Where, oh where does the time go? Friday and Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the worst day of my life (which encompassed an entire sleepless night). I'm not going to explain it again. I wrote about it at the time in a blog post which is still there if anyone's interested, but which I don't recommend because it's somewhat incoherent. I was still reeling from shock and confusion and anger, and I jumped around chronologically several times. But it was useful for recording quotes and details while they were still fresh, which has helped me with subsequent accounts. The most definitive one, and the one which I do recommend to anyone interested, is an essay I wrote for class last year called Things That Rhyme with "Elise." Though it doesn't include every possible detail, it is much better-written overall. It left a big impact on my classmates and my professor. Actually, because it was so long, I split it into two parts and submitted them separately instead of writing two essays. And the first part had just a bit of foreshadowing of what I like to think of as the greatest plot twist since (spoiler alert) "No, I am your father." I still laugh a little to myself when I think of how my professor began her feedback letter to the second part. I have such a sick sense of humor. I mean, I felt really bad about this plot twist, though not as bad as I did about living through it. Everyone was so invested in the story, thought it was so sweet and so cute. I felt like I was preparing to shoot a puppy as it looked up at me with eyes full of love and trust. But to continue: Yes, there is some mention of race in the essay even though the worst day of my life had nothing to do with race, because I wanted to acknowledge that larger conversation and show my awareness that even when I am misunderstood and mistreated for being different, I maintain some degree of white privilege. There is zero doubt in my mind that my interactions with the police and hospital staff would have gone even worse if I was black. And as much as Officer Hayden Nelson of the Logan City Police Department can go fuck himself, I'm not accusing him of conscious racial prejudice. But he was very obviously prejudiced against me because of my mental illness, and it's also self-evident that white cops in the US are conditioned to perceive and treat black people as more threatening, while white healthcare workers seem to believe they have different biology altogether. We saw this, for example, with the cops who assaulted a neurodivergent black man named Elijah McClain for "looking sketchy," then claimed he had exhibited "superhuman strength" and the fictitious medical condition of "excited delirium" (both often used by police to justify brutality). We saw this with the paramedics who injected him with ketamine without attempting to talk to him and overestimated his weight by eighty pounds. Those cops and paramedics should be publicly executed just like they publicly executed him. So yeah, I wanted to recognize my privilege of not getting murdered for existing while black. It would have been very tonedeaf not to do so.
I couldn't have asked for more understanding than I got from my professor and classmates. It was kind of intimidating, in the era of #metoo and #believewomen, in a predominantly female class in the hotbed of liberalism that is a college English department, to assert that two women falsely accused me of some form of sexual misconduct. (In saying that, I don't mean to suggest that I have it worse than the women who are actual victims and still don't get taken as seriously as they need or deserve. USU is currently being sued, and its police chief Earl Morris was recently forced to resign, for that very reason.) I am grateful that everyone believed me and empathized with me. I don't take that trust lightly. There was one part of the essay that I'd been tempted to gloss over because it put me in a less positive light, but I realized that if a classmate from my undergraduate non-fiction course (with the same professor) could write an essay about abusing her husband, I could admit to being less than perfect too. And then only one person even commented on that part in their feedback. Toward the end of my essay, I didn't have room to explore all the introspection and gossip and recovery that filled the months after the worst day of my life, and in particular the process of reconciling what I thought I knew of Calise's kindness and maturity with her very unkind and immature action, so I tried to summarize it. I tried to explain why, to the best of my knowledge, Calise and Talease did what they did. I didn't want to cast them as one-dimensional villains when in real life I know them to be complicated people, and I've forgiven them and I didn't want anybody to hate them. (Maybe someday I'll be able to say the same about Hayden Nelson.) But my professor and classmates didn't think that worked. They said Calise and Talease already came across as complicated, and that the end of the essay needed to stay focused on me and not them. So I changed that. In my first blog post about them, even though I did hate them at the time, I kept them anonymous (unlike Officer Nelson) to avoid any appearance of vindictiveness. But after a while I stopped keeping them anonymous because I hope that someday they'll notice what I've written about them and get the side of the story that they never asked for and then barred me from sharing. Is that a socially acceptable thing to do? No, and I don't care. If people are going to abuse me no matter what I do then I'm going to do what I want. I've written a little prayer/poem that goes like so: Father, forgive Talease, for she is delusional. Father, forgive Calise, for she is naive. Father, forgive Officer Nelson, for he is stupid and poorly trained. Father, thank you for giving the emergency room staff at Logan Regional Hospital what they deserve. [Note for future historians: this is a reference to the COVID-19 pandemic that made healthcare workers' lives a living hell.] Father, forgive me, for I am autistic.
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Crisis struck last weekend. Prudence, which it runs out I am capable of possessing once in a while, dictates that for the time being I keep it to myself apart from a half dozen friends and all of my Fiction Writing classmates who deserved an excuse for why my second story is garbage compared to the first. For a few moments after seeing the news I never wanted to see, I tried to wrap my brain around the fact that my life and my faith were about to shatter beyond repair. Then I ran into my bedroom to pray but discovered that I couldn't speak. I tried to pray silently but discovered that I couldn't think. So my prayer was just Help me, help me, help me, help me, help me.
