Under which do the poor give more?

I had a thought experiment that occurred to me recently, showing how silly our insistance on rules can be.  Before I get to the thought experiment- lets cover a little bit of definition grounds.  In the LDS church there have been two systems of financially giving to the church.  There is tithing where you give 10% of, well, nobody really wants to define it.  The word is increase, but whether that means of gross or net, gross receipts or net revenue, or simply cash flow is at times left to the individual sometimes to the over anxious leader.  All those definitions of increase are ones I have heard people use and which definition is in vouge sometimes just depends on which general authorities are around.  But the one thing everyone agrees on is you give 10% and that you give it before you feed yourself or your children and before you keep a shelter over your head.  If paying it makes your children go without necessary nutrition its praised in meetings as if you did something really awesome.  We are taught that this really is a lower law.

The higher law and second form of financial giving to the church is the law of consecration.  It has been suggested that we still live this by creating so much work for ourselves through callings etc that we are essentially giving all of our time to the church.  I've even heard a quote from an Apostle suggesting that members who really want to live this law should donate all their excess cash to the fast offering fund.  Sometimes it is taught that we simply don't live this law in practice right now, but will again later.  But the basic point of this law is that everyone only keeps private ownership of what is directly within their immediate use and that all other excess financial resources should go to a general fund to evenly provide for the need of all members less fortunate.  If I recall later in church history this was expanded into a drive for total community efficiency with communal ownership and production of as much as was possible.  Perhaps it could be argued that this didn't have as much to do with "consecration" per se, but was simply a form of economic/cultural isolationism and independence.  But whatever it was at different times, it is supposed to be higher than tithing.

The though experiment is this, under which system would an impoverished member of the LDS church in Africa give more to the church?  Tithing, or consecration?

Under tithing, whatever that family earns, however they calculate it, is given to the church and under current teachings if that means that their children are perpetually going to bed without food that is a noble sacrifice for the Lord which we should all look up to as an example of exemplary righteousness.  I'm not joking about that there was a conference talk within the last few years that praised just such an example.

But say things switched up to being the law of consecration.  This poor family that can hardly afford food even without paying tithing is now part of a big "take care of your neighbor" process by which their personal finances and way of life are supposed to be equalized with the way of life of the wealthiest church members.  So instead of giving anything, a huge amount of foreign aid comes into her land from church members who might make a lot of money but are spending their money at a rate which makes them look impoverished by local standards in Europe or North America.  We can't just give individual church members clean water and food without fixing entire communities, so suddenly entire communities are given clean water and money starts flowing to be able to buy more expensive food in the community.  The African saints are blessed by an enormous influx in their standard of living as circumstances permit.  Chances are they don't give anything to the church at all, but maybe later in life when they've put their kids through college and they have jobs, maybe they will.  Under the lower law of tithing they make sacrifices far in excess of what should happen under the higher law.

But what about the general authorities of the church some might ask?  Obviously they live the law of consecration yet don't live in hovels while they donate their excess money to poor starving Africans. Ok, so maybe the church will give up on the idea of economic inequality meaning that the whole world is groaning in sin.  We can disregard that part of the D&C.  Maybe the law of consecration only should apply within national boundaries and not across them.  This doesn't really change the terms of the thought experiment, it just shifts it to a different places within each country.

So imagine back here in the US say you have a poor member who is having trouble affording their mortgate on their tiny home because they just lost one of their two jobs and things are about to fall apart for them?  How much do they give vs receive under tithing vs the law of consecration?  Under tithing they keep paying their tithing till their house is repossessed by the bank and they go into a homeless shelter.  Maybe their bishop helps them out, maybe not.  If things are really this bad for them there is a strong chance they work Sunday's and the bishop is under some kind of injunction not to give them financial assistance because they don't attend church.  Its possible that isn't really the way it works, but I've heard lots of people who are pretty sure that is how it works because they are full of stories about the unworthy poor who attend church the minimum necessary to get their church welfare money from the bishop.  In any case, they might or might not get church welfare based on the the rules that administer that program.  Even if they are eligible it might not be enough to save their house.  So under tithing they stand a very strong chance of losing their house.

