Jon Krakauer's book, "Under the Banner of Heaven," appears straightforward enough. On the surface it's the story of two men who commit a gruesome murder of a mother and child in the name of Fundamentalist Mormonism. Why? Because "God told them to." (Fundamentalist Mormonism {henceforth FM}; that wacky religious aberration that condones polygamy and relies on the seemingly contradictory staples of "personal revelation" and cult-like ecclesiastical hierarchy).

But this is not nearly the whole story. As you start to delve deeper into the book you begin to realize that this is about much more than FM's; it's about you and I. It's about the religious mindset and how we often have the tendency to confuse "our" voices for the voice of God. The fact that this book is about Mormons is, in the end, inconsequential because it could very well apply to some Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Make no mistake; this book is troubling. Troubling because I know people who believe in God like the FM's do, and troubling because I was once one of those people. This is what makes it a good book. Reading it is like clapping dried-mud boots together. It clears away the debris of human religious hubris and forces you to look again at some things long since left behind, and some things you may still desperately cling to.

The book traces the Mormon religion from its early days to the present. From the discovery of the tablets by Joseph Smith, to the defining moments of the religion where it almost sank into oblivion but didn't. It looks at the charisma of Smith and his successors, the fights with the US government, the eventual settling of the church in Utah, and the fundamentalist schisms of the 19th/20th centuries.

I don’t want to go into why I think Mormonism is a seriously flawed religion. You can find that out for yourself. What I want to talk about is how this book made me think about Fundamentalist Christianity and the religious mindset in general. This book didn’t give me answers. All it gave me were questions. Questions like. . ..if Mormons feel the same way about their religious experience as I do, could I possibly be wrong? I think we all take some creative license in religion don't we? To a greater or lesser degree all of us make ourselves into little gods in one way or another. We confuse ourselves with God. Let me give you some examples. Someone might say the following: “If I'm depressed, it's the devil who's tempting me.” When who knows if the devil has anything to do with it or not? Or “If I don't feel happy while singing praise songs it's because I don't love God enough, or I'm not good enough.” Or “If I keep sinning, God must not exist.” Or “If I can't be perfect, God can't accept me.” Or “If I hear voices in my head telling me to kill my wife, God must be telling me to kill my wife.” How do we distinguish our voice from the voice of God, especially when that voice is mediated through other people? How do we ever get one inch outside our proper skin? How do we adjudicate between various religious revelations?

As I sat back and thought about the problems this book raised, I came to only one conclusion. We are on our own in our search for truth and God, and many of us are deceiving ourselves. This is not a comforting thought.