Over at , a comment made by Jared really grabbed my attention. He said, As Nate Oman and others never tire of pointing out, the church mostly cares about what we do rather than what we believe.
Upfront I have to say I m not familiar with previous threads or discussions that have touched on this topic. So I m most likely misunderstanding what Nate and others have been trying to say and what their perspectives are. (Nate s obviously a very thoughtful fellow and I have no doubt he s put a lot into his reasoning, as always.
)
That said, this notion that the Church cares more about doing than believing is pretty much foreign to my own experience. I m one who wanders through Mormonism wary of saying precisely what I believe in Church. I don t want to suggest that my experiences or my perspective are somehow evidence that my paranoia is correct.
I m truly very curious as to what others experiences are and if people think my concern about speaking out is without merit.
My experience tells me: If I don t show up to help someone in Elder s Quorum move, no one says a word. If I miss my home teaching, no one calls to chastise me.
If I don t sign up to do a cannery assignment, not a word of disapproval is uttered in my direction. I ve had times in my Church activity where I couldn t (or wouldn t) participate all that much. No one talked to me, no one criticized me, no one approached me and asked me what my problem was.
I showed up to Church each week and coasted by.
On the occasions I ve dared venture my beliefs in Church, it hasn t gone so well. When I introduced the Book of Mormon to my Gospel Doctrine class, I touched very briefly on Joseph s money digging.
I suggested that Joseph used his seeing talents to try and provide for his poor family before realizing that he had a much higher calling and that there were more important ways to use his gift. One woman a week later told me how disturbed she had been at what I said and pointedly told me not to stray from the manual, since that s all the Brethren had approved. When I mentioned that the Melchizedek Priesthood was probably restored in 1830 and not 1829, two people were so angry I thought after Church they d be heading to the hardware store to pick up torches and pitchforks.
During a discussion while I worked at Deseret Book, the topic of progression between degrees of glory came up. I mentioned President McKay s letter that said we don t know if it is possible, and I also pointed out that some leaders had said it would be possible, while others quite strongly insisted it would not. One man (these were employees chatting in the breakroom - not customers) became very uncomfortable and said he didn t think it was appropriate to talk about this.
Another woman actually began to cry and said this was the reason her brother had left the Church, and why did people like me refuse to believe the truth (in this case, the truth was that you could not progress between kingdoms).
I could go on, but I won t. Suffice it to say I m not persuaded that these are just a few anecdotal stories that prove nothing.
These kinds of disagreements are hardly over fundamental points of doctrine. So here s my problem: Given the experiences I ve had and the experiences I ve seen others go through, I proceed through Church convinced that if I spoke up, I would not be accepted. Perhaps it isn t fair to assume how people would act.
But I can t see it being too well received if I said that I didn t believe the Book of Mormon was a historical record, or if I mentioned my support for gay marriage.
The temple recommend interview, which seems to be the primary criteria for determining worthiness in the Church, seems to be mostly about belief. Yes, many things involve both believing and doing, such as the Word of Wisdom.
But I suspect one s condemnation would be the same regardless of whether they actually broke the Word of Wisdom or whether they said they believed it was ok to break it.
In short, the Mormon community I ve grown up in and lived seems to have repeatedly demonstrated to me that it s beliefs that get you in trouble or get you accepted. I ve seen it as my father s left the Church, as friends in Sunstone have been looked upon with suspicion, and as I ve garnered more raised eyebrows than you can count.
If you stray from the orthodox perspective, someone will be there to correct you or remind you that you re wrong. Granted, most people probably won t say anything. But we don t pay attention to those who don t come up to us, while we tend to make a pretty big deal out of the ones that do.
The First Presidency has written the expected letter on political neutrality and by now it has been read over most pulpits throughout the U.S.
But this year as I sat in Sacrament and heard the letter, I could swear there was a new addition. As it turns out, I wasn t wrong. (You can view the .
) The last line in this year s letter reads, In addition, members who hold public office should not give the impression they represent the Church as they work for solutions to social problems.
For those of us living in Utah, this (at least at first glance) seems like an obvious allusion to the Utah State Legislature (which is 90% LDS). In recent years the Legislature has prompted almost half a dozen statements from the Church in an effort to clarify its position after the Church was cited as a reason behind proposed legislation.
One such statement addressed the issue of concealed weapons in Church. The ultra-conservative legislature insisted those with concealed weapons permits have a right to carry their 9mm glock into a school or church building. Some legislators expressed their genuine shock and surprise when the Church announced it was opposed to weapons in their buildings and would take the steps necessary to prevent such weapons.
