Flip Side of the Coin

[_KevinSim]

I've heard a lot of stories on this forum about how the LDS Church has really messed up people's lives, told them lies, and wasted their time, and how happy those people are to be out of the LDS Church. So I thought I would talk about someone (me) who is the flip side of the coin, who is happy to have grown up within the LDS tradition, for whom life is going pretty pretty well, and who is content to live the whole rest of his life as a devout Latter-day Saint.

I've sometimes thought I have the best of both worlds; my mother was a sixth generation Latter-day Saint (her great-great-great grandfather was the Isaac Morley who's reprimanded for disobedience in the Doctrine & Covenants); while my father joined the LDS Church about age twenty while he was in the Air Force.

I was the third of six children, the first to be born in Seattle after my parents moved there to get a better job than my father could find in Utah where they were living. My father worked for Boeing as a research mechanic.

People talk a lot about how the LDS Church effectively brainwashes the children of active LDS parents into thinking that the Church must be true, but I think that simplifies the natural development of children and teens enormously. LDS teenagers rebell just like teenagers raised by any type of parents rebell. I attended Seminary for four years, where it was drilled into us, not that the LDS Church was true, but rather that the way to find out whether or not the LDS Church was true was to ask God if it was and have faith that God would answer.

Of course, that presupposes that there actually is a good God willing to give us an answer to the most basic question we could ever ask Her/Him, but over the years I have come to realize that belief in the existence of a good God isn't all that unreasonable. To be honest I have had some times when I've doubted God's existence (and still do to some degree), but I've never let a day end without letting God know that I've committed to believe in Him no matter what happens in the world, and there's nothing that can shake me from that commitment.

I left on a mission to southern Chile when I was just a few months short of twenty years old. I have a combination of Asperger Syndrome and Tourette Syndrome; the first messed up the first part of my mission, and when I tried to compensate for it the second kicked in and I got sent home. I finished the last two months of my mission in the University of Utah Medical Center; when the two months were over the Missionary Department officially released me and sent me off to a program for people with Tourette Syndrome at the National Institute of Health. I spent two months there and then came back home to Seattle.

I started out my life pretty conservative, even Libertarian to a degree, but my time at the University of Washington (in northeastern Seattle) transformed me into somewhat of a moderate. The first counselor in the Seattle North Stake presidency gave a fireside on evolution where he surprised me by actually supporting the Theory of Evolution, and that fireside effectively launched me away from my conservative base.

My wife Sandy and I were relatively old for Mormons when we got married; we were both 32. We were biologically unable to conceive, so we went to LDS Family Services in Seattle to try to adopt. I had followed my father to Boeing, as an Ada programmer, but I got laid off in 1995 when the 777 went into production. Texas Instruments in Dallas hired me shortly after I was laid off, and Sandy and I moved south to take it. 18 December 1996 (note that that's precisely one week before Christmas) we adopted three siblings, a four-year-old girl, her two-year-old brother, and their one-year-old sister. It was a chaotic start, but I've got to say adopting those three children was the second best decision I've ever made. (The best decision I ever made was, on a walk in a park with Sandy, after she hopped up on a log and took my hand, and after she came to the end of the log, I didn't give her her hand back.)

We raised our three kids in the LDS Church. Whether my two daughters will embrace it is still unclear. My son appears to be embracing it pretty well. He recently left our ward for the YSA ward in Provo, and has a calling that he is really taking seriously.

We lived in Texas for nine years, and then moved to Utah to be closer to family; Sandy has a brother and sister there and I have a brother. I've been a Java tester now here for a little over a year and a half. We finally settled down in Springville, which is the next city south of Provo.

Sandy is currently the assistant ward librarian, and I'm a ward missionary. I have a friend who left the LDS Church back in the 1980s. This friend at one point tried to get Sandy to pay attention to Joseph Smith's sexual acitivities with women married to other men, but Sandy didn't want to talk about it. She's just plain not interested in that kind of stuff. I used to be very interested in that kind of stuff, but Sandy has influenced me a lot, and I've got to say that what Joseph Smith did 170 years ago was a lot more important to me in my 20s than it is now that I'm 52.

I'm still firmly committed to my belief in a good God who controls the universe, and who has the power to answer prayer. I asked God a question about the LDS Church back when I was 17, and because of the answer I got I have concluded that God chose Spencer Kimball as His spokesman back then, and has chosen Thomas Monson as His spokesman in today's world.

[_Drifting]

I've got to say that what Joseph Smith did 170 years ago was a lot more important to me in my 20s than it is now that I'm 52.

So, translation the Book of Mormon far less important to you now, yes?
Or did you mean to say "some of what Joseph Smith did..."

[_Bob Loblaw]

The problem is that the church is a one-size-fits-all lifestyle and organization. So what makes you happy may make someone else unhappy. I believe the church damaged me personally but I can only talk about my life--not yours or anyone else's.

[_Drifting]

I'm still firmly committed to my belief in a good God who controls the universe, and who has the power to answer prayer.

So when the Haitians were praying for the earthquake to pass them by God:
1. Ignored them, or
2. Knew they needed the challenge?

[_LDSToronto]

I reject your system of beliefs, Kevin, but I can't deny your happiness. It's good to hear that you have found lasting happiness in your family.

H.

[_Bob Loblaw]

I reject your system of beliefs, Kevin, but I can't deny your happiness. It's good to hear that you have found lasting happiness in your family.

H.

Agreed.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Well, I gotta tell ya... I think it's great that Mormonism works for you. I truly do. I reject the truth claims of Mormonism, but I love the fact that you're happy.

Should everyone try to fit within Mormonism? No. It simply doesn't work for everyone.

That's your burden, though. If you're going to promote Mormonism then you're burden is to transform it into something that can accommodate everyone, but then by that act you force Mormonism to lose what's unique about it (which is what's happening with Correlation and Internet Mormonism).

- VRDRC

[_KevinSim]

So, translation the Book of Mormon far less important to you now, yes?

Exactly. My wife doesn't really care how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon; all she cares about is that the LDS Church that she, her parents, her brothers, and her sister belong to, says that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I care somewhat about how Joseph Smith translated it, but my wife does have a point, so I've been putting a lot of emphasis recently on how one knows today, in today's church, that God wants us to treat the Book of Mormon as scripture, and that's because a living prophet says that God wants us to treat it as scripture.

[_KevinSim]

So when the Haitians were praying for the earthquake to pass them by God:
1. Ignored them, or
2. Knew they needed the challenge?

There's a difference between controlling the universe and having all power over the universe. I don't believe in the literal omnipotence of God. Neither did Joseph Smith for that matter. God concentrates on the things that will bring about the most good for the universe, and lets everything else (like the Haitian earthquake) happen as the laws of nature direct.

[_KevinSim]

I reject your system of beliefs, Kevin, but I can't deny your happiness. It's good to hear that you have found lasting happiness in your family.

H.

Agreed.

LDSToronto and Bob, thanks for your well wishes!