“Holy Ghost,” from Low‘s 2013 album The Invisible Way^[1]Whose other stand-out tracks include “Plastic Cup,” “So Blue,” and especially “Just Make It Stop.”, is lyrically the most straight-forward LDS song in their extensive catalogue. Even more so than the Adam & Eve allusion in 1999’s “Missouri,” or the Savior’s crucifixion in 2002’s “The Lamb,” or Satan’s you-want-religion-do-you in 2015’s “DJ,” “Holy Ghost” is probably the highest they’ve ever let their Mormon flag fly.

This is not, of course, because the doctrine of the Holy Ghost is somehow unique to Mormonism; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is (very famously) the central creed of basically every single Christian denomination. Yet there is a reason why Joseph Smith once told President Van Buren himself that the key difference between ours and every other sect is “the gift of the Holy Ghost,” and that all other considerations are “appendages”–it’s because conversion to our faith is rooted strictly in the experience of the Holy Ghost and no other.

It is important not to take this for granted: Once on my mission, my companion and I were meeting with this evangelical woman, one who, per usual, couldn’t get over the hump of there-can-be-no-other-scripture-than-the-Bible. After the usual proof-texts of course didn’t work, I elected to go straight for the throat: “Well, how do you know the Bible is true?” I asked.

She only gave me a blank stare. After a moment, she finally stammered, “Well, it’s the word of God.”

“Yes, but the Muslims say the same thing about the Quran, and the Hindus about the Bhagavadgita,” I said, thinking I was clever, “So why do you believe the Bible is true, and not those other books?”

“Well, uh, because it doesn’t contradict itself,” she tried again–and boy oh boy did I not feel like going there that day, so I only replied with, “Neither does the dictionary, why isn’t that the word of God then?”

It was then that my companion–a convert from Guatemala–jumped in, because he knew what I was getting at, but also knew why I was failing. “Look,” he said directly, “You know the Bible is true because you feel the Holy Spirit when you read it, right? The peace of God which surpasses understanding, right? Those feelings of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith^[2]Galatians 5:22–that’s why you believe in the Bible and the existence of God, right?”

This time we got the blankest look of all.

That’s when I realized we were likely never going to get anywhere with her; if she didn’t feel the spirit in the Bible–a book she ostensibly accepted as Holy text—then we were never going to get her to feel it with the Book of Mormon.

This was a revelation to me, cause I had been raised during the Gordon B. Hinkley era, when the prophet went on 60 Minutes and said that we want people to bring what’s already good from their churches, and that we will add to it.

This had imbued me with the assumption that all religious people feel the Holy Spirit to some degree–that the value of “Mormonism” is to add to the Spirit they have already experienced. Ironically, it took my mission to realize that, while a great many church-going people really do feel the presence of the divine in ways I must respect, an even greater number do not feel anything at all. Religion really is just their tradition, church merely their tribe, Jesus only their mascot.

But my purpose here isn’t to dogpile on the evangelicals or what-not, but to remind us that we ourselves are no better if we don’t feel the Holy Ghost either. As Joseph Smith himself wrote in his Lectures on Faith, “Is the knowledge of the existence of God a matter of mere tradition, founded upon human testimony alone, until persons receive a manifestation of God to themselves? It is.”^[3]LoF 2:55 Even true religion is nothing more than a human tradition, if it is not accompanied by a manifestation of the Spirit.

This has all been a gentle reminder to not take the Holy Ghost for granted–it is all we have. When we are being weighed down by all of our other frustrations with Church history and Church culture and Church meetings and Church leadership and a million other things, the Holy Ghost alone is why we keep attending–that is in fact how it should be, and must be: as D&C 50:17-18 reads, “Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? And if it be by some other way it is not of God.”

All other reasons for attending church and preaching the gospel than the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, no matter how well-intentioned–whether that be EFY cheer-rallies^[4]Joseph Smith in the King Follet discourse said that the Holy Spirit is “pure intelligence,” not a hot emotional surge–we can have emotional responses to that pure intelligence, but … Continue reading or appeals to one’s pioneer heritage or family pressure or ancient religious comparatist studies^[5]And I say that as one with great love and affection for Hugh Nibley or what have you–are fake, counterfeit, manipulative, and not of God. The Holy Ghost alone keeps us in.

Or as Low themselves sing, “Some Holy Ghost/Keeps me hanging on…”