Scrupulosity & the Signs of Mt. Doom

Scrupulosity is characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues. It is personally distressing, objectively dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning. Many people who grow up in fundamentalist branches of religion suffer from this sort of religious or moral OCD.

I had never taken a trip like it before, and I had never been to Idaho. We were headed northwest on I-84 toward Bosie from our home in Fort Collins, Colorado. I think we would have gotten into the car in our purple high school graduation robes if we could have, but we ended up leaving a few days after the ceremony. It was the tail end of day one, and fifteen hours of driving in.

The sun was sinking low and we still had quite a ways to go — about two and a half hours until our destination of Twin Falls. I began constantly checking the digital clock on my dashboard.

“Hm…” I broke a silence, “We don’t wanna set up our tent in the dark.” The thin hum of the interstate beneath us.

“Yeah…” Nick said. He was staring out the window with his feet on the dash, as if he were daydreaming — probably not really listening. I knew he wanted to get there, but there was just not enough time.

“Why don’t we try and find a place close to where we are,” I urged, begging for him to take the hint. “It looks like there might be a place to pull off here — ”

Miles of golden plains stretched out beyond the concrete slabs of the highway, beckoning us to them. And beyond them stood a row of looming mountain peaks, like Mt. Doom of Mordor.

“I think we can just camp wherever,” Nick said, adjusting his wire-frame glasses (the same pair he’d had since fourth grade), as he surveyed the land.

“Ehh, I don’t think so… We can check it out.”

We turned off onto an exit named ‘Snake River’. “I’m guessing there will be camping by the river?” My silver Subaru veered to the right and we started heading what I thought was west.

Nick was on his phone, finally Googling.

Nick was (and still is) one of my oldest friends. We met in Mr. Joyal’s fifth grade class. His mom packed him the same lunch — a PB&J sandwich, a bag of celery, carrots, and cauliflower, pretzels, and Oreos — every single day of his life from kindergarten until he graduated high school. From day one, we were jokesters, making up songs, drawing grotesque caricatures of us and giggling in class. We bloomed a sort of Abbott and Costello relationship. But there were other things about Nick that I didn’t touch. There was a hard shell of humor over him, yes, but I could see the darkness looming under him as clear as I could see the hole in his bedroom wall he so blatantly tried to cover with a Monty Python poster. When I asked him about it, he said he threw a ball too hard at the wall. I knew that was a lie.

We also quietly bonded on the fact that we both grew up going to Evangelical church on Sundays. It was a weak bond, that one, but it was one that made me feel safer with him. Like he got me in a way other kids didn’t. This bond was more important to me than I thought. Later on that trip, Nick and I sat in the car, headed south on a coastal highway.

I don’t remember how the conversation started, but I had put on Merle Haggard (which I found out Nick hated). The ocean sun was beating through the windows of my Subaru and we were drinking coffee from Dutch Bros.

“I just can’t believe in a god that would send people to hell just because you couldn’t be perfect,” Nick said. The hum of the highway droned under us. I was startled, and sweating. Not only from the sun coming through the windows like an ant under a magnifying glass, but because I think I felt the shift in our friendship. It was as if Sam had just told Frodo that he didn’t care if the ring was destroyed — like he wanted darkness to win.

I don’t know why, but the specifics of the rest of the conversation slipped through my memory. I know I tried to convince him. Because then I couldn’t imagine him not believing in faith we had both grown up in and shared. And then it wasn’t just a ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ for me. It was real.

It’s funny that now I can’t imagine how I could have cared so much about what he believed. I should have known that our friendship built on slapstick humor and history class could not hold up during what the week on the road had in store for us.

“Looks like there’s a wilderness area up here, I’m sure we could camp there.”

I followed his directions, we came to a sign: Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area.

The pavement road gave way to gravel. I was tired, and hungry, and excited to get to sleep. The purple mountains loomed in the distance, their ominous presence comforted me for some reason, made me feel closer to home.

The sun was burning like eternal fire. We came to a fork in the gravel road and a metal sign riddled with bullet holes. My stomach dropped like a broken elevator.