Take that same family living in that tiny house where dad just lost his second job.  Under consecration adjusted to only withing national boundaries, Dad probably only works one job and is probably getting church financial assistance not only to help make ends meet but also financial assistance completing his degree so that he can get a better job and be more independent and give back to the community.  Or maybe if he's permanently disabled the church might give him money to make sure he doesn't live with any less conveniences than any other member of his nation in his church.

No matter how you define tithing or consecration, the basic point is that under the lower law the poor are requested to make much larger sacrifices than they are under consecration.  Under consecration the poor receive an abundance of help and there is no thought that they will need to contribute under after they've gotten back on their feet.  If they never do get back on their feet they may never have to financially contribute to the church again.  They might still donate their time and talents, but no money.  Under tithing the poor are expected to pay tithing even if it means not feeding their family or keeping their house or paying other honest and legal obligations.

This focus on a legalistic interpretation of 10% that intensifies the pain of poverty instead of alleviates it brings to mind Matthew 23:23-

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Also Matthew 23:17

 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?

 Note that Christ didn't say that tithing shouldn't be done, but said that if focusing on tithing eclipsed things like mercy then it becomes just hypocrisy.  The glory of God isn't made up of the money we give to the church.  Our love of God isn't made up of the money we give.  Our love of God and each other is what makes us disciples.  As lovers of God it makes sense to give as we can to build up our community of worship by tithing.  But the money we give isn't really the point, its the sacred spaces created by our mutual support that allow for greater and more joyful worship.  If we build up temples by demanding sacrifices whereby the poorest are denied food and shelter, I propose that this is guilt money.  Even the Pharisee's understood that the money paid to Judas to allow Jesus to be killed was unworthy of the temple.  Similarly, food taken out of the mouth of a malnourished child in Africa is not fit to be given to God.  I think this is one place where LDS church leaders have made a well intentioned mistake.  We should take instruction from the Book of Mormon in Mosiah 4:26-27 where we are commanded to give to the poor, but not faster than we have strength.  In Mosiah 2:17 we are taught that "... that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."  Since serving our fellowman is serving God, then the same principles should apply to each, and to neither should we sacrifice so much that we "run faster than we have strength."  If we are truly striving to live closer to the highest laws of heaven, then our understanding of tithing needs to be subject to the weightier matters of the Law.  The widows mite may have been more than all the donations of the rich, but our merciful God would not have demanded the woman to neglect feeding her children to give it.

How far away is Heaven?

As my work schedule has changed my luck has run out and now I work Sunday's on a regular basis for the first time in my life.  To still have the day mean something a bit more to me I've been taking books on religious subjects with me to read between calls.  Today I read a passage in which the author asserted that God's presence is always within us and that our belief that God wasn't present was a major block to being able to tell He was there.  The author argued that to really commune with God on a regular basis is more like always being ready to open the door to Jesus who is standing at the door knocking.  And that there is nothing really hard about opening a door.

One thing that struck me was how simple the idea was.  I grew up understanding that my ability to have God's spirit with me was based on performing rituals and living righteously.  Once these were accomplished, the Holy Ghost's presence would be so typical in my every moment that I probably would never notice it was there unless I was excommunicated and lost that access completely.  Since this presence was so hard to detect, I was to learn to communicate with it by watching for impulses that weren't evil in nature and experiment with not controlling them until I learned how to identify a specific reverent feeling that was supposed to go with the correct impulses to follow.  Figuring out which feeling was supposed to indicate God's will and which were just random could be kind of chancy at first.  I've done some kind of random things as a result.

The other thing that struck me was that the author didn't suggest that any predetermined level of righteousness was required, only an attitude of humble reverent listening.  I've always been told that just like how I feel uncomfortable being around people who aren't doing the right things, God doesn't like spending time with people who were preoccupied with sin and would therefore refuse to spend any more time than necessary with them unless they were meeting some general requirements first.  Some sins were supposed to be so bad that I was taught that it would be impossible for me to enjoy the Holy Ghost unless those sins were gone first.  I heard repeatedly from missionaries that I associated with that they could always tell which investigators were committing sexual transgressions because those were the people who couldn't feel the spirit at all and who wouldn't feel the spirit unless they repented first.