Another surprise for conservatives in Utah came when the Church announced it did not oppose a bill to create hate-crime legislation. Gayle Ruzicka, director of the Utah Eagle Forum (a group so conservative they make John Birchers look like socialists) insisted the Church s statement on the hate-crimes bill had been misunderstood, and then she graciously took the time to tell everyone exactly what the Church really meant. In response, the Church actually released another statement effectively chastising Ruzicka (a member of the Church) by reiterating that it did not oppose the hate-crime bill and that any attempt to attribute any other meaning to their first statement was a mistake.
Most recently, a political group that supported a bill that would have made it impossible for undocumented workers to get a drivers license, cited LDS teachings of honoring and sustaining the law as a reason why the bill should pass. The group also insisted the Church would not give a temple recommend to an illegal immigrant. The Church issued yet another statement, saying it had no position on the bill in the legislature, and that illegals can have temple recommends, since they are issued based on personal worthiness, not nationality.
So for the millionth time in the bloggernacle, what is it with some Mormons and politics? I just learned that church-owned Deseret Book has received several complaints from customers who are incensed that the store would dare carry Bill Clinton s memoir. As one customer put it, Deseret Book used to be my safe haven.
Now I can t even trust it.
Are most Mormons political conservatives who just can t fathom that someone would be a Mormon and a liberal? Or are a few squeaky wheels getting lots of oil in the media and in our minds?
Am I just so annoyed at people like those who complain to Deseret Book that I magnify them in my own mind to be more representative than they really are? So today I had the slightly surreal experience of having our ward mission leader approach me in the hallway with a visitor in tow, saying there she is she s our Ward Sunstoner.
She just got back from the symposium with a beaming grin on his face.
Turns out that he (the WML) had met a young man during a fair at which our ward was manning a family history booth. The young man seemed well-informed, and eventually confessed to being a member.
But, he said, I m more a Sunstone than Sacrament Meeting kind of guy. So WML convinced him that it was possible to do both, and was thrilled that the Ward Choir Director/RS Secretary/Music Chairman/Sacrament Meeting Chorister was also a bona fide Sunstone reader and subscriber who could be called upon for witty banter to distract our visitor (who works for the DNC) from the running Republican sniping that passes for discussion of the Book of Mormon in Sunday School.
In closing, I just want to say that I hope that we can all remember the importance of being missionaries and setting a good example by attending the Sunstone symposium!
I was getting a haircut today (for the record, I get my hair cut at a posh salon known as Dollar Cuts ) when the stylist had to run to the front to make an appointment for a walk-in. While she was gone, I looked down at some of the hair that had fallen in my lap.
It looked remarkably like salt and pepper. That s impossible, I thought. I ll find a rogue gray hair now and then, but I m 27 years old and I hardly look gray.
I also didn t have my glasses on so I figured there must be some mistake.
Turns out, it isn t. Gray hair seemed to surround me - to mock me.
I never thought I d be this kind of guy, but I don t handle getting older well. I know I don t qualify as old - not by a long shot. But I ve had a very enjoyable last five or so years.
Childhood and adolescence wasn t kind to me, so being a young, post-missionary Mormon was pretty sweet.
To get to the point, I think dealing with age and death is where a lot of Church members have me beat. I m the kind of person who says living is a lot more important than believing, that life is short so make the most of it, and that the here and now is a lot more appealing than the hereafter.
So I find, unlike most faithful Church members I meet, that I don t deal well when pondering old age or death. I like living and what life has to offer. And my inherent skepticism means I can t be all that confident of where (if anywhere) I ll be headed when I give up the ghost.
Getting old is pretty much the one thing we re all guaranteed, so it seems silly to fret over it at all. And the rational person in my mind tells me that very thing. But I still find I do it.
So, any advice for a young fellow who hasn t the wisdom, experience, or mind to deal with the inevitable in a very thoughtful way? Confession time: I am a vain, vain man.
At the same time, I take terrible care of myself and am not a particularly sharp dresser. So, you can imagine how deep my dissatisfaction runs. But all that is about to change: I am going to have cosmetic surgery.
No, really next week, Sumer and I are flying to , where we will both have , following which, we will be spectacle-free. Hurrah! becomes .
There are some practical benefits to having this type of procedure no more glasses means that my vision, most likely, will be better than with lenses, including my peripheral vision; I ll be able to see underwater; to run without the bouncing of the frames; to make out with hot girls (such as Sumer) without the annoying clunk sound of glasses-hitting-girl, or worse yet, the horrible clank of glasses-on-glasses. But at the heart of it all, it s a vanity issue no more four-eyes, which I ve been since 4th grade (I remember it to this day, dancing to , woefully aware of my lot in life). I ve been sensitive about my glasses for a long time, and so has Sumer.
