Choose The Right Memories

It’s been difficult for me to attend church lately. First of all, when I do go I spend most of my time chasing my baby around the hallway. It turns out that it’s actually much easier to chase her around at home (she’s not very sensitive to the promptings of the spirit telling her to calm down and be reverent). Second, the lessons frequently have very little appeal to me. Maybe if I actually had the chance to sit down and listen I would feel differently. That would be really nice. Yesterday was unique because I actually felt needed and useful. Since the song leader for the children’s Sunday school (called Primary) was absent, she asked me to fill in for her. Even if I’m not sure of my feelings about the messages presented in the songs, as a trained musician I always enjoy putting my skills to use. So yesterday was the best day I’ve had at church for several months. It also reminded me of when I attended Primary as a child. Singing the familiar songs about Jesus and the church’s core beliefs made me remember how I used to feel about them. It had been a long time since I felt anything like that.

What affected me the most was when we sang A Child’s Prayer. This song teaches children that they can have a personal relationship with God as they pray. As a child, I truly believed that. As an adult, I used to rely on God to hear and answer my plea for help and for answers. Unfortunately, I spent several years getting a pretty limited response from God, but it was nice to remember what it felt like to have that kind of faith.

Primary poses a difficult predicament. It makes perfect sense to have Sunday school for the kids, and most kids, I think, enjoy and look forward to participating in Primary classes. Some might argue that Primary is a form of brainwashing. Maybe that is true. Public school could be viewed as a form of brainwashing as well. Private school could do the same thing. The point is that parents are responsible for overseeing their child’s education, and they should be aware of what the teachers are teaching to their kids. If you are okay with a church leader telling your child that if they have a good feeling about something that it means that the Holy Ghost is testifying of absolute truth, then Primary is for you. If you want your child to memorize the 13 articles of faith (you could call it the LDS creed) then Primary is for you. I think I am OK with what they teach kids in Primary, but I always wonder how my children will respond, knowing that what they are taught at church represents what Mommy believes but maybe doesn’t exactly represent what Daddy believes. I take comfort in the fact that my children will have the choice of deciding what they believe for themselves. They will have to ask themselves “Why does Mommy believe that?” and “Why does Daddy not believe that?”. Their convictions will be their own and will be authentic. I fear that part of the reason I stopped believing in the literal story of the LDS restoration is because the narrative I learned as a child in my home and at church and as a missionary was far too literal with no nuance to explain the inconsistencies. My children will know the historical facts that they must integrate in order to develop a true testimony. If I had that opportunity before I committed myself to the church, I might still believe.

I hope and pray that my local church leaders will do the right thing and give me a chance to serve regularly. Apparently our organist is moving away, so I am basically lobbying for that position. If they want me to attend church every Sunday, that would be the smart thing to do. If they can live with me attending once or twice a month, then they don’t need to do anything. And if God almighty wants me to go to church every Sunday then he better tell the bishop that I’m the guy he needs playing that organ! If not, then there’s always the chance they will ask me to help out in Primary again. That’s helped me feel better about church than all the adult Sunday school lessons I’ve heard in a lifetime.

Is The Priesthood Really Necessary?

Why does mankind search for spirituality and seek the supernatural? For primitive man, it probably gave him hope and confidence in a savage world of uncertainty. For the human race today, it provides some level of clairvoyance and confidence to anchor the soul in a rapidly changing world where the future is anything but certain. I often wonder if spiritual explanations are just a way of dressing up normal human experience. Like a costume, it can either dress up the true nature of things or even make something that is ugly seem attractive. Sometimes the costume may merely complement the true character of the masked marauder.

I’ve talked before about the Holy Spirit. I would like to follow up what I said before by addressing other spiritual phenomena that perhaps are not quite so special as Mormons have been led to believe. Let’s start by discussing the LDS concept of priesthood. Mormons believe that Jesus ordained his twelve apostles to the priesthood after the order of the Son of God, usually referred to as the priesthood of Melchizedek or Melchizedek Priesthood. Mormons insist that the priesthood is necessary to administer ordinances of baptism, the sacrament, confirmation, and so on. Only worthy Mormon males can hold the priesthood. Catholics have a similar concept of the priesthood, but their structure is different and the Catholic clergy enters the priesthood as a vocation. I think I like the Lutheran idea of priesthood: that all baptized believers are part of the universal priesthood. No longer do you need a priest in order to access God. Sure, let’s have pastors to help organize and lead our congregations, but let no man declare himself as a necessary intermediate between you and God. You can access God by yourself without any priests. What is the purpose of the priesthood, anyway? Is it to make it harder to man to access God’s grace and love? Ever since my ordination to the LDS priesthood at age 12, I understood that hte priesthood was an organization designed to facilitate service. And I believe that the LDS priesthood frequently serves that purpose effectively. Unfortunately, it also serves at times to oppress women and exercise unrighteous dominion over the children of God. For that reason, I favor a Protestant approach to priesthood.

