The Fight I Picked

Today I picked a fight with my brother Thom, who has been my best friend within my generation of the family. He's been there for me for a lot of years, and I've always had a lot of respect for him. Still, I picked this fight and while I know I'm not going to like the consequences I don't feel it would be right for me to back down before having my say once and for all, even if it costs me my brother.

Thom, it's about time you stopped pussy-footing around. Nobody asked you to spare my pwecious widdle feewings, or at least I haven't. Yes, I'm a pain in the butt and I'm sure you've all bit your tongue a lot around me. You all have no idea how much I've had to do the same these last few years, how much restraint I have shown because I have loved all of you. This is not an attempt to guilt anyone, I try to leave that particular stiletto to Mom. But there is one thing which I strongly suspect is going to one day (today, perhaps?) cause an irreparable rift between myself and the family I was born to: Religion.

I started this fight by stating that I cannot accept people using God as an excuse for the things they want to impose upon others. What I mean by God as an excuse is that when someone says that something must be so because "God says so" or "God wants it that way" without any additonal reasoning or argument, that completely invalidates their point. People have been using God as an excuse to do the most horrific things throughout human history, from the massacres of the Crusades to the modern Islamic jihad. It's easy to claim to speak for God when God hasn't made any verifiable public appearances or statements in centuries - if ever. The scriptures weren't written by God, they were written and often re-written by men. They're not interpreted or preached by God either, again this is done by men. Fallible creatures are men, prone to wishful thinking and fudging the details to suit the needs of the moment. How can one trust a book written by men to be the words of God? How can one trust the testimonies of men about the words of God? It's one thing to believe and be guided by belief, but faith is not synonymous with fact.

For anything to be factually accepted as the Words of God, they have to be verifiably spoken by God, and in such a way that he can be publicly identified as God. Do we even have a definite way of recognizing God if he were to make himself known? I sincerely doubt God has passport photos or a driver's license, although theoretically he could have them any time he wanted. Believe in him or not believe in him, you have the right to do either or both, but as long as God chooses to remain an unknown, he is not admissable as evidence.

Now, I am not arguing that everything God supposedly said is wrong. My point is that adding God to an argument does not strengthen it any, and using God as the basis of your argument renders it rather meaningless. If something is a bad idea, don't tell me God said it was bad. Tell me why it is a bad idea. 1 + 1 will equal 2 whether God is involved or not.

That is what "God as an excuse" means.

Beyond this, we are getting into the realm of what I myself believe about the universe. Ever since I started to publicly question Mormonism, I've heard all kinds of trite phrases to explain me away. "Ron was just offended by a member." "If Ron truly understood the Gospel, he'd come back." "Ron will come back when he's ready." "Ron just hasn't prayed hard enough for a testimony." My personal favorite is "the Devil is confusing Ron." Essentially, I have been told that because I have not come to the same conclusions as the rest of my family/ward/religion, my judgement, maturity, and mental faculties must be inadequate somehow. Ponder these things in your heart, but woe betide if you come up with different answers.

However, people doing and saying foolish things does not make a religion right or wrong. Every religion has people doing foolish things. Some religions are ABOUT doing foolish things. As long as you don't harm anyone else, I have no problem with it. What makes a religion right or wrong is its doctrine. Here are the points in which I cannot condone Mormonism. Frankly, they're most of them equally applicable against any form of Christianity.

Families Can Be Together Forever - Sounds great on the surface, doesn't it? Look closer, though. Families CAN - not WILL - Be Together Forever. If I don't toe the line, my family will be torn apart in the hereafter. By whom? God? The Devil? How will this sundering happen? Will I just not be allowed to see them again for eternity? Are they going to rip my heart open and nullify my love for my nieces? Are they going to make me forget them (or them forget me) forever? All of a sudden my family is a hostage to my good behavior? Is this God or the Godfather?

Prayer and Worship - Prayers over every meal. Prayers at the beginning of each gathering. Prayers before bedtime. Why? Supposedly you are communicating with God, but - except for some good feelings that are theoretically brought to you by the Holy Ghost if you're praying sincerely enough - it's very much a one-way thing. God isn't kneeling by his bed, praying back at you, is he? Oh yeah, I feel the love. Of course this next is easily just as much human silliness as divine gospel, but from my observational experience, prayers tend to fall into a pattern. First you thank God for everything, even if he didn't personally give it to you. Theoretically he created the world, but how much gratitude does one guy need? Thanking your mother for bringing you into the world every now and then is sweet, but doing it two or three times a day every single day is kinda creepy and emotionally exhausting. Part two is when you ask God to tell you how to live your own life. "Not my will, but thine, oh Lord" This is a particular hair-puller for me, as I hear it every night at dinner when Dad asks God to help us to use the energy the food gives us in his service. So the main reason we eat is so we can do more for God?