In other words, the God who spent his time ministering to the spiritually sick, who was criticized for spending time with drunks and prostitutes, and who let a woman-so deep in sin that the Pharisee thought it would be wrong to be touched by her-wash his feet with her tears and hair thinks that the Holy Ghost is so skittish about being around sinners that the Holy Ghost only ministers to the spiritually clean who don't need a spiritual physician very badly?

I think I'm going to have to say this is a concept that makes no sense to me.  If Christ ministered to the most vile of sinners and sought to inspire them to repentance but kind of ignored the already righteous and attacked the self righteous, then I should expect the Holy Ghost to also spend its time ministering to any vile sinner who will listen humbly, ignore the already righteous, and attack the confidence of the self righteous.  In my own life I've felt the Holy Ghost in response to when I've been penitent and humble and listening, no matter what stage of righteousness I was in at the time.  At times when I've felt condemned by my sins I've felt the most gracious senses of forgiveness and love even if I hadn't completely mastered the rejection of the sins yet.

A prolonged attitude of penitence and humble listening that create intimacy with God should also help to produce righteousness.  But I think it is a mistake to assume that the Holy Ghost only spends time with the already righteous who only need mild repentence.  Those who are well don't need a physician.  The belief that the spirit of God shuns us if we sin will indeed create a mental roadblock.  If you don't have faith that God wishes to spend time with you why would you reach out to open the door to Christ's spirit knocking on the doors of your heart?

If ye have love...

In my ward growing up there was a fast and testimony meeting where many of the members expressed their love for each other.  An investigator got up and proclaimed his desire to be baptized because he felt we had demonstrated what Jesus taught when he said that his disciples would be known for having love one for another.  Ironicaly, he couldn't be baptized because he traveled around a bit and his primary residence was in another state.  Even though his recent travels had brought him to our congregation on a regular basis, the church would only allow him to be formally taught the discussions in a way that counted towards baptism and join the church from his primary place of residence.  But our ward was where he had felt that spirit of love and he expressed some confusion why the rules were so technical that even though he was converted here he could only be baptized there.

Hopefully he eventually found his way to his home ward and he could join in communion with God through us and feel that same spirit of Love.  We'd always like to assume that every ward is equally loving and amazing.  Of course, that isn't always the case.  I was talking to people recently about some experiences they had in a ward where the members had been cold hearted towards them, apparently more interested in belonging to upper class cliques than in love- leading to a real sense of exclusion.  And I could relate to feeling excluded from a ward family.  I've been in a ward where mostly no one seemed to think it was their responsibility to love me or my family because I wasn't planning on living within the ward boundaries for the rest of my life.  I didn't really count to them.  I've been in an Elder's quorum where the teacher clearly only wanted participation of returned missionaries.  It just didn't occur to him that I counted as a member of his Quorum even if I didn't go on a mission for medical reasons.  And my own experiences are more minor compared to some.  One of my friends growing up once was disruptive in our youth Sunday school, probably because his older brother had just died earlier that very week.  The instructor came right out and told him that it didn't matter if he was having a hard week because he just had a family member die, but that if he was going to behave that way he wasn't welcome and should just leave.  So he left... and to my memory never came back to that class.  After being treated that way I think I can understand why, he was rejected when he was needing acceptance.

Because we are fallen human beings, there are often some reasons that we give ourselves excuses not to love other people.  If you've ever read C.S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" you can easily think of some examples, like the woman in the story who loves her son so much that she hates everyone else.  Or people who love their country so much that they hate foreigners, love a sports team so much as to hate rivals, love a church so much as to hate anyone their perceive questioning it or fear non members, love their views on chastity/marriage so much that they hate or are afraid of gays, or love anything you can imagine so much that they hate what they think the opposite is.

