"You can leave the Church, but..."

You Can Leave the Church, But You Can't Leave it Alone. (Reposted from here.)

I had a conversation with a friend about people who wonder why post-mormons don't all quickly move on. I'm sure you've all heard the saying, "You can leave the Church, but you can't leave it alone." This is my response to that claim:

There's a huge double standard, as evidenced by the following:

1- I don't go knocking on my neighbor's doors to tell them about Agnosticism.

2- I don't text them saying, "I noticed you went to Church today. I sure missed you at not-Church. Hope to see you soon."

3- I don't bribe their kids with treats to stay home from Church.

4- When my Mormon neighbors move, I don't track them down and invite them to leave the Church in their new area.

5- When PBS has a show on about Charles Darwin I don't make fancy invitations and invite them to watch it with me.

6- I don't keep track of who's going to Church and who's not.

7- I don't fly across the country to Philadelphia at my own expense and spend two years trying to get Philadelphia Mormons to leave the Church.

8- I'm not constantly quoting Richard Dawkins or Carl Sagan on Facebook.

9- I don't put on a huge anti-Mormon pageant every year and invite all of my Mormon friends.

10- I don't secretly interrogate their children to find out why their parents are staying in Church.

11- When a Mormon neighbor makes the decision to stay in the Church, I don't write them a letter explaining the eternal consequences of their decision and telling them that before they make such an important decision they must sit down with me to discuss it.

12- I don't drive down to the Church on the night they're having youth activities and say, "Hey kids, we're on our way to the arcade. Do you want a ride?"

13- I never look at a Mormon and try to figure out what type of underwear they're wearing.

14- I never use funerals as an opportunity to teach the plan of natural selection to grieving Mormons.

15- I have never written my testimony inside a copy of No Man Knows My History and given it to a Mormon while explaining what the book means to me and how it has changed my life.

16- I have never bought a Mormon a gift subscription to a Secular Humanist magazine.

17- I have never told a Mormon how they should vote.

18- I have never criticized a Mormon for the clothes they are wearing.

19- I have never chastised a Mormon friend for posting something on Facebook that was too mormony.

20- I do not deny my Mormon friends and family the opportunity to attend weddings, even if they're not Agnostics in good standing.

21- I do not send Birthday cards to my Mormon Neighbor's Children with a note that says, "Darwin loves you and so do I. We sure miss you when you go to Church."

22- I don't tell my Mormon friends that they're going to hell because they don't believe in the Big Bang.

23- When my less-active Mormon neighbors decide to start going to Church more often, I don't visit them at a time when I know their spouse will be at work and tell them, "Now you know you don't have to go to Church just because your spouse wants to go. You're allowed to make up your own mind."

24- I don't disown my child if they decide to be Mormon.

25- I don't counsel anyone to divorce their spouse because they've decided that Atheism isn't true and that Mormonism makes more sense.

26- When I notice that a family in my neighborhood has attended Church for several weeks in a row, I don't leave delicious chocolate cupcakes on their doorstep with a note that I wish they would stop attending.

27- I don't get together with several of my Post-Mormon neighbors and say, "Hey, lets make a list of all the Mormons in the ward boundaries, and let's think about it and pray about it, and we'll narrow that list down to 5 names, and we'll focus all of our energy and attention on these five people or families, and we'll try to get them to leave the church."

When I was Elder's Quorum President, I was instructed to contact all the elders and potential elders every year, even if they had requested not to be contacted, because they could have changed their mind since last year.

So who's not leaving who alone?

Wife #1

We typically place Emma Hale at the top of the long chain of Joseph Smith's wives because she was his first and only legal wife. However we need to keep in mind that today in LDS culture the first sealing indicates who the primary celestial spouse is. In the case of Emma and Joseph, they were not sealed until May 28, 1843 which means Emma is not wife #1 - she's something like wife #27. That's right, Joseph was sealed to well over twenty women before he was ever sealed to his dear Emma. WTF?