Here's the other part I don't understand about prayer and Christian religious observance in general: Telling God How Wonderful He Is. Okay, fine, he's all that and a bag of chips. Is he insecure, that he needs us to tell him this? Does groveling in front of the Mighty One make us better people somehow? Remembering that you're an imperfect creature and maintaining some humility is healthy, but do we really need to become whipped dogs, licking the hand that beats us? What does it say about a God that would WANT all this? Is God really that kind of raving egomaniac? It's not healthy for him, and it's certainly not healthy for us.

God's Justice & Mercy - Yeah, I know, life's not a bed of roses (unless you're counting all the thorns), but there are parts of the Bible that need to either be addressed or thrown out. What exactly are we supposed to learn from the story of Isaac and Abraham? Abraham finally gets a son, years after he thought it was too late. A few years later, God tells Abraham that he wants his darling boy as a blood sacrifice. Bad enough that this being would even ASK such a thing of a man of Abraham's background, but much to my stomach-curdling Abraham makes ready to go ahead and do it! At the last moment God swerves and tells Abraham it was all a test and offers up a scapegoat (somebody's lost ram) to gut instead. What if God had held his tongue and let Abraham finish the job? The bible would be a lot shorter, for one, but still. What kind of a God would ASK such a thing of a parent, even as a test?

Another one that makes me wonder is the story of Job. God and the Devil decide to have a bet. God picks a mortal, and the Devil puts him through hell to see if he'll give up on God. Job, of course, passes with flying colors of rotting burlap. His entire family's been butchered, everything he worked for his whole life has been taken away, and about the only thing that hasn't happened to him is death, but he won't tell God to stuff it. Hurrah hurrah, faith and hope are wonderful, but what about the poor people that have died because of this? Was it right for God to let the Devil murder complete innocents over a fricking bet??? We need to either stop telling stories like these, or face up to the implications.

God is supposedly a just God as well as a merciful one. However, the justice and mercy seem to be exclusively reserved for the afterlife. Okay, so he's holding back to let us humans be humans? I'm fine with that. But please make it clear that we're on our own until then. It's nice to believe that God will be with you throughout your trials, but a friend who stands there and watches as we try to crawl out of a pit trap isn't much of a friend.

The Pre-Existence - Supposedly we all signed up for this wonderful trial period. But can any agreement be binding if you don't remember making it? And with this War in Heaven, we had to choose between God's way and the Devil's way. Are things really that dualistic, that if we're not for one side we have to be for the other? That doesn't feel right somehow.

The Afterlife - Welcome to the Gated Community of Heaven, here's your keycard. Note that it only unlocks those areas authorized for your level of membership. And no, it's already too late for you to earn a higher level of clearance. Seriously, we're supposed to get divvied up into our kingdoms, and stay there forever. Is our free will taken away, that we can't become better or worse people over the course of eternity? Or is it just that the celestial bureaucracy doesn't want to process the change of address forms? The highest level of heaven gets a shot at creating new worlds in accordance with God's plan - does this mean you'll want to run everything exactly the same? Ooh, I'm there. And what about the rest of humanity, what are we gonna do for eternity? Stratified afterlife + infinite time = eternal stagnation?

Anyway, it's late at night and these are all the big points. Because I cannot resolve what I have been taught with what my mind and heart tell me, I choose to set aside what I have been taught and go with my mind and heart instead. If this is God, I cannot support him. If this is his one true church, I cannot belong to it. If this is his heaven, I do not wish to go there. Brother, you say to me that I don't believe in God because he doesn't do things my way. There may be some truth in that. But it doesn't make me wrong. If my judgement is invalid because I do not agree, then what was the point in giving me free will to begin with?

I know I'm a screwed-up person. I am very insecure, and I am quick to feel anger and depair. That does not mean that my hurts belong to the Devil and my joys belong to God. I cannot believe in one and only one brand of happiness, any more than I can believe in only one kind of person. Thus, I cannot believe in only one kind of God. I will heal in time, if I can get away from the crushing pressures I am subjected to constantly by a world I did not ask for. But please do not hate me if I heal into a different shape than you had hoped for. If your way makes you happy, then it is good. That happiness does not give you the right to declare your way to be the only way, however, and it especially does not give you the right to use your way as a weapon to cut off others from their own happiness. The happiness of others is not a threat to your own happiness, because happiness that destroys that of others, is not happiness.

Bottom line: I'm your brother. I'm a pain in the backside, and I do feel sorry about that. But I am not sorry I believe the way I do, even though I often express it in the worst possible ways. I will always be your brother, but I leave it to you to choose what that will mean. Each relationship is its own world, with its own rules. Sometimes worlds end. Sometimes worlds begin. And sometimes things typed while half-asleep sound terribly profound whether they are or not. Take it for what you will, or toss it completely. Your choice, bro.

Ron