DANGER

ENTERING IDAHO ARMY NATIONAL GUARD

FIRING AND MANEUVER AREA

CIVILIANS STAY ON MAIN ROADS
DO NOT SALVAGE
DO NOT PICK UP UNEXPLODED AMMUNITION

I stopped the car, and read the crimson words out loud. I looked at Nick like someone just cut in front of me at the line to the deli.

“I thought you said this was a conservation area.” I laughed.

“It is!” Nick held his phone closer to his face, zooming into the map with his boxy fingers, as if to say there must be some mistake.

“Hm,” he huffed, “okay, this looks right…. Just keep going down this road and I think we’ll be good.”

He pointed to the left fork. “That way.”

“Dude.” I tried to say with weight “We can’t camp here. I don’t know what this is, but we can’t camp here. Let’s just go back to that rest stop by the interstate and sleep in the car. It’s not worth it.”

But he wasn’t listening, whether immersed in his phone or simply ignoring me he did not heed my warning. So we kept going, Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes. Except Frodo and Sam had reason for traveling to such a dangerous land. What was our noble quest? What did we bring with us to rid the world of by casting it into the very fires of its own creation?

It was against my better judgement, but this is what life after high school is, right? Adventure, new experiences. I was a Good Christian Boy who never got into any trouble with anyone. Who always did what God wanted. Surely He would keep us safe.

Now, I think that Hell is a made up place. Made up to scare people and manipulate them using the crowbar that is fear and shame. Elaborated on and perpetuated by people like Dante and Jan van Eyk. It is something that has haunted me since the day I could understand it. I thought about what it would (will) be like. I imagined what it would feel like for my flesh to burn off of the bone — and the screaming for eternity. As a kid, I would get anxiety stomach aches and feel nauseous for hours; in those torturous hours I would think this must be what Hell is like. Sometimes I would feel the heat rays of the sun radiate onto my pink skin. This must be what Hell is like.

The signs of the homophobic men on the street threaten it, the pastor cowering in his pulpit hides behind it. Sometimes I wonder if they’d still be doing any of it if it weren’t for the threat of the place called Hell. I don’t believe it and I won’t believe it. But just because I don’t think it exists doesn’t mean it’s not real.

It did not occur to me that this scrupulosity was the source of my anxiety on this trip (and throughout my life). Nick, having told me of his renouncing of his faith, was now, effectively, an atheist. My scrupulosity kicked in.

It was silly, really. But silly as the man on the stump yelling at the ‘whores’ to repent, there is no changing the scrupulous mind. Just as you cannot convince the compulsion of someone to wash their hands obsessively. It would take a much more sophisticated science to stop a religious minded person from crushing skulls just to save someone’s soul.

God had put us in this car together. More importantly, God had put ME in that car with him. It was my job. His soul was in my hands.

Further down the road, were smaller bright pinkish-red signs that said something different than the giant metal one, yet just as alarming:

CAUTION

OVERHEAD MISSILES MAY BE PRESENT

AT ANY TIME

“‘May be?’” I think I said aloud. Nick was still glued to his phone, murmuring.

“Haha, yeah. If you just keep going down this road I think we’ll be good.” I knew Nick and I did not have the type of relationship where I could easily challenge him. Why? I don’t know. We were jokesters. Nothing was serious, the world an eternal punchline to our dumb-fuck jokes. And also, because I had never challenged him before, maybe there wasn’t a reason to before now.

So I kept driving. The road was rough and my 2005 Subaru Impreza jerked and vibrated. As we continued to drive we came upon some structures. They were not houses, nor buildings. There was no godly purpose these structures could serve. They were ghostly, not old but ragged. They were a dark beige color and square like the pueblos. The windows — or holes rather — were boarded up with plywood. My grip tightened on the steering wheel and my eyes blinked as if I had just been pepper sprayed. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was getting scared.

“Keep going, I think I see a place where we can camp.” Nick, this whole time alternated between studying his phone and the vast prairie through which we drove like a technician verifying specifications of a piece of machinery. None of the signs or the buildings seemed to disturb him as they did me.

As we continued, I tried to think of a way to convince Nick to let us turn back. Anything. What if we got fined? This could be really dangerous. I don’t wanna die. I don’t remember if I said that last part.