Christ's apostles serve as great examples of how this lofty concept of universal love is so hard to attain, even when taught every day at the feet of the Master.  There are accounts of the apostles bickering with each other over who was the greatest or would receive particular honors in the kingdom of heaven.  Their love for each other and love for God could be eclipsed by a striving for importance and stature in the Kingdom of God.  Just because Jesus commanded them to love each other didn't mean they automatically just got the concept.

Similarly, just because Love is supposed to be written into the programs of the church doesn't mean that any particular group of church members have actually adopted commandment to love one another fully into their lives.  It can become like a character says in "The Brothers Karamazov," the more love one has for universal mankind the less one has for anyone in particular, with organizational or ideological love replacing love for individuals.  Just being stamped with membership in any church has no relevance on whether you have mastered loving others.  No matter what memberships we have, it is the love that indicates discipleship.  Without love for others we won't deserve to be known as disciples of Jesus. We will be just one more of that group of people that say to him that we have performed many mighty works in his name, just to be rejected with the condemnation that He never knew us.  And how could we know him without a fullness of love, when God is Love?

In the end, we fulfill the commandment to love as individuals and hopefully form communities of faithful that together exercise this love.  If we do not love, no membership in Mormonism or any other Christian religion will make all men or God know that we are disciples of Christ.

Sexting and Consent

Some time ago there was a national controversy about a young man who raped his drunk date during a party after the prom.  A lot of useless talk happened about how the young man's life was ruined because of his conviction, not so much recognition that he had done some pretty long lasting damage to his date.  The more interesting side story was that during this same wild party there was another pair of teenagers where the boy was legally prosecuted for child molestation because the laws in their state assumed that was what all oral sex between teenagers was, even though consent was given and the participants were close enough in age no crime would have been committed if they had just risked pregnancy instead of throat cancer.  It seems to me the guiding principles for the law should be protecting consent, recognizing the mental maturity issues involved in consent, and preventing exploitation.  Charging a teen boy for child molestation because he broke a cultural taboo even though no exploitation or consent violation occurred just seems wrong.

 Recently, I saw a blog post which suggested we should worry about teen sexting because those engaged in it could be considered guilty of production, possession, and distribution of child pornography and that supposedly many jurisdictions were aggressively prosecuting such cases, even pushing to have teens tried as adults.  The blog post referred to a policeman who routinely searched young men's cell phones on the assumption that naked pictures of girlfriends could always be found to charge the young men with child pornography crimes.  This seems to beg the same kinds of questions as the case of the young man charged with child molestation.  If no exploitation occurred, if consent was obtained, and the participants were of legally permissible ages to have had sex with each other, should it be illegal for them to share erotic photos of themselves with each other?  It might be stupid, but I don't think it should be illegal.

Obviously a host of other issues come up.  If a photo was taken without consent or shared with the purpose to humiliate that should be illegal.  If the photo is sent as an unwanted advance that should constitute sexual harassment and be illegal.  If a couple exchanges such photos with consent but then shares them with the purpose to humiliate after they break up that should be illegal.  If such a photo is shared between people who are far enough apart in age that sexual acts would be considered statutory rape then it should be considered illegal and a child pornography crime.  These different sorts of crimes should have punishments appropriate to the type of exploitation occurring.  For instance, a young man who harasses young women by sending unsolicited pictures of his crotch deserves a different punishment than a child pornographer.

Its possible all of this is meaningless because the blog article I read might be over playing how such behaviors are actually prosecuted.  But, its possible the legal grey area is more important for its vagueness rather than for a history of overzealous convictions.  But it sounds to me as if it might possibly be time the child pornography laws were updated so that protecting consent and preventing exploitation are the principles that matter, not whether cell phones existed when the laws were written.

Motherhood

Today my Elder's quorum president complained that in talking about motherhood in church meetings he had attended earlier, the atonement of Christ failed to be connected to the discussion in any way, making the meeting not centered on worshiping Christ.  He invited us to bring up ways in which we could connect these subjects.  These were some of the thoughts I had in response to his question.

