Mormon tradition has many renowned theologists and scholars that have impacted the lives of people both in and out of the faith. James E Talmage permanently changed mine in a number of ways with his doctrinal masterpiece, Jesus the Christ. I particularly love his perspective on camels.
Many New Testament stories have Jesus asking people to leave everything behind. A rich young man once asked Jesus what he needed to do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and was told to sell everything, give to the poor, and join the following that Christ had accumulated. But instead of following, he left Jesus, weeping. He was very wealthy, and his worldly possessions were difficult to leave behind. He did not choose to join the followers of Christ, and did not secure his standing in Heaven, at least not then. We do not know if he eventually repented and followed.
Other times Jesus did not ask someone to leave their riches, but their family. We're taught that whoever is not willing to leave mother, father, and spouse to follow Christ cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. At one point Jesus commanded that a man leave his family as they were preparing his dead father's body for funeral services. Following the New Testament Christ was not an easy thing to do. Perhaps even unreasonable.
The great demands placed upon a devout Christian are the reason we must discuss camels.
Camels are a beast of burden. The work horse of the desert. The alpaca of the Middle East. The zero-emission pickup truck. They carry stuff.
Jesus once said it is easier for a camel to pass through the a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In his book, Talmage astutely observed the difficulty of threading camels through even the biggest of needles. This much I was already aware of, but after making that observation he noted, perhaps with more wisdom, that the small doors on either side of the gates in Jerusalem’s city walls were sometimes referred to as the “Eye of the Needle”.
A fully burdened camel approaching Jerusalem would, under normal circumstances, go through the gate. In fact, I somewhat doubt that anyone has been in such abnormal circumstances that they've tried to get a camel through the little side doors which are decidedly not sized for a camel. But when Jesus is talking he gets to say what he wants, why we are pushing camels through doors is not the point.
The point is, getting through the Eye of the Needle and into the Kingdom of Heaven would require the camel to be stripped of his burden completely. The saddle, side bags, and all other encumbrances must go, just as we are required to let go of our wealth, family, home, and other attachments that hold us back from becoming who we were meant to be. Perhaps Jesus' camel was a Buddhist.
I’d been trying to get what I wanted out of life for a decade or so, and felt like I was held back. Years of persistent, diligent effort had produced an impressive company, but I could not expand it, try as I might. Summoning all of my energy and throwing myself against the glass ceiling did not break it, and I was burning out, nearly ready to give up.
In love I had gotten divorced, and while I did find love again I’d been unsuccessful in pursuing it. After admitting to myself that I had deep feelings for Aliza I told her how I felt. I made a point to say I expected nothing from her because I did not want love from someone who didn’t have it for me, but I still made my affection absolutely, unequivocally, explicitly clear.
Later, while texting back and forth, she said she was glad we could remain friends. In response I said I was nearly certain we could write a long and beautiful story together. I told her I’d been hit by a realization and I believed a similar realization would eventually hit her. I wanted her to call me when it did and told her I was prepared to buy a one-way ticket to anywhere in the world so I could be with her, but that I couldn’t place my own life on pause to wait. She didn’t respond.
My exodus from the church had placed a barrier between myself and many of my family and friends. I felt like I had, in large part, lost my community. Even with the people I still opened up to I felt like a stranger among them. The members of my former church were tolerant of my sinful self at best, judgmental at worst. They couldn’t understand the experiences I’d been through.
Those who’d left the church were better company, but still difficult to be around. Many of them were angry at all semblance of religion and lived lives of rampant indulgence. In contrast I considered myself agnostic, but still carried a deep sense of spirituality with me.
People who had never been religious were good company but had no way to relate to my background. The intensity of my upbringing was entirely foreign to them. We could connect on many things, but there was simply a depth we could not go to. I was alone.
I had almost entirely stopped dating. Within moments of meeting a new person I could see they were unaware of self-sabotaging attitudes, attitudes I was tired of having the patience to work with. Very occasionally I would meet someone who was more emotionally mature and we could have a decent conversation, after which we’d acknowledge the lack mutual attraction and go our separate ways.
And God was still dead. I didn’t know what I believed anymore. I was slowly, slowly beginning to reconstruct a moral lens through which to view the would, but I hadn’t found any resolution.
Nihilism never made sense to me until this period of my life. The idea that life is meaningless was just too foreign because I had so much meaning for so long. But by this point I’d come to the conclusion that nobody really fucking knows what in Hell is going on. I started doing things based on how I felt.