Heavenly fatherliness #43 - Having fun

According to popular wisdom, a good father knows how to have fun with his children.

It's hard to believe that a Guy who forbids loud laughter really knows how to have a rollicking good time. When was the last time you had a fun time with God? Are you sure God was there or was it just you and some people you care about talking a bit about God? What's the funniest joke God's told you? How long did it take you to get the punchline? What's the best game you two have played together? Did you win or did he? Do you guys, like, totally hit it off?

I doubt you have real answers to these questions. I find the very idea of God having fun laughable at best.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #28 - Owning mistakes

According to popular wisdom, a good father is not afraid to own up to his mistakes.

Heavenly Father is kind of exempt from this fatherly behavior because the Dude is perfect. He makes no mistakes to own up to.

However, those who profess to speak for God are only human and are subject to making mistakes just like the rest of us. Oddly enough, they rarely, if ever, own up to them.

You might think a perfect God would ask his well-intentioned, mistake-making servants of choice to apologize from time to time.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

In college and doubting?

BYU Magazine has joined the fray when it comes to offering advice on tackling doubts.

Unlike the advice recently offered for teens, this one's actually not all bad. It encourages parents to embrace the doubter, engage in respectful conversation, avoid shutdown language, get educated on the issues causing doubt and admit when they don't know something.

Maybe ignorance on these topics is why parents - and Mormons at large - have developed such strong negative responses to doubting and questioning which has in turn created a culture in which members with doubts often feel isolated.

Professor Rachel Cope (cited in the article) rightly points out that “If parents are fearful of the questions, that could feed the crisis because it implies something’s wrong. If they can’t even go there, their children will assume there must be a real issue. There needs to be less fear and more willingness to talk.”

I'm not going to say there aren't real issues in the LDS Church and its doctrine, but I wholeheartedly agree that "there needs to be less fear and more willingness to talk."

Body aesthetics

Does the Church still get its panties in a bunch whenever they see people with tattoos or a girl with more than one set of earrings? When he was prophet, Gordon Hinckley sure made a stink about it and a new policy about tattoos and earrings was immediately adopted. The justification, as given in the talk, had nothing to do with revelation from God and everything to do with Hinckley's personal tastes and lack of understanding American culture.

"I cannot understand why any young man—or young woman, for that matter—would wish to undergo the painful process of disfiguring the skin with various multicolored representations of people, animals, and various symbols"  he says.

Can Gordon understand why this older lady got her tattoos?

Well if you can't understand it, Gordon, it must be ludicrous, stupid, and maybe a little bit evil!

"Likewise the piercing of the body for multiple rings in the ears, in the nose, even in the tongue. Can they possibly think that is beautiful? It is a passing fancy [...]"

Yes, actually, some people can possibly think that. Is that a problem? Does it honestly concern you? Is this seriously a valid topic for you to weld your prophetic authority on?

Hinckley frames his comments in terms of "self-respect" and talks about "defiling" one's body/temple, but chooses to ignore the fact that the verses he reverences have everything to do with filling our meetings and lives with the Spirit and nothing to do with how we dress and ornament ourselves.

Dissing the JC!

I'll admit that I have plenty in common with Hinckley on this topic: I rarely see tattoos I like and I easily imagine a life of discomfort when I see someone with obtrusive piercings, but who the hell am I to say that no one else finds those things interesting or beautiful? Who am I to stop someone from wanting tattoos or piercings? And why are we so convinced that God, who looks on our hearts and who will supposedly give us a perfect body and a perfect understanding of that body, actually gets upset about how much ink you've injected into your skin or how many ornaments you have hanging from your skin?

And if Jesus is so concerned about all the ways we disrespectfully change our bodies, why haven't we heard a prophet outlaw nose jobs and breast implants?

