It used to strike me as odd that what is gospel thinking to one person may be abhorrent to another. It's like the issue of abortion. Each side feels so strongly about its position that they mislabel the other side by calling them "pro-abortion," or "anti-choice." The more aggressive picket, they denounce, they even murder on occasion.

Religious pathways can be like this too. I met an Evangelical once who asked me point blank if I had been saved. When I equivocated on the very nature of the question, he told me, "You haven't been saved. If you were to die right now you would be damned to hell."

"Uhm, what do you mean by hell? Like roasting in a fiery pit of coals...forever?"

"Exactly what I said," he responded with the righteous surety of someone who knows that he is right. "I won't soft-peddle the truth. Hell is a lake of fire and brimstone. Screams and torments as your flesh is burned from your body. Again and again and again. Think of the most horrible pain imaginable. It's worse than that. Forever."

I marvel that anyone can believe in--can worship, even--a God who would be so cruel and arbitrary as to punish someone with unimaginable torment simply for believing the wrong things about His nature. I marveled also that someone could be so certain of his way of thinking as to deny any validity to any other way of thinking. And this is the heart of the matter.

As a less hostile, but still rigid example, I have been frustrated by the reactions of friends and family to my perceived apostasy. Now, Mormons don't believe in hellfire, per se, but they do believe that turning away from the true path--the only true path--is a tragic, horrific thing. There can be only one way back to God, and there is little doubt in many of their minds that if Mormonism--specifically, the Brighamite branch of Mormonism known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints--is not true, then absolutely nothing is true. Because Mormons are steeped in the belief that no other church could be true. Others may have a little bit of the light, but this is only light reflected from the True, Restored Gospel. Borrowed light. If the light of the church is turned out, then everything else will fade away as well.

And that is the belief of tolerant Mormons. The less tolerant theology comes from Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon. It holds that there are only three kinds of people in the world: there are the people holding to the Iron Rod on their way to the Tree of Life, there are the people who have let go of the Iron Rod and are wandering in mists of darkness, and there are the people in the Great and Spacious Building (the disbelievers and members of other religions) who mock at the people holding to the Rod to get them to let go and be lost in the mists. That there might be other paths to the tree, even other trees, is a possibility outside the realm of LDS theology.

While I reject the belief of one path through the mist, I do think the analogy of pathways is a good one, if turned slightly on its side. They represent methods ways of thinking. Some are well groomed and we walk them often. Others are overgrown, and it takes effort to clear away the weeds and debris, but they do not yet feel so dangerous that we avoid them entirely. There are other thoughts, however, that have become so enmeshed with thorns that they are nearly impassable. They are almost invisible. We do not allow ourselves down these paths, and even forget sometimes that they are there. We might ignore suggestions that we entertain these thoughts, or even become angry when others do so. These paths are dangerous. They may even be deadly to certain other thoughts with which we are more comfortable.

My job is to bring these alternate paths to the attention of our friends and family. I don't want to force them to walk the same paths I do, only to make them aware that these paths are a safe, healthy route for others to travel.