I really started thinking about the purpose of priesthood when I looked at examples of miracles. In the LDS tradition, the power of the priesthood coupled with the laying on of hands by those who are in authority serves to facilitate miracles in the lives of the faithful. I have always believed that faith is the key, and I think most Mormons would disagree with me. So is a faith feeling performed by a Mormon Elder more efficacious than the prayer of faith offered by a Presbyterian minister? I think Mormons would say yes. “He has no authority to invoke the power of God.” They will say. I seem to remember Jesus saying that all you needed in order to get a miracle was faith. No priesthood required. I think that priesthood has gotten a little out of hand in the LDS church and it’s just not as important as Mormons have been made to believe.

The poet John Donne asserted that “No man is an island”. I agree. Can you achieve complete spiritual well-being outside the LDS church? I think you can. While the church is a great help to many people, it’s not right for everybody. I think anyone can access God perfectly well without a church and without any priests. I think what’s in your hear matters more than whose hands were laid on your head.

The Perks of An Unholy Marriage

Five years ago, my wife and I were married in the Washington D.C. temple in Kensington Maryland (I guess as soon as the Mormons arrived they decided that Kensington, Maryland was part of D.C.) Five years is the longest I have ever been married. I often look back and ponder what being married to my wife really means. In Mormonism, the church conveniently defines this for you. Marriage means that you can have a forever family. It means that you can have sex with your spouse so you can have babies. It means that your responsibility as the family patriarch is to make sure everybody lives the gospel like they are supposed to. It also means that now you can add your wife to the list of one of your most prized possessions. Fortunately, some Mormons are good at personalizing the prefabricated covenants and principles in Mormonism. While I’m good at personalizing the functionality of my actual, physical possessions (like my laptop computer and my grand piano) I have lately lost my proficiency in personalizing certain elements of the Mormon gospel. That’s why I wanted to write today about the perks of an unholy marriage, like the kind that happens in an ordinary church of the devil or at the country club.

Why would anyone choose ordinary (civil) marriage over a temple marriage? First off, let’s remember that Mormons represent a very small percentage of the people getting married these days. Second of all, temple marriage has a lot of prerequisites. If you’re a man, you have to receive both of the priesthoods of Mormonism for at least a year before you can be sealed in the temple. Then, if you have received the priesthoods, you have to live up to the standards of the church and qualify for a temple recommend. That is an investment of 10% or more of your income per year for the rest of your life! Also, you should be serving faithfully in whatever capacity the church asks you to. If you’re a woman, then you don’t have to worry about the priesthood- it’s for men only. But you do have to qualify for a temple recommend just like men do. If all that wasn’t enough, after qualifying for a temple recommend you have to receive the endowment. This is an ordinance where you consecrate your entire life to the Mormon church, among other things. The good news is that most people seeking a temple marriage accept these obligations of their own free will and choice. In fact, for most Mormons this is the only kind of marriage they have ever thought about. The most tragic part of a temple marriage is that unless all of your friends and family are card-carrying Mormons (and are old enough AND have received the endowment) then they will not be able to attend the ceremony.

To get married civilly, all you have to do is go to the courthouse, show some documents to prove the identities of yourself and your spouse-to-be and then you pay a modest fee. I’ll be the first to remind you that the fee you pay at the courthouse is much less than the 10% tariff imposed by the Mormon church. The best part of being married civilly is that you can plan the ceremony however you like. While a marriage outside the temple can be expensive, I still think you will spend less than the lifetime 10% (or more) charge imposed by the church for continuing temple access, unless you are really, really poor. You get to invite anyone you like and you get to choose what to wear and where you will have the wedding. My favorite part is that you and your spouse-to-be can write your own vows instead of being obligated to use the church’s official vows. I suppose you could still use those if you wanted, but I have found that writing my own vows has really made it special as I have prepared to celebrate five years of being together.

