baptisms for the dead, part 2

Continued from baptisms for the dead, part 1...

The interview went well enough. I dressed up in my Sunday clothes, a dress I hated. But then, I hated all dresses. Just was not my thing. An interview with a member of the bishopric, though, required dressing up. It's how it was done, especially in my family.

Over at the church, I sat on the old orange couch in the foyer, my hands planted under my legs as I stared at the red-orange industrial carpet. Brother Hicks, the executive secretary, called my name and escorted me into the bishop's office. I was especially shy as a kid, so "don't speak until you are spoken to" was easy enough for me. Actually, adults had a hard time getting me to answer at all. But these were questions I had to answer, and answer correctly, without guilt on my face, if I wanted the temple recommend to go do baptisms.

I answered simple "yes"es and "no"s to all the right questions, the ones about faith and belief, the ones about behavior and abstinence and attendance. Easy stuff, for me. I'd read the Book of Mormon and believed it was "true." I thought Joseph Smith was a prophet and had restored the True Church and the Priesthood. I'd never even been offered alcohol or cigarettes, let alone try them. Sex was beyond my realm of imagination; I hadn't so much as held a boy's hand. Had he asked me about masturbation (had he thought girls did that), I wouldn't have known what the heck he was talking about.

The bishop signed the card, but kept it for my Beehive leader, so she would just have all of them in one place on the big day.

The next week, I zipped up my coat over my dress, and met the rest of the youth at the church parking lot for the carpool. Several of us piled into Sister Brown's car, excited and acting like any 12 year olds would: giggly and silly and downright untemple-like. Sister Brown quickly scolded us and began a serious lecture about how to act when about to visit the most sacred House of the Lord. Not only should we keep all conversation to a whisper, but we shouldn't talk about worldly things--which boy was the cutest and what outfit we'd be wearing to school tomorrow. Lots of jewelry was inappropriate, as was too much make-up, perfume, and bright nail polish. None of this bothered me, since I didn't wear any of that girly stuff anyway, but some of the other girls got a little uncomfortable recognizing how they were dressed and done up.

A reverent calm came over us after the lecture, and we sat a little more quietly for the ride to the Provo temple, 10 minutes away. Still, we were a group of girls, and the chit-chat started again. As we approached, I thought about how, well, ugly, the Provo temple was. I was pretty sure I shouldn't think of a temple as ugly, though, so I tried to think instead about how my parents got married there.

Once inside--the first time inside a temple!--I attempted a glance around, but we were hurriedly ushered to the left of the main foyer, and down a flight of stairs. I knew this is where the baptisms took place, in the basement. After Sister Brown showed an old man in white the list of our names and recommends, he waved us through a hall to a room.

This room had several wooden benches in it, all facing a large glass window. Through this window, I looked for the first time on the baptismal font, a hot tub-sized pool resting atop twelve golden oxen (representing the twelve tribes of Israel, I had been told). Men sat on either side of the font, above it, on a balcony, all of them in white jumpers. Two of these men worked at a computer console. It seemed oddly out of place. Two groups of youth in white clothes sat behind and to the side of them, girls on the left, boys on the right.

Off this main room were other rooms as well, but I couldn't tell their purpose. Sister Brown gathered us like a mother hen over to one of the rooms, full of white jumpers on hangers. An old lady helped us pick out jumpers in our sizes. Next, we were off to the girls' dressing room. Inside, we were pointed to yet another white-haired woman who stood in front of a large closet of white underclothes. While I was still processing what was happening, I heard another one of the girls list her pantie and bra size.

Oh, no! I was mortified. At twelve, I had already started wearing a bra, but only a training sports bra, and that only because my mom knew I'd be embarrassed in the PE locker room if I had no bra at all. And here was my fellow Beehive, a B since she was 10, and she never let me forget it, either. What size should I ask for? I didn't even know! What a nightmare. Too quickly, it was my turn, and when I couldn't get anything out of the mouth on my burning red face, the temple worker was kind enough to gently help me out with a negative triple A. Or whatever. I wasn't paying attention, just get me out of here already.

The next step was to change into our whites, and thankfully there were individual stalls with locking doors to give us privacy. I changed, put my clothes in a small locker within the stall, and locked it with the key. The key had a safety pin on it, and as I emerged from the stall, I saw the other girls were pinning the key just under the zipper on their jumpsuits. So the weight of the water doesn't pull the jumper open in the font--in front of the boys. I couldn't imagine much worse that having my clothes come open at the chest in front of the deacons in the ward. [Shudder.]

