Jack Harrell’s 2007 short-story “Calling and Election” is a strange, uncomfortable, ambiguous freak of a story. I mean that endearingly. The story aggressively raises narrative questions, while steadfastly avoiding answers at every turn: Is the seminary teacher protagonist Jerry Sangood actually receiving his calling and election, or is has he been fooled by the devil? Or is the implicit commentary that the devil is part of God’s plan? Did Sangood put up the pornography in his classroom, or did the devil set him up? Is his Abrahamic test to have even his Church membership taken from him, since that what was most precious to him? Is that what the line “Even your goodness is your enemy” signifies? And that brain tumor, is that part of his trial, or is he hallucinating this entire experience? Does it matter? Is the trial any less severe if it was just all in his head? And if it’s real, why didn’t the cops follow him to South Dakota? And at the end, when he looks forward to being a Temple cafeteria worker and feeling the spirit of God…is that a subtle mockery of Temple service, or a signifier for how, as King Benjamin taught, our highest forms of devotion are no better than dust or cafeteria work before God? Is this story satirical or weirdly faith affirming…or…or…or what? Where do any of these questions go? Just what the heck do we do with this text?

One might conclude from this story that Harrell must be some sort of morose, brooding, fringe-thinking alternative voice in LDS discourse. However, I once actually took a class from Jack Harrell (ENG 325: Advanced Grammar) at BYU-I; in person he is the epitome of the large, jolly, happy Mormon; he laughs easily and smiles often; he loves English, teaching, ‘70s-classic-rock, and playing his guitar at the local Hogi Yogi; he starts each semester with a powerpoint about his conversion to the Church and his mission. I didn’t read “Calling and Election” until long after I graduated, so I find myself sometimes trying to reconcile the two Harrells—the one from my class and the one from his fiction—in my mind.

What is Harrell’s religion, then? The same question was asked a century ago of famed Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno’s response, in a short-but-brilliant essay called “My Religion,” may help illuminate both Harrell and his larger project at play in “Calling and Election.”

Unamuno begins his essay by discussing how “Individuals as well as countries who suffer from a spirit of laziness…lean in the direction of dogmatism…an attitude of spiritual laziness avoids any position which is critical or skeptical.” But Unamuno’s skepticism isn’t a negative or hostile or destructive one. Quite the contrary, he claims: “I use the word skeptical in an etymological or philosophical sense, because to be skeptical does not mean that one doubts, but that one investigates or searches without the need to find definite conclusion or affirmation. There are those who examine a problem and feel they must find explanation or a solution, whether it is accurate or not.” Unamuno, however, is uninterested in finding explanations, only instigating the searching process itself. Harrell’s “Calling and Election,” similarly, is uninterested in giving the solutions, only in organizing the search-party, so to speak. As Unamuno states, “Most of my work has been an effort to stir up others, to disturb the very fabric of their heart, to distress them if I can…Let people search like I search, let them struggle like I struggle, and perhaps all of us together will be able to glean a bit of truth from God and, at least, this struggle will make us better people, people with more spirit.” Harrell, likewise, wants you to struggle as he struggles, and thus composes a story performative of this struggle, that invites the reader to enact this struggle along with him.

In response to the original query of “What is Miguel de Unamuno’s religion,” Unamuno responds directly: “My religion is to look for truth in life and life in truth, even knowing that I may never find them while I am alive. My religion is to struggle constantly and tirelessly with mystery; my religion is to wrestle with God from the break of day until the close of night, like they say that Jacob struggled with Him.” Unamuno doesn’t struggle with religion—rather, his struggle is his religion. This constant wrestling and struggling with God is what brings Unamuno closer to God, just as the struggle got Jacob blessed as Israel. Likewise Sangood, in “Calling and Election,” finds himself in a constant state of unresolved tension of one form or another—from the initial meeting with Brother Lucy to his run from the law to the status of his church membership—with this tension still unresolved at story’s end. Harrell presents a very Unamuno-esque form of tension-as-religion-itself.

Unamuno himself reminds us that this unresolved tension (at least for this life) is codified right into Christianity itself; he writes: “‘Be perfect like you Father in heaven is perfect,’ the Christ told us, and such an ideal of perfection is, without doubt, unattainable. But he gave us the unattainable as a goal for our efforts. And that happens, according to theologians, by grace. I also want to fight my fight without worrying whether I will achieve a victory…that is my religion.” The struggle itself may be the religion, but it is still a struggle with a focus, with a goal—indeed, a goal of divine perfection, however unattainable that goal may sometimes feel. In fact, if our quest to feel perfect supplants the struggle itself—those “spiritually lazy” who “because of superficiality” want only “dogma,” and who still “who believe…like we did as children”—then, according to Unamuno, their religion has failed. Our desire to be perfect in orthodoxy has undermined our struggle for perfection. Perhaps this is what Brother Lucy means when he says, “Remember…even your goodness is your enemy!”

But why must we struggle with this religious tension in the first place? Unamuno himself writes: “If it did not affect my peace of mind and my consolation for having been born, perhaps I wouldn’t worry about the problem; but since it affects my entire inner life and is the basis for everything I do, I cannot bring myself to say: ‘I don’t know, nor can I ever know.’” This religious tension is not a side-show in our lives, but is rather central, indeed all-consuming, for the religious question touches every point of our life. Hence Jerry Sangood’s trial of faith must envelop every element of his life as well, or it doesn’t count.

Unamuno, then, explains how his conception of religion-as-struggle has informed his own writing. He writes: “In order to accomplish this work…I have sometimes had to appear immodest or improper, at other times hard and aggressive, and not a few times complicated and paradoxical…I reserve the…sacred right, even to contradict myself if necessary.” Since the struggle itself is what is most important, then Unamuno will be immodest, he will make readers uncomfortable at every turn, he will utterly contradict himself even, if it means that he can keep the struggle going. Perhaps that is how I reconcile the contradictory Harrells in my head—by embracing the contradiction itself as endemic to the very nature of religious struggle.