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Explain Yourself

Posted: February 28th, 2010, 11:33pm EST by Bodhi

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So I’ve been long gone from the church (and christianity and theism, etc) for the past 5 years or so, and since moving away from Utah and coming to an unspoken understanding of “just don’t ask” with my mother/active siblings, I’ve settled nicely into the comfy little “normal life” track that Seattle has afforded me.

However, I recently stumbled upon the facebook profile of a family from my mission (about 10 years removed), and in light of my last contact with them (_long story short: companion was fucking nuts, abusing his girlfriend’s kids, shit hit fan shortly after I got home, church punished me for saying nothing and made me cut all ties to friends in australia_), I felt it would be nice to try to reconnect with some fantastic people (regardless of the fact they were very active members). I’ve longed for a connection with australia ever since I left, and they were such a pivotal family in one of my fav areas, I figured they’d know what everyone had been up to.

It’s been a bit jarring, however, to find their response to my message to be so overtly filled with descriptions of their kids being “so strong in the gospel” and talk of missions and whatnot. They spent several paragraphs describing what they are doing in church now, etc, and eked only two sentences about how the grandmum (who I also knew) was dying of cancer.

It was a bit disappointing, but the end of the letter gave me pause in quickly responding. The father, a former bishop (albeit one of the nicest, understanding bishops I’ve ever seen), asked straight up if I was still active, “and I pray you are.”

It’s so easy to explain to never-mos and recent friends that I was once mormon, but have given that up. It’s like saying you were once married, or used to have a drinking problem, or lived in some far off exotic land for a little while. It’s a topic of passing interest, with some life-altering experiences, but largely no one judges you on it and life moves on.

However, explaining the detailed, intricate process you followed of unravelling your entire believe structure is a maddening task. Even worse is explaining said process to the people who have always, and will always, view you through mormon eyes. As maddening as the task would normally be, explaining it to these tender, well-meaning people is like explaining to your mother that you killed her favourite pet several years ago in a brutal and disgusting manner, but don’t worry, it was all for the best and your life is going great right now. How is it you explain that you’ve disproven, for your own purposes, the cherished beliefs they hold so dear, and feel confident in telling them you’re so glad you did? It’s heart breaking. It’s probably why I’ll never end up telling my mother why I’m no longer mormon.

So how will I explain this to this caring, sweet family from my past? Simple—I’ll just avoid it all together, stick my fingers in my ears and pretend they never asked.
Almost a year since my last post

Posted: May 5th, 2009, 4:28pm EDT by Bodhi

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When I started this project, I was full of fire and zeal toward creating a new site to share and archive some of the best and most relevant content regarding the sham that is mormonism. And here I am, a year since my last update, without that same zeal. Why?

Well, for one, mormons are more or less doing that work for me. Funding marriage inequality (ie, throwing heaps of cash into campaigns to ban gay marriage) and recent news of “squeaky clean” LDS members leading the way in developing the horrid torture techniques that were used during the Bush administration come to mind.

But I guess the main reason for my lack of interest is largely that my life has moved on. I no longer live in a community dominated by the closeted bigotry and hypocrisy, the over-the-shoulder snooping and gossipping that fills the heart of Mormondom. Life hasn’t been easy, and I won’t say everything I’ve experienced since leaving the church has been glorious, but they are honest and free and real. I can breathe free and easily without constant anger and paranoia toward the LDS church.

I still hope that people will find the information that mormonanswers.com set out to archive (and I will admit I am unsettled by the amount of old, but very useful, exmormon websites that will likely be headed for the dustbin when Yahoo closes Geocities very soon) and find reality and a path out of delusion, but the fire under my ass to provide a centralised access point has gone out. There may be reason in the future to revisit the project, but for now, I’m going to get on with my life, and smile.
Preparing

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 9:20pm EDT by Bodhi

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Oh hi there. Probably thought I’d forgotten about this silly site, didn’t you. Yes, I’ve been busy, swamped with work (huge project I wish I could tell you about but I think it’s best that I stay identity-agnostic here) and planning a big move. No, not for me… for my partner. And, well, that’s kind of why I’m posting this.