But then I heard the girls talking, and, yes, something could be worse. We were in white clothes and about to be dunked repeatedly in water. The boys will be able to see right through to our bra and panties! There wasn't much we could do about it, either, except get that towel around us as quickly as possible after coming out of the water. That, and imagine that only the boys virtuous enough to avert their eyes politely were the ones we wanted to date someday.

Once we were dressed, we nervously walked barefoot through the locker room, past the showers, and into the font area. There, we were directed to sit on a bench behind the font and wait our turns. The boys from our ward were on the opposite bench, to our left. They were goofing off. In the temple. How immature.

My turn came, and I gingerly stepped down the few stairs into the font, careful not to slip. Everyone was watching. The man in the font doing the baptisms, Mike, a guy from the ward about to go on his mission, helped me down. I got into position, standing in chest-deep water, facing a blue monitor, which sat just above the water to the side of the font. On the screen were the words for the baptism, so Mike could just read them off and not try to speak the words from memory. It was important to say the exact words, or the ordinance didn't count, and we'd have to do it all over again. Same if any part of my body or any strand of hair didn't get immersed completely--that's a do-over. My brother had been baptized twice when he was eight, because his toe had popped up. I secretly wished that had happened to me; I imagined there was something special about being baptized twice, like it washed away the sins even better.

Here in this baptismal font, I was about to be baptized for some dead women, enabling them to receive the necessary ordinance so they could progress from the spirit prison where they were, onto spirit paradise. I had heard stories about people performing baptisms for the dead, and seeing or feeling the presence of spirits, people they were being baptized for. The spirits came to witness their own vicarious baptisms, or to thank the person who got the ordinance done for them. Part of me hoped I would see some of the spirits, or at least feel them. But part of me was scared; seeing spirits might creep me out. I wasn't sure, and I wasn't sure if I had the faith to see them anyway. So I kept the idea to myself. And kept my eyes peeled.

Mike raised his right arm, elbow bent. Reading from the screen, he read, "Sister FTA, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and on behalf of Mary Klein, who is dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen." After a bit of confusion, we got our arms interlocked into position, with my fingers plugging my nose, and he immersed me completely under the water, and pulled me up again. The water was heavy on top of me, but not too cool, and the jumper pulled me down. Just as I was about to panic, I was out of the water, trying to regain my footing. He immediately started to repeat the prayer, this time with a different woman's name, and I was in the water again. I tried to pay attention to the screen to note the women's names, birth years, and birth places; I felt a special bond with them, being the person who played so significant a role in their salvation. I went down and up twenty times before it was the next person's turn.

I started up the steps out of the water, feeling the soaked, now see-through jumper cling to my body in all the wrong places. Mercifully, Sister Brown had anticipated this and was waiting just at the top of the stairs with a towel, which she draped over my back. She escorted me back past the girls, and into the shower area of the dressing room. Only shower curtains blocked the shower from anyone coming in or going out, and I felt embarrassed and worked as quickly as I could to get out of my wet clothes. But my dry clothes were secured back in the stall, so I was given a "shield" to wear as I walked back to change. The shield was basically a large square of white cloth with a hole cut in the middle for my head to poke through. I pulled my head through the hole, and tried as well as I could to hold the open sides closed all the way back to my stall.

Once dressed, my hair brushed but still wet, I was given yet another set of white clothes, this time to take part in confirmations--the ordinance done just after baptism that confirms the neophyte a member of the church and gives them the gift of the Holy Ghost. I was led into another room off the main room, and into a small cubicle, where two men in white jumpers sat around a chair. Their chairs were built specifically for this; they were like bar stools, with a crossbar elbow rest, so they could easily keep their arms up to put on the youths' heads, for blessing after blessing. I sat in the chair, and folded my hands in my lap. Both men placed their hands on my head (they were heavy hands) and one spoke the prescribed prayer, again saying my name, then inserting the name of a different dead woman each time. Between each time, they lifted their hands off my head, then placed them back down, making a clear distinction between each confirmation.

Finally, my part was done, and I only had to wait in the wooden benches while everyone else finished up. The others with me watched the people in the font, and chatted amongst themselves about this and that. Hopes that the boys didn't see through their jumpers; news that Paul had a crush on Suzie; gossip about who thought who was cute.