I've heard a lot of talk about how motherhood is inherently Christlike because of the service given as it is performed in daily tasks.  I think this praise is essentially good, but lacking nuance.  Today while in church I started pondering what the doctrines Christ taught about love had to say about whether mothering was essentially Christlike.  One in particular came to mind. 

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Getting up with a sleepless child over and over again is an act of service, and can be a very selfless one.  But the full essence of the kind of love Jesus is teaching us to have here isn't just serving people, its serving people who actually pretty much hate your guts and are intentionally mean to you.  While serving children can often by physically and emotionally demanding, you can easily argue that there are many times when performing the service is no particular virtue because the children you are serving love you in return.  On the other hand, loving and serving a child with a disobedient streak who seems to love to make your life hard or serving a teenager who is rebelling as hard as they can against you instead of just becoming angry and self serving, well now, that is something unusual and an excellent example of something Christ would hold up as an example of particular virtue.

This isn't to say that sometimes the love that a newborn gives you just doesn't really pay you back for being up every 2 hours in the night with them when they just won't seem to gain weight and you have to push feed them.  And honestly, the love and service a 2 year old gives back to you often doesn't seem to add up to all the work you put in to them.  Its an inherently unbalanced relationship where you give much more than you receive because it isn't possible for it to be any other way.  Children simply cannot contribute as much to the relationship as you can.  Christ also said

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
When there is access to reasonable medical care etc, it is not common for a woman to have to give up her life for her children, but she often gives up a lot of sleep, time to spend with friends, personal development opportunities, and countless other things.  So it can't be said there is nothing Christlike about the sacrifices mothers make.  But when a child looks up at you with those pleading eyes and ask if you can read them another book, serving them by reading often might just mean you are an average decent human being.  How you love them if they grow up into teenagers who tell you that they hate you just might tell you a lot more about how Christlike you are.

I'm not trying to say motherhood isn't Christlike.  But I'd rather that instead of talking about mothers being inherently wonderful that we talked about what it is about parenting that can be Christlike and what Christ actually said about love that matters regarding motherhood.  For example,

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

This scripture suggests that if we parade our parental sacrifices about to show off our love, that our efforts don't help to sanctify us.  Not that women don't need to be able to talk about their daily frustrations and work or that they don't occasionally need praise for the often thankless work they put in.  But if the discussion shifts into showing off and one upping other people or talking about how real righteous women would change their parenting or housekeeping methods, something is wrong.

I appreciate that we celebrate the service of women and mothers, but it feels to me as if church should be a place for the celebration of the sanctification of still imperfect sinners, and a place of reflection on what we might lack in our seeking of additional purification.  So if we described how many mothers were an excellent example of the teachings of Jesus instead of just saying that motherhood itself is Christlike, that would help answer the question of how to have a Christ centered mothers day at church.

What I wish I could say...

I work customer service and tech support by phone.  And I'm on the autistic spectrum.  Those are things that don't normally go together.  Honestly, its so weird that I keep it a secret from almost all of my coworkers and managers.  Only a very few ever find out, and then partially because anything that affects that much of you that you try to hide that much just needs to come out somewhere.

Occasionally I have a call where the customer just stops and praises me for having very good empathy skills, how I just calmed them down immediately with my amazing emotional tone and really helped them.  Once, apparently the prolonged length of my calls attracted attention from a big whig who decided to use my calls as an example to discuss things with his team of managers.  One of the managers came to me afterwards and told me how the big whig had said that they could tell I really cared about my customers.  When I receive praise like that from a customer or a manager I often just want to press pause on the official interaction, transport them to my living room, and explain what its like to be an autistic customer service agent.

I'd tell them that my earliest customer service by phone roles were almost entirely scripted, where I was barely allowed to paraphrase.  And tell them that this was a good way for me to start out because talking on the phone tends to make me freeze up unless I have some kind of script to guide what I say.

I'd tell them about how I, along with my past coworkers, had been through countless trainings on how to be empathetic in a company approved manner following the company approved formula.  And how none of it really made any sense to me.

