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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Out of a silly concern for people's privacy, I used to give pseudonyms to everyone I wrote about on my blog. So when I wrote about my group from Shanan Ballam's Fall 2015 Poetry Writing course, I gave the members stupid pseudonyms: Bracelets, Redhead, and Glasses. And then Bracelets was the only one I wrote about consistently but I think I did mention the others once each. Anyway, I hate those nicknames now, so I'm going to come clean. Their names are Lauren, Clara, and Joe. That felt weird. I called Lauren "Bracelets" because she wore lots of bracelets on both arms, as well as hats with big, floppy brims and other generally fabulous clothing. She liked to be fabulous, but she wasn't conceited or anything. She was responsible for the formation of our group when she said those of us who happened to sit near her on the first day of class should just be a group, so she shaped my life in some ways with that thoughtless act. She also became a fan of my blog and more than once the only reason I continued writing it every week despite its very underwhelming performance. I would have given up back then, a few months after starting, but because of her I didn't, and now I've sunk too much time and energy into it to give up despite the paltry returns on my effort being nowhere near worth it. Thanks, Lauren, I say sarcastically. On my phone, she was and remains listed as "Lady Lauren" because she had an affinity for the romanticized version of the Middle Ages that we all know never really existed. I don't even remember why, but she once told me, "You're my knight in shining armor." And I told another woman about that and the other woman said, "Dude, either she likes you, or you're really deep in the friend zone." Women are allowed to say "friend zone" unironically without getting their heads bitten off because reasons. But Lauren was just big on being a lady and being treated like a lady and stuff. In her phone, I discovered one day that I was listed as "Christopher Aspie Friend". I posted on Facebook, "Today I found out that my crush has me listed in her phone as 'Christopher Aspie Friend'. I'm not sure how I feel about that." I felt safe posting it because Lauren didn't have Facebook. A couple months later, some random lady liked the post. The random lady, upon investigation, turned out to be Lauren's mother. I think I'm still listed as "Christopher Aspie Friend", and I'm torn between wanting to keep it that way for nostalgia's sake and wanting to change it because I now know that Hans Asperger collaborated with the Nazis by knowingly referring children with disabilities to be murdered at the Am Spiegelgrund clinic. (Nobody knew this in 2015.) I have ceased using Aspie or Asperger's as a descriptor in any other context. I never mentioned on my blog how she broke my heart, but I did cryptically allude to it with some very melodramatic language that's still better poetry than any of the actual poetry I wrote for our poetry class. Around that time, though, I saw Disney's Inside Out and learned that it's okay to be sad sometimes, and that was powerful. She started dating the guy she'd called "basically my brother" and then that ended but I still didn't have a chance. Anyway, we remained good friends but we argued sometimes because I got frustrated with her sometimes. I won't talk about why because I don't want to criticize her, and I'm sure she had legitimate reasons to be frustrated with me too, and I didn't fully appreciate the toll that the hardship she was going through must have taken. Let's just say we weren't great at communicating. We stayed in touch after she graduated and moved on, and I got her into the Star Wars fandom and found out she was already in the Legend of Zelda fandom, but sometimes she stopped responding to texts for months at a time and I still don't know why. I have another friend who was like that for the better part of a decade, but it was because she periodically relapsed into heroin and felt embarrassed to talk to me, so I don't know what the deal was here. Most recently, Lauren stopped responding for about twenty-six months. In late 2019 I was texting her once a week with no response, and then in early 2020 I told her to have a nice life, which, even though it sounds like a nice thing to say, is actually a rude thing to say. My frustration this time around stemmed in large part from waiting indefinitely on the feedback she had promised for the book that I'd sent her in April and she'd finished reading in July or so. I still texted her happy Easter 2020 and then in October 2020 I texted her to mention that I had a dream where she told me why she'd disappeared for a year, and I was very disappointed when I woke up. But I just accepted that she would probably not be part of my life again and I didn't know why. I didn't expect anything to happen when I texted her Merry Christmas this year. And nothing did happen for three days. But then - So this was a really, really nice surprise. I do hope she'll stick around for a while. I haven't asked about why she disappeared or why she didn't give me feedback on my book, and I'm sure I will at some point but first and foremost I'm just grateful to have her back and I have no hard feelings whatsoever. I value her friendship very much. I don't even feel like my former romantic interest in her was a complete waste of time like most of my romantic interests have been. Her kindness, her intelligence, her thoughtfulness, and her sense of humor, besides just generally making her a good person to associate with and a positive influence on my life, have helped to shape my vision of the kind of woman I'm going to marry. The thing I like most about her sense of humor is how we can take a joke that isn't all that funny and play along with it so seriously that our seriousness about the joke becomes the joke. Anyway, maybe I can't adequately convey what I'm trying to convey in this post to those who haven't met her, but our reconnection is the greatest thing that's happened to me for a while and though it came out of the blue, I'm sure I was prompted to text her Merry Christmas, and it increases my confidence in the glorious promises God has made me if I can just be patient and stay close to Him.