Once we were all gathered together, we headed back up the steps. When I left through the temple doors and back outside, I was surprised to find it was dark, and the ground was covered in snow. I had completely lost track of outside; inside had been so warm, so peaceful and filled with the Spirit. (Also, it had been windowless.) It was a little bit of a let down to go back into The World.

For a while, though, I had been inside. I had tasted a little bit of heaven, and I was eager to go back.


It occurred to me only halfway through writing this post that I would have never written down these details as a faithful Mormon. All goings-on in the temple are kept quite private, from personal feelings and reactions to actual ordinances and protocol. Mormons say this is because the temple is sacred, and it was to me. Writing about the baptisms and confirmations so openly would only confirm my status as an apostate. Keeping them secret only makes outsiders all the more curious and suspicious, and the rumors wild. Writing out my experience, I want to show my mundane interactions (talking about boys; worry about bra sizes and wet whites) in the midst of what I understood as my "sacred, spiritual experience." It was both grounded and sublime, as is much of Mormonism.

Thanks to Meg for reminding me about the bra and panties anguish.

immorality education

Like other Mormon young women (doesn't everyone else call them teenagers or youth?), I had the importance of "morality" drilled into me. Morals and ethics are fine things, but in Mormon parlance, "morality" means one thing: abstinence from sex. Conversely, "immorality" means having sex. Why the terms took on such specific meanings I cannot fathom, and I believe it creates a skewed idea of what morality actually is, but that's not the topic of this post. What I want to talk about is the Mormon version of teaching youth about sex.

As a youth, I was taught that immorality (which I always had to sort out in my head as different from immortality, another hot topic in Mormon churches) was bad, bad, bad, to be avoided at all costs, and just downright bad. Fornication was listed as the third worst sin, after murder (number two), and denying the Spirit (whatever that means). How messed up is that? Also, if you were "immoral," you were unworthy to go to the temple. And it was the temple where you wanted to get married, to start your eternal family, so you had better avoid immorality!

And how to avoid it? By staying as far away from it as possible. How? Not dating until you were at least 16, not entertaining dirty thoughts, not reading dirty romances, not watching rated-R movies, not watching dirtier PG-13 movies, not having a steady boyfriend until after high school, not single-dating, not staying out past midnight ("When the holy Ghost goes to bed!"), and not going to parties where the parents wouldn't be there. Don't masturbate would've been on the list, had any of our leaders imagined that, yes, females masturbate, too. But they didn't.

Oh, and all the do's, too: Go to seminary, stay worthy of the Spirit, read your scriptures, say your prayers, attend church every week, go to Young Women's activity nights, befriend only people with your same standards (read: Molly Mormons, and only Mormons), listen to good music, read worthy books, and always dream of the day you will be sealed in the temple to a worthy return missionary!

I remember my dad's explanation behind waiting until you were 16 to date: You start dating, hanging out with people you like, and you're going to want to move to the next step--holding hands. Pretty soon, holding hands won't be enough, so you'll want to move on to hugging. Then little kisses. Then even that will get boring, and you'll want to kiss more. Maybe even make-out. And making out will lead to heavier making out, and before you know it, you're clothes are off and you've blown (heh) you're chance at happiness (e.g., temple marriage). So don't start dating early, and don't be alone with your date, until, oh, you're married, mmkay?

Oh, and if you are "immoral" with that 18-year old, you'll prevent him from going on his mission, so not only will you have ruined his life, but you'll have stopped him from teaching all those people he would have converted had he only stayed worthy, you slut!

Did we get any lessons about STDs? Teen pregnancy? How hard it is to be a teen mother? How to deal with the emotions around having sex? Birth control? HIV? Where to get condoms and how to put them on? How to negotiate safe sex with your partner? How anal and oral sex can still spread diseases, if not pregnancy? Nope, nope, nope.

How to say no to a boy? How to be confident and strong? How we have the right to say when and where and how and with whom? No way. How about sexual abuse? Rape? Incest? How to deal with those? Where to seek help? Nope. What to do if you find yourself pregnant? The teachers were eerily silent on the issues.

Instead, it was simple: Stay clean, stay worthy, and all will be well and you'll live happily ever after in your perfect temple marriage. Slip up, and you're screwed (heh). And left to wallow in your guilt for having sexual impulses.

That is, being a completely normal human being.

what women know

I commented before about the 1950's-era talk given in LDS general conference recently, and how people criticizing it got a slap on the wrist, as it were, in subsequent church meetings. The church can believe and teach what it wants, but in teaching the kinds of things about women (and men) that the church is teaching, they are ignoring what women (and men) really are. And therefore hurting them, even the very people who want to be Mormon.