I'd tell them how on any customer service or tech support job there's always these problem spots where the basic facts of the situation are almost guaranteed to make someone mad unless its presented well.  And then I'd tell them how I tend to take months or maybe even longer perfecting just the right phrasing to get past those danger zones because to me figuring out how to emotionally present things effectively is like tinkering with an old beat up car, you just keep analyzing and listening until you figure our which parts need replacing until you get it working.  It doesn't happen automatically.

I'd tell them about how I was once responsible to fake that I was a supervisor to take calls from angry people who didn't want to talk to base level agents anymore.  I often did pretty well.  My emotional response range is so calm to most things that its hard for most customers to get under my skin, and remaining calm is probably 3/4rs of the battle in taking care of angry people.

But when I was asked to intensively multi task while doing those calls I started to have a pattern of people asking to speak to my manager because they felt I wasn't empathetic enough.  I just couldn't concentrate on sounding nice at the same time as doing too many other things.

I'd tell them that probably the biggest reason I sound good emotionally is because I've been perfecting my phone voice for the last 7 years.

I'd tell them about how even though I can mask my innate emotional lack of intuitive empathy by lots of practice, I still have the detail oriented mind result in calls so long I tend to be on the verge of getting fired over it.  And that my poor ability to emotionally connect with people still makes my sales offers sound like more like something smelly, warm, and soft going splat rather than the money making music the company wants to hear.

I'd tell them about how I once had manager a couple levels up from me try to have me officially written up for submitting credit requests that were too wordy.  And how my direct manager who knew about my being autistic shielded me from them because she felt that the other person could use having to get used to someone like me.

I'd tell them about how once someone did manage to get me reprimanded because I included, at the customers request, personal medical details that related to a credit request and how I started to melt down get upset because I couldn't understand what the problem was.  And how this same manager who knew my diagnosis respected me when I told her that it wasn't worth it and that I needed to disengage.

I'd tell them how for me empathy is more a choice I make and a point of view I explore rather than a feeling that spills out of my guts without me choosing when it happens.

I'd tell them I am an empathy practitioner.  Meaning that I have to practice it because the way I naturally express it probably wouldn't come across in a way they would understand.  But that its still there as part of who I am.  I just have to translate it.

A Tribute to my Mexican Irish Roomate's Search for Christ

When I first came to school in Cedar City, the apartment I rented was really just a house with all the rooms rented out.  It wasn't in the nicest area of town, rent was dirt cheap, and the roommates you ended up with could be almost anyone.  I once shared the house with a man who was half Mexican and half Irish.  I honestly don't know if I ever knew what the real name was, but for this blog post I'll call him Bob.  He told me he was wanted by the police down in Las Vegas and so had been living under a pseudonym.  It turns out that he had been a member of a gang down in sin city and a Mormon friend of his helped him move out to try to start a new life away from the gang where he had been getting in trouble.  At first he had stayed with this friend of his and then eventually moved in with the group of students that shared the house I was in.  He was ready for a change in his life, and was spiritually hungry.  Being in Utah, when he looked around for a place to spiritually feast, what he found was Mormonism.

Bob had no particular illusions that Mormons were somehow more righteous than other people.  He flat out told me that his Mormon friend who helped him move to Utah was a car thief and a spouse abuser.  Bob described watching his friend act almost as if on the verge of attacking the woman.  Bob told me he decided if the man started to hit his wife, Bob was going to punch him out.  Looking at his biceps, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of Bob's righteous indignation.  But knowing one bad person wasn't stopping his interest in Mormonism.  Bob had tried for some time to investigate the church, but with little luck.

I don't know if maybe the missionaries were scared of Bob.  He says several sets of them stood him up for appointments and never showed up again.  He had tried even just showing up directly at our meetings.  But Bob wasn't a Mormon or even an ex-Mormon.  He didn't know anything about the confusing array of family, single non student, single student, or married student wards with their overlapping boundaries and age limitations.  All he knew was he tried showing up several times and someone would keep telling him that he wasn't allowed to attend in that church, that he really belonged somewhere else.  I'm sure no one meant any harm, it just didn't occur to them to just let him come and worship and investigate as he chose.  They were really concerned that he his attendance match his life circumstances.  My roommates and I told him to just come with us, who cared if he was technically too old for our student singles ward.  And for a while I think he liked coming with us.  He told me that the young teachers in our ward taught more and he learned faster from our congregation than from others. 

