Mormon vs. secular - where we're going

WHERE AM I GOING? WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I DIE?

We all ask ourselves these question from time to time, don't we? They're two of life's greatest mysteries... unless you're a Mormon. If you're a Mormon you're pretty sure that you're not going anywhere. Check it out. When you die you'll roam the Spirit World (probably just another dimension of our physical earth) as a missionary seeking to teach of Christ and convert the spirits restricted to Spirit Prison (yet another earth dimension?) to the One True Church. Then you'll be resurrected into a perfect body! Then you'll be judged by Joseph Smith or whoever he's delegated judgment to. But you'll be found spotless because you've truly repented and been saved through Christ's Atonement! And you'll be welcomed with open arms by Heavenly Father, the Great Elohim himself, into the Celestial Kingdom, which just happens to be... EARTH! But not like it is now. Earth will be exalted and perfected as well, which means it will be a gigantic seer stone, or Urim & Thummin. It will be beautiful and we'll all be immeasurably happy forever.

Now if you're not good enough you'll still have a perfect resurrected body (so that's good news) but you won't get to live on a crystal ball with the rest of us and if you're really, really bad (like, apostate bad!) you'll have to float around sadly in absolute nothingness with Satan and his defeated angels. That would totally suck, so for the love of God don't apostatize please.

Secularists really have nothing on this happy explanation. They think our bodies just decompose and enter that whole stupid scientific circle of life bullshit, and make no claims about an eternal spirit (because they're too afraid to make BIG CLAIMS without any backing evidence at all!). How is anyone supposed to be sold on something so... natural? It's like they think we're supposed to observe the world and somehow conclude that we human beings are just a part of it instead the purpose for it!

Mormons clearly have the better explanation. Never mind that it produces an endless string of unanswerable questions that quickly lead to ludicrous and infantile notions of what life after death must be like. Thinking too much about it might lead to doubt and we don't need any more of that!

Mormonism has 'the' answers

Growing up in the LDS Church I was taught very early on that we had the answers to all the big questions. You know the ones I'm talking about - THE big ones:

1. Who am I?
2. Where do I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. Where am I going?

For those of you who aren't LDS or have somehow forgotten the answers, they're simple:

1. You are a literal spirit child of the Everlasting God! who loves you and has a Plan for you!
2. You came from God's presence...
3. to be born into a physical body and prove your faithfulness to God by living according to His desires and commandments.
4. Sometime after your physical death your body will be made immortal and reunited with your spirit. Then you will be judged and assigned to your eternal kingdom - a brilliant and golden sun, silvery moon, a tiny wink of bronze or the cold obsolete of pure darkness.

I have no doubt that these answers have lifted the fog of existential confusion from your heart and mind and you're now ready to move forward in life with undaunted assurance of God's love and your place in the Universe. Please contact your local LDS missionaries for further light and knowledge.

Hang on. A big blond family? You guys have to be Mormon already.

No? That's strange, usually the Spirit confirms these words of truth in the hearts of the sincere. This is a bad sign. You might be a two-faced piece of shit destined for Outer Darkness. Believe me, the above answers all make perfect sense when you grow up hearing them every week in church.

Repeat it enough and hopefully it will become second nature.

So what seems to be the problem? Are you maybe wondering what a god is and how he procreates to produce literal spirit children? Maybe you don't quite understand what a spirit is. Or maybe you're skeptical of how this information came to our knowledge in the first place. If this is the case, we can tell you that God has a body of flesh and bone (but not blood for some reason); that he has sex (a lot) with a goddess (or two) that we're not allowed to speculate on or talk about; that a spirit is eternal (but only after conception or birth or something) and, believe it or not, physical somehow (but we don't know how and don't know any specifics); and that we got all of this from a very reliable source named Joseph Smith. It doesn't get any clearer or logical than that!

On to where we come from, you might be wondering where God is. That answer is easy: Kolob! Where's Kolob? Um... we don't need to know that, actually. Why should anyone believe God has a physically restricted presence? Because Joseph Smith said so, duh! Is this star or planet named Kolob found within our Universe? Probably. Why wouldn't God reside outside of Creation? Why is he summer homing on a planet he made? Um... It's nice there. Hm...

The important thing is the present though. What you do right now in this life is crucial! You've got to let God know you're on his side! Because he doesn't already know if we are or not? No, because, well, we can switch sides at any time, you know? Because... Satan! But doesn't God know the future already? Doesn't he know if we'll one day succumb to Satan and forsake him? ...Well, sure, probably, but we don't know that. We fricking fought a war with Satan and his followers while still in the presence of God about whether or not we'd follow God's Plan which was to let us live mortal lives in general ignorance. We chose the Plan, that's why we're here enjoying our bodies and all the rebellious spirits, like Satan, will never get a body. Wait! You're saying we already chose to follow God and helped him conquer Satan before we were born? Definitely! So how the hell does God not already know that we chose to follow him? Why are we taking a second fidelity test? Does God not trust those who fought for him? Hey, whoa! Not so fast! That wasn't a real test because it didn't involve faith! No? No, we were living with God, so we had a perfect knowledge of him, not faith in him. We had to be born on earth to learn to develop faith. Why? Because that's the way God likes it. Oh dear god.