Well, people are stepping up and have written a response. It's beautiful and powerful, and it shows that a lot of Mormon women--faithful, liberal, and ex--are thinking, and not just obeying blindly. It takes guts for faithful Mormon women and men to sign their names, at the risk of church discipline, and I applaud them. They are seeking signatures from people who can show their support in that manner (I know there are many reasons to be anonymous on the web, both the 'nacle and the DAMU).

I added my name. Check it out.

leaving is hard

My friend responded to my email about leaving with surprise that it would be hard to leave the church. It just had never occurred to her. So I speculated about why.

Oh, I also wanted to say that I had never considered that it would be hard to leave, either. Maybe this is partly because the three most common reasons listed within the church for people who leave are "they were offended; they wanted to sin or they sinned and were feeling unworthy; and they were lazy." Doesn't sound difficult.

In fact, these reasons are grossly inaccurate. Of all the people I have interacted with since leaving (and that's a lot of people), very, very few of them are captured in those reasons. For most people who actually leave the church or stop believing (as opposed to "jack Mormons" who still believe but just don't practice for a variety of reasons), the main reason is that they simply don't believe the church's claims. "Simply not believing" may sound simple, too, I guess. But it's not.

free speech in Mormonism

I haven't commented on Julie Beck's recent LDS General Conference talk that told women that homemaking, nurturing, and house chores are their highest calling. Aspiring to have a life outside the home is apparently ungoddess-like, and while I, as a faithful Mormon, aspired anyway, I always felt very conflicted about it. It wasn't until I was out of Mormonism that I was actually comfortable with pursuing my master's degree with the idea that I'd actually get a full-time job afterward.

Anyway, many Mormon people in various stages of faith and non-belief have spoken up about Beck's talk since that first weekend in October. Since then, Boyd Packer, one of the church's highest leaders, has made comments that appear to chastise the women and men who have criticized the seemingly 1950's-era talk. Packer quoted a scripture that basically called the critics (both faithful and exmo) "children of disobedience" and "servants of sin." (The scripture's context appears to me to be regarding people accusing Joseph of polygamy, but never mind that for now.)

Hellmut over at Main Street Plaza has written a more extensive post than I have, and I want to bring attention to it. Every Mormon, faithful, doubting, ex-, or post- should have the right to speak freely, even if that means criticizing leaders, their opinions, policies, and doctrine. Period.

publicity

I was with my devout Mormon relatives this last week, and some interesting conversation topics popped up. One topic was "any publicity is good publicity," a view apparently held by some of the apostles. You know all the Mormonism-in-the-news that's been going on? The polygamist Warren Jeffs trial (guilty!), the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the movie September Dawn, and Mormon Mitt Romney running for president? Yep, it's all publicity for the mainstream LDS church, even if only tangentially through history and the FLDS church.

Apostle Perry, for his part, believes all this to be a good thing for the church. Why? Because when people hear about the funky doctrines of Mormonism that Romney equivocates about, and the FLDS church's prophet-accomplice to rape, and the ugly, ugly history of fanatical mass murder, people ask questions. And, Perry must believe, the curious place these questions to devout Mormons who know little enough about them that they can make them look okay.

You know, like, we're really about family values and we don't actually worry about man-becoming-god and the New Jerusalem and denial of the priesthood to blacks. And the FLDS church is in no way related to us; we're LDS, see? Those FLDSers are bad and not Mormon and a big fat embarrassment to us. They have nothing to do with us, and their version of polygamy is in no way anything like the LDS historical polygamy, no, no. And those MMM murders, well, okay, they were murders, but it was a bunch of fanatics. If they had just listened to their leaders, they wouldn't have been led astray. It was their own sick brand of Mormonism that they interpreted to allow for the murders; that wasn't true Mormonism. Besides, the Arkansans were claiming they killed Joseph and all that--of course the Mormons were angry!

But I would venture to guess that, for the most part, all this publicity mostly makes Mormonism look worse than it already did to the general US public. Most Americans think Mormonism is as strange as Scientology and Moonie-ism and JW-ism. To hear more about polygamy and massacre and funky doctrine is only going to solidify that opinion in most minds. And when the curious ask questions, they are going to ask Google as often as their faithful Mormon neighbor, and get very different answers. In my experience, when people do ask faithful Mormons questions about their religion, it is often out of simple curiosity, and the only thing keeping them from saying "That's sounds idiotic!" or "Oh, please, you actually believe that?" is politeness.