Sometimes he would ask me questions about religion or morality.  I'd like to say I had all the answers he needed.  I didn't.  I remember once he asked me what was so wrong about pornography.  Maybe this came up because some of the roommates I think were ignoring the law and throwing out junk mail ads for subscriptions to pornographic magazines that were addressed to him.  I knew what the answer was that the church tells its members about Satan attacking the family and how we are sons and daughters of God, but this was a man who didn't really believe yet in all the talk about how family was central to God's plan and what does being God's child have to do with whether its immoral to get turned on by a pretty naked girl?  Growing up I was taught that using it would make me into Ted Bundy and I would end up on the electric chair.  Not a good answer for someone who is using it and obviously hadn't turned into a mass murderer.  All I could remember was a talk by Boyd K. Packer in which he said that our sexual moral code in the church could only be understood in the context of understanding our divine worth as God's children and that once we understood that, the sexual moral code would inherently make sense.  President Packer spent a lot of time discussing the divine worth part of the question, but never got back around to mentioning how that connected back to sexual morality and pornography.  I didn't want to tell him that when it came down to it I had no idea why pornography was wrong, so I told him that pornography being wrong was something that only made sense once you believed other doctrines.  That's about what President Packer had taught me.  I think I could answer him now, but only because I've looked beyond the simple answers to understand things like human trafficking and how abusive depictions are often used.

There were other things I knew the answers to much better.  Bob had a Jehovah's Witness friend who wanted to come debate with me.  I was hesitant, knowing that a Bible bash did no one any good.  But Bob insisted.  The funny thing was I don't think the Jehovah's Witness preacher knew much about Mormonism.  He spent a large amount of time trying to prove shared beliefs out of the Bible, as if I didn't know what they were about.  I kept saying for about the first half of the meeting "thanks for pointing out that scripture, that is a belief we share."  Then he started getting into some weirder stuff pulling the scriptures out of context and using pseudepigraphal sources.  That I could respectfully disagree with him on, tell him I admired his fervor in studying his scriptures, and to have a nice day.  Bob told me he thought it was wonderful watching us because he realized nothing could be proven by just arguing from the scriptures.

He never gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon or of Joseph Smith.  As far as I could tell, he never read the Book of Mormon, despite the missionaries hammering him on it.  My other roommates and I were suspicious that he might not have been able to read well enough to understand the book because he never gave any indication that he had tried, despite desperately wanting to grow spiritually from what Mormonism had to offer.  Eventually, the Bishop in our ward assigned someone to give a talk on the evils of improper dress and appearance.  Unfortunately, Bob didn't have any dress clothes and wore jeans and a T-Shirt to our meetings, and the T-shirt didn't cover the extensive tattooing on his arms.  Bob felt ashamed and felt as if the other members were laughing at him, and stopped being so interested in attending.  My roommates and I discussed pitching in together to pick him up some church clothes he might feel more comfortable in, but the idea fell through for some reason.

I hope Bob found his way to Christ somehow.  I'm a firm believer that no matter what road you take to find love in your heart for God and your fellow man, it’s the right road as long as you get there.  But, I'm afraid that Mormonism at that time wasn't going to lead him to Christ.  At most, it told him that what building he showed up in was more important than whether he worshiped, and what he looked like was more important than whether he was searching for repentance and sanctification.  And since our conversion process centers around reading a book, I think we unintentionally told him that he had to know how to read to be saved.  During the time he stayed with us I watched him lose many of his rough edges and become a more gentle and loving person.  And I can always respect the memory of the man flexing his biceps explaining how he was going to take care of any man who beat a wife.  I just wish I could have led him closer to Christ without all our cultural baggage getting in the way.