Good neighbors

Dear brothers and sisters in the faith,

Heaven knows we have some high standards and heaven also knows how easy it is for those standards to be compromised. It only makes sense that we only carefully interact with people who are not of our faith. It's only natural that we avoid inviting certain people over because we have no coffee in the house to offer them and that we turn down invitations to go out because none of us drink. It's right that we keep our children from spending too much time in a home that doesn't share our standards of living, our children might get the idea that it's okay if other people don't believe like we do! I mean, what if our children notice an R-rated DVD next to the TV or something? Scary!

We are completely justified in keeping certain neighbors at arm's length. We have to keep the World at arm's length given how we've learned that Satan is in reality "the god of this world." We can't take any risks! We have to surround ourselves with light and truth and, while it's true that everyone probably has some truth, we're really the only ones who have it all, so it only makes sense to keep to our own.

It's just that sometimes I get to thinking how Christ-like it would be to be open to everyone. I start thinking about how condescending our attitude is toward everyone who doesn't toe the Mormon line even when they're not Mormon. I ponder from time to time the arbitrariness of so many of our standards and then I consider how so many others seem to be directed at young teenagers who haven't yet learned to think for themselves and act on their own integrity.

Could it be possible that there's really nothing to fear? Would it be better if I showed more respect and trust toward my non-LDS neighbors and also my children? Should I stop taking brownies over with the sole intent of converting said neighbors?

Respect the office

BYU's decision to invite the then Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney to give the commencement speech in April 2007 really came as a blow. It had since been proven that Cheney had fed the US and the UK bad intelligence with regards to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His deception and war mongering has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (reporting about a good portion of the casualties has been suppressed) and long term resentment across the globe. The man once known mainly for accidentally shooting his friend in the face in a hunting accident became one of the most despicable men in the world and probably should have been tried for war crimes.

Why would the largest and most well known Mormon campus endorse such a disgusting and controversial person? People did complain. Students, faculty, and community protested (you can read and hear about the protesting here and here), but BYU kept Cheney.

Why? What were the justifications for inviting such a controversial figure? The height and nobility of his office. At least that's the most common justification flying around campus. It's an honor to have someone - anyone - holding the office of Vice President of the USA visiting the campus and we should all respect that office even if we cannot respect the man!

It's the vilest, most nonsensical horseshit I've heard. What if Cheney had been caught having sex with men in airports, would the Church have continued to endorse him? What if Cheney had been convicted of molesting a couple of nieces, would we still ask him over? What if we had discovered that Cheney was secretly a Neo-Nazi? What if he had caused the killings of thousands of innocent people and sent many of our friends and family overseas to fight, kill, and be killed? Oh, wait.

Would Jesus have invited Cheney to give the commencement speech? Doubtful. Would Jesus have shrugged off all the deaths caused by Cheney's lies? Doubtful. Would Jesus respect Cheney merely on the basis of his office? No fucking way. Why was my church doing this? What was I a part of?

Attitudes about women - MTC

While in the Missionary Training Center I got to hear the thoughts of a lot of missionaries as they prepared to go out and teach the world the truths of the Gospel. We were to be the mouth pieces of the Lord's church throughout all kindreds, tongues, and people, and what did we have to say about women, for example?

Nothing especially admirable. As it turns out, the choice young men who were called to serve managed to throw sister missionaries rather easily into a few groups: the sisters who couldn't get married either because they were too ugly or too crazy, and the sisters who could but wouldn't because they were too strong-headed and deviant. The only worthwhile female peers, according to many missionaries, seemed to be those who had either gotten married already or who hadn't given up yet by choosing to go on a mission.

I was appalled not just by the thoughts expressed but by the frequency of these conversations. I tried to dismiss it as typical immature boy talk but I had to recognize that these ideas were coming from somewhere from within the Church. Who's ideas were these missionaries repeating? Who had convinced them of such blatant sexism?

Hopefully the lowering of the age requirement for sister missionaries will help level the social playing field among the Church's missionaries.