So when my family was talking about all this, I was polite. I put in my two cents about MMM and the polygamy trial, to be sure, but I chose my words and tone carefully so that they would actually listen, rather than automatically ignore my opinion because it's so exmo. The interesting thing about those topics, though, is that we, as devout Mormons and exmo, can somewhat agree. The MMM was disgusting. Polygamy is disgusting.

The difference between us lies in the beliefs about the origins. To them, MMM came from local, fanatical leaders--so it is not a part of the True Church of God. To me, it came from local and regional leaders and from a fanaticism that Mormonism itself engendered--so Mormonism is not the True Church of God. To them, polygamy came from God for some incomprehensible reason, but as long as we ignore it, it won't bother us, and a church that once demanded it for salvation can still be the True Church of God. To me, polygamy came from Joseph Smith for personal power and sexual pleasure--and no god would tell a man to do such a thing so Mormonism is not the True Church of God.

Publicity for Mormonism? Yeah, I guess it's a good thing. From my point of view, anyway.

another take on Mormonism

I've been reading god is not great by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens doesn't even give god the respect of capitalizing the word god. And that is perfectly fine by me, since the monotheistic God is not any more convincing or real than all those other gods whom God-believing people don't give the dignity of a capital letter. But that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to delight in Hitchens's take on Mormonism.

First of all, take note of the chapter in which Hitchens discusses Mormonism.

Chapter 11: "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin": Religion's Corrupt Beginnings

This is the chapter in which he discusses the formation of modern religions, what he calls "openly manufactured sausage religions." This particular metaphor comes from the idea that if you want to continue to enjoy eating sausages, "take care not to be present when [they] are being manufactured" (p. 155). In other words, these are the easily-debunked, obviously-false religions. Mormonism is grouped here with Melanesian cargo cults and a Pentecostal preacher Marjoe, who was trained from a too-young age to awe and fool audiences. If I hadn't left Mormonism, I would have been appalled by the author's grouping. But now, I can only see too well why Hitchens would make the association.

He refers to Joseph as a "gifted opportunist" who "openly plagiarized Christian terms" and had a thing for Muhammed (p. 161). After that quick introduction, he moves on to Joseph's court appearance for peep-stoning, his residence in the Burned-Over District, and the local fascination with Native American burial grounds in the area. Joseph managed to combine interest in the treasure of the mounds with interest in their origins. It was a popular idea at the time that the Native Americans were really descendants of Hebrews, a lost tribe.

This sets the stage for "the imposture [that] is almost embarrassing to read" (p. 162).

And how was this same story rendered in Sunday School?

Joseph, age 14, wasn't sure which church to join, so he prayed and was told to join none of them, but to start his own.

It's flabbergasting to see that juxtaposition, isn't it?

Hitchens also calls Joseph's story "almost embarrassingly easy to uncover" (p. 162.) I had mixed feelings about that statement. He is so flippant when he points out the fact that Mormon origins are so obviously fraudulent, and that they are so easily uncovered to be embarrassing. And yet I, along with millions of others, were duped. And to uncover that truth? Embarrassingly easy? Hardly. Perhaps the process of finding the information was relatively easy--once I got past the cultural block that all that information is just a pack of lies I shouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. Really, the information to show that Mormonism isn't all it claims to be is legion and, since the advent of the Internet, easy to find. But actually disbelieving it? Actually letting my brain put the pieces of the puzzle together, against all socialization and family support? That, my dear Hitchens, was agonizingly hard. Nevertheless, I forgive Hitchens this slight, because, you know what? It is embarrassingly easy to uncover, when viewed from the outside.

One thing that struck me was his sentence about Fawn Brodie and her No Man Knows My History, a biography of Joseph Smith. From a faithful Mormon point of view, this book is positively anti-Mormon (but, then, what isn't, besides syncophancy?). Even I wouldn't touch Brodie's book while I was exploring church history, thinking it was just unfairly harsh. I hadn't read it, of course, which is the way I formed that opinion. When I did read it, I found it to be great, and nothing more anti- than refusing to tell the story as if Joseph actually saw god. Hitchens, interestingly, called it "a good-faith attempt by a professional historian to put the kindest possible interpretation on the relevant 'events' " (p. 162, emphasis added). Isn't it telling that an outsider thinks it good-faith and kind, when Mormons see it as despicably anti-Mormon?

