Mormon Murder Musings

By Mister Curie

My intention in posting news links yesterday was not because I was trying to make a point about Mormonism, homosexuality, religion, etc.  I posted them because I am in shock at the news.  These are actual people that I have attended church with, talked to, and prayed with. I spent the day reflecting and sifting through ward gossip.

Neither individual, murderer or murdered, is a product of Mormonism.  John Thomas converted to the church a couple of years ago.  I was struck with the intensity of his passion for the church.  I first met John Thomas when he was an investigator with the missionaries.  I was walking home from work one evening and he street contacted me, asking me if I had ever heard of the Book of Mormon.  He shared his testimony of the Book of Mormon with me and how meeting the missionaries had changed his life and of his excitement to be baptized.  He had moved from one religion to another, searching for the truth, which he felt he had finally found.  I felt a bit inadequate after meeting him, as here was someone who was so excited about the Gospel that he was willing to share it with complete strangers, while I had a difficult time even sharing it with friends and coworkers.  After being baptized he was constantly trying to share the gospel  with his friends and complete strangers alike.

John Thomas gave off a little bit of a weird vibe, he seemed a little bit off.  His first testimony after being baptized was sincere and heart-felt, and filled with King James Bible phraseology.  But there wasn't anything in his conduct that ever made me think he was capable of murder.

John Thomas was good friends with Murray Seidman.  It was with the encouragement of John Thomas that Murray began to investigate the church.  They were often together and inseparable.  As new converts they were fellowshipped extensively by our ward.  I have a ward friend who had them both over for dinner shortly before the murder.  Murray also gave off a bit of a weird vibe, he was slow mentally, but seemed kind-hearted.  He had spent his young adulthood in a facility for mentally handicapped individuals, but was eventually able to get a job working in the laundry for a local hospital.  He worked there for 40 or so years before retiring.  He was not rich.  He had no assets that I know of (rented an apartment, no car, etc.) and was in retirement.

Sadly I did not know either of them in any more depth than the typical Mormon knows another ward member's life.  I was unaware, as the article points out, that they first met while Murray was working in the hospital laundry and John Thomas was a patient in the psych ward, before either were members of the church, as I understand it.  I didn't know that John Thomas was diagnosed with schizophrenia and needed to be medicated, which would explain some of the sense of oddness that things in his personal interactions were just a little off.

Just a few months ago, sometime that I believe was between the murder and the arrest, I ran into John Thomas again on the street.  It was dark and I was taking the garbage to the curb as the next day was trash day.  It was winter and being bundled up and in the dark, I didn't recognize him.  But he recognized me.  After walking past me, he turned around.  I suddenly felt a bit of adrenaline as a seeming stranger turned around and moved back toward me.  Then he said, "Hey! I go to church with you!"  Still not recognizing him, I asked his name.  "I'm John Thomas" he replied.  I suddenly felt at ease with the recognition of who it was.  We chatted briefly and somewhat awkwardly, then he moved to resume his journey, stating that he was going to a friend's house.

So it was with shock that I heard the news today from a ward friend that John Thomas was arrested for the murder of Murray Seidman.  And I was further shocked by the bizarre news of an Old Testament stoning for homosexuality.  Happily, as a society, we have largely moved to a higher morality than the stoning practiced in Old Testament times, and even the most religious among us fails to give serious heed to those biblical injunctions, regardless of how inerrant they view the bible.  I don't think this was a case of religion leading someone to believe they should murder.  This is a case of mental illness leading to a divorcement of mental capacities from rational thinking.  Another ward friend who was closer to John Thomas than I was, told me that John Thomas had decided to stop taking his medicine, believing he did not need it and that sincere prayer would be sufficient.  Apparently it was not.

I don't know that a rational motive can be established in this case, I think the actions were probably the result of a diseased mind.  The wealth motive rings hollow because Murray did not have any wealth or assets to speak of, but what wealth could a diseased mind conjure up?  The religious motives also do not reflect my experiences with the teachings of Mormonism or with current ethical interpretation of scriptural passages in any religious tradition, but what horrors can a diseased mind do with religion?

