Rusty's Reviews > The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary

Hoo boy – every once in a while you read a book that sort of stabs you in the heart. I won’t belabor this point – that is exactly what this book did for me. It stabbed me right in the chest. Blood is everywhere and it’s because of those damned pointy corners.

Wait, I think I took my metaphor and made it literal there. There was no blood, it only made my heart hurt because of the emotions I felt, not through a physical confrontation with the bound paper it was printed on.

If I take a step back and try to look at it objectively, I’m not sure if it will have the same impact on a reader who was not ardently devoted to a faith, then later decided later that apostasy was preferable. Personally, that is my story, so this book, while specifically about a devout Mormon becoming an international terrorist (accidentally), for me, it’s an insight into myself in late teens.

And, yes, in a different set of circumstances this might have been me. We clearly had the same thought process about what we believed, even if his faith (Mormon!) and mine (Pentacostal!) we’re far enough removed from one another that had we met at the time when we were both teenagers, I’d have been tearfully explaining to Elder Shunn how he’s going to burn in hell forever with the impeccable logic only a true believer has (in college, I remember I took a world-religions class, and each section in my Christian Liberal Arts college class would examine a particular faith, look at the tenets of that faith, its practices, and why their adherents are going to hell – Momons were chapter #1).

I must point out that the author goes to great pains to not comment on the veracity of the claims of the Mormon church. I’m sure it was hard to do. I for one, have a great fondness for the faith myself, as it was a group of Elders on their two-year mission that came knocking on my door one day, and we talked for what seemed like hours, they came back a week later (having given me time to read the Book of Mormon in full) to discuss in detail. I can’t for the life of me remember their names, there were two, then later, a third person that I spoke with the most. I got to hear their tales of searching for a true religion (with no trace of irony, they noted they were all raised Mormon, considered leaving, and decided after some real soul-searching that they’d been lucky enough to be born and raised in the one true faith) and they talked to me about mine.

In the end, the reason I loved them so much, was that I could sit down the Book of Mormon, and see the flaws there. I could see the contradictions, both with itself and established scripture (i.e., the Bible) and the mental contortions they were forced to get themselves into in order to harmonize their faith both with the world we clearly live in, and the spiritual one they thought surrounded us. I found it laughable.

The faith of my missionaries, by the way, was unshakable, at least in front of me. No argument, no matter how ironclad, that I presented worked on them. I mean, I all but had a signed writ from God himself saying that Mormons were wrong, but each argument I would present was dismissed with a wave of the hand and a line or two of scripture. They talked about the history of the Americas before Europeans settled here that included no people, but Oxen (those are domesticated animals), horses (brought from Europe later), Elephants (seriously?) and all sorts of other things that history tells me never happened. Turns out, everything I thought I knew was wrong.

As I, and they, grew more frustrated with one another, one of them eventually turned to me and said, “You know, your bible has just as many problems as the Book of Mormon does, I don’t see you holding that up to the same standards.”

And then, just like in a movie, about a thousand gears clicked into place, a giant veil fell from my eyes, and I saw it: He was right. I did the same thing. I did the EXACT same thing. Sure, my faith had been around longer, the details were different, but the justifications I had for my belief were the same. I realized, maybe for the first time in my life… I was full of shit*.

Literally, at that moment, in a way that is impossible to explain to anyone that hasn’t experienced something similar, I knew that I didn’t believe it. Not any of it. Something I’d dedicated 10 years of my life to, and I mean devotedly, unquestioningly, fervently… it was all gone in a puff of smoke.

For probably 6 of those 10 years I’d had some nagging doubts, but those were the sort that were buried deeply and only came out once or twice. But for the previous 6 months or so I’d say I was in full-on crisis mode when it came to salvaging my faith. I’d finally decided to really look into all these particular issues that were bugging me and work my way through them – my personal journey wasn’t going very well. But the first appearance of the Mormons appeared to be a Godsend, because it let me focus on all their problems and not be bothered with my own. But man, when my Mormon issues and my personal crisis of faith issues met, it was ugly. It was over.

I’ve spend the last, um, fifteen years or so trying to reconstruct who I was back then and how I saw the world. This book, it brought back a lot of memories for me, similar instances of bonding with peers, hanging out with like-minding people and sharing a sense of community that doesn’t really have a parallel in the real world that I’ve seen otherwise. At least not when it’s at its best.

I may have gotten myself off-track. All that is just a long preamble to be saying that I am clearly the target audience for this work. Even if it’s not obvious. I think its appeal is universal enough that anyone could read, and almost everyone who did would be moved. The Accidental Terrorist is well written, well paced, and has enough context provided that someone completely unfamiliar with Mormonism would come away feeling like they got enough detail to feel educated about it and its early history. Well, at least a little.

I’m sad that the book is over. I wish there was a part-two to this. But I guess this is the whole story. Well done. Can’t recommend this highly enough.

*I have to say that I’m not entirely comfortable with all that I’m probably implying about religion in general, so I’ll simply qualify what I’ve said above with, “no offense intended.” Many people many times smarter than I believe wholeheartedly in whatever faith you care to mention. There very well may be great reasons for belief, I’m only saying that the reasons I believed turned out to be based on a pretty flimsy foundations.