The author goes on to tell the basic story of Smith, with the characteristic unsympathetic voice he employs through the rest of the book. He even makes a couple minor mistakes, saying baptisms for the dead are performed through prayers said in weekly meetings. It couldn't have been that hard to find an insider to confirm the itsy-bitsy details, could it? But then, who cares? Mormonism is, in the grand scheme of things, embarrassingly insignificant.

The way Hitchens tells the history, it is embarrassing that I didn't figure it out before. In my defense, though, I didn't have the information I needed--and I gobbled it up when I found it.

LDS library

Because of a water leakage problem, I had to pleasure (read: chore--I was the only one home and awake when it needed to be done) of removing all the books from a seven-shelf bookshelf so the carpet guys could get under the shelf. Some of the shelves were stacked two deep, too. But it wasn't all bad, since this particular shelf happens to be where my in-laws store all of their Mormon books. So as I performed the tedious task of transferring all these books to the pool table, I checked out some of the titles. What on earth is in a devout Mormon family's LDS library, besides Books of Mormon, triple combinations, and Sunday School manuals? I variously gagged, cringed, and laughed as I found out.

There were your presidents-of-the-church superficialities, like Way to Be! and the bio of various church, ahem, prophets.

Then the "deep doctrine" writings, such as McConkie's Messiah series, Doctrinal Commentaries on all the Mormon scriptures, The Miracle of Forgiveness (two copies!) and Isaiah for Today. Because, you know, Hebrew poetry figures into the daily lives of just about everyone I know.

Then you've got your let's-pretend-the-Nephites-really-existed books, such as Charting the Book of Mormon, In the Footsteps of Lehi, and Early America and the Polynesians. Also, a book about the Incas was mixed among these books, because, you know, the Incas were really the Lamanites (gag). And the one to make Nephites more accessible to kids: Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites.

Don't forget the homages to BYU football, either, with books about Lavell Edwards, Ty Detmer, and Steve Young.

There were even some potentially subversive we-used-to-teach-what?!? and Joseph-did-what!?!? books, such as History of Joseph Smith by his Mother Lucy Mack Smith, Lectures on Faith, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, and History of the Church volumes 1-7.

I was amused to find advice-for-better-living books, too, such as Marriage and Family: Gospel Insights, Fun for Family Night, and When a Child Wanders (there were a couple sticky-tabs marking pages in this one). My favorite by far, though, showed a man and woman in front of a rainbow, with the title Do it Yourself Destiny. Wow. I mean, wow.

The only thing more awesome would have been How Awesome Will it Be? A Teenagers Guide to Understanding and Preparing for the Second Coming. 'Cause apocalypse? Burning? Slaughter? All that? It could only be, like, totally awesome. Good thing I'll have plenty to read. Until I burn up like chaff, that is.

further reading

I finished reading Orwell's 1984, and was chilled to the bone. While the imagined world in the book is more powerful and controlling than anything ever experienced, I couldn't help but find some parallels to the psychology of being a believing Mormon. Hey, it's my experience, it's what I know. If I were Chinese, I'd find parallels with the Cultural Revolution's brainwashing; if I were Salvadorian, I'd find parallels with the disappearances.

I found the concept and power of doublethink most striking, and shocking. Doublethink has many explanations, but one basic definition given is this:

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" (pp. 289-290).

Cognitive dissonance, anyone? How about how I was able to belief in the creation and Adam and Eve, the fall, Eden, all that, and also evolution and the age of the earth? How Joseph did a bunch of immoral things, but could still be a great prophet, second only to Jesus?

The idea of crimestop was also disturbingly fascinating, and familiar, to me.

"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism, the philosophy of the Party], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity" (p. 287).

I essentially thrived on crimestop during most of the time I was exploring church history, when I was a Sunstone Mormon. Stopping myself from using crimestop could be another way of saying what I have said before, of letting the barriers in my mind crumble, of letting all the pieces of the puzzle come together.

There is a particular character in the book, named Parsons, who is perfect at doublethink and crimestop, at blackwhite thinking. He has bought into the Party line completely, so much so that when his own seven-year-old daughter turns him in to the Thought Police for talking in his sleep ("Down with Big Brother!"), he is thankful. He is glad they caught him in time, so he can be fixed, and returned to society without a negative thought--even subconscious--about the Party. He is willing to serve 5 or even 10 years of hard labor to be re-educated, to come back to unthinking orthodoxy, goodthink.

