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I remember Pres. Monson speaking at BYU when I was a student there (a multiple stake fireside in the Mariott Center), I clearly remember him boldly proclaiming to “dream big,” “do not limit your dreams,” and “just because you did poorly in chemistry in high school does not mean you should not major in chemical engineering here at BYU, because the lord will bless you,” etc. I’m paraphrasing, but this was the tenor of the talk, and now all of these years later it seems to me very bad advice. BYU is littered with the corpses of over-zealous LDS who later collapse from disillusionment and broken dreams and are never the same afterwards, people like Stan Ferguson (the subject of the very interesting biography “Quest For the Gold Plates”) who went into the wildernesses of Mexico, Central and South America (with the the blessing of church authorities) in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s with absolute, 100% certainty that he was going to prove scientifically the BOM was true…and ended up years later, in his golden years, disillusioned from the church and more or less agnostic. Better to start modestly, with modest dreams, building one step at a time, best not to get “too big for our britches”. Thanks, MWallace57. I loved your story. I think most of who have been active in the church all of our lives can relate, we know someone like you have described, your former husband. The current admonition of the church that “gayness” is not the problem, this is not a sin, but acting on it is…it is just not realistic. I believe (as Martin Luther, a one time celibate priest, came to believe) that the human sex drive is irrepressible and that God intended it to be so, ideally within the bounds of marriage. This does not mean there aren’t any gays who haven’t done it and are currently doing––lifelong celibacy. But the percentage of the church gay population who succeed at this is miniscule. (I read that Evergreen’s success statistic for changing one’s gay orientation is 0.04%. Is this accurate? I don’t know, but it seems about right. Please correct me if I’m wrong.) Just my opinion….
A few years back my gay nephew killed himself…over being gay. He’d been hurt, really from the time he 10 years old and on, by bullying at school, anti-gay rhetoric in the church, and so on and so on. I’m a believing, temple rec. holding Mormon, but I think that if I had or ever do have a gay son or daughter, I will tell them the BOM is true, JS was telling the truth, etc., but stay as far away from the present day church as you because there is no place in it for you. The J. Bonner Ritchie quote is not verbatim, I can’t remember his exact words. But I think I got the sense of what he was saying right. To godlives…. You can’t worry about what your bishop thinks, you can’t worry about whether you’ll be excommunicated, etc. This is not easy for me to say. For 25 years I’ve written short stories, plays and screenplays. I’ve never published anything that I’ve written and I’ve never had a play produced, but I’ve had two screenplays produced. I used a pseudonym because I was ashamed of them, not because of R-rated content but rather the opposite. They were…I guess the word is kitsch. The irony for me is that the church loved them even though they were almost complete garbage––bad acting, bad direction, really bad scripts. But because there was no “language”, no nudity or sex, and a tidy little moral was offered up at the end, it was considered praiseworthy. It reminded me of Hugh Nibley’s comment that in the church today it is more praiseworthy to get up at 6 a.m. and write a bad book than to get up at 9 a.m. and write a good one.
For anybody working in film, theater, writing fiction…the thought that one day you’ll get a call from the stake president inviting you in for a “visit” is very real, and I for one have decided that if this happens––maybe in 4-5 years, when I’m ready to publish or produce a play, since I doubt I will ever have the money to do one of my films––I have decided that if one day this happens…well then it happens.
I can’t imagine Joseph Smith doing this, and I can’t imagine the Savior doing it. Jesus taught that the tares will grow with the wheat until He comes to separate them, but until that day they will grow together…because, I think, nobody but Jesus knows enough, nobody knows or can know the hearts of men sufficiently to separate the tares from the wheat. When a Stake Pres/Bishop undertakes to excommunicate a member for, say, egregious adultery, that is one thing, but to excommunicate an artist for overstepping some nebulous, indefinable line…well, that is another. J. Bonner Ritchie, a BYU faculty member, in an address (at BYU, I think), said that “all organizations are immoral”, and the church is no exception: all organizations tend toward abuse of the individual. The church is nowhere near as abusive as, say, the IRS; but I believe it can still be abusive in the way it treats individuals, and excommunicating artists/intellectuals is one manifestation of this abuse.
Quote:I noticed that all the comments so far are left of center. To me, that means that most of you are newbies to being inactive, less active, or “questioning” the Church.
Interesting––this view of things. I’m an RM, married in the temple, I have a current Temple Rec., and I’m also a committed Democrat. And I can’t tell you how many times and in how many different ways I’ve had my faith questioned, had other LDS assume that I’m “lapsed”, not to mention the outright attacks. In 2000 I was teaching Sunday School, the 16-year olds, and the discussion turned to politics and somehow I mentioned I was going to vote for Al Gore and all of the class looked at me in stunned silence. “You’re kidding, right?” someone asked. “No,” I said. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I was released from this calling a week later. Someone might say, “You’re not supposed to bring up politics in church.” But the gospel doctrine teacher does almost every week, or did all during Bush/Cheney, praising Bush policies and slamming the Dems in subtle and not so subtle ways. And he’s still teaching. I live in a neighborhood that is probably 98% LDS, and I was never able to keep an Obama/Biden sign on my lawn (this despite being only a lukewarm Obama supporter), someone(s) kept taking it down, this during the same time I would get emails from ward members using ward email lists pitching Repub candidates.
Oh, well. It’s OK, it makes things interesting. But I do get bothered when people question my church activity/belief because of my affiliation with the Democratic Party. It doesn’t mean I accept all the party stands for, it only means they are less offensive to me than the Repubs.