I was very proud of my first Fiction Workshop story. It was about a world of robots who start contracting a highly contagious computer virus, so they have to stop interfacing digitally and communicate face-to-face. Get it? It's funny because it's like Covid, but the opposite. Very subtle, sophisticated humor there. Charles and classmates loved it too. But one classmate, in his written feedback, dinged me with a PLAGIARISM WARNING! because a character in the story said the words "Life finds a way." This was, of course, an allusion to Jurassic Park that I expected almost everyone to pick up on. I wasn't trying to pass off anyone else's work as my own, and even if I had, I think this phrase is too brief and generic to legitimately claim as one's exclusive intellectual property. So I thought that was funny and I made sure that in my second story a character said the words "Clever girl." That was the high point of my second story. I'm not as proud of it. Actually, it makes me cringe and I want to burn it. In it I sort of tried to emulate what I perceived as the style of Catch-22 - a relatively flat protagonist with a simple goal just moves along from one absurd situation to the next until the story ends. And Charles said it felt like Catch-22 without being anything like Catch-22, so mission accomplished. But I wish I had finished it sooner and left myself with more time to revise it into something adequate for public consumption. During the break I wheeled my desk, which is attached to the chair, which has wheels, over to Kylie to discuss rescheduling our viewing of Return of the Jedi that she bailed on to fill out another MFA application at the last minute. And then she invited Mia or Mia invited herself, I don't remember, and that was nice since it permitted us to use Mia's TV instead of Kylie's laptop. I said she could invite the whole class for all I cared, so she did. The missionaries came over on Wednesday and roleplayed teaching me a lesson about prayer. I could have given them a real hard time, but I decided to play nice. I only asked "What if I pray and nothing happens?" and if they couldn't come up with a half-decent answer to that question, they would've had no business being missionaries. I could have hit them with some harder stuff. "This all seems like a bunch of confirmation bias to me. If you pray and get the desired outcome, that means God is real and loves you. If you pray and don't get the desired outcome, that means God is real but has a better plan because he loves you. If you feel good feelings, that's his presence; if you feel nothing, you need to be patient and keep trying. He's set up to be unfalsifiable, don't you think? And speaking of prayer, look at these Brigham Young quotes about black people." I understand B.H. Roberts played a similar trick on greenies when he was a mission president. The meeting lasted about ten minutes, and they asked if I had any less-active or non-member friends they could talk to. No, I didn't, because most of my graduate school friends have already been members. Greyson still is one, so while I wasn't as close with her as some of the others, I recognized that I could talk to her about a few things that I wouldn't talk to the others about, spiritual things that might just sound crazy to someone who doesn't believe in them even if that person is determined to be respectful. We had lunch on Thursday. I wanted to buy for both of us to thank her for her time, but she wouldn't let me. She's too nice. Last semester she borrowed my copy of Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender because she'd left hers in Georgia, and when she returned it I found among its pages a little handwritten thank-you card in a little envelope. Who does that? But we had lunch and talked about things and after I got off on a tangent about my distaste for the post-World War II gender roles that past church leaders taught as eternal truths and current church leaders quietly downplay, she invited me to her institute class because she had a cool teacher who said that women can decide for themselves whether or not to work outside the home. We went to the class, and a slideshow was up with the title "The Role of Intimacy in Marriage". Greyson apologized and said I didn't have to stay. I did anyway because I'll never grow if I always try to avoid discomfort. Fun fact, one of my former students was there. Greyson had never seen any Star Wars, which was even less Star Wars than Kylie had seen. I invited her to watch Return of the Jedi with us, and since I knew she was just being excessively nice in not wanting to be an imposition, I had to push a little and then backtrack from my pushiness, and she was over an hour late but she did come for the social aspect. Mia referred to it as a "watch party" and I had no idea how seriously