It reminded me of "ex-gays" in Mormonism and other homophobic religions. Just like Parsons, an "ex-gay" sees his own self as faulty, wrong, and in need of help and repair. He is thankful that the church is there to show him how to change, how to deny to himself who he is, and feel love for the church that "changes" him.

Another striking parallel with the book and the church is the rewriting of history. The present Party decides what is history, who exists and who didn't, anything that is true now (who the enemy is, for example) has always been true. People who realize that the enemy was Eurasia only four years ago, but is Eastasia now, need to consciously forget that they were ever at war with Eurasia. Then they need to forget that they forgot.

While the church is slowly, slowly getting better at admitting even its ugly history (Joseph's polygamy and the Mountain Meadows Massacre have been mentioned in the Ensign, for example), there is definitely a tradition of recreating history to make mythology--and calling it History. We have "forgotten," for example, that the first four presidents of the church made it abundantly clear that polygamy would never be taken from the earth. We have forgotten that there used to be death oaths and naked washings and anointings in the temple. We have forgotten that women used to give blessings to the sick and wounded. We have forgotten that Joseph Smith was in Carthage Jail for a crime he actually committed. We have forgotten that the date of the Melchizedek priesthood "restoration" is unknown (and yet somehow manage to celebrate it on Mother's Day, of all days).

Luckily, the church doesn't have "memory tubes," as does the Party, where all records of the now false past are incinerated. So we can remember.

the best and worst "Big M" lessons ever

Mormonism frowns severely upon The Big M, masturbation. (Let's see how that and yesterday's posts affect my keyword hits.) Mormonism also seems to think that it is a "problem" for only boys. Like I mentioned before, my Big M talk was from my bishop-father, "You don't need to worry about that." The worst Big M lesson ever. I imagine my brothers got slightly more in depth talks, but they were probably along the lines of "Don't. It's evil." 'Cause God gave you a penis, but He sure doesn't expect you to use it! As for the female body, I didn't know what was what until I learned about female circumcision in college. Yes, I was that innocent.

The best Big M talk, though, I saw on DVD last night. It was quick, extremely informative, straightforward, and as funny as hell. My husband and I were laughing hysterically. So if any of you have any pre-teen sons, but you can't figure out how to talk to them, leave it to the no-good, free-riding, brother-in-law character, Andy, from Weeds. Or at least take some tips from him.

(Explicit content. Obviously.)




Now if we could just get a female version of the talk.

lessons my son will be spared

I was ten, and I just received a little birthday money from Grandma. I looked at the ten dollars, gleefully thinking about spending it. Candy, candy, candy. My mind wandered to my top drawer, where I kept two cleaned out orange juice cans. Both had been saved especially for a primary activity, where we labeled them with cutesy little cut-outs of cartoon kids holding up letters to spell Tithing and Missionary Fund.

Am I supposed to pay tithing on birthday money? I wondered. I had always paid exactly 10% on allowance (when I got it, which wasn't much), but a birthday present? Hmm. I had also started saving 10% for my future mission, which I was sure I would go on ever since I was confirmed a member of the church at age eight. So that'd be a dollar to tithing, and a dollar to my missionary fund. Leaves me eight dollars. But it's birthday money. I decided to ask my dad for the definitive answer.

"Dad, are you supposed to pay tithing on birthday money?" I asked.

He smiled slightly. "Is it income? Is it increasing the amount of money you have?" I replied.

I didn't bother to answer his question. I knew the answer. Pay 10% tithing on all your income. So I paid, and continued to pay, until I was 25. Even on birthday money.

.......

I was 15 and the youngest sophomore. My 16th birthday didn't come in my sophomore year like it did for all my friends. I wasn't to turn 16--and be of eligible dating age--until my junior year. So as I watched all my friends go out, I got to thinking about this no-dating-until-you-are-16 rule. I thought of a test.

"Dad, let's just say, hypothetically, that on the weekend before my 16th birthday I get asked out. And it wasn't just a normal date we could postpone a week. It was a special event, like a concert of my favorite band, and my potential date already got tickets and everything. Could I go?"

"You ever heard of Amazing Baseball Player With Awesome Batting Average?*"

"No," I replied. The sport in my family was basketball.