Hey, man, how's God going to know whether or not you deserve gold? Because he knows everything already and because I helped him fight off Satan. No, but God has to judge your faith in Him! Which wasn't required when I chose to fight a war for him? Nope. So why did other spirits fight with Satan if they knew God would win? They were just stupid assholes, man. Ah, obviously. So tell me about this super-sunny, magically awesome kingdom. What's so great about it? Yes! Now we're talking! The Celestial Kingdom is the best! You get to live with God forever and YOUR WHOLE FAMILY! Why would I want that? Is God really funny or something? Does it matter that no one in my family would ever believe anything you're telling me here? Will my brother still be a wife-beating dick? You don't understand! Remember how we're all God's literal offspring? Well, the Celestial Kingdom is where we grow up to be full-blown gods! We will make worlds and universes and have billions or trillions or more babies (think how much sex that is!)! We'll have tons of power and glory and love and it'll be so great FOREVER! Uh, yeah, no thanks. Bye!

Take aways

Mormons have a reputation of being reliable, kind people. They have high standards that they seem to honestly believe in. They're a lot like Boy Scouts in that they strive to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. All of those qualities are, in my mind, excellent qualities to have in many situations, and I'm not embarrassed to say that when it comes to take away lessons on life the Scout Law might sum up a great deal of what Mormonism taught me.

A couple of other beneficial life lessons learned through Mormonism would be learning that it's a good idea to ask questions and that we should seek out the original source when trying to learn about something. The Joseph Smith story is all about "lacking wisdom" in a world of confusion and challenging that confusion with personal investigation. You can't simply rely on others to get you through; you have to do the work for yourself. Joseph questioned authority and eventually found his own.

I admire people who constantly question authority and scrutinize sources. People who request to see the data for themselves and who want to investigate the texts on their own show a great deal of Boy Scout bravery, in my opinion, not to mention self-respect. I want to be someone who is unafraid of research and investigation and I think Mormonism can teach people to be that way.

On the other hand, Mormonism has had some negative effects on me. Mormonism taught me an unhealthy reverence for authority, it taught me that circular logic is okay, it taught me that I am offensive by nature, it taught me to equate virginity with beauty, cleanliness, and morality! Mormonism taught me bad history. It taught me that we already had the "answers" that mattered and that I should wait until the afterlife to understand the non-salvation-related questions I had (boy, oh boy, did I want to know why God ever bothered with dinosaurs!).

Mormonism taught me to make excuses. I was making excuses constantly for Mormonism. All the crazy shit that didn't make sense even to a child was excused away. Oh, God hasn't revealed that yet! We're not ready for that yet! It's not important to our salvation! They're just men, they're not infallible! I need to work on my faith! It's just a bunch of "anti" bullshit! The world doesn't understand! If only everyone else would listen to the Gospel as taught by the One True Church! Our prophet is so inspired, they'll let us know as soon as God wants us to know more!

Losing my faith in Mormonism taught me to stop making ridiculous excuses.

The Celestial Kingdom

Remember how Mormonism is so great because it answers those three really important questions: "Where do I come from?", "Why am I here?", and "Where am I going?"??? Thank God we have such awesome answers to share with the World because that whole Christian thing about there being no Pre-Earth Life and the Afterlife being either Heaven or Hell just didn't make any sense at all!

Mormons have answers! We know what to expect! That's why early on in my mission I really wanted to develop a seriously kick-ass spiritual thought about what's really in heaven to share with our many English class students who would come to the Church twice a week for free lessons.

We've got the three kingdom thing going on so Heaven's totally fair for everyone. Plus! if you make it to the Celestial Kingdom you get to learn and progress on into the eternities! WITH YOUR FAMILY!

"Welcome to Cloud City, Joe!"

We also know that the Earth will "receive its paradisiacal glory" and be turned into a giant Urim and Thummim (similar to one that God currently lives on) that we'll all live on it with Heavenly Father. Just think, you and every generation of your family living on a crystal ball! So cool!

I have to confess I never shared the spiritual thought, though. I just couldn't work it out. I think I got hung up on a few other questions. How will we be learning? Are there classes and stuff like that? Are they going to be more informative than Sunday School, Seminary, Institute, and BYU religion courses? What about all the science we'll have to learn? Will we have to sign up for labs? How is everyone going to live with their family? Will I be in my parents house, stuck with my in-laws, in my own house, or in one of my children's houses? I've heard that we'll still enjoy food even though we don't have to eat. Isn't that a little Hedonistic? Won't we have the power to Priesthood some delicious taste bud action right onto our tongues without all the mess of cooking? Will we still have to shit what we ate? What does the perfect shit look like, a type 4 maybe?

If we get to enjoy the things we enjoyed here on Earth, will they really be just as fun in the next life? I can't imagine riding a horse will be quite as fun when you can go inter-galactic whenever the hell you want, and hiking will be even less of a thrill than say crawling to your friends house when you could be flying a jetpack or something instead. I bet sunsets are going to be a total bore.

What do people do if they're not into the science of making worlds without end? Do they hang around making babies or something? How much baby-making happens in the Celestial Kingdom? If we already know everything down to its most intimate detail, why would we be wearing any clothing? Will we be so prudish that we'll be bothered by someone's nudity even when we are perfectly aware of each and every molecule of every fluid pulsing through each other's genitals? That might take the thrill out of climaxing.

Just what exactly do we expect of the next life? How does anything that has been revealed about it not sound absolutely absurd, like the kind of silliness little kids might dream up? What's really to look forward to? Why is hanging with the Father so great? Is he particularly funny or entertaining? Is he a good hugger? Is he just so smart that merely standing next to him makes our brains bigger? What is it we want from Heaven?