We’ve been together for some time now, and the past 6 months apart have been torture. Luckily for me, she’s decided to move away from SLC (well, she’s excited to get the hell out of there too) and she’ll be joining me up north. And of course we’re in it for the long haul. And my family loves her. And I do as well. So everything should be awesome, no?

Well, it is, except for one not-so-awesome bit for my still-mormon immediate family: she’ll be moving in with me. My family lives largely in denial of my apostasy, preferring to think that I’m simply “struggling” or “inactive.” While my stomach would show proof of some sort of inactivity (I really need to exercise), I am in no way struggling. I’m happier than I’ve been in years, and the addition of my love to my daily life again is set to blow the happiness metre through the roof. But of course, the TBM half of the family are “concerned for [my] welfare.”

It’s strange to think that talk of me living with a woman I love causes concern and uproar, yet previous bouts with depression and chronic illness were looked at as “he’s tired” or “he’s sick.” It seems that only when I offend the delicate mormon sensibilities am I worth worrying about.

I guess on another level I’m preparing for the shit to hit the fan, in that this level of “sin” could be angled as an offence great enough to expunge my name from church records. Or at very least cause lots of annoying phone calls and attempts at contact from local church leaders. I’ve avoided removing my name from church records for a while because of my fear of what it would do to my poor mother, but I’ve set some ultimatums for myself as to when I’ll kick myself out of the church:
1. If Boyd K Packer becomes president, I write my letter that day.
2. Before I marry my aforementioned love.
Both events are in the coming years. BKP is next in line (if he survives), and my lady and I plan on marrying sometime in the next few years (no rush). The BKP clause is easy to understand for most ex-mos: he’s simply abhorrent. But why before marriage, which would seemingly be the event that would keep the LDS from kicking me out?

Well, she and I had a long talk about how my former faith and my family tie in to our future together. She laid it out like so: “Your mom needs to know where you stand before we have a wedding. She needs to know that you’re not coming back and that we have no plans on allowing our future family to be a part of the mormon church.” While she never stipulated my resignation, and she’s played no role in my exiting belief and the church, that stipulation really lit a fire under my ass. She’s right… no point in living in fear of what my mother or family would say.

Of course I’m not about to go and write that letter today. I have a site to build… ;)
Been A While

Posted: January 10th, 2008, 9:11pm EST by Bodhi

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Okay, so you may be wondering where I’ve disappeared to and where the hell this new site is hiding as well. Progress on the MA site and where I’ve been happen to be directly related: I moved.

I’m now living in a new state, with a new job, and far far fewer free hours than I previously had. The nightmare that is interstate moving effectively put a freeze on coding the site, and since getting set up at my new place, my dev machine has been a bit quirky (plus, who wants to work on a 4 year old machine when you have a new macbook pro from work to play with?).

That being said, the project is not dead, but I may have to rescope and rethink how I’m going to deliver the site. My major hold up is that I’ve never built a search engine before, and I don’t know enough about Django/Python to just crank it out. The underlying system to power the site is pretty much there (I think), but search really is the killer app here, so progress really is stunted. Add in the full work schedule and a few left over freelance bits, and yeah… talk about back-burner.

Aside from the technoid details, I have to say living outside of the morridor is as amazingly refreshing as I remembered it to be. Having a drink with your meal, expressing a liberal thought or simply acting like a sane human being without fear of judgment or reprisal is a very nice thing, indeed.
Young Woman

Posted: September 25th, 2007, 1:58pm EDT by Bodhi

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I was recently visiting my dear mother, and the topic of names came up. You see, a family friend is having a baby very soon, and they refuse to divulge the name they have chosen for the baby—ostensibly to avoid having someone say something to ruin that name for them. Someone in the group started listing off names as we cherry-picked the better (or perhaps more likely) ones. My sister then suggested including “church names”... you know, the typical Utahn choices from the Bible, Book of Mormon, General Authorities and, sadly enough, church manuals (I’ve heard of someone naming their son Quorum). I guess I should be glad people haven’t graduated to using the Pearl of Great Price for names. I can’t imagine the pain that Kae-e-vanrash Smith or Ha-ko-kau-beam Christensen will go through, not just in life, but when they realise their names are nothing more than gibberish. But I digress.

“Book of Mormon”-sourced names were being offered up, and inevitably Alma was mentioned.