I’ll ask again. Why would Mormons choose a temple marriage ceremony over an unholy civil ceremony? It turns out that the forever family package deal is worth anything and everything to most Mormons. It doesn’t help that the Mormon church effectively discourages Mormons from getting married civilly before their temple marriage unless they are trying to get them baptized into the church or the country where they live requires a civil marriage first in order to recognize a temple marriage. I hope that the church will leave civil marriage alone and then Mormons can have a beautiful civil ceremony where they invite everyone and then get their temple marriage whenever they want after the honeymoon. My wife and I almost did that. I almost wish that we had, since it would make a great story. Since time machines are scarce, we’ll have to settle for a quiet, private ceremony where we will exchange our personal vows to each other and make our marriage as special as it should have been when we were married in Washington D.C., I mean Kensington, five years ago. Maybe in another five years Mormons won’t have to worry about making that choice.

Sometimes both my wife and I fear for the future of our marriage since we have an obvious difference in our level of belief in Mormonism. I appreciate the church’s emphasis on trying to marry someone who share your faith and background so that you will have an easier time making decisions together. I think we both wonder if we would have chosen someone else if we had known I was going to suffer a faith crisis a year ago. I also appreciate the emphasis the church places on making relationships work instead of just expecting the “right person” to be perfect and flawless. But I’m still angry that the things I used to believe take away from being unified with my wife whereas before we agreed on 99% of everything. The first five years have been a time of huge growth and adventure. I am hoping that in the next five years we find more and more common ground as we decide how to teach our kids and further define our individual spirituality. My hope and prayer is that we will always be looking forward to the next five years and never find ourselves alone, lamenting the last five years.

Joseph’s Book of Abraham

As a child, I remember flipping the pages of The Pearl of Great Price and being fascinated with the facsimiles from ancient Egyptian papyrus. It seemed to me that the very mystery of godliness was contained within those ancient characters, so Joseph’s translation of them seemed all the more miraculous to me at the time. I suffered a great disappointment when I came to find out that the facsimiles really had nothing to do with Abraham or the Hebrew God, for that matter. It turns out that the facsimiles were nothing but common funerary scrolls for some other dude. So where did the text for the book of Abraham actually come from, then?

I believe that Joseph Smith created the book of Abraham. It reflects and seems to complement the biblical narrative, while adding in some of Joseph’s theology, introducing some of the ideas that would help form the Nauvoo endowment. The problem is that for for 180 years, the church has treated Joseph’s book of Abraham like it was really a translation from Egyptian papyrus. Now they have to own up to the fact that what Joseph told us about the book of Abraham was not correct. While I believe the book has spiritual value, it is not useful as a testimony of the church of of Joseph Smith. I would characterize it as a liability more than I would call it an asset to the church’s correlation department. Some will say that Joseph was not capable of writing the book of Abraham. Why not? Although his early education was limited, he spent a lot of time and energy educating himself as an adult. I can’t find any good reason why Joseph couldn’t have written the book of Abraham and used it as a vehicle to introduce his new theology while using the papyrus as a convenient setting for the new scripture.

What bothers me the most about the book of Abraham is that while the facsimiles are unrelated (or at best, loosely related) to the book, the church largely ignored the issue for years. If the leaders of the church really are inspired of God, wouldn’t they have figured it out sooner rather than later? If not, then I guess God just didn’t care about what would happen when we figured out that the book of Abraham wasn’t a translation from Egyptian papyrus. What’s so important about the book of Abraham, anyways? It’s not what we learn about Abraham, is it? I think the bible shed plenty of light on that story. If the book of Abraham was necessary for Joseph to introduce new elements of his theology, couldn’t he just deliver it in the style of the King Follett Discourse? I think that when Joseph saw the opportunity with the papyrus, he couldn’t help himself. I think it’s possible that Joseph really got off playing the role of a prophet and the book of Abraham was part of the game. Well, I’m sick of the church playing games with the members. Let’s rip out the facsimiles from our scriptures and let the first presidency tell the world that the book of Abraham didn’t come from any papyrus. And let them come up with their own genius explanation for where it came from. Hopefully they can come up with something more watertight than the story about the facsimiles.

Southern Racism vs. Mormon Racism

Having lived in Charleston, the recent news of the shooting affected me personally. I’m not sure I have a solution to the problem of gun violence or racism, but this unfortunate incident brings up a lot of good questions. Today, I want to compare Mormon racism to the flavor of racism expressed in the South. This is a difficult subject for me for a lot of reasons. First of all, my wife is a Southerner (born and raised) and frequently gets frustrated with accusations that all Southerners are racists, uneducated, and some people seem to think that if you are Southern and white then you must be an active member of your local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan. It’s ridiculous, but people actually seem to believe that. The unfortunate truth is that Southern history has one too many sad tales of racism and violence. While some Southerners still act with prejudice against people of color, I would like to believe that for the most part, racism reflects the past, not the present.