"Well, he had a great batting average. One day, a reporter asked him, 'You've got this great average. How do you manage?' Know what he said? He said, 'I never swing outside my strike zone.' So the reporter asked him, 'But if you would swing just outside, just widen your zone a little bit, you'll hit that much more.' But the baseball player said, 'No. If I start swinging a little wider, what's the keep me from swinging a little wider after that? And after that? Pretty soon, I'll be swinging at everything and my average will be shot.'"

"So the answer's no?"


*Sorry, I can't for the life of my remember who the player is. A quick google search didn't do me any good, either.

.....

I was 11, and every few weeks, one of the stupid, immature, goofy, mean, whatever, guys my age (they were all a few months older than me) were getting called up to the pulpit in church. Getting the priesthood, passing the sacrament.

"Why do only boys pass the sacrament?" I asked.

"That's the way God wants it to be."

the very jaws of hell

When I was younger, the idea of the devil and his minions scared me to death. As a kid, I was scared of certain parts of the house, let my imagination get away with me, etc. This was worsened by all the cultural representations of the devil, spirits, ghosts, demons, etc in popular literature and movies. In third grade, a friend of mine told me a ghost story about Bloody Mary appearing in the bathroom mirror to some elementary school girls who performed some sort of ritual chant. For years, I couldn't walk into a bathroom without first reaching my arm into the bathroom to turn on the light. I finally had to consciously break myself of the habit when I was nearly an adult. Even as an adult, The Sixth Sense disturbed me. I couldn't be in a room alone for a month.

It was further exacerbated by Mormon teachings. Mormons teach that the devil is real, but also has billions and billions of evil spirits on his side, constantly trying to lead us astray. If the devil is real, if spirits can really interact with mortals in certain circumstances, then who's to say ghost stories are just pretend, I thought.

Add to this stories I heard from my mom and other relatives about so-and-so seeing so-and-so, who is dead. Or hearing voices, whatever. All that had a spiritual-religious bend to it, but it still creeped me out.

While I was questioning, I found out that Jewish theology--the theology of the Old Testament--doesn't even have a devil. The serpent in Genesis doesn't represent Satan at all. There is no Satan in the old church. But JS claimed to have restored the old church. So now why is a devil essential to Smith's plan of salvation--the plan he claimed was laid down from the beginning? Something fishy going on there.

I didn't think much more about the devil until after I stopped believing in God. 'Cause if there's no God, there's certainly no Satan. So now I'm not afraid of spirits or ghosts; it was a great relief when I realized that.

But I haven't gotten around to watching any horror movies. Maybe someday.

(Bonus to anyone who can name where I got the title for this post.)

timetable of disbelieving and leaving

Common misconceptions about how Mormons leave the church prevail.

The youngest Mormon apostle, Bednar, said in a recent General Conference talk that the common theme he encounters in "less actives" is being offended. He said of his visits to "less active" members, "Many other causes of offense were cited—from doctrinal differences among adults to taunting, teasing, and excluding by youth. But the recurring theme was: "I was offended by . . . " At least he acknowledges that there are "doctrinal differences," but he categorizes that as being offended. He asserts that being offended is the main reason people leave, and asks them to just stop being offended.

I've seen other people take this a step further and claim that first we are offended, then we dig up all the dirt we can on Joseph Smith to support our wounded egos. For example, during a debate between believers and non-believers over here, someone, adopting the pseudonym of a non-believer in the debate, wrote, "I really have nothing good to say. I'm just grinding my bitter ax because I was once offended by the Mormon church and I have distanced myself from it. Therefore I find every bit of anti-Mormon literature, believe every word, and tell all the Mormons how stupid they are for believing this stuff because some guy wrote in some book somewhere that some weird thin[g] that makes Mormons look bad is true." The stereotype comes out well in this comment. He claims that the disaffected Mormon was 1) offended, 2) distanced himself, 3) found "anti-Mormon" literature that made "Mormons look bad," 4) believed every word, and now 5) talks trash about and to Mormons because he's bitter about it all. Huh?!?!

Sunday school classes contribute to the misconceptions. Classes I've been in supported the view that failing to go to church, read scriptures, prayer daily, etc., result in "loss of testimony," i.e. not believing. And, of course, "sinning" is a big way people stop believing, according to the church. They start drinking, smoking, having sex, and suddenly (or slowly, depending on who you ask), they can't feel the Spirit anymore, and their testimonies are gone. Poof. The Holy Ghost just can't negotiate through the clouds of cigar smoke, the dirty shot glasses, and the poker chips in the living room.

To be continued...