Homeschooling

I was homeschooled from about 6th grade on.  The reasons why are kind of complicated, but lets say there was a big project involving being required to study astrology in math class, being given word puzzles as English homework on a regular basis, and getting an A on an assignment because it involved a % mark.  It's been a long time since I left that world, and I think I can look back on it now with a lot better perspective than I had at the time.  I wanted to give a quick review of what I felt about the experience in terms of the quality of academics, my emotional well being, and my social well being.

Quality of Academics

Homeschooling did help some parts of my academic progress.  For instance, grammar was something that always eluded me until I studied it at home.  Instead of writing assignments being something that were inflexible and arbitrary, I could adapt writing assignments to my own ideas and style and developed in writing much more than I would have otherwise.  I also don't think I would have ever studied poetry if I hadn't been home schooled, and an ability to enjoy poetry has enriched my life even if the poetry I write is only mediocre.

In some ways homeschooling actually hurt my academic progress.  During the time that the whole curriculum plan was built for us by Calvert School it went pretty well, but afterwards when we tried to build our own it went downhill.  My parents didn't feel up to teaching me chemistry or biology or having me self study.  So we signed me up for a BYU independent study biology course.  I don't know if they've improved, but the BYU high school independent study course for biology was pretty horrible at the time.  And I had no lab experience.  Its not that you can't experience biology labs in home school, its just that you have to buy them, and we didn't.  In chemistry we signed me up for a chemistry class from the local community college.  That by itself was actually a very good move.  It got me a little college credit, I learned much better than I would have at home, and it broke down some of the fear of college level courses for me.  But, we never thought to sign me up for the lab section of the chemistry class, which for whatever reason was optional at Montgomery College.  So I missed the labs again.  Yes we could have purchased those too, but my feeling is that unless your parents are already professional chemists, that is probably a bad idea.  At school you actually have a full set of safety equipment.  The things we used for civics studies didn't allow for any serious alternate world view presentation, and didn't encourage critical thought or introspection.  Even though I learned to break past writers block, grammar, and any fear of writing, my parents were unable to provide serious contributions to the maturity of my writing.  Most of what I wrote during that time except for humor pieces is so embarrassing to me today that I can hardly read it.

Emotional Well Being

Public school during 5th and 6th grades was living hell for me.  One of the things I liked the most about leaving the public school system is that breaking out of the environments where so many bad things happened to me allowed me to let go of a lot of the hatred and anger that had been building up in my personality.  Trying to navigate childhood with Asperger Syndrome is hard, and its harder when your undiagnosed and hardly anybody really gets you.  Despite not being diagnosed, the school councilors and psychologists could tell there was something wrong and had me spend some time in the special ed program.  They knew all about how I had trouble socializing, had problems empathizing, and learned things in an unusual pattern.  All the dots were there, but the paradigm to connect them hadn't been accepted in the DSM yet, so I was stuck with vague labels and assignments to write and read things that encouraged looking at stories from more than one perspective.  Didn't do me much good, and other than offering to let me spend more time playing with other special ed kids they didn't do anything that I am aware of to try to help me make friends.  And who really wants the stigma of spending lots of time with the special ed kids?

So I got to heal from a lot of the pain of public school just by leaving it.  But homeschooling does something funny to your emotional well being.  Its puts a lot of your eggs into one basket.  An overwhelming portion of your time is spent in one social group, and if family relationships go sour then you have very few options to escape it.  To imagine how badly that can end, think of how many people like or dislike subjects in school based on whether they liked or disliked the teacher for that class and for no other reason.  So say your mom is your teacher in ALL of your subjects and the relationship goes sour.  You either have the choice to hate academics, or make the mature decision to base your like or dislike of a subject on something other than who is helping you learn it.  Fortunately I didn't like or dislike subjects based on teachers.  And, when my mom would start to threaten to withdraw all support from me to force me to obey her idea of perfect study methods or habits, I just call her threat and learn to self study.  This was how I lived with my mother in general- find ways to reduce any need for physical, academic, or emotional support from her to as little as possible.  It taught me good study habits, even if my life at home was pretty much living hell a lot of the time just like public school had been.  It is normal for teenagers to need to learn some independence from their parents and authority figures.  Public school decentralizes those authority figures and allows you to take breaks from people you have trouble getting along with.  Home schooling centralizes many of your authority figures into one and gives very few opportunities to take breaks from people you don't get along with.  The only times I routinely wasn't with my family was during early morning seminary, mutual night at church, and church itself.  Other than that I spent almost all of my time with my family.