Schizophrenia and other mental illness often have a habit of latching on to extreme religious thoughts.  As a 1st year medical student, I remember visiting the psych ward and interviewing a schizophrenic patient with a small group of my classmates.  We sat down with the patient and asked his name.  "You know the bible?" he responded.  "The Beginning and the End. Alpha and Omega. That's me."

And so I  return  to the bizarre news that a Mormon  from my ward, who I knew as an odd but devout and sincere believer, has confessed to murdering another member of my ward by stoning to death for "unwanted homosexual advances".  I will probably never understand it because it is beyond understanding how the mind goes wrong in the diseased state and what horrors it can lead to. And yet I seek to understand and to find something more.  I understand the desire to find implications in the story for Mormonism, homosexuality, religion, etc. because I am seeking for them too.

Traditions

By Mister Curie

"Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as... as... as a fiddler on the roof!" - Tevye

Madame Curie and I went to watch "Fiddler on the Roof" for our weekly date night.  The company did a great job and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.  I have seen "Fiddler on the Roof" several times, but I came with a very different perspective this time.  In many ways I am a "traditions" person, as well as a "truth" person.  Since becoming disaffected with the church, I feel like I have lost a lot of my traditions, and life often feels very shaky.  It is a very precarious position when you are a traditions person and a truth person.  I wobble back and forth, when I seek to observe the traditions, the truth side of me reminds me of the futility of the traditions.  When I follow where truth leads, I  long for the traditions of my youth.

But it was also obvious in the play, that while traditions provide a sense of stability and comfort, they can also be harmful.  I think of Tevye disowning his daughter because she married outside of the faith.  And I think of the things I did sincerely believing they were the right thing, but which were wrong, harmful, and judgmental.  I see many ways in which our religious traditions lead to harmful behavior.

I also thought about how life is a journey that continues throughout our life.  Often it seems that the church's Plan of Happiness (TM) ends at parenthood.  Everything in the church leads toward the temple, marriage, and having children.  But once you start having kids, everything focuses on the children and the parents are largely left to stagnate.  However, that isn't how life works, it keeps throwing stuff at you.  I think of Tevye and his family with their challenges.  And I think of my parents and how learning of their kids' disaffection will be a challenge to them, and how it will be a challenge for them to learn that they have a gay son.

I thought about how Le Petite Curie is sure to throw some curve balls our way and challenge us.  And I thought about how the big challenges right now seem to be adjusting to my disaffection, accepting that I am gay, and figuring out how to make my MOM work.  While it feels like these are huge challenges and that I just need to endure and get through them, there are sure to be additional challenges on the other side of them.  Life is like that.

The Meaning of Life

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life.  I don't think that's what we're really seeking.  I think that  what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

- Joseph Campbell

"I help myself by making a distinction between the idea that 'we make everything up' (which I don't think is accurate) and 'we give meaning to all that we consciously experience' (which I do think is accurate). . . . Each of us has to create our own frame of reference, which ultimately means only I decide if I am acceptable, if my accomplishments are adequate, and if my life matters. . . . [Some have] connected the idea that 'there is no inherent meaning' to the idea that 'it's all pointless'.  Not for me.  The point for me is that I have to get from here to the end of my life and how I do so matters to me. . . . So for me the question is . . . who will define meaning? If I give other people the power to define meaning for me. . . then I guess the point is to live according to the meaning they define.  Or, I can exercise the power within myself to define meaning for myself. . . . But, based on what?  I answer this by considering what I value.  For me that's the point.  What do I value?  I value being a good [partner]. Now I have meaning in my life. . . . I value being smart. Now I have meaning. I value deepening my way of relating with those closest to me. Now I have meaning. . . . and so on."

- Jake Eagle

Having lost faith in Mormonism, I have been questioning what is the meaning of life if it wasn't The Plan?  If there is no God, as I increasingly believe, is there a meaning to life?  These quotes have given me a lot to ponder.  I think that as we recognize those things that we value and then live our life in harmony with those values, we will find that rapture of being alive and joy in our existence.  And I think that just might be enough.

Abrahamic Trials

By Mister Curie

In the story of the Abrahamic trial, the great Patriarch Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his covenant son, Isaac, the one through whom God has promised that he will be blessed with posterity as the sands of the sea.  According to LDS theology, this was doubly difficult because Abraham himself had nearly been sacrificed by his idolatrous father.  But Abraham was obedient to the Lord and went forth to sacrifice his son.  Once God was satisfied that Abraham would be fully obedient, he released Abraham from the command and blessed him.