she took that appellation until I saw the three boxes of pizza, breadsticks, Cheetos, potato chips, Pita bread, and carrot sticks she had provided for the four of us who showed up (me, Kylie, Greyson, and the guy who gave me a plagiarism warning). Greyson asked a lot of questions and Kylie answered a lot of questions like she was a lifelong fan and didn't just learn most of that stuff from me the week before. I was very impressed. And then after the movie she was like, "Wait, so who's the actual Chosen One? Is it Rey? She's not even one of the original characters. That's lame." Yes, Kylie, it really is. She made us watch the SNL Kylo Ren Undercover Bosses sketch again, so I made us watch the seagull song. I did an endowment session at the temple for an actual family name, not from my family as far as I know, but one I brought to help out a friend who doesn't have as easy access to temples. It made the experience a little more meaningful, I think. I got a really good feeling throughout and felt really affirmed in the state of mind I've chosen in response to my current trial. And maybe now this guy on the other side of the veil, Christian Friedrich Grimm, will help me with my German studies. No, of course he doesn't owe me anything for providing him with an essential ordinance to enter God's presence. It's just a funny thought I had.
P.S. Feliz Geburtstag to an estranged friend who probably isn't reading this.
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. This event happened on campus recently in the science building auditorium where ten years ago I took my first college class ever and gained a testimony of organic evolution. It was filmed, so I expected by this point that I could link to a YouTube video and have that be the post with just a touch of commentary from me, but no luck. Ratio Christi is an apologetics group that seeks to prevent 70% of Christian college students from leaving their faith. I have been invited to its meetings but have a class during that time. On this occasion it was represented by Matthew Markham, the guy who sends me texts and emails, and Gil Sanders from Weber State University. The Latter-day Saints were represented by Kwaku El. As you may remember, Kwaku fell from grace in my eyes after his plague parties and CES Letter videos last year, but I decided not to let that ruin my enjoyment of his funny and intelligent contributions to the discussion which, incidentally, turned out to have little if anything to do with the end of faith. The participants discussed their theological differences on the nature of God and how to discern truth, and ran out of time to discuss their similarities.
The moderator announced from the beginning that this was to be respectful, an example of the dialogues that should be taking place to exchange ideas and determine truth. It was not a formal debate. It lived up to that promise, but that didn't stop small-minded audience members on the Slido app from submitting bad faith questions (no pun intended) such as: "How does the LDS community explain the lack of archaeological evidence for it's [sic] historical claims?" "Why does the LDS church use the king james translation when Joseph Smith made a translation with a plethora of 'corrections' made to the bible" "Kwaku you said that your church has eternal truth. Yet your church changes its official teaching over time. How can that be? Because truth never changes." "Why do [sic] the Mormon president tell Mormons to not check into the history of the LDS church?" "Why are none of the LDS temple ordinances ever mentioned in either the Bible or the Book of Mormon?" "If there were gods before the LORD, Why does God say this? Isaiah 46:9 (KJV 1900): For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me," "Kwaku, why do you by definition follow a [sic] Another Gospel?" "'You dont [sic] need to care about them, to care about what they wrote.' JS lived an immoral life. How could someone trust what he says based on his actions?" "To be exalted, you must be temple worthy. This is determined by a bishop (maybe your plumber). Why not worship him? He holds the keys to your exaltation." "It seems that Mormonism is rooted in emotionalism" [Astute observers may notice that this is not a question.] "What do you think of Joseph Smith's practice of divination by using a seeing stone to receive revelations. When this practice is condemnd [sic] in Deuteronomy 18:10" "If exaltation is so wonderful why did Jesus not teach it? Why is it not contained in the Bible, or the Book of Mormon?" "You talk about being sealed in marriage in heaven but the Bible says otherwise. Luke(22:30) for they are neither mary [sic] nor are given in marriage." [Astute observers may notice that this is not a question.] "How can you believe the teaching of Mormonism when it verbatim is exacly [sic] what Satan taught which lead [sic] to the fall of man." "What do you think of the lamanite dark skin curse?" "Kwaku: is the earth also flat?" "If I convert to mormon, can I keep smoking weed?" "What about Joseph Smith's practice of Free Masonry which is rooted in lucifarenism [sic]?" A few other questions also showed skepticism toward LDS truth claims, but were actually thoughtful and worthwhile questions. Strangely enough, I didn't see anyone attacking the evangelical faith, though several criticized Gil for talking about philosophy so much. One complained, "Why is the Mormon the only one quoting Scripture?" Gil's point, which he explained, was that he had started his faith journey as an agnostic, and his study of philosophy was what led him to believe in one Supreme Being in the first place. It was the prerequisite to him taking Scripture seriously at all. Philosophy "proved" a certain kind of God and then evangelical Christianity was the only religion that matched. Both evangelicals really downplayed the significance of emotions or spiritual experiences, which they regarded as unreliable and often meaningless. Kwaku, as one would expect, defended those things but acknowledged that they have to be weighed against logic and common sense. He pointed out that we're emotional beings by nature and our brains are unreliable too. They ended up talking a lot about their different visions of heaven, including this controversial LDS idea from the Bible that we can become gods. Matthew said that really all he wants is to praise and adore God for eternity. I can't relate to that. Certainly God deserves to be worshiped, but if that's the only reason He created us and the only thing He has for us to do forever, I think that makes Him an egotistical creep. Kwaku talked about how cool and reasonable it is to think that eternity is such a long time and we'll be able to keep progressing and God will at some point give us responsibility over something. Gil said he's down with the idea of continuous progression in heaven, but there will always be an unbridgeable chasm between us and God. Kwaku said yes, God will always be above us, and if it's less controversial to call ourselves "exalted beings" instead of "gods" because words carry all kinds of baggage and can mean anything, and the word God comes from Odin anyway, then so be it. So it seemed like he and Gil basically believed the same thing and that was shocking. The discussion reminded me of a philosophy class I took once, in fact. It was like "Oh, that's a good point. Oh, that's a good rebuttal. Oh, that's a good rebuttal to the rebuttal." I'm sure nobody changed their religious views that night. I'm sure everyone just had their pre-existing biases reinforced. I'm no exception, because not only am I a Latter-day Saint but I figured out some time ago that if I ever stop being a Latter-day Saint, evangelical Christianity is one of the last religions on Earth I'll consider joining. (Catholicism, Buddhism, and Sikhism are at the top, if anyone cares.) So I can't objectively read a whole lot about the merits of their respective positions into the fact that the beauty of exaltation has never resonated with me more than it did that night. I passed through a phase years ago where I couldn't bring myself to care whether God was an exalted man with an exalted wife or "only" a shapeless force that filled the universe, and exaltation was so far beyond what I wanted or deserved that I didn't care about that either, so long as I could be assured that I would be happy in heaven regardless of the details. I have a testimony of those things now. They wasted their time discussing whether Mormons, in their view, are Christian. Wikipedia says they are. Move along. The moderator asked the weed question as a joke. As anyone who knows him would expect, Kwaku said he knows a guy. Ha ha. I shook everyone's hand afterward, even Kwaku's, and went outside before the Ratio Christi guys could return to the little tables they had set up with cards and pamphlets. My eyes were drawn to a little stack of cards with the angel Moroni silhouetted beside the words "The truth will make you free" and a link that, upon investigation, went to a nearly two-hour video called "An Earnest Plea to Latter-day Saints" about all the reasons why our church and the Book of Mormon are fraudulent while evangelical Christianity, by implication, has no historical or theological or scientific problems whatsoever, and the inerrancy and miracles of the Bible are of course fully supported by secular archaeology and textual criticism. This earnest plea and sincere concern for the welfare of my eternal soul moved me so much that I took all the cards. |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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