“Yeesh, I hope not,” I offered. Now, we’d had a family friend during my youth that was named Alma, and he was a nice fellow. However, I think my mother assumed I was referring to him.

“Why not?” she asked. I suddenly realised I’d placed myself in a predicament: interjecting something that makes mormonism look foolish without drawing attention to my so-called “church inactivity.” I tread lightly.

“Well, did you know Alma means ‘little girl’ or something like that?” I offered. “I’m not sure in what language,”—it’s Hebrew, almah, and it’s actually young woman—“but someone told me that on my mission. Apparently it’s a fairly common name for girls in France.” By feigning the “oh someone told me this” ignorance I’d managed to deflect suspicious looks and keep things open. I can’t tell you how many times TBM family members have effectively stopped listening to me when I state something—anything—definitively.

“Really?” my sister questioned, face squished in confusion.

“Yeah… in fact, there were quite a lot of streets named ‘Alma’ on my mission. It confused me… I mean there aren’t exactly a lot of members in [the place I served]. At least it confused me ‘til someone set me straight.”

And the brilliant, TBM retort to this new information? “Huh… interesting.” I wanted to yell out “Oh yeah! And the Book of Abraham, you know they found that like 40 years ago, and it’s been translated by Egyptologists, and they say it’s an egyptian funerary text, and it post-dates Abraham by 2000 years!” But I had the common sense to quit while I was ahead. After all, I’d received a few strange looks earlier when I’d offered far more information about the new missionary policy of living with members¹ (more on that later) than a completely “inactive member” would be likely to have.

I can only hope someone there at least stored away this new information instead of forgetting it the instant after I said it.

¹ I was shocked at how confused and distrusting my family looked in regard to the news of missionaries living with members. They couldn’t seem to grasp any reason why that would be a good idea (they had plenty of reasons why it would be an awful idea). My interjection that it was a money-saving maneuver (“Have to pay for that mall somehow!”) was perhaps my most blatant post-mormon ribbing to date. I’m just glad no one called me on it.
Status Update: Infrastructure

Posted: August 29th, 2007, 6:08pm EDT by Bodhi

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I just thought I’d update to tell you that I’ve begun the coding of the application that will power MormonAnswers.com, AnswerBase. For you technically inclined, the application is written in Python using the Django framework. After some initial set up issues on my development machine, I got Django and PostgreSQL running, and today busted out the main article and tagging code. I’m shocked at how easy it has been. Django is awesome, and the prebuilt admin backend renders me speechless. If you’re a web dev, I highly recommend picking up Django. Now to figuring out how to build a highly effective search engine, and then the fun parts: data entry and front end UI work. Given that I am a UI designer, the latter shouldn’t be too bad.

The data entry, however… *shudder*

(I’m also wondering about creating a pingable address for select bloggers to auto-add their content to the database, ala pinging technorati… but that may be a bit over the top.)
Testimony

Posted: August 17th, 2007, 11:42am EDT by Bodhi

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“Every time I’m out and I see the outline of someone’s temple garments underneath the collar of their shirt, I start to feel hot. I mean, especially in this weather. I can’t see someone else with that many layers of clothing on without feeling suffocated.”

“Is it like a burning sensation?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And your whole chest seems to fill up with pressure?”

“Right, because I can’t imagine how uncomfortable they must feel.”

“That’s not empathy, Jon. That’s the Holy Ghost.”

Can I just take a second to say how much I love Dooce ? I wish I could be that witty and smart about something that overwhelmed my childhood.
More talk of Parrots

Posted: August 6th, 2007, 4:54pm EDT by Bodhi

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I was visiting my family on Sunday, and the usual discussions about the week’s occurrences took place as we sat around, allowing our meal to digest. As it was Sunday, it was only a matter of time before a church-related discussion took place. This week, it regarded the day’s fasting and requisite testimony meeting, in place of the usual sacrament meeting. As if ribbing my sister with an inside joke, my bro-in-law asked her “So what did you say when you bore your testimony?” It turns out that he was earnest in his desire to know, as he had been dealing with my screaming nephew outside while she was at the microphone, but the air of inside joke eminated from the fact that she responded in such a curious manner.

“I don’t even know.”