The LDS church teaches that we must all face an Abrahamic trial to be worthy of exhaltation.  Modern scriptures teach "Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son.  For all those who will not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified" (D&C 101:4-5).  According to John Taylor, Joseph Smith taught that "You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and (said he) God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God" (Journal of Discourses, 24:197).

Could homosexuality be such an Abrahamic trial? 

Could it be as George Q. Cannon asked, "Will you be true and loyal to God with the curtain drawn between you and Him, shut out from His presence, and in the midst of darkness and temptation, with Satan and his invisible hosts all around you, bringing all manner of evil influences to bear upon you? The men and the women that will be loyal under these circumstances God will exalt, because it will be the highest test to which they can be subjected" (Gospel Truth, 1:7)? And could it be as Ezra Taft Benson said, "The prophet is not limited by men's reasoning. There will be times when you will have to choose between the revelations of God and the reasoning of men--between the prophet and the politician or professor. Said the Prophet Joseph Smith, "Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof until long after the events transpire" (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, p.134)?

I have a lot of problems with this interpretation of the Abrahamic trial and how it applies to homosexuality.  I do not think homosexuality should be viewed as a trial of this life, that will be taken away from us in the Resurrection if we are faithful to the LDS church leaders and remain celibate or marry women, or otherwise we will be resurrected without genitalia.

I like Karen Armstrong's interpretation of the Abraham and Isaac story in her book, "The Case for God".  She wrote (page 35-36):

The God he has served so long had turned out to  be a heartless slayer of children, who was also cynically breaking his promise to make him the father of a great nation. . . . The Genesis narratives show how difficult it is to see or understand the divine as we struggle with life's cruel dilemmas. 

There is no clear, consistent image of God in Genesis.  In the famous first chapter, the Creator God appears center stage, with no rival, supremely powerful and benign, blessing all the things that he has made.  But the rest of Genesis seems to deconstruct this tidy theology.  The God who was supremely powerful in chapter 1 has lost control of his creation within two chapters; the utterly fair and equitable God who blessed everything impartially is later guilty of blatant favoritism, and his somewhat arbitrary choices (the chosen ones are rarely paragons) set human beings murderously against each other.  At the time of the Flood, the benign creator becomes the cruel destroyer. . . Genesis shows that our glimpses of what we call "God" can be as partial, terrible, ambiguous, and paradoxical as the world we live in.  As Abraham's plight on Mount Moriyya shows, it is not easy to "see" what God is, and there are no simple answers to life's perplexities.

I like Karen Armstrong's interpretation of the Abrahamic trial.  For Armstrong, the Abrahamic trial is a story about struggling with life's perplexities.  Such an interpretation does represent a trial that all mankind must go through, but getting through such a trial is not achieved by blindly placing faith in other men who claim to know God's will better than the rest of us.

Church and Choice

By Mister Curie

A couple of acquaintances have suggested that my church disaffection and discovery of my homosexuality are so closely tied together that perhaps I would be better served by focusing on one before the other, suggesting that my struggles with the church are inhibiting my acceptance of homosexuality.  Invariably they have suggested that I focus on my church disaffection first and that once I work through that, I will be better positioned to accept my homosexuality.

I think I have pretty well worked through my disaffection.  Although I still attend church, I do not believe in its doctrinal foundations.  I do not believe Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet, that there was a Divine Restoration, that the Book of Mormon is a historical document translated by the power of God, or that we are led by a Prophet today.  That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?  Perhaps not quite - I don't believe that Christ was the literal Son of God, that he founded a church, that he atoned for our sins, or that he was resurrected.  I'm still on the fence about God, I'm still trying to decide if I think there is substantial physical evidence that God does not exist or that God's non-existence cannot be proved by physical evidence.  But I do not believe in an anthropomorphic God who lives on/near Kolob with plural wives and gazillions of kids.  I do not believe in a God that intervenes in the world to help me find my car keys so I'm not inconvenienced, but allows immense pain and suffering in the world.  The world makes much more sense when I stop trying to superimpose Mormon theology on it.  So what more is there to work through?  When you stop believing entirely in the church, there just isn't much left.