I reached out to this guy in the ward that I know a little bit for a priesthood blessing. I didn't want to be too much of a burden on the guys I usually ask. While waiting for him to get back to me and then waiting for him to arrive, I cooked a frozen pizza and force-fed myself half of it, despite my complete lack of appetite, because I was starving. I offered the rest to him when he arrived, and he said it would be a good idea to make himself eat, and he appeared to have an even harder time doing so than I did. He wasn't doing well. He asked if he could stick around for a while after the blessing so he didn't have to be home alone. He asked if I've ever had questions about my faith, and I outlined the most recent one in very vague terms. I didn't want to tell him about my situation because I just wanted comfort from the blessing; I didn't want to open the channels for advice that I wasn't ready to accept. And he gave me the shortest blessing I've ever gotten and I appreciated that. He cried afterward. I think it helped him more than me. So that was cool. I invited him to accompany me to Come Follow Me with people from the ward. While there, I went through mood swings and wasn't in hell the entire time. I sat there for half an hour while two girls and four guys discussed the proper care and washing of different kinds of hair, a topic that I found altogether uninteresting but still better than being home alone, and then as I was poised to go be home alone again some others arrived very late and we played Werewolf. I threw myself into it with gusto. When I figured out that my in-game lover was a werewolf, I protected her with as much zeal as I would a real-life lover who murdered people. When others falsely accused and killed me, I was only upset that it would lead to her death as well. I can be selfless like that. I didn't look forward to bedtime because past experience had given me some idea of what I was in for. I'd gotten the obligatory blessing, and I would pray, and I would get sufficiently calm and peaceful to fall asleep, and I would wake up an hour or two later in a cold sweat with my heart doing its best impression of the ungodly screaming over the bridge of Rammstein's creepy and inappropriate song "Mein Teil", and there would be no more calm or peace or sleeping for the remainder of the night. Well, I did wake up and fail to get back to sleep until the sun rose, but the rest didn't happen. I didn't feel good by any means, but I felt all right. I soon came to the realization that God was shielding me from the worst of the pain. And He continued to shield me throughout the week, and I thanked Him and prayed more and tried harder and got better. Wednesday morning I woke up from a nightmare that ruined most of my day, Thursday morning I woke up from a nightmare that ruined the next half hour, and Friday morning I woke up from a nightmare that I was able to put out of my mind right away. It's not like I'd never thought to pray for comfort before. I'd just rarely noticed any of this magnitude, no matter how hard I pleaded. I don't know what's so different this time, if the nature of the situation has made me more desperate or more deserving or what. I do know that whatever suffering remains is a part of life that I shouldn't try to avoid or expect to be exempted from. Now I feel like I'm in a good place where I haven't stopped hoping for and believing in one specific outcome based on God's previous communications to me no matter how unlikely it looks at the moment, but I'm also patient and trying to be open to any outcome and the necessary understanding that will come with it. I know, I hate having to be so vague too. I'm annoying myself. One thing I've consciously done to enhance this effect is listen to a playlist I started nearly two years ago, which has taken on ever greater significance. Sometimes, like in the mornings when I wake up feeling like a dead battery and vulnerable to all manner of negative emotions, songs like "Head Above Water" and "Echoes of Andromeda" and "Boasting" have returned to my head.
I canceled my Tuesday morning classes so I wouldn't have to get out of bed until I felt like it, which greatly disappointed my students, I bet.
My ex-neighbor and dear friend Steve drove up from Salt Lake on Monday evening. We talked a little about what happened, but mostly watched Disney+. We watched Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and then some of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons - "Bart Sells His Soul", "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace", "The Springfield Files", "Lisa the Skeptic", "Bart on the Road", and possibly another that I forget at the moment. He went home around noon on Tuesday, which I later realized was his birthday. He gave up a third of his birthday for me. And I couldn't believe it was two years to the day since we went to see Jojo Rabbit, aka one of the finest films ever made. Where does the time go? My classmate and colleague Kylie also offered to hang out, so after our class on Tuesday I went up to ask if she was still good to hang out that evening. As soon as I started to speak, she put her hand on mine, and I thought about how USU's sexual misconduct prevention trainings told us not to touch someone without permission, even though we know full well that's not how neurotypical people live their lives. And I thought about my old friend Bracelets who used to touch me on the shoulder a lot until she saw the Temple Grandin movie and decided I didn't want to be touched. And I thought about a girl in my ward who came up to give the closing prayer after I had spoken in sacrament meeting, and touched my knee as she walked by. I