feel that they’re too afraid of their own doctrine to wave their freak flag high enough in hopes of finding like-minded individuals. Yeah, they have their media campaigns, but they are very, VERY glossy in comparison to what is taught.

The “true blue Mormon” (i.e. “TBM”) justification for this is usually, “The church [or the world] wasn’t [or isn’t] ready for [this or that] yet.”

But, are humans ever really ready for new doctrine or truth?

If Jesus Christ was a legitimate historical figure, look at what the Roman Empire/Sanhedrin did. They crucified him because they weren’t ready for what he had to say. Did he stutter? Did he change his words to make people more comfortable? I don’t personally believe so, but maybe. I dunno. I wasn’t there, and I don’t trust any of the historical records that survived from his time.

This leads me to feel that I’ve been lied to, and this another one of the main reasons I left the LDS church. I also left because I felt that sexual expression with those you love is important, and also that the reason there is so much mental illness in the church is due to the doctrine of “men exist to have joy”, but yet, what do you do with sadness? Is sadness sin or transgression? I don’t think so. I think we exist to learn what existence means, and that means feeling both joy and sadness.

In the end, I left the church, and that’s that. I don’t need to go on any further. The point is that I feel like all religions are businesses, corrupt, or cannot be truly innocent. But I need a community to serve, and religions can be such wonderful places for this.

Anybody out there got any ideas? I want to practice being a kind and wise man, but I don’t feel like I belong in a religious community.

I’m craving a church without the dogma.

I want to believe in God. I want to believe in a system. But what if the true path to godliness is no path or system at all? I’ve found it much harder to make my own way through the world of the metaphysical than to simply rely on someone else to tell me how the metaphysical world is. And moreover, I find that service opportunities are fewer and farther in between when you don’t have your old community. I could get involved in the local LDS church, but I could not sincerely participate in their worship. And the same applies to every other church that exists for that matter. Most people seem to want to worship God, I just want to talk to him/her/them/it and serve my fellow man (which, in some interpretations of scripture, is equal to serving God).

Random note: I think I’m just going to abbreviate that until I know what God is–HHTI (Him/Her/Their/Its) or HSTI (He/She/They/IT).

Does God even want to be worshiped? I don’t think so. Every time I think about it, it leads me to believe that God would be egotistical if that were true. If I were God, I would want my creations to grow, like a gardener to plants. If a flower is poisonous, I want it to produce its poison; if another is sweet, I would hope to find its nectar sweet. If a fruit is supposed to make you shit, then I hope it serves its purpose when I’m stopped up…but the point is I wouldn’t be upset if they never spoke to me about how great I am. I would actually feel uncomfortable with the lip service and tell them to show their appreciation by learning all they can about life and serving in their ecosystem.

The point is, I don’t believe in the God that people seem to want to worship, but I don’t feel comfortable joining any group or organization–or even organizing my own, for that matter–that would enable me to meet with like-minded individuals without it getting weird and dogmatic. Every organization that grows turns into a sort of religion; businesses included (maybe even especially so). Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates–these men have ascended to economic godhood.

I want to get to know my neighbors, and find new ways to serve them. I want to be the guy people can turn to when they are in trouble or need a shoulder to cry on. Kinda like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables.

Maybe I’m egotistical myself for wanting to be everyone’s savior. I dunno. All I know is that I don’t want to die and rest until I know I can go down with a clear conscious.

The only way I can do that, is by being a good man today, and forever after. I can’t change my past, and I don’t want to. That’s another reason I question the logic of some Christians when they say things like “Jesus got me, so I’m good.” I always want to rebuke them: No! You’re not good! If you leave your guilty conscious to someone else, that’s bad! You should let your guilty conscious drive you to make amends where possible! You should make it right, not let some arbitrary dude with a beard in the sky take care of your regret and emotional baggage. You can do it, and you can do it with a God you can discover on your own.

Sorry, got a little soap-boxy there. When I get “soul sick” like this, I want to talk, but I’m never sure what about until I start typing. And I guess that was it. I need to serve, in order to satisfy a human need to love others, but I don’t know whom I should serve. I’d love to hear your comments or ideas.