Or is there?  There is one aspect of my disaffection that I have not worked through, and it is intricately tied in with my discovery of my homosexuality.  My wife hinted at this aspect of my disaffection in her recent post about feminism and choice.  We are taught that free agency is the greatest gift God has given us and that we must use it wisely (in fact that was yesterday's Priesthood lesson in my ward), but I feel that psychologically the church trapped me into making the choices it dictated.  Madame Curie wrote about how women don't really have a choice in whether to be stay-at-home moms because they are taught that it is a divine requirement.  For the true believer, the choice is whether to please God or disappoint Him. In the church, it is all very black and white.

Similarly, in many of my life decisions, the church gave me a black and white choice where one option was clearly God's will and the other option was sinful self-indulgence.  There really was no choice involved for the true believer.  Such was the case with homosexuality: either you choose to obey God's will to honor your natural affections for a woman or you chose be a sinful, degenerate faggot.

I have not yet intellectually plumbed the depths to which the church controlled my life and dictated my decisions.  The church dictated to me as a true believer how to spend countless hours of my week, what food to eat, clothes to wear, words to use, entertainment to watch, music to listen to, who to spend time with, etc.  You can argue there was a choice and that I chose what the church said, but to me there was no choice other than to please God or to choose misery.

My life's path was largely dictated by the church: go to BYU, go on a mission, get married, have a kid.  I was following "God's plan for me".  I admit that I was too dependent on the church, too quick to succeed my agency to what it dictated was right.  I'm afraid to confront how much of my life was chosen based on what the church said, rather than on what I really wanted.

If the church said it was what I wanted, then I believed it.  Take for example my experience in the temple. The first time I went through for endowments, I was shocked (and this was after the temple was toned down to remove the ritualized physical punishments, etc.)  I was not prepared for the temple experience.  And I don't think that there is anything in the church that will properly prepare you for the temple, certainly not the worthless temple preparation courses.  I left the temple being reminded more about Gadianton robbers than anything else.  I've heard my experience was not unique.  But I had been told that in the temple we found the crowning ordinances of the Gospel, that it is God's house on earth, and that it is the most spiritual place we will ever be.  And so I convinced myself that it was.  I attended the temple weekly and acclimated to the weird worship pattern.  I came to love temple worship, so much in fact that I served as an ordinance worker in the Provo temple for several years while at BYU.  The church told me the temple was the pinnacle of spirituality, and so it became for me.  So much, in fact, that I came to see Sunday worship was essentially meaningless without the temple experience.


The same pattern was repeated with my mission.  I think back fondly on my two years as a servant of the Lord (and not just when I remember my cute companions).  The church told me my mission should be the best two years of my life up to that point, and so it was in my mind.  A review of my mission journal tells a different story.  Most days I was miserable.  My introverted nature was not designed for engaging strangers in gospel discussions.  I worked hard, but failed to become an effective proselytizing missionary.  But my role as a missionary was to do God' will (as determined and dictated by the church) and to go and do what the Lord wanted me to do.

I have not yet come to grips with which decisions I have made because the church told me that I must in order to be truly happy.  For the true believer, there was only the choice between pleasing God and eternal woe.  I tried to choose to please God every time.  And so I wonder, how much of my life path was determined by what the church wanted and how much was determined by what I wanted.  Surely some of the time those priorities aligned and I don't want to throw out everything the church taught just because it said it.  On the other hand, my life has been great and I think I'm generally happy with where I am at.

Unfortunately, prayer isn't very helpful in this struggle because I have already proven to myself that the answers I have received to prayer in the past are largely manifestations of the complex psychological interplay between what I want and what I believe God wants (typically the church's stance), and typically the church's stance won out. But that is how the church teaches it should be.  In the Bible Dictionary we learn that "The object of prayer is not to change the will of God. . . Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other."  Now that I no longer believe the church has insight into God's will for me, I'm not sure where to turn to determine the best path for me.

So what is it that I actually want and how do I get my life on that path?  Or am I already on that path?

Adam and Eve

By Mister Curie

I don't keep my disaffection with the church a secret on this blog, my disaffection was integral to accepting my homosexuality. However, I am interