The Small Talk: Right now I am going to SDSU. I transferred this semester from Grossmont college, which I thoroughly enjoyed and found to be an excellent education. To those of you going to community college: don't let people feel superior to you because they go to a 4 year university. The classes are virtually the same. Many of the professors at Grossmont teach the exact same class at SDSU. Stop saying, "It's just community college", or "Granted, it is community college". Community college is just that. College. And while others are suffering under massive student loans and fighting tooth and nail for financial aid, you will be debt free and already better off than them. Seriously, Grossmont is a phenomenal place to start.
I am perusing a degree in Business Administration - Accounting. Many people, upon learning this, say, "You must like math." The fact is that while numbers are the language of accounting, there is a lot more to it, which is a great deal more enjoyable, than doing complex mathematics. Furthermore, I think there is value in doing hard work, and I want a degree that I need to work hard for, as well as one that provides me with a steady, well-paying, job.
Currently, I am also singing in the Gay Men's Chorus of San Diego. Made up of over 150 people, it's a very large, and very diverse choir. The concert we are working on right now is a holiday concert scheduled for December. For those of you who are interested, I'll give out details later in the year. I love going, and being a part of a community of people who are so loving and supportive. No matter where you're from, what you do, or how you dress, you are not only welcomed, but embraced.
I am also on the hunt for friends. Because most of my friends have gone away to school, I have declared this fall to be friend hunting season. Shhhhh. Be vewy qwuiet. I'm hunting fwends. Although I used to consider myself really outgoing and social, I have a hard time making new friends because I'd rather just stick with the ones I have. They're pretty much my fave people. But seeing as they abandoned me, leaving me to traverse this weary, San Diego desert alone, I guess I have to make do. If you know of anybody in need of a really cool, hot, and Nicki-Minaj-loving friend tell them to give me a ring.
The Rough Talk: For those of you who don't know, or have been wondering, I no longer consider myself Mormon. The only reason I have not yet removed my name from the records of the church is that I'm quite lazy and don't want to go to the trouble. You also either need to email your bishop, and I don't even know who that is anymore; or you have to have your membership record number, which I don't have and acquiring it would involve contacting someone in the church which I also would rather not do.
Frequently, I think, members of the church see nonactive members as people who somehow just fell away because they were sinning too much, or would rather go shopping than to church on Sunday. The fact is that I didn't leave because I wanted to sin without guilt or I wanted to have promiscuous gay sex, or drink, do drugs, drink coffee, or even because Sacrament was really boring. I left because I had fundamental problems with the organization itself. I will discuss these problems at a later point. I would be lying to say that it had nothing to do with my sexuality. My orientation, however, was only the first issue I had to face. Because of it, I called into question all things I had ever been taught in Sunday school and at home.
Most Mormons would call this time in my life a trial of faith. Most Mormons believe they have had a trial of faith when, in my opinion, have not. One example of one thought-to-be trial of faith is the death of a loved one. While for most people this is a difficult time filled with confusion and sadness, they do not usually question their religion, but cling to it as a source of steadiness and hope.
One problem that I have with the church is that they say to know that the church is true you must pray, read your scriptures, and go to church. Many youth, who want to be a true Mormon say to themselves, "I wonder if the church is true" and pray to the god they've always been taught to be in existence, and reading the scriptures you firmly believe to be true. Praying to god and getting "a good feeling" does not mean that anything is true, because people from other religions get this feeling when they pray to a different god.
Take, for instance, the analogy of buying a car. The leadership of the church discourages members from reading or viewing anything that is critical of the church because, they say, this would be like going to a Toyota dealership and asking if you should buy a Ford. Yes, this is true. I would not buy something when only given information about it from the competition. However, I would not only go to the Toyota dealership and choose the first car they told me to buy. I would get all the information I could about the cars and then make an informed decision about the one I want to buy. If I pray to the Toyota gods they would, of course, tell me to purchase a Toyota. Reading only literature produced by Ford would certainly lead me to believe that the Ford is the best option.
In a similar way, firmly believing in something is not sufficient to make it true or even something you should have faith in. Many Mormons say they know that the church is true because they had an assurance from the spirit that told them it was. To emphasize my point, but not relate the two, I point to radicals from any religious organization. Many of these people "know" that god is their inspiration and are only following his plan. Further more, we frequently dismiss Greek and Roman mythology as being "crazy" but they believed in their gods with as much fervor as most Mormons today. What makes your "knowledge" better than theirs? I even found this puzzling as a kid. I remember asking my Sunday school teacher how we knew that the church was true since Catholics believed their church was true. He told me that I should pray like Joseph Smith to know which church was true. This did not answer my question. Catholics also pray to know, and they presumably get a different answer.
A note: You can't even go with majority rules. A really rough estimate says that all the Mormons who have ever lived make up about .092% of all the humans who have ever lived on the earth. (This estimate was done by myself, with sources such as the Population Reference Bureau and generous estimates on how many Mormons that have ever lived) I recognize this fact isn't really relevant, but it's kinda cool.
It astounds me that they way that we know things to be true - the scientific method, proofs, etc. - don't work at all for religion, and yet people "know" it to be true. Let me emphasize this point: You can believe in anything you want, but you cannot attest to know anything without proof. And since God does not operate in a laboratory with controlled variables, it is difficult to truly attribute anything to God. This leads me to my second point. Although Mormons do not look down on people for leaving the church, they often diagnose the exmormon with lost-sheep syndrome (I made up this word). An attitude prevails that this person simply lost their way and must be brought back into the fold. They see the lost sheep as having lost its faith, when perhaps the lost sheep actually found the truth.
It's difficult for these members to understand that those who leave the church often leave because they firmly believe that the church is not true. "How can they not see it?" They might ask, "The gospel is so perfect, and just works as the answer to everything!" First I will say that the gospel is far from perfect. That is a discussion for another post. Secondly, I would like to mention that I saw a post on Facebook the other day by a religious person that said, "Science can only answer so much. God makes up the rest." I concede that science can't answer everything, and is, in fact, very limited in its scope of knowledge. This does not however, mean that we should use God as the answer for everything we don't know. That's what ancient civilizations did, and what most religious organizations do now. God cannot be an answer to the things we don't know.
I write all this, not to attack the LDS church but to "level the playing field". Because you can't possibly know with a surety that your church is the right one, you cannot take a higher moral ground of enlightenment, or claim to have some knowledge that others don't. You can believe what you want to believe, but don't assume that everyone should do so based on a feeling they may or may not get when they pray.
- Joshua Read
Again, I further discussion of this topic. If you feel as if you would like to defend your beliefs to me just call or text me and Ill be happy to have a discussion with you. Please don't let it just stew in your mind.
COMING SOON: MORMONS AND HOMOSEXUALITY - A discussion of the church's view on homosexuality, and what I think about it all.
