When my shelf began to crack

Faith is often compared to a shelf. When things come along that don't fit with our view
of the universe, we put those items in a box and put it up on the shelf of faith in our brains
to become dusty and forgotten. Eventually, however, too many boxes can accumulate on
the shelf and the weight will send the faith crashing to the ground. This is a faith crisis.

My faith shelf began to crack because of a complete coincidence. I had been listening to a
lecture series from a Yale Professor about the American Revolution at the same time as I
was trying to complete the Book of Mormon challenge issued by President Nelson. One day,
Prof. Freeman was discussing the first great awakening and described one of the camp meetings.
 I was struck by the many similarities between the camp meetings and what we read about
King Benjamin’s great speech. In both instances, people gathered from the neighboring areas
to listen to a religious leader speak. Both brought tents which they pitched towards a structure
from which the speaker preached. Prof. Freeman quoted the famous preacher Jonathan Edwards.
He said, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some
loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. And now you have
an extraordinary opportunity," a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open."
I thought, “Wow, that is completely something King Benjamin might have said.” She also
spoke about the strong emotional responses of people who were “born again” in Christ,
how they fainted and wept, not unlike those in the Book of Mormon.

These similarities were so powerful that I decided to turn to trusty Google to see if others had seen
them as well. Of course, many people had noticed this blaring connection and presented countless
others. This led me on a journey to discover all of the potential environmental factors that could
have potentially influenced the Book of Mormon. It was positively alarming how many there were.
We are taught in the church that the Book of Mormon was created in a vacuum of sorts. It was
written by an uneducated hick in the lonely frontier in 90 short days, right? Mormons never
consider the cultural movements and events that were occuring right in Joseph’s vicinity during
the exact time that he lived. What I eventually concluded was that either the Book of Mormon is
coincidentally connected with an absolutely ridiculous amount similarities to local ideas and events,
or Joseph Smith was a fraud. It was when I began researching masonry, a massive influence on
Mormonism, that I realized I couldn’t rationalize Joseph’s actions any more. I felt like Dorothy in
the Wizard of Oz when she pulls back the curtain and realizes that the magical illusion is nothing
more than an average man running a machine. Once you see behind that curtain, the magic is gone,
no matter how much you want it to be true.