I’ll admit, my sister and I share the wonderful ability to draw a blank on things that just happened, so it seemed as though her husband was teasing her about it. Had that been the end of the conversation, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.

However, my sister-in-law piped up.

“Oh, I know! I never know what I say up there,” followed by my mother’s proclamation that “you really shouldn’t… you’re being moved by the spirit!”

I couldn’t take it. I had to say something.

“Wait… you never know what you’re saying when you’re bearing testimony? Shouldn’t you know what you are stating aloud as belief?”

My mother looked at me perplexed. My sister in law chimed in “No, but you’re being moved by the spirit!“

I decided not to get into it—talking to my family about religion or politics just gets ugly, as it usually turns to questions about why I don’t go to church any more. However, let’s carry this thought out a bit, shall we? Define a testimony, especially as pertains to Mormon belief and terminology. More or less you get:

Testimonynoun
a declaration of one's religious beliefs, a public recounting of a religious conversion or experience.

So essentially you’re getting up to tell people what you believe to be true, what your beliefs are. It would stand to reason that this is a highly personal thing, and thus, no one should be telling you what you believe (don’t get me started on the practise of whispering a “testimony” into the ear of a waiting and scared 2 year old for the child to repeat into the mic), nor should anyone else but you be able to proclaim your beliefs for you. I mean, seriously, right?

What was being said, that night, however, was that when they get up and profess their beliefs in regard to god, jesus, jos. smith, church and other dogma, they don’t know what they are saying, have no control over what they are saying, and essentially, are allowing someone else to dictate their beliefs (even if that someone is “the spirit”). Now, if I were to talk about the spirit guiding someone—never mind my non-belief for a moment, this is purely for illustrative purposes—whilst speaking, I’d generally like to think, as far as my Mormon upbringing and tutelage lead me to believe, that the person being guided is being told something, which they will cognise, process and then repeat. What they were describing, though, was more along the lines of a possessing experience, as though “the spirit” had complete control over their mind, to the point that they have no recollection of what they said. This smacks of something, but it is not the supposed “still small voice” I was taught of as a child.

I was never taught that when professing personal belief that the spirit would knock you out of control and take over. If the spirit were to tell you what to say (once again, hypothetically, since I don’t believe in the mormon/christian concept of the holy spirit) in a personal belief proclaiming experience, wouldn’t it be that the spirit were reminding you of a great experience, or helping you say something important, but all the time, saying it to you, for you to think about and repeat? To say something takes over you and speaks for you when you are stating your personal beliefs is to say those beliefs are not personal, and they really aren’t yours—even if you do believe the same. Belief is personal, and if someone is controlling what you say when you state your beliefs, and you have no recall of what you said… well, I hate to use the term, but you have to say that tastes an awful lot like brainwashing. Or at very least (and this may reach believing Mormons better that the b-word does) it seems like evangelical speaking in tongues, only the words being spoken aren’t gibberish, but memorised, socialised rote recitations. Mormon readers may turn off at the sound of the word brainwashing, but I know they’ll cringe at being compared to evangelicals speaking in tongues, but really… it’d have to be one or the other: if there is some spirit controlling the speech, it’d be like speaking in tongues, and if not, it has to be some level of brainwashing or memorised recitation of socially-accepted rote phrases.

Either way, it gives me the creeps and makes me feel a bit sad for my family. I’d like to think that if they really do believe Mormonism to be true, they’d actually be able to say it themselves without entering some blackout zone.
A State of Blind Self-Security

Posted: August 3rd, 2007, 1:28am EDT by Bodhi

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I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not.
— Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:150

Food for thought, especially when you think about Dallon Oaks recent comments in the PBS documentary about not criticising church leaders, even if they are wrong.

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Posted: February 28th, 2010, 11:33pm EST by Bodhi

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Posted: May 5th, 2009, 4:28pm EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: May 7th, 2008, 9:20pm EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: January 10th, 2008, 9:11pm EST by Bodhi

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Posted: September 25th, 2007, 1:58pm EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: August 29th, 2007, 6:08pm EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: August 17th, 2007, 11:42am EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: August 6th, 2007, 4:54pm EDT by Bodhi

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Posted: August 3rd, 2007, 1:28am EDT by Bodhi

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