In the end I'm unsure whether the living hell of public school would have been better to continue if it would have meant not having to deal with living hell at home.  Its possible that I would simply have had bad experiences in both places at once if I had stayed in public school.

Social Well Being

Because I didn't have any effective way to deal with the problems inherent in having Asperger Syndrome, my social well being was pretty much broken and would have been broken no matter which path I took in life.  Public school wasn't working.  Homeschooling only allowed me to socialize at church or church events or with people from church on a regular basis.  Luckily, my group of friends at church was really great and our little group did tons of things together.

We did try to break out of not having socializing opportunities in different ways.  There was a group of homeschooling families in the neighborhood that gathered at a public park to play together on a regular basis.  They were good and intelligent people.  Unfortunately the brand of Christianity they belonged to made them somewhat apprehensive of mormons and I think there was almost a standing ban on us playing together in non public settings.  It got awkward quickly, which is too bad because I got along with some of them pretty well.  Since hanging out with the local Christian homeschooling groups didn't work out so well, we tried forming our own mormon homeschooling groups instead.  This had its own problems.  Most of the homeschooled kids were pretty young, and when I was a somewhat older teenage boy most of the other kids involved were pre adolescent girls.  Not so much my thing.  There were occasionally boys my age in these groups, but there was a problem with trying to be friends with them.

The thing is, one of the major reasons teenagers get taken out of public school and home schooled when the parents aren't concerned about the academics of the school district is to rescue them from some kind of bad behavior or a bad situation where the school isn't protecting them.  They don't tend to home school for very long, just long enough for their parents to feel like they have gotten past some life crisis of immoral or illegal behavior or simply a dangerous situation.  So they don't tend to be part of the homeschooling community for very long and they tend not always to be the kinds of people you want to spend time with when they are.  I remember a play event where my mom brought me a boy to play with and pre warned me that this boy was into some bad things and that if he proposed to do anything illegal or immoral that I should feel free to reject his ideas of a fun time.  During one of these visits he told me about how he wanted to grow up to be a hacker or a drug dealer because that was how to make a lot of money.  Even if the kids were well behaved and not spending their time with you making crude gestures and crude jokes and planning their future criminal life, I'm an Aspie, which means that I won't necessarily be able to become friends easily with anybody just because you throw them at me.  I had some play visits where I just sat there and watched the other kids play video games that I had never played before and couldn't easily learn because I had never played anything more complicated than a sega genesis.  If I hadn't been so well integrated into the social life at church, homeschooling would have been an utter failure for me at allowing me to have a social life.

So was I glad that I was home schooled?  Yes and no.  I was traumatized by 5th and 6th grade enough when 6th grade was in the elementary school, that I think I would have been severely damaged by middle school.  Maybe by high school that would have all calmed down.  Before I left the public school system I would have my mom call people to ask to play based on which kids weren't making fun of me, and then those kids would start making fun of me just to get the message across that my friendship wasn't wanted.  So I think socially and emotionally it gave me a valuable break that allowed me to recuperate in preparation for the epic control battles with my mother that ended with me pushing her out of my life in many ways.  I managed to do this in a way that left her proud of me and left a path forwards for the relationship to continue to develop in a positive way.  But I don't know how I would have managed dealing with middle school and early high school and the battles with my mother at the same time.