While I hope that most Mormons can agree that racism is wrong, the truth is that Mormonism has an unfortunate history with racism as well. While Mormonism ironically has its genesis in the Northern states that opposed slavery, Mormons denied the priesthood to blacks for over one hundred years. What is worse? Claiming a black man as your property while providing for his livelihood, or denying a black man the Priesthood of God that he must have in order to receive exaltation in God’s kingdom while gladly taking advantage of his willingness to serve in the church without any power or authority within said church?

While both Mormonism and Southern history have many examples of racist comments and behavior, they also have countless tales of bravery and sacrifice. I suppose that taking down the confederate flag is a prudent move in order to appease the masses, but the truth is that taking the flag down doesn’t make racism stop. It just means that those who make the decisions are willing to do something in order to look less racist. My hope is that whether we’re talking about frontier Mormonism (or even pre-1978 Mormonism!) or the history of the South that we will be inspisred by the good things and learn from the bad things.

Racism is bad. We all know this. While the most important thing is to move forward without prejudice, a formal apology would be nice. I think that the South received excessive punishment since the war destroyed their economy. As for the Mormons, I think they owe black people a formal apology for Priesthood prejudice and benevolent bigotry. Then we can quit talking about racism and focus on treating each other like human beings. I don’t think Jesus cared what color you are, and I don’t either. I am grateful that my parents taught me that racism was wrong and that I had the opportunity to live in a neighborhood where I was a minority when I was a child. I only hope that parents today can teach their children not to hate so that the incident in Charleston never repeats itself.

God the Father’s Day

Tomorrow I will celebrate being a father for four years. As for God, I can only wonder how many years of fatherhood he will be celebrating. I guess for God, he can look back on each father’s day and say with satisfaction that he did a great job and has nothing to improve upon for next year. As for me, my kids constantly remind me of my inadequacies every day, and especially at mealtime. I don’t think I will ever be fast enough to satisfy all of my kids’ needs at the same time to their satisfaction. What must it be like for God? Every second of every day he has prayers rolling in with everybody whining and complaining, begging for a new bicycle or a miracle healing. God has to hear billions of requests to bless the food every day of the year. If I were him, I’d consider outsourcing some of the traffic to Asia. Maybe he already has.

I rarely feel good enough as a father. During my TBM days, at the very least I had God the Father as the ultimate model for fatherhood. He always listens, is patient, always knows what to do and when to do it and he always knew how to teach you in the way you needed to be taught. I think I have a loose concept of the kind of father I am trying to be, but sometimes I doubt if I am making any progress. My biggest struggle is patience. All three of my kids are ages 4 and under, so they need lots of help with most things. While my two sons have pretty good communication skills, my daughter (the youngest) seems to feel comfortable telling me everything to laughing and screaming. I have to remind myself every day that they are just kids and really don’t know any better than to ask me to do everything at the same time, but I frequently get frustrated with them. If I could change anything about myself, I would be more patient. I think I used to be a patient person. I don’t know how that part of me wilted away in atrophy, but I want it back. I would like to believe that whatever patience I once had was built-in, but now that it’s gone, I’m not sure quite what to do about it.

On this father’s day, I want to give my kids the gift of patience. I want to give them the gift of knowing that I will always be there for them and will always help them. The gift I would like for father’s day is for my father, God, to at least say hello and try to show me that he’s there, looking out for me. Is that too much to ask? And no, I won’t make the first move. I don’t expect my kids to tell me I need to be more patient; I figured that out myself. And if God can’t figure out that if he wants a relationship with me that he will have to put in some effort, then he will have to be very patient waiting for me to make the first move.

Isn’t It About Time?

Until about a year ago, I would strive every day to accomplish as much as I could. I had an eternal perspective that I needed to become like God as quickly as possible and I knew that time was running out. I think that is part of the reason that I stopped playing video games after my mission. I had a laser-like focus that I needed to serve, learn and do as much as I could every day. While it was exhausting, I almost always knew exactly where to invest my time. What about now? I go to church but I don’t believe. I try and make the most of my life but I’m not sure if there is anything after I die. How can I achieve complete satisfaction in my life when I’m not 100% sure of life’s true purpose?

I still have habits from how I used to approach life. I am a time nazi; scheduling and efficiency are paramount to my peace of mind. I find myself trying to save as much time as I can, but for what? So I can have more time to sit around and do nothing? Am I saving up time for a vacation? I’ve realized that while I rush around trying to “save” time, I sometimes end up trampling important moments with my wife and kids. When I am fretting about minutes and seconds, my children are learning how to problem-solve and how to interact with other people. I regret rushing those moments that never come back; I am sorry for overlooking important opportunities to teach and bond with my kids.

My goal for now is to be 100% in the moment. Since the only thing that absolutely consumes my time is dental school, there’s no reason I can’t take my time when I’m not getting ready to catch the bus or studying for a test. If I don’t know how to use my time, couldn’t I just invest it in my family? That would be the smart thing to do. The truth is that there are things on my bucket list that I could sink more time into. I want to become proficient as a jazz pianist. I’ve wanted that for a few years now, and I need to spend more time pursuing that goal. And as for video games, I think I just need to decide whether I’m going to play FF VIII now or continue with FFX-2. Maybe then my life will have a purpose.

Searching For Spirituality

Mormons love to talk about spirituality and praise it as perhaps the most desirable attribute to cultivate throughout life. The funny thing is that at some point in recent months I completely forgot what it is supposed to mean. Part of me blames the fact that Mormonism defines it somewhat amorphously. I’ll take a stab at it. After pondering for a while, I think I remembered that on the most basic level, spirituality means listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. After Mormons are baptized, they receive the confirmation, kind of like Catholics do. From this moment on, a Mormon has the potential to experience the Holy Ghost at every moment of his or her life as long as they remain worthy. Many Mormons talk about the Holy Spirit as a “still, small voice” that tells them what to do. Closely related is the Light of Christ, that tells us right from wrong. Jiminy Cricket called it your conscience. These definitions seem simple enough, but the whole issue becomes obfuscated when you throw in some of the other stuff Mormons say about spirituality.

The instruction manuals for youth Sunday school lessons frequently describe spirituality as the mind (and/or the spirit) developing control over the body. Other materials support the idea that feeling good about churchy things is an indicator of spirituality. Youth in the church are encouraged to be “spiritual”, which generally means attending as many church meetings as possible, reading churchy stuff as much as possible, praying always, memorizing scripture passages and quotes by church leaders, and so on and so forth. These activities increase spirituality because they are, apparently, inherently spiritual. Dallin Oaks described spirituality as looking at life through the lens of eternity. Now that is a definition that I think is useful and worth examination and discussion. Call it spirituality. Call it whatever you want. But I believe that using the word spirituality tends to obfuscate the issue.

Let’s start with the “still, small voice”. Mormons frequently share experiences where they heard a voice or had an idea pop into their head to do something. Sometimes following the voice yields a miraculous experience. Sometimes, as Jeffrey Holland has taught us, the spirit tells you what to do and then when you do it you realize it was the wrong choice. The spirit did this to show you the wrong choice so you would know what the right choice was. And the Holy Spirit made it possible for you know what you should do. So is the spirit what we call intuition? The fact is that we are all highly evolved animals. As animals, we have an amazing ability to tell when something in our environment is “off”. I am convinced that this is part of what Mormonism considers to be the spirit. Once upon a time, a music teacher of mine told me that as he was about to dig into his delicious hot meal at a restaurant, the spirit told him to wait and blow on the food before eating so he wouldn’t burn himself. He paid no heed and burned his tongue. If you ask him, it was the spirit. It you ask me, it was his experience telling him to avoid a painful mistake. Is it possible to cultivate this ability? Mormons would say yes. Do spiritual things and the spirit will be with you so you can listen him. (that’s right, the Mormon Holy Spirit is male) Mormons would tell you that people who are better at following their intuition are more spiritual. I think that people who are better at following their intuition are 1) probably women and 2) manifest that behavior as part of their uniqueness as an individual. Maybe prayer/meditation does facilitate a greater awareness and capacity to follow the still, small voice in our heads. But I’m not sure it is a Holy Ghost possessing my body that tells me I shouldn’t eat the stinky lunchmeat in my fridge. I learned about listeria without any help from the Holy Spirit. For some reason, I keep eating the stinky cold cuts anyways. When I get a bad dose of listeria I will know that I should have listened.

Mormons believe that the human being consists of the body, mind and the spirit. You might actually be able to remove the mind from that equation depending on how you interpret Joseph Smith’s fascinating and controversial teachings on the nature of the soul. Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether Joseph was speaking as a prophet or as a man during that discourse. I’m not sure if Mormons believe that the spirit controls the mind or if the mind controls the spirit and/or the body, but they definitely believe in both the mind and the body being in tune with the spirit. So the theory goes that the spirit has the potential to always be there telling us things that are consistent with the gospel. It would seem like developing the ability to subject the body to the spirit would depend on hearing and understanding what the spirit is saying to you. Buf if you feel like the spirit is telling you to do something that contradicts the gospel then by definition it can’t be the spirit. So it would seem that following the spirit means obeying a specific set of rules. In Mormonism, if you follow the rules then it would seem that you are close to the spirit. If you don’t play by the rules then you don’t have the spirit. So maybe a more useful way to approach the idea of self-control is to talk about discipline. I guess the point of discussing the spirit is that when you choose to exercise discipline, Mormons might use that as an example of listening to the spirit. Whether or not so-called spirituality has to do with the spirit controlling the mind or the mind exerting dominion over the body, I think most folks consider self-discipline to be a good idea. But the spirit of Mormonism doesn’t have a corner on it.

Another part of what Mormons view as spirituality is the ability to perceive. Mormons believe that church leaders or missionaries receive spiritual “keys” to perceive the thoughts and feelings of those they are supposed to help. While I am doubtful that this power exists in the way depicted by Mormonism, maybe what we’re really talking about is emotional intelligence. One of my colleagues told me that the bishop of his ward was particularly perceptive. Then I reminded him that the guy was a psychologist. Is “feeling the spirit” (TM) perhaps an emotion? People who are especially emotional are often described by Mormons as being especially spiritual. Maybe people like that are just crybabies. I’m sure that emotional people who converted to the church later in life exhibited that behavior before receiving the confirmation. Maybe the behavior can be accentuated by the promise of the constant companionship of the spirit, but I would be surprised if becoming a Mormon suddenly made that behavior come out of nowhere. Sometimes Mormons describe the spirit in terms of what it feels like to “get the spirit”. Some call it a warmth or a burning in your bosom, while others describe it as a tingling feeling that encompasses your whole body. Maybe they’re really talking about the emotion of elevation? I remember a friend telling me that he felt the spirit really strongly while listening to an exciting spirit of music. While I knew exactly what feeling he was describing (the emotion of elevation) I certainly disagree on the origin of those feelings. Even people who are not spiritual at all can recall experiences where they have felt this emotion while experiencing the beauties of nature or pondering cherished experiences or relationships. It would seem then, that you don’t have to be Mormon to get high on your emotions. You don’t have to have the Holy Ghost to be elevated. So what’s the big deal about Mormon Spirituality, anyways?

Lastly, I want to address what Brother Oaks said about spirituality as a way of looking at life through the lens of eternity. What is unique and special (and depending on your theology, heretical) about Mormonism is the idea that all of God’s children have the potential to become like him (although Gordon Hinckley didn’t seem to agree 100%). Furthermore, Mormons believe that the choices made in this life directly determine the individual’s eligibility for godhood after death. So it makes sense that Oaks would define spirituality in terms of making choices in the flesh that take into consideration the everlasting fate of the spirit. Unfortunately, this concept is all too simply reduced to one tedious equation:

pay + pray + obey = life eternal.

I think there is much more to life than this. And I think most Mormons agree with me and accuse me of oversimplifying. So let’s explore a more meaningful approach to spirituality and looking at life not just in terms of here and now, but through the lens of what can be. Mormons like to emphasize the importance of family history, keeping a journal and setting goals. These are activities that are valuable without any spiritual component. Introspection, it would seem is another component of Mormon spirituality that is valuable even if your belief system doesn’t have a holy spirit. So when a Mormon girl says she wants to marry a guy who is a spiritual giant, what does she mean? Maybe she is trying to say that she wants a husband who will go to church every husband, read the scriptures every day, fast every month, pay a perfect 10% tithing, fulfill church callings to serve, obey the words of church leaders, write in a journal every day, pray always and attend the temple regularly. But what if the perfect Mormon spiritual giant also happened to be a self-centered prick? What if he had no backbone or personality and was a mindless automaton? Isn’t there more than to seek after than plain old boring spirituality? I think that talking about spirituality is confusing and not really useful. While there is more to life than the pleasures of the flesh, I don’t think that doing “spiritual” things all day is the answer, either. Perhaps one of the reasons that spirituality is so attractive to religious folks is that it levels the playing field for adherents to compete as they demonstrate their faithfulness. While we can’t readily change our body composition or suddenly change other things we may not like about ourselves, Mormons believe in an unlimited capacity to develop the spirit. So if you are an unattractive guy in the church, developing your “spirituality” is a great way to attract a mate since you’re not going to get much attention from your Laffy Taffy jokes. Maybe the emphasis on spirituality in Mormonism has a relationship to the 19th-century environment in which Mormonism was born. I’ll conclude by reiterating the fact that I am very obviously not a very spiritual person. I think I used to be- maybe.

Nobody Sells More Fire Insurance Than Mormons

In the bible you can read the story of when Abram’s brother, Lot, was captured by some badguys. Abram, feeling a strong sense of justice, went to defeat those rascals and save his brother. He and his comrades also brought back a bunch of goodies from the campaign. Since Abram had sufficient for his needs, he gave some of the spoils to Melchizedek. Maybe Melchizedek used it for church stuff- or maybe he auctioned it off to pad his investment portfolio. I’ll let you decide what he did. What’s important here is that the bible tells the reader about the idea of tithing: giving something to the leaders of the church because you should and because it’s a good thing. After all, the church needs money to build up the kingdom, right? So who wouldn’t want to pay tithing and participate in such a glorious cause?

Tithing has changed a lot over the almost two hundred years that the LDS church has been around. In the early days of the church, tithing principles generally revolved around the financial needs of the church. When the church needed more money, tithing was emphasized and sometimes the prescribed percentage increased. At one point, the church tried to live spiritual socialism by consecrating everything they had to the bishop, who decided how to distribute everything to the members of the church so that everybody had exactly what they needed. It was a perfect plan but it didn’t work. In the beginning, tithing was collected based on ten percent of your surplus after meeting your needs. That doesn’t sound bad at all, right? When the Doctrine & Covenants refers to increase or interest, the contemporary Webster’s dictionary defined it as surplus. At some points in Mormon history, tithing was a free will offering to be made by those who felt so inclined. At some point after the Mormons arrived in Utah, it became mandatory for a temple recommend and eventually tithing had to be money instead of paying with goats or gourds. For the last hundred years or so, tithing has been consistently applied as the 10% rule. It is interesting to note that not only are all of our general authorities trained theologians, but when the church finances get sticky, they become experts on linguistics as well. I’m glad that our modern day prophets receive better quality revelations so they could realize that increase really means income. I’m glad that they corrected the misunderstanding perpetuated by early church leaders. While Mormonism generally has a distinctly American flavor to it, consecration is perhaps the most un-American thing to ever appear in Mormonism! (I think the council of fifty is a close tie) Fortunately, the modern church takes advantage of capitalism by using private businesses under its corporate umbrella to help finance its affairs instead of suffocating Mormon capitalism with consecration. (See this article for a detailed history of LDS tithing)

The real question to be answered is where does all the tithing actually go? At some point a year or two ago, they modified the tithing slips to let members know that no matter what category of charitable donation they pay into, there is no guarantee the money will actually go there. That is like writing a check off to a charity without knowing if it is going to treat kids with malaria or pay for a hotel and a hooker for some CEO. I’m not saying that church leaders use hookers, but the truth is that LDS church finances are enshrouded in mystery.

Unfortunately, tithing is not the clear-cut business that some folks believe it to be. The bible supports the idea of giving stuff to the church as being something a believer might do. It does not clearly explain how the program should be administered. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for treating tithing like the ultimate way to demonstrate discipleship instead of actually treating one another with love, fairness and kindness. Maybe Jesus thought tithing was necessary. If he did, he didn’t bother spelling it out for us. To me, that means that tithing should be a voluntary offering made in wisdom and prudence. While it can be beautiful to demonstrate faith by giving more than one can really afford, Jesus only seemed to prescribe this type of giving for the wealthy who loved their stuff too much.

The truth is that paying tithing is not a sound financial principle for many folks. For a long time, I paid tithing faithfully and my bishop praised me for my faithfulness in paying my dues to the church. When I was out of work, my only peace of mind came from knowing that if I continued paying tithing on whatever I received that the Lord would take care of me. Unfortunately, that pattern didn’t really work out for me. While the church helped pay some bills and gave me food when I paid tithing (which was truly a godsend), I got a job not because of anything the church did (actually, I got very little work through the church community) but because I applied for a dozen jobs every day for four months. My only consolation after having paid out so much to the church is that the amount the church spent helping me pay my bills was roughly equal to my charitable contributions over the years.

