Posted by:
Void K. Packer
(
)
Date: December 20, 2014 02:27PM
I'm a born science nerd and voracious life-long learner. To this day I read college text books to learn what I do not know (currently Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th ed). Which biography I present only to indicate I was all about that "deep meaning" claimed by the church I was born into by sheer bad luck. The administrative, social and tribal aspects of the church were something I endured for the access to that wellspring of deep, gnostic TRVTH that I thought had to be there. Bluntly put, I hated the social side of church, hated testiphony meetings with a passion, hated things like home teaching, etc.
It goes without saying that I was riveted to the Pearl of Great Price in general and Book of Abraham in particular. Hell, I built a small refractor telescope, including grinding the mirror, when I was 12. Kolob and Kokaubeam? Linked reference frames of time? Giants in the land? (I of course had a thing for dinosaurs.) Man, how cool was all that? There was deep TRVTH there to be sure.
Uh huh. By the time I was, oh, call it 16, I knew enough demonstrable, verifiable, *falsifiable* ideas to detect a major disconnect between the BoA and reality. Somewhere inside it was dawning on me that it was bullshit from start to finish, but it stayed submerged for another 15 years until I had enough self-confidence to overcome the mind fuck and admit the obvious: it *is* bullshit from start to finish. The entire church and its teachings. There was no TRVTH, only a charlatan's get rich and sex quick scheme that spiraled horribly out of control to afflict generations to this very day.
Now, at 55, I look back with something akin to awe that I could have been snookered by what was arguably horny joe's worst fraud (BoA) long after I knew better. It's a badge of shame I wear and sometimes contemplate which gives me more compassion for others still there. Those others who also seek and expect to find that "deep" scripture, because there, by the grace of god, went I.