There is a new Netflix documentary called…well, I don’t know what it’s called. Give me a second. It’s called Murder Among the Mormons and it’s about old, cool, found documents, LDS church history, pipe bombs and ultimately deception.

While it all occurred during my life, I didn’t remember any of it and it played like drama and twisted and surprised me at every revelation. I loved every minute of it, though that’s pretty awful to say that about any murder anywhere. What does that say about me? I mean I loved the series. Is that better? Maybe only a little, but I really don’t want to talk about the questionable ethics of death as entertainment.

What I do want to talk about (there may or may not be spoilers here) is how lies and secrecy wreck everything. The LDS church followed a practice of suppressing any information that might contradict the gold plates of church history and doctrine, which brought to mind the words of the wise turtle Oogway (in King Fu Panda), “One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.” By trying so hard to squash inconvenient truth (whether it is actually truth or not) to protect a faith system so fragile, the result is the exact opposite. If the foundations of our lives can be destroyed by a letter about a magical white salamander, then maybe the foundation deserves to be ground into dust and reconsidered.

Religious systems are an interesting creation. We erect walls and then fight and kill over their position, protecting our power and status and mountains of money. What starts as an beautiful expression of love and worship towards God morphs into a massive altar to our own abilities and desires. No wonder we all run from the whole sordid mess, throw the baby out with the bathwater, and struggle to build new walls of purpose and meaning without faith. Religion isn’t Yahweh, the LDS isn’t Jesus, and we are not and have never been gods. Once we can figure that out, we can loosen our grip on our doctrines and trust the Truth of God to be bigger and more resilient than some guy in a hidden room inventing pretend letters, diaries and origins. In other words, trust God to be God, even without our arrogant ‘protection.’