Posted by:
sithlord
(
)
Date: October 20, 2013 07:01PM
Well, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I was mostly bored and trying to spice up the church meetings. I thought I might as well be instructional in the process and not let on that I used to be a member and therefore be seen as an apostate.
So in Gospel Doctrine, the guy was droning on about temple work and this and that, mostly getting no response from the class and pausing long enough on several occasions to make things a bit sleepy. They said something about baptisms for the dead so I finally decided to make things interesting. I raised my hand, briefly introduced myself as a newbie and curious, and asked what they meant by baptizing dead people. Awkward silence for about 10 seconds and then someone started to answer that it’s a proxy thing, blah, blah, blah. I asked what it was then, exactly that they did in ‘temples’, was that similar to what the Masons do? By now, anyone that was slouched or slumbering was now wide awake and paying attention. Clearly things got interesting for them as well. (Hmmm a potential convert in our midst maybe). Standard answers poured out on what is done in the temple (sealings, baptisms for the dead, ….) until someone decided to mention washing and annointings. “Washing …. like with bathtubs” I asked? No no I was assured, just symbolic washings like in the bible. Someone else make the mistake of mentioning endowments so I went with that one too. “What exactly is an endowment”, I asked? Promise to God, blah, blah….. I was told, and someone said sacred not secret. So I probed a little to see who else would slip up a bit and no one was biting so I finally just commented, “Oh wait, is this where you guys have all the ‘secret handshakes’ and stuff? No comments but I caught a few nodding heads, but overall silence and someone in charge moved the lesson along. When we walked into Gospel Doctrine, we had one or two hi’s, but when we left, nearly everyone came up and introduced themselves, instant celebrity status. I think they were mostly grateful that we were able to spice things up for once and give them a lot to talk about the following week.
That was so much fun I wanted to stick around for Priesthood session. This was a lesson about Lorenzo Snow. The very first paragraph mentioned the martyr of Joe Smith but absolutely no details. They were about to move past that paragraph and I decided to probe a little on that. Raised my hand politely and asked “Ummm, I’m just curious but what exactly happened to J.S? Why did they kill him? “. Older guy giving the lesson answered “Oh, yes, well, back then… a lot of the people mis-understood Mormons and thought it was a cult and satanic worshipers (hmmmm, I restrained myself on that one). A mob gathered to kill him for that reason. “Really”, I replied, “Well, I heard that he was practicing polygamy, polyandry, and marrying teenage girls with 33 wives and one of his fellow leaders found out about it and was going to expose him with a newspaper article when J.S. had the printing press destroyed, even though he was telling the truth. And because of that, they hauled him off to Carthage where the mob rushed the building after guns were smuggled into the prison where upon J.S. killed two people before being killed himself”. Immediate reactions from many of the H.P’s, one of them said, no no, there were no guns there, another corrected him, yes, yes there were guns. Someone else said, well that’s debatable how many people he killed, it was most likely only one. Someone else said, I hope it was the guy who killed Hyrum, he was an incredible man…. I just relished the moment mostly thinking about what to ask next. Somehow the lesson got back on track and they started talking about taking the gospel to the world. I mentioned somewhere in there that in Israel where we lived for nearly 3 years, I was told that Mormons are not allowed to preach to the Jews, why was that? A few off the wall comments but someone finally got it right so I asked why would God care so much about having a building in Jerusalem more than bringing the good news to all the Jews when that would bring in the 2nd coming. Most of the answers were along the lines of waiting for the right timing, that we have similar issues in other countries as well, blah blah blah. Okay, so now the lesson is nearly over and I have to get one more dig in, so I politely raised my hand and got ignored for about a minute or so, and finally got to ask how long it would be till the second coming? How many mormons are in the world? 15 million they said, and I said out of 7.5billion?, so that was what roughly 0.2% of the population of the earth, didn’t seem like they were making much progress converting people to Mormonism. Yes, yes, its going to take a lot of work someone said. Some guys tried to drag me off after the meeting to talk about Carthage and give me more details, but I was done with my PTSD for the day and just walked away from him.
Overall, it was good fun. I hope we got people there thinking. I tried to not offend anyone but to ask questions that would get people to see their world from a different outside perspective. I know we were at least that successful.