My religion offers me little advice regarding the advisability of cosmetic surgery, whether it s with or without any practical benefits. Is this surgery making my body more perfect? Will the incisions in my cornea be raised with me in the Resurrection?
has as good a description as anyone s: the spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time But this doesn t really tell us much about the nature of our resurrected forms. What is the proper frame for our bodies? We believe that our bodies will be made perfect does that mean we all get that 20/20 vision we long for?
Will we no longer be lactose-intolerant? Will we be taller, stronger or (as my title suggests) more well-proportioned? In other words, does the resurrection serve to correct things perceived subjectively as imperfections, or does the resurrection work to some external standard of perfection?
This issue isn t as peripheral as it might sound, because our notions of a physical resurrection, together with LDS belief in a corporeal God, make our notions of heaven and perfection a little different than the average Christian s. Can we conceive of a God that can t eat spicy nachos or that is a little on the short side? Even worse, do our concepts of God s perfection require him to be anglo and bearded and if so, does our definition of perfection require us to be anglo?
(and bearded better get that Beard Card, ye BYU-ites!) Perhaps we need to be a little more disciplined in LDS culture in how we conceive of perfection, and steel ourselves for the possibility that perfection may not mean the absolute resolution of self-conceived imperfections. That s the problem when someone else makes you perfect you don t get to decide when you ve reached perfection!
In the meantime, I ll be doing a little weight training so that I can a little better. So, for those of you who ve been holding your breath
I talked (a little) about BCC at the Sunstone symposium yesterday, in an exceedingly weird session titled Internet Mormons vs.
Chapel Mormons. It was mostly (I think) meant to explore Dr. Shades s contention that the Church is in imminent danger of schism because people are being exposed to uncomfortable facts about Mormon history and doctrine on the Internet, and are thus forced to discard simplistic Chapel Mormon beliefs about the infallibility of prophets, the relentless glory of church history, etc.
So Dr. Shades laid out his theory in extreme and argumentative terms, was rebutted in similarly extreme and argumentative (though much more cogent) fashion by Michael Ash (of FAIR), and then it was my turn.
I had mistakenly believed that the session was to be more of a discussion, and less a serial presentation of short papers, so I didn t have a prepared statement, and included lots of ums and uhs in my rambling 5 minute remarks.
I was a little flummoxed by the tone of the discussion preceeding me, and ended up in the strange (for me) role of Molly Mormon peacemaker, trying to lighten the mood in the room. In short, I think I seemed dumb, but really nice 
I changed my mind about a couple of things over the course of the discussion. I still think that the Internet will not (at least not very soon) have a big impact on how the average Mormon in the pews (acknowledging, of course, that no such person exists!
) perceives the workings of the institution. However, I do think it makes it somewhat more likely that people will encounter unpleasant facts about church history, difficult doctrinal issues, etc. in an unfriendly context it s hard to get a sense of just what people s agenda is on the net.
(Dr. Shades, for instance, seems somewhat less antagonistic to believers on his site than he appeared to be in person.) I think the Church needs to respond to this somehow, either by officially discouraging people from learning more about Mormonism online, or by creating more opportunities for people to grapple with the difficulties of Church history, doctrine, etc.
in a friendly and believing context. (Obviously, I favor the second solution, and look forward to the Sunstone-enriched Sunday School manuals(:)) Correlation has had the (I think) unintended effect of pitching our Sunday School and Relief Society lessons to the lowest common denominator, and making it impossible to confront difficulties of any kind during the three-hour Sunday meetings.
The second thing will seem to contradict my hope that we could tolerate more controversy in Sunday School (it s always good to contradict oneself immediately!
). While I usually think of myself as someone who enjoys a bit of contention, I was really uncomfortable with the level of animosity in the exchange between Dr. Shades and Michael Ash it may have been just the nature of the forum, or the particular personalities of those two, but I m less likely than I was before to think that it s a good idea for Mormon apologists to go toe-to-toe with antis.
I m not sure that many readers will follow the intricacies of their arguments, and the vitriol really does seem antithetical to the spirit of the gospel. (I think I might feel differently about academic exchanges in refereed journals, but at the level of so-called intellectuals with no degrees in ancient languages or philosophy of religion, it was just plain ugly.)
The best part of the day was meeting D.
Fletcher and John Hatch. D. was much as I d imagined him; John was not at all the small, wiry rock-climbing type I had pictured!
Since I ve already confessed to betraying my commitment to resisting gender-essentialist stereotypes, I ll also say that (as stereotypical females are supposed to) I *really* liked having embodied conversations with them, instead of just seeing cold words on the screen. I have a confession to make: I am a liar.
I have deliberately told an untruth about a fellow human being, with the intent to convince my listeners to believe something unsavory about that person and to affect her negatively. Shame on me? You decide.
