"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise." - Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
I'm not a huge Vonnegut fan. I read almost everything he wrote, just to see what it was all about. However, maybe I should re-examine him. That poem just rocked my world a little bit.
By this fraud have I won me, year by year, A hundred marks, since I've been pardoner. I stand up like a scholar in pulpit, And when the ignorant people all do sit, I preach, as you have heard me say before, And tell a hundred false japes, less or more.
I think that what made me a good missionary, also fueled my desire to vigorously study Mormon history, try and objectively weigh both sides of the issues, and is what ultimately made me want to leave.
I also appreciate the following saying, because it reminds me of the young, idealistic, and naive missionary I was 20 years ago. I believed it all, although I felt uncomfortable about many aspects of the dogma. When my religious views met with reality, I determined that for me to stay in the church meant me becoming a hypocrite of what I knew...and I didn't want to be one.
"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. - Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 1963