If I had to do home school over again and I could change something about what I did academically, it would be that instead of just doing the one class at Montgomery College as a 15 something year old I would have dropped almost all the classes I was self studying and tried to get an associates from Montgomery College before I turned 18.  That would have been a much better investment in myself than the self study courses I was doing and would have prepared me for life much better than the distance studies courses I started taking from George Wythe College.  For whatever reason having me take more college classes from the community college just never occurred to us.  Which is really too bad.

Chaos in Stillness, and Stillness in Chaos

Today I stood in the bathroom, looking at my wife and kids.  The three year old, or T as we have been abbreviating him online, is sitting on top of the toilet kiddy seat, completely naked, telling me about how he is sitting on the potty like mommy and daddy.  I’m glad he’s so happy about this.  Most of the day he’s been vomiting and unable to eat, or sleeping.  The 1 year old L is sitting in the sink, playing with the breakable travel alarm clock we keep on the counter and my breakable electric razor before I take it away again.  My wife is about to try to read to me out of the bible as I try to get both the kids into the bath.  Most nights I’m not home for this, and the last several times I’ve come home from work after the kids have had baths there was water splashed half way across the bathroom floor.

But at least during that moment of chaos, I’m holding still.  At least on the outside.

A few weeks ago we invited someone over to dinner.  With two kids our meals can be something more like a zoo feeding time than a ‘proper’ dinner.  But we try to laugh and have fun with it anyways.  Trying to hold intelligent conversation, eat, fend off the two little bandits trying to steal my attention and my cup of water, and figure out all of the social communication signals involved with having someone new in my environment is hard.  Probably about a week later I’m still internally freaking out because I don’t know if how we use cloth napkins might have communicated a confusing contradiction because cloth napkins normally are used at more formal events and in reality our chaotic dinner habits are born of trying to feed two small children in a hurry.  Our guest was very politely following a formality of etiquette that I am aware of but unfamiliar with, leaving me unsure how to interpret what it means when they used it in a complete mismatch to the chaos of the situation.  But if you took a photograph of our meal, any given moment might have looked calm enough.

At work the other day my manager praised me for having won the most fake money on our team for use at the year end company auction.  Apparently I had 11 customers who gave me 100% scores on good customer service after our phone calls (apparently not many other people got so many) and I practically never miss work or even come in late.  On the surface it looks good.  Underneath, I’m going crazy from the stress of strained relationships from having too little time away from work and school, strained relationships with myself from having too little time to invest in myself, financial goals that seem just out of reach of our income unless we fight for each dollar, chronically almost incomplete or almost late school work, and just trying to make myself slow down the pace of my inner life.  Some days my stress is so high that my acid reflux never really calms down between meals and I spend my time at work massaging my stomach to help relieve the tension building up inside of it.  I sometimes stop being able to digest my food fully- I’m not joking that happens to me when I’m on the danger zone of being stressed out.  I feel so mentally exhausted that even asking my customers names seems like too much to ask.  I frequently forget and have to ask at the end of the call, but honestly I just feel too exhausted to care.  As for making multiple sales pitches per call, forget it, I feel great if I can make myself offer them just one sales pitch.  I’ve still never figured out how to make even one sales pitch to a 3rd party monitoring tech support company that calls me because their connection to the customers modem went down- they aren’t the decision makes and probably never even talk to the decision makers other than when their monitoring contract was drawn up.  And how do you even start to think about selling our own IT support to an on site IT specialist?  “Hey just so you know Mr. Local IT, we have this great product that will make your boss lay you off, want to pass the word along to see if your boss wants it?"  But if I forget to make those two sales pitches my quality stats will suffer.  If I don’t make the calls shorter eventually someone is going to freak out on me and threaten to fire me again.  So I still stress about it all, even though I still feel too exhausted to even care some of the time.  I need to reinvest in me, but where do I start when there isn’t very much of me left to go around any more?