The story that follows has virtually no connection to Mormonism, other than that I happen to be Mormon, the Gospel demands that we not bear false witness against our neighbor, and I did so anyway with reckless abandon. All you amateur Mormon ethicists out there are invited to weigh in on my actions and call me to repentence or not.
One fine afternoon about two years ago, I pulled up to the drive-through at Jack-in-the-Box.
I don t particular care for Jack-in-the-Box, but as it was down the street from my wife s work, I often bought something to eat there. I frequented the place enough that the Latino employees at the drive-through window knew me by sight, and would always smile and say hello. I would do the same.
On this particular occasion, a homeless black man, probably in his late 70 s, walked past my car, passively looking for a handout. I politely brushed him off, as I often do in these situations. A few moments later, as I was thinking about whether to order the buttermilk ranch or the Red Hot sauce with my chicken strips, I was suddenly jolted out of my stupor by a loud, caustic stream of racist vulgarities unlike any I had ever heard before.
I turned around and witnessed the following scene: The black man had approached the car behind me, soliciting some change. The trashy-looking woman driving the car lit into him with the most obscene tirade imaginable. Get the f*ck away from my car you f*cking n*gger!
she screamed. A continuing stream of F-words and N-words continued to flow from her lips. The volume and intensity of her bile was mind-blowing.
I can honestly say I have never heard such a shocking display of hateful, racist filth in my entire life. No R-rated movie I d ever seen could compare. No episode of Jerry Springer could ever come close (even without the censors).
Even that in testimony meeting couldn t hold a candle to this crone.
The black man s reaction was interesting. He was clearly shocked by the treatment he received, and I got the impression that he probably hadn t been talked to like this in a very long time.
His initial, visceral response was to lunge at the car instinctively, as if he wanted to strike out at the window, but he stopped himself before he actually did so. Keep in mind that this was a very elderly gentleman, so I doubt he was prone to physical violence as a rule. The woman was unphased, and continued her racist tirade unabated.
I immediately became furious. Despite the occasional moral indignation I display on the internet, people who know me in real life will tell you that I rarely get visibly angry, if ever. I am known for my rather narrow range of emotional states: jaded, sarcastic, and more sarcastic.
Thus, I hadn t felt this way for as long as I could remember. It was like I was in a Charles Bronson movie, or I was sitting in Harrison Ford s buggy, watching the tourists pick on the Amish guy. I was pissed.
The black man decided to ignore his verbal assailant, and he walked past my car again. I decided to lean out the window and hand him 2 dollars. He asked me if I d just buy him a couple tacos instead, which I agreed to do.
This gesture earned me an earful from the woman behind. F*cking Saab-driver! she yelled, over and over again.
(Ouch - Saab-driver ! What a put down! She really got me good with that one!
). This gave me the opportunity to do something I don t think I ve done since highschool. Down went my window, and up went my middle finger.
(Juvenile and crass? Perhaps, but it somehow seemed appropriate at the time.)
I drove up to the pick-up window, paid for my food, handed the gentleman his tacos, and proceeded to drive off.
The placement of the drive-through window and the exit at this location was such that I had to double back 180 degrees to leave the parking lot. In doing so, I passed right by the drive-through window again, just as the woman in the car was picking up her food. With my window down, I was able to hear her conversation with two Jack-in-the-Box employees.
In a very irate tone, she was demanding to speak to the manager, in order to complain about the black man that had been harrasing her in the parking lot. She insisted that the restaurant see to it that he was kicked off the premises.
At this point, I snapped.
I stopped my car, got out, and walked up to the drive-through window, placing myself squarely between the window and the woman in the car. I proceeded to talk to the employees in Spanish. (I m as white as white can be, so it always comes as a shock to Latinos when I can speak their language.
I figured my speaking Spanish might help my credibility in this instance.) I indignantly explained to the employees that they should pay this woman no heed, as she was a lying, hateful racista whose only motivation was to malign an innocent black man and to provoke an ugly incident. But I felt like this wasn t enough.
I needed to say something else, to really dissuade the employees from having sympathy for her duplicitous claims. And then it happened
I decided to lie.
I continued addressing the Latino employees, but I switched to English, making sure that the woman in the car would understand me.
And that s not all, I fibbed. This lady also made some ugly comments about you! After insulting that black man, she started mouthing off about how the damn, dirty Mexicans at this restaurant should be sent back toTijuana!
So you guys decide if this is someone you want to take seriously. The employees looked at the woman and then looked at me with wide-eyes. They re faces seemed to turn white.
I shot a knowing glance at the woman in the car myself, gave her a big cheesy grin, and walked off.
I don t consider myself an intellectual because by now I ve known too many genuine intellectuals and I know that they are in a different class.
They are almost always people I admire, not just because they are well read, erudite and full of interesting ideas, but because of the way they lead their lives.
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