But eventually we kept driving and my nerves calmed down. The sun kept sinking lower, soon it would set the whole world aflame, as soon as it touched the horizon. Nick pointed out a place to set up the tent — a small peak in the subtle hill on the prairie.

We set up the tent and sat down to eat the turkey sandwiches we packed. The sandwiches I had made at home that morning. I thought of the coolness of my refrigerator as I opened it and the comfort of our leather couch. Those things seemed a lifetime away, as though I had been plucked out of that world and that story and into this one. But I was hungry, so I ate.

We thought we were so cool, so we smoked tobacco pipes. Something that was old and beautiful. We lit them with matches, as to not ruin the flavor. The wind of the prairie blew them out. The fat sun was now behind those looming mountains that still comforted me.

The dark came and we had nearly forgotten the metal and pink signs. The Pueblo-esque structures seemed to be almost imagined. If not imagined, then distant memories of someone else — Somewhere else. I started to convince myself that this was perhaps once a military site but was likely abandoned long ago amidst some bureaucratic decision to remove them from this prairie. Maybe that was foolish, the way someone convinces themselves that Purgatory is Heaven.

The storm started at 8:20 and I don’t know why I remember that. It rained lightly, but mostly the wind blew and the sky darkened like a day-old bruise. Then, lightning. For a while, we stood and watched it roll in, marvelling at the beauty in the power of it. Thunder reverberated through my chest. I remember feeling free in this place. Looking back, I felt free for a moment of this scrupulosity. Of the ever present clamping jaws of my duty to God that nearly killed me — my soul at least.

Around nine o’clock we both went inside the tent and started setting up for sleep. After a sixteen-hour day of driving I was ready to rest. I lay my head down and listened to the ruching of the wind and the distant rumble of thunder. I closed my eyes.

The thunder changed. From dark crackle it broke into an organized rapid succession of cracks and booms: pop…BOOM! pop…BOOM! pop…BOOM!

I jumped to my feet.

“No. We are leaving. Nick get up.”

“What?” he said as if nothing had happened. “C’mon duuude. It’s just thunder.”

“That is not thunder.” I said, and began to pack up my stuff.

“Well we aren’t really sure what it is. Why don’t we stay for a while and see if it stops?”

We were stupid enough to drive through all of the warnings. I wasn’t going to let us stay in this place any longer. I made my response known by continuing to pack up.

We drove to the rest stop and slept in the car.

Six days later I am sitting in the campsite bathroom of the Jedediah Smith Redwoods National Park. I am fully clothed sitting on the metal toilet seat that probably hasn’t been cleaned properly in years. I am crying. I am downloading a book, The Case for Faith, onto my phone in hopes that I can convince him. I can save him… I have to. Now, I am sitting at my desk and feeling nothing that I was in that bathroom, wondering how in the world I could have acted that way. It was a compulsion. I didn’t sleep that night, because I wanted him to believe like I did. See like I did.

Somewhere else, three or four years later, I am living in a house full of conservative Christian boys. I have worked a summer at Christian summer camp. I have volunteered with a campus ministry. I have done all that God has asked of me. And I have moved on. It’s funny, how you can move on from something so compulsive and obsessive. So quickly (relatively) over the span of a few years a lifetime of indoctrination falls away. And so do the compulsions, for the most part. But I still have those anxiety stomach aches — waves of inexplicable dread wherein it feels like my entire nervous system is made of liquid metal. And with each wave I still think of Hell. But at last, I don’t need to save anyone. Certainly not Nick, who is doing just fine.

Though, now I can hear my roommates in the next room over. We need to pray for him; Everyone strays from the path, God gives us all Free Will. And I almost think I hear them say At least it’s not me. And I get it. I really do, because if I never left that world, if I never cast my ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, I’d still have those friends, and the support, and the love.

But something happened at the Snake River and in the Redwoods. That ring fell off from around my neck and there’s no way I will ever get it back. And, of course, if Hell isn’t real, neither is Heaven. And now I’m the one with my face glued to my phone saying if you keep going down this road I think we’ll be good.