think, in fairness, that this isn't just about neurotypicals vs. autistics but about women vs. men. Because women are raised to be more affectionate and nurturing, I think they can touch men's hands or shoulders or knees without these automatically coming across as romantic or sexualized gestures, whereas the reverse is not true. I remembered when a friend in high school was crying about her grandmother dying, and I needed to comfort her but I didn't know what to do but I didn't want her to think I didn't care so I finally admitted, "I'm trying to decide if I should put my arm around you or not," and that made her laugh through her tears a little so I guess it was better than just putting my arm around her. Speaking of dead grandmothers, I was at the funeral of mine a couple months ago, seated right next to my grandfather, who howled with grief a couple of times. If ever there were appropriate contexts to touch someone without permission, these were them. And it was still hard, it still rebelled against my conditioning, to put my hand on his wrist. And then I felt awkward. Should I take it off now? What if he wants to move his arm? I'm not really letting him move his arm. I envied a little Kylie's ability to put her hand on mine all casual-like just because she knew I was having a rough time. I couldn't think of anything more exciting to do than watch a movie, but fortunately for me, Kylie hasn't seen any Star Wars except for Rogue One and both of SNL's Undercover Bosses skits with Kylo Ren, so I picked the original Star Wars movie to guarantee that I would get invited back at least eight more times. She observed that Darth Vader is a jerk for kidnapping his own daughter, that stormtroopers don't aim very well, and that the use of computers in warfare was a pretty new idea in 1977 and that's probably why the movie was so popular. After the next movie, she reiterated that Darth Vader is a jerk for strangling his own men, and also reflected on the lack of women and racial diversity that's been somewhat fixed in the more recent movies. She said Princess Leia is an interesting character - specifically, it's interesting that she's a strong character but she still has to be sexualized. I hate myself for using that word twice in one post. Anyway, Kylie wasn't judging; she said the movies were fair for their time. I should have apologized in advance for what happens to Leia in the next one. She made me watch the SNL skits, and I made her watch the Robot Chicken sketch that introduced the world to Gary the stormtrooper.
I also talked to my old friend Eliana on the phone a couple times, and the first conversation mostly turned into her complaining about the Church. Kylie has left the Church too, but we have nuanced and mutually respectful discussions about it, and I look forward to reading her folklore paper about how patriarchal blessings might have roots in the Smith family's fascination with folk magic. When Eliana left a couple years ago she still believed in the Book of Mormon and stuff but didn't trust the leadership because of their past mistakes and current LGBTQ policies. Now she sees nothing good, wholesome, or true in any of it. I didn't try to argue and I hoped that my listening allowed her to let off some steam. But I kind of wanted to ask, Can you live with yourself knowing that I'm still in the Church because of you? I used to tell her about all kinds of issues that bothered my testimony, and she was so chill about all of it and confident that the Church was where God wanted her to be. She was my anchor many times. You never can tell what the future holds, can you? Anyway, we don't talk much anymore but I appreciate that she's still there for me.
For Thanksgiving, I was going to visit a nearby great aunt whom I shamefully never visit because I'm always welcome but that means I have to kind of invite myself at any given time, but she got sick. So I went to my bishop's house. Although I haven't always cast him in the most flattering light, he is a great guy. I wish I could say the same about my last bishop. Some others from the ward also showed up, and someone else in the ward had a friend who wasn't in the ward but was going to come, but he went to the wrong house so we started without him. He showed up fifteen minutes in and guess what? He was one of my students. So he saw me without a mask on and sat right next to me and that's kind of funny, isn't it? I hope he didn't take it as a personal jab when I said that I like teaching college students because if they don't want to be there, they don't show up. Today I tried really hard to pay attention in church and be open to the Spirit, and I did pretty well. I didn't even close myself off when a couple of people in Elders' Quorum said a couple of things about gender roles that made me want to stab my eyes out. I walked late into Elders' Quorum a couple weeks ago because I had ducked in to another ward's linger-longer to get food. I did that all the time in my previous stake without a thought, but after two years I still don't feel quite at home in this stake and I had to push myself. But I got the food, I ate the food and then I went to Elders' Quorum and I have no regrets about my priorities. They were talking about sexual transgression and respecting women. As a backdrop we played clips from then-BYU president Jeffery R. Holland's speech "Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments," which for the most part I think is phenomenal and really powerful even though most of it doesn't apply to me. It's just so well-done that it almost convinces me that sex is as beautiful and sacred as I'm supposed to believe it is, and not as disgusting as I know it is.
Holland refers to the impulse for sexual transgression as "a physical appetite so conspicuously evident in all of us," and I can't fault a guy in 1988 for not recognizing that asexual people exist, or even for not noticing that some people's physical appetite is not for the opposite sex. But in the clips we heard he also refers to "the God-given power available in every one of us from our early teen years on to create a human body" and says that "all of us" carry "daily, hourly, minute-to-minute, virtually every waking and sleeping moment of our lives, the power and the chemistry and the eternally transmitted seeds of life to grant someone else her second estate, someone else his next level of development in the divine plan of salvation." Okay, so, people with fertility problems aren't even rare. They're 9% of men and 11% of women. Those percentages may have gone up in the last few decades because of plastic pollution or whatever, but still, this is a really obvious and perplexing oversight. And then the teacher said we need to respect women by not telling sexual jokes, and asked for examples of how we respect women. I remained silent because, as is often the case at church, I knew my contribution wouldn't be welcomed. I would have said that I respect women by speaking out against the aspects of church culture and teaching that degrade them, and then the guys who believe those aspects and/or think the Church is perfect would have felt really uncomfortable. Putting women on pedestals is not respect. Treating women like children is not respect. Telling women that they don't need the same privileges and opportunities as men because they're special is not respect. Telling women that motherhood and homemaking constitute the entirety of their God-given role is not respect. Telling women that they need to be careful how they dress so men don't get aroused is not respect. A few months ago I respected women by sending the following email to the stake president, which I mentioned at the time but now reproduce in full because the bishop knows I wrote it anyway: [Quote] President [Redacted], I'm sorry to trouble you about this, but I won't rest easy until I speak out. On May 30, Bishop [Redacted] of the [Redacted] Ward gave a Sunday school lesson which, though it contained good and helpful information - I particularly appreciated him acknowledging same-sex attraction and telling people to chill out about not being married by their late twenties - overall made me feel sick, unwelcome in the Church, and reluctant to ever go to Sunday school again. Specifically, he was very blunt and adamant that God wants all women to be full-time homemakers. He straight-up told them to use their college education to be better mothers, not to have professional careers, full stop, no caveats, no nuance. And I knew there was no point in trying to discuss it with him because he was also adamant that anyone who feels differently (like me) is following the "natural man" and the world's lies about women's equality. (He had a very us vs. them tone throughout the lesson, like Latter-day Saints are the only people on the planet who believe in family values.) At least twice he referred to the people who feel differently "outside the Church", which came across to me as a conscious attempt to invalidate and put down the many people in the Church that he knows perfectly well also hold that view and constituted a sizable portion of his audience. He stressed that this was DOCTRINE, this was SCRIPTURE, this was from A LIVING PROPHET. He based this part of his lesson on the section of the Family Proclamation about fathers being primarily responsible for providing and mothers primarily responsible for nurturing. But that section is very short and vague and doesn't say most of what he thinks it says. I know that what he said is what the Church taught when he was our age, but I don't know how he could have failed to notice that it's not what the Church teaches anymore. In the last thirty years the Church has backed down a lot on the women's-place-is-in-the-home rhetoric and even reversed it with the "I'm a Mormon" campaign showing off (usually married) career women to the world as positive examples. In 2017, the Church's newspaper did an in-depth article on mothers who worked outside the home and some of the history around them. It explained that the stay-at-home-mom "doctrine" originated in the 1950s and (even while acknowledging that some of it came from living prophets and has been printed in church manuals) described it as "culture" and not some kind of eternal principle. So I'd say that's the closest thing to an approximation of where the Church stands right now. https://www.deseret.com/2017/9/6/20618595/mormon-women-navigate-cultural-pressures-around-work-family-and-faith I could go on (and have elsewhere), but I think this shift in the Church's teachings is pretty self-evident to anyone paying attention. It upsets me to think that my future wife may have been conditioned by lessons like this one to believe that her career ambitions are sinful, and to think that some women present for this lesson were thus conditioned. It's wrong and it's harmful. It will lead to depression, guilt, faith crises, and disaffection from the Church. (It's already led to me losing a great deal of trust in local leadership, but I'm not primarily worried about myself.) Anecdotally, the twenty-something LDS women I know - not all of them raging liberals by any means - are far more open-minded on this topic. A majority of them see no reason why they shouldn't pursue careers (one staunch believer has straight-up told me she wants to work at least part time because she'd go insane being stuck with kids all day, and that if she sat through a lesson like this one that equated womanhood solely with motherhood she would leave and not come back for a long time) and those who do want to be stay-at-home moms have no desire to force their preference on everyone else. Many of the latter will end up working anyway because modern economic realities have made it impossible for many families to survive on one income, Bishop [Redacted]'s talk of sacrifice and frugality notwithstanding. I know for a fact that I wasn't the only person in the room who vigorously disagreed with what he said, and that his belittling of us did not persuade us to reorient our thinking. I don't believe this part of the lesson provided any benefit whatsoever to counterbalance the negatives, either. Women whose staying home is in the best interest of their particular families can make that decision for themselves without a man incorrectly insisting that it's the only option God will allow. The damage has been done, but I would appreciate it if this never, ever happened again. I didn't reach out to him because he made it abundantly clear in the lesson that he's not open to discussion because he thinks his views are the word of God. Thanks, Christopher Nicholson [Close quote] I carefully avoided using the word "sexist" in the body of the email and then went ahead and put it in the subject line. And the stake president agreed with me, and as I later learned during an unrelated meeting, he shared the email and withheld my name, but the bishop knew I wrote it because it was so well-written. Blush. He said he wasn't mad, that he makes mistakes like everyone, and he hopes I would be comfortable talking to him about such concerns. I might have done so if he hadn't pre-emptively dismissed views like mine as the product of the natural man and the world's lies. So in Elders' Quorum, not for the first time, I kind of wanted to say something about seeing women as individuals with individual talents and skills and interests, not as interchangeable wombs with legs, and encouraging them to pursue all those things on equal footing with men and speaking up when they face discrimination large or small. But that would have been too controversial. On that particular day it also would have made me a hypocrite, since I had made a sexist joke that morning. I was at the home of some female ward members having pumpkin waffles, and this guy from the ward was there and I don't remember why but at some point he said "Women, am I right, Chris?" And then a few minutes later he was about to leave and three more women from the ward showed up. And he said something like "They're replacing me - three are worth one, right?" And I didn't give my response any thought. I think I'm generally regarded as a funny guy, and that's because my brain unconsciously observes and processes principles of humor. So in this case, I immediately noted the gender ratio between the three and the one, saw the opportunity for a joke, and inferred from the guy's comment about women a few minutes earlier that he would find it funny. And he did, and the women whose home we were in either did or pretended to as they laughingly said that I could leave. I've hated myself since then for making this joke that was entirely inconsistent with my feminist values. Of course I didn't mean it, and of course the shock value was kind of the point - but still, it reinforced a societal power imbalance and it was wrong and I'm sorry to the whole world. At least I can no longer feel holier-than-thou about that one time a few months ago when I was at a church activity and a couple of people told racist jokes and everyone except me laughed. Getting back to Elders' Quorum, the bishop was there and he said that if we could see how the women in our ward are feeling we would get our crap together (paraphrased because I don't remember how he said it). He decried the gender imbalance in the ward and the percentage of men who don't come to church. I didn't feel like chastising the ones who did come to church about the ones who didn't was quite fair. I also was kind of like, I know I'm a bad person and need to improve myself in countless ways, but I don't want to marry any woman in this ward and none of them want to marry me, so I'm not going to do it for them and I feel like it's none of their business. The unquestioned assumption throughout the lesson that all of us experience the same sexual temptations made me feel kind of excluded and invisible too, but that's hardly just a church problem. We (and by we I mean the bishop and other guys not including me) discussed how, as men, we have a duty to protect women, even though virtually the only thing women need to be protected from is men. One guy recalled a time when he talked back to his mother while his father was nearby, and the next thing he knew he woke up at the bottom of the stairs with a hole in the wall. Everyone except me laughed because child abuse is funny. I guess honoring women means having zero emotional maturity or impulse control - in other words, acting like a police officer. The bishop said that any true man would gladly take any pain rather than let his wife experience it. I'm down with that, but I'd expect her to feel the same about me. I'm not made of stone either. I do think men in the Church are pretty good at not sexualizing women in the ways discussed on this occasion. A few months ago I heard one talking about how women from this one South American country are way hotter than the women from this other South American country, and his brother married a woman from this other South American country and she's - here he shook his head and made a hand motion toward his throat - but he was young and about to leave for a mission to this one South American country, so of course he didn't know anything. A Brief Look at the 2022 Come Follow Me Old Testament Manual for Individuals and Families24/10/2021 When I was about twelve I decided to read the Bible all the way through, and I did, except for a few chapters of Leviticus that bored me beyond my capacity to endure. I learned pretty quickly that there was a lot of stuff in the Old Testament besides the usual stories I'd heard eight billion times. If I recall correctly, the first time I thought "What the $#@%?" was during Genesis 19. This is not an obscure chapter. It includes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but I never had and still never have heard the parts before and after discussed in Sunday school. At the beginning of the chapter, Lot invites a couple of angels or holy men to have dinner and spend the night at his house. 4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: 5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know [have sex with] them. 6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, 7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. 8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known [had sex with] man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. Lot doesn't exactly sound like a contender for Father of the Year. Fortunately, the would-be gang-rapers aren't interested in his daughters, and it becomes moot when the angels smite them with blindness so his family can escape before the city is destroyed by a meteor. He flees with them, his wife gets salty about leaving their home behind, and his daughters have their revenge. 31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. Biblical scholars now believe that "wine" should have been translated as "margarita", because it sounds like Lot was wasted away again in Margaritaville, searching for his lost pillar of salt. Eh? Anyway, you can imagine that by the end of this chapter, twelve-year-old me was like Muslim apologists have suggested a few creative and possibly legitimate interpretations of the first passage that don't actually involve Lot offering up his daughters to be gang-raped. So far as I can tell, the Christian approach to the passage, besides ignoring it, is that yes, Lot did offer up his daughters to be gang-raped, but this action was simply wrong and unjustified, even though neither God nor the author of the text shows the slightest hint of disapproval. Here's one area where Joseph Smith's revision of the Bible comes to the rescue. In his version of Genesis 19, the mob demands to have sex with the angels and Lot's daughters, and Lot refuses on both counts. (And the number of angels is three, not two, because that matters for some reason.) So maybe that's what really happened, or maybe the Muslim apologists are right but Joseph Smith figured that was too complicated to try to explain. He also interpolated that Lot's daughters "dealt wickedly" and "did wickedly" when they raped their drunk father to get themselves pregnant, removing any ambiguity as to whether the Bible endorses that sort of behavior.
If only that were the only issue. To modern readers, the Old Testament is full of weird and disturbing stuff that requires a lot of contextual knowledge that most people don't have in order to be of any value whatsoever. In my experience, instead of providing that contextual knowledge, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and most of its members - like most Christians in general - go out of their way to cherry-pick around the stuff in question and pretend the authors and characters of the Old Testament were just like us. Yet the Church exhorts people to study the scriptures, including the Old Testament, without so much as warning them about what they'll find. That sounds like a recipe for atheism to me. Third-party sources, including some by Latter-day Saints, are of course available to make sense of these things, but I sure think the Church should take a more proactive role in explaining one of its own canonical texts that it wants everyone to read. It doesn't help that the Church's curriculum writers lean conservative and anti-intellectual. Of course, it does help them with their assignment to dumb the curriculum down so it can be translated into dozens of languages with relative ease and used by used by a convert of two weeks to teach a class, but it has its obvious drawbacks. And my faith in them was shaken a little more last year when the Come Follow Me manual for the Book of Mormon included a racially insensitive quote from Joseph Fielding Smith about dark skin. It was, admittedly, pretty tame compared to most of the things he said about dark skin, but I still find it concerning that the curriculum writers didn't realize it would be a problem. And the Old Testament institute manual that hasn't been updated in forty-one years devotes quite a bit of space to quoting a Seventh-day Adventist anti-evolution tract. Based on these facts, I half-expected that the Come Follow Me Old Testament manual, in addition to continuing to cherry-pick around the weird and disturbing stuff, would strongly denounce evolution even though the Church has quietly but unmistakably moved away from ever doing that in the last decade or two. The manual is already out, so instead of paying attention in Elders' Quorum one week, I skimmed through it (specifically the one for individuals and families because I'm an individual and/or family). This was by no means a thorough reading, but here are a few things of which I took notice. An introduction called "Thoughts to Keep in Mind: Reading the Old Testament" gets off to a promising start. It says, "These writings come from an ancient culture that can seem foreign and sometimes strange or even uncomfortable. And yet in these writings we see people having experiences that seem familiar, and we recognize gospel themes that witness of the divinity of Jesus Christ and His gospel." Vague, but a most useful and necessary warning. It continues, "If you wonder whether you and your family can find personal meaning in the Old Testament this year, keep in mind that Lehi and Sariah's family did. Nephi shared stories about Moses and teachings from Isaiah when his brothers needed encouragement or correction or perspective." I'm not sure this is a good comparison when Nephi was at best a century removed from Isaiah, immersed in a similar cultural background to the Old Testament writers, and not dependent on a seventeenth-century English translation of their writings. "Don’t expect the Old Testament to present a thorough and precise history of humankind. That’s not what the original authors and compilers were trying to create. Their larger concern was to teach something about God - about His plan for His children, about what it means to be His covenant people, and about how to find redemption when we don’t live up to our covenants. Sometimes they did it by relating historical events as they understood them - including stories from the lives of great prophets. Genesis is an example of this, as are books like Joshua, Judges, and 1 and 2 Kings. But other Old Testament writers did not aim to be historical at all. Instead, they taught through works of art like poetry and literature. The Psalms and the Proverbs fit in this category. And then there are the precious words of prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, who spoke the word of God to ancient Israel - and, through the miracle of the Bible, still speak to us today." Boom. Here the manual acknowledges that the Bible is not historically accurate in all respects and that its books are written in different genres altogether. Many people will be learning these concepts for the first time. A note at the bottom of this introduction says, "These [first five] books, which are attributed to Moses, probably passed through the hands of numerous scribes and compilers over time. Still, the books of Moses are the inspired word of God, even though they are - like any work of God transmitted through mortals - subject to human imperfections (see Moses 1:41; Articles of Faith 1:8)." This is a short and sweet attempt at reconciling Moses' traditional authorship of the Pentateuch with the scholarly consensus that it has multiple authors. While church curriculum doesn't need to address every academic controversy or criticism in detail, it needs to engage with them instead of promoting a bubble of ignorance, and this is a good start. Moving on, I was gratified by the lack of evolution-bashing. The manual remains as vague as possible about the methodology of creation. It says, "While there’s a lot we don’t know about exactly how the world was created, ponder what you learn about the Creation from what God has revealed in Genesis 1:1–25; Moses 2:1–25; and Abraham 4:1–25." I'm still going to nitpick a little because that's what I do. I would have said, "While there's a lot we don't know from the scriptures about exactly how the world was created..." (emphasis added) God has allowed us to learn a lot about how the world was created through the scientific method, and while this knowledge is beyond the scope of the manual, I kind of hate when we act like it doesn't exist and any speculation on the subject is equally valid. Just because the scriptures don't tell us how old the planet is or how its current diversity of species came to be doesn't mean those things are mysteries. The manual does acknowledge at least one little controversy. "What does it mean that Adam was to 'rule over' Eve? This passage of scripture has sometimes been misunderstood to mean that a husband is justified in treating his wife unkindly." It kind of sidesteps the actual issue here - normal people in the twenty-first century are repulsed by the notion of husbands "ruling over" their wives at all, not just unkindly. A husband who "rules" benevolently, while of course preferable to an abusive one, is still an insult to any grown woman with a functioning brain. I think this is a more subtle example of the writers being out of touch. Within the memory of many people still living, the Church taught that while he should be kind and considerate and involve his wife in decision-making, a husband had final say because he held the priesthood and God had chosen him to preside in the home. His was the tiebreaker vote if the couple couldn't come to an agreement. I suspect that some of the manual writers still subscribe to this way of thinking on some level, and that while they would never use the wording "rule over" themselves, they can't bring themselves to denounce it either. "In our day," the manual continues, "the Lord’s prophets have taught that while a husband should preside in the home in righteousness, he should see his wife as an equal partner (see “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” [ChurchofJesusChrist.org])." It gives no reason for the obvious discrepancy between this teaching and what the passage of scripture says. One cannot "rule over" an "equal partner," and the only reason one can "preside" over an equal partner is that we've redefined "preside" to no longer mean what the dictionary says it means or what we obviously meant when we said it fifty years ago. The only persuasive argument I've seen for this passage - supported by the original Hebrew and better translations - is that it isn't saying how marital relations should be, it's warning about how they will be in a fallen world. But then, since the passage itself has been used countless times to justify the very thing it warns against, it seems like God should have just not said anything. In a note on the historical books of the Old Testament, the manual says, "When reading the Old Testament, as with any history, you’re likely to read about people doing or saying things that, to modern eyes, seem strange or even troubling. We should expect this - Old Testament writers saw the world from a perspective that was, in some ways, quite different from ours. Violence, ethnic relations, and the roles of women are just some of the issues that ancient writers might have seen differently than we do today." Like true historians or anthropologists, the manual writers don't assert that these views on violence, ethnic relations, and the roles of women were wrong, just different. That's fair. We want future generations to be patient and understanding with us too. And it's still a big deal - for many readers, this will be the first indication they've ever gotten that people in the scriptures were not just like us and didn't get their entire worldviews straight from the mind of God, let alone that the scriptures themselves contain unenlightened ideas we should reject. The note also says, "Sometimes the passage may be like a puzzle piece that doesn’t look like it has a place among the other pieces you’ve already assembled. Trying to force the piece to fit isn’t the best approach. But neither is giving up on the entire puzzle. Instead, you may need to set the piece aside for now. As you learn more and put together more of the puzzle, you may be able to better see how the pieces fit together." I think the manual underestimates the number of pieces that don't appear to fit, but still, acknowledging them at all is a big and much-appreciated step. This manual isn't perfect but it is a breath of fresh air. A Post About the October 2021 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints3/10/2021 You know what, after nearly ten hours of watching General Conference this weekend I was not looking forward to the tedium of also writing a post about it ASAP before another week has gone by, and then I thought, why not just share the five pages of notes I took? With a few little exceptions that I will redact, I don't believe anything in them is too personal or sacred to share with the entire world. Frankly, most of them are just stuff directly from the talks that stood out to me as potentially significant, and I don't flatter myself that they're anything special that anyone really needs to read, but I'm in graduate school and I'm a busy guy and this saves me the time of writing a full post. I approached this conference with the same question I had two years ago, and a lot has changed and my knowledge and insight into that question are light-years beyond where they were then, but it remains ultimately unresolved and just as pressing. For now it's a personal matter but I do hope that in the immediate future it will be resolved and I can write a post or twelve gushing all about it.
A few little thoughts before my actual notes: On Saturday afternoon, the multicultural choir intended for April 2020 finally sang, albeit in reduced numbers. Prior to its debut, the Deseret News ran an article that of course drew anger from the usual ilk of Deseret News commenters for "creating division" because "we're all one human race" and so on. Then President Eyring used the phrase "multicultural choir" several times during the conference session itself and those people probably blew a few blood vessels. It was great to see more than three black people and one Asian in the choir before returning to our regularly scheduled whiteness in the next session. Not counting prayers, twice as many women spoke as last time, for a total of four. Most of the thirteen temples announced this time are actually somewhat warranted by membership numbers, and aren't just about reducing travel times. I had noticed most of them on people's prediction lists. Last week my institute teacher solicited our predictions of how many would be announced, and I half-jokingly said thirty-seven, because who knows anymore now that the traditional metrics for anticipating their locations are only reliable half the time. I'm glad I was wrong, because announcing fourteen more temples to service one or two stakes each and be mostly empty most of the time would have been harder for me to get excited about, but I suppose that just shows my selfishness in making this about me when it really isn't. Now, my notes: Three things to listen for
It’s not too late to seek the Holy Ghost Don’t “fix” the tooth, pull it out No man having his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God There is divine help for any one of us at any hour that we seek to make a change in our behavior First great truth – God loves us wholeheartedly now He will give us the capacity to love our neighbor and ourselves Study patriarchal blessing Don’t tangle yourself in the net Don’t judge your neighbor harshly and cruelly because we all need the Savior Seek out the good in others As we rely on God’s love, we rely less on the approval of others God’s blessings are not unconditional The world is anti-Christ Can God rely on our love as we rely on His? Can He love us not just in spite of our failings, but because of what we are becoming? It is not where we start but where we’re headed that matters Don’t ignore your negative circumstances, but don’t fixate too much on them Show some humility for the positive circumstances we may not have created ourselves – give back Every blessing of eternal significance begins with faith that God is willing Overcome selfishness and individualism Church participation can magnify our capacity to love Live in accordance with the obligations we have accepted in the temple to receive spiritual strength in every season of our lives If you want justice and accountability, study the Atonement more deeply “Since the price already has been paid for those sins, would you demand that such a price be paid twice?” Heal the wounds caused by another person’s unrighteous exercise of moral agency, receive peace, mercy, and love The Lord knows what is better for us Nephi and his brothers were acting and trusting the Lord, yet failed twice Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time – your faith increases and your character grows One more day, one more week, try one more time God’s love is not found in the circumstances of our lives, but in his presence in our lives Pray to have our eyes opened to see his hand in our lives and his love in the beauty of his creations Focusing on growth is healthier than obsessing about our shortcomings What things do you ponder? What things really matter to you? [Redacted] (duh)
Don’t look beyond the mark or God will give you only confusing things The faithful need not fear the Second Coming And may I add, sisters? The Savior doesn’t fault our shortsightedness re:death The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives (4x) Nephi didn’t murmur against the Lord because of his afflictions Lift others’ burdens even during your own Complexity is not a bad thing or something to be avoided Small things bring to pass great things
Only He can bring us true joy, happiness, and peace To believe is to love and follow our Savior and keep the commandments even in the midst of trials and strife Relationships with Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and those around us = happiness Willing heart to say to the Lord, “Here am I, send me” Repentance is healing and it’s more important than physical healing His grace is sufficient for all + leftovers Feast on the scriptures, don’t just taste them Desire to participate in the gathering of Israel will increase We will want to go to the temple as often as possible and submit our ancestors’ names We will faithfully keep the Sabbath day God’s well-intentioned messages can be misunderstood as hateful Taking the sacrament is like filling up at the gas station Don’t just ask for forgiveness, ask for grace – less time hating yourself for what you’ve done, and more time loving Jesus for what he has done No all-or-nothing expectations – incremental growth – prosper by degrees We are not just walking toward God and Christ – we are walking with them
The need to hold up our light has never been greater Pure revelation for the questions in your heart will make this conference rewarding and unforgettable Revelation is always gotten by exercising faith If you have questions and seek answers, you have at least enough faith to hope for answers If it’s important to your eternal welfare, it’s more likely to come (*cough* [Redacted] *cough*) but even then the answer might be to be patient Internal quiet and submission to the Lord’s will. “I only want what you want, not what I want.” Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost, wherefore they speak the words of Christ The Savior will not shout commands to you and me Judith Tannery Roiz It’s hard to walk in a straight line, actually impossible without landmarks. True for individuals, also for societies and nations No matter how strong our spiritual experiences have been in the past, we tend to wander Keep our thoughts and actions pure by keep rolling Change this hour to change your day to change your life What narrative are you writing for your life? Will you invite Jesus to be its author and finisher? David could have gone home, back to tending sheep We receive more faith by doing something that requires more faith Spiritual stress test has revealed a need to be more unified and less contentious Failing the test doesn’t mean I’m hopeless, it just means I need to change What can I do to foster unity and lessen contention? Assume that those with whom we disagree are doing the best they can with the life experiences they have Don’t give up our cultural heritage The Savior helps restore order to a life thrown into chaos by our own or others’ choices Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment, and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high Love your enemies if you want to receive a glorious welcome home Nobody changes the principles and doctrines of the Church except the Lord, but methods may change
Pray consistently to understand temple covenants and ordinances We can always trust God even though humans break our trust We endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning The Lord doesn’t forget our sins, he chooses to forget them I can do the same thing with [Redacted]’s wrongs against me Sacrifice was once more closely tied to ancient Latin roots meaning to make sacred or holy Our will/heart is the only uniquely personal thing we have to give the Lord
Don’t expect to go from Attila the Hun to Mother Theresa overnight One of these things could make the biggest difference in your life When we choose to doubt, we choose to be acted upon Only your unbelief will keep God from blessing you with miracles Conversion blesses your life – sorry I was distracted during this one by [Redacted]’s text Focusing on the road ahead is like focusing on the Savior and walking on water No discipleship without discipline Things in front of the hood can distract us from Christ and eternal things down the road Distractions do not have to be bad or immoral to be effective (for Satan) The Savior came to the Apostles’ aid during the fourth watch of the night, not immediately When we must wait, remember that the Savior is always watching Specific steps in the Savior’s work (like emphasizing the proper name of the Church) are revealed at the appropriate time In these coming days, we will be called by the name of Jesus Christ Domains suddenly became available when the name change happened Humility and sacrifice to follow the prophet when it contradicts our initial thinking, we receive the Lord’s affirmation and approval How will we be different because of what we have heard and felt? Counter the allure of the world by making time for the Lord in your life each day. Even otherwise faithful Saints can be derailed by the steady beat of Babylon’s band Nothing invites the Spirit more than fixing your focus on Jesus Christ |
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