Now that I don’t pay tithing, I can afford to save a few hundred bucks every month. I purchased a life insurance policy. I have the money to go out with my wife once in a while. Overall, I am much better off financially. And as a non-tithe payer, I have participated in more meaningful charitable giving then I did as a card-carrying Mormon. The biggest problem with Mormon tithing is that it is a flat rate applied to your income regardless of your circumstances. While touted as an exercise in faith, tithing is an exercise in futility that stifles real charity and turns Mormons into misers. Who wants to give more of their money away when tithing is just something in that list of bills to pay? What about low-income or lower middle class Mormons who are struggling to pay off student loans? I think most people in that group could achieve complete financial independence within twenty years if they quit paying tithing when they graduated and paid off their loans instead. This is a big generalization, but the only compelling reason the church can come up with to pay tithing is that if you do, you won’t get burned up when Jesus comes (D&C 64:23). “For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart”. The Jesus I think of cares more about how you treat those you interact with from day to day. But it seems like the Mormon Jesus counts every penny of tithing and is ready with flamethrower to barbecue everyone who didn’t pay, pray and obey.

10 Years a TBM – Final Fantasy X And My First Reality

As long as I can remember, I have enjoyed playing video games. In the early 90s, my first video game was the original Super Mario Brothers. Another childhood favorite was Megaman. And that, folks, is how I got the name Retrogamerdave. Before I ever had a testimony, I played video games as much as I could. Once I found my testimony, I played video games even more. The reason for that is probably that I finally got a computer of my own (which was definitely a blessing of prosperity for my faithfulness). But my gaming habits began to change once I started to prepare for a mission. I knew that I couldn’t play for two years solid, so I began to wean myself off. But the last thing I did before being set apart as a missionary was play Super Mario Brothers for the last time. During my mission, I would sometimes (ie, often) think about what I would do when I got back. It is no surprise that living in the “real world” as a missionary led me to place less and less importance on leisure and especially video games. I played occasionally after my mission, but it just didn’t have the same appeal as it used to. My logic for explaining my sudden disinterest was that as an adult it just wasn’t important anymore. It was just a waste of time to play video games. It didn’t help that more than one church leader while I was growing up criticized the overuse of video games. Some leaders made it sound like it was bad to play them at all. Obviously none of them knew the pleasure of beating Dr. Wily for the gazillionth time. None of them could knew how it felt to discover the truth about Cloud Strife and his past with Sephiroth, Tifa and Zack. None of them new anything about video games, yet they were apparently qualified to lecture on the subject.

My favorite thing about video games is that they allow the human mind to experience a fantasy world. While video games often depict a world that is incompatible with reality, the characters, music and emotions are real. While many adults I know who never experienced video games as a youngster view film and books as superior media for finding fantasy, video games are unique in the sense that you get to inject a little bit of yourself into that fantasy. And sometimes you get sucked in deeply enough that you have to remind yourself that it’s just a game. Dr. Robotnik hasn’t really captured all the animals and, unfortunately, you can’t save or load your game at will.

Oddly enough, several months after I began to doubt my testimony, I wanted to play video games again. Pretty soon I was spending an hour or two a day reliving the glory days of my gaming career. Although I am definitely more choosy about my games now (and I was pretty choosy ten years ago) I enjoy getting sucked into a fantasy world just like I used to. I keep asking myself why I stopped playing video games in the first place. I think getting married had a lot to do with it. It’s safe to say that I had very little besides romance on my mind for the first year of marriage. Then the kids came along and I had already fallen out of the habit so it seemed like there was no time for playing any games besides peekaboo and pat-a-cake.

The irony is that for the ten years that my testimony lasted, I lived in a fantasy world. It was a world with infallible prophets, hidden scriptures and magic rituals with the power to save the world from certain destruction. I finally understood the irony when I started playing Final Fantasy X a few months ago. I first encountered the game ten years ago as a TBM and inwardly scoffed at the people of Spira who lived in fear of transgressing the teachings of Yevon that were meant to keep them safe in a world threatened at every moment by Sin. In particular, I laughed at Wakka, the zealot who couldn’t look at a forbidden machine without fearing Yevon’s wrath. And now I come to find out that Yu Yevon was just a little parasite who created an ideology to serve his own interests. But he had convinced himself that it was for the good of the people and look at all the problems it caused! It’s obvious to me now that the story was designed to challenge the player to reject false ideologies. But ten years ago I was just as blind as Wakka. As I play that game now, I admire the Al-Bhed for daring to defy Yevon. I respect Yuna and the Ronso for clinging to the good while abandoning the false parts of their religion. Sometimes I feel like Tidus. I definitely don’t feel like a hero or anything, but like him, I have gone through the process of first resenting the reality of now, then eventually accepting it and ultimately embracing it. Maybe the old TBM me was part of a dream, just like Tidus. Maybe my old world of believing Mormonism never really existed. Regardless of the past, it all begins here. This is it. This is my story.