I like to say that trying to take care of my own emotional well being is like driving a car with a broken gas tank indicator.  I don’t tend to know I’m low on emotional energy until I run out.  Sometimes I hit bottom, and won’t even be able to tell what’s happening to me until I’ve had to stop and think about it.  By then I can be pretty messed up.  So I try to reboot my self care, start trying to read books for fun between calls instead of doing low quality homework because I can’t concentrate very well at work anyways, try to force away some of the urgent things in life so that I can just relax a while with my wife.  Try to force away some of the stupid things in life that suck the energy away from me but give me little back.  Take a few moments I’m getting dressed for the day to read something uplifting  Try to spend more time romping with my kids.  Life never stops, even if I wish I could take a vacation from it every once in a while.  But for those few moments that I spend relaxing with my wife, reading something uplifting, or tickling my kids, I try to approach stillness that is on both my inside and my outside, even if its just for a few moments.

Walking away from Omelas

Recently I read a short story by Le Guin entitled walking away from Omelas.  In this story there is a community where everything is perfect, where people are happy and have learned how to reject things destructive, to accept the things that are different but not destructive, and to celebrate joy.  There's only one problem.  For some cultural reason, the whole community is certain that its well being, happiness, and prosperity all come from allowing one child to be neglected and abused.  They all know this child exists and all feel bad about it.  But since allowing that one child to suffer is what keeps the society working properly they feel that there is a terrible justice about it and will refuse to speak even a kind word to this child and find ways to rationalize that nothing could be done about it anyways because the child has become almost inhuman as the result of long mistreatment.  In general people accept it as an unfortunate but necessary reality.  But there are some in the community who reject this devil's bargain of prosperity at the price of anyone's pain.  They simply leave.

Probably one of my weaknesses in life is a tendency to self indulge in certainty.  This is of course a rather human trait.  Most people would probably prefer certainty to pleasure or goodness in most areas of life.  Fighting someone can feel more certain and more empowered than asking for forgiveness.  Ending relationships can be more certain and empowered than holding out to see if they can be repaired.  A war can be simpler than negotiations.  There is nothing unique about being addicted to certainty.

But over the last few years I've noticed that my certainties put me at odd with any kind of sense of right and wrong that I could understand.  I found that I had been, without allowing myself to notice it, justifying other people's pain in favor of my own certainties.  I had allowed myself to believe that other people must have moral defects in their character if they didn't agree with me, had allowed myself to believe only one side of the story in conflicts where human passions and weaknesses leave no one unscathed, or was convinced that my own sense of contentment with my own internal convictions about the world was more important than other people.  Innocent real people were getting hurt, I knew it, but I thought that their getting hurt was somehow the expression of some bigger divine truth where if I didn't accept their hurt as necessary and unimportant it would disrupt my own certainties and perceived harmonies with the world around me.

So I decided to defend people rather than a sense of certainty.  It's not that I want to question "right and wrong" or overturn all values or anything like that.  It's that now I believe in right and wrong, but disbelieve that somehow the stars are aligned in some magic way so that my own cultural attitudes and presumptions invariably declare for right and cast down wrong.  Culture is about the history of good and bad intentioned decisions and attitudes that were made for reasons that were compelling at the time, but it lacks the stamp of eternity.

So where does that leave me now?  When I hear of a dispute between historical figures in the past of my cultural baggage, I stop assuming that the winners writing history means they were right.  Might doesn't equal right in wars, politics, or ethics.  I feel a need to seek out both sides of an issue.  I'm somewhat compulsive about it now.  Instead of cultivating certainty I want to cultivate Christlike love.  Instead of telling people that I understand them and then telling them that their pain is their fault because I imagine them to be someone other than who they are, I want to listen.

Just because someone is hurting doesn't make them "right" anymore than being powerful makes you right.  But listening with compassion keeps me from assuming either one to be completely true.

So where does this leave my certainty about life?  Well, one might say that in part I am walking away from Omelas.  To the extent that my certainty gave me an excuse to be unchristlike, its time to change that.  Losing certainty hurts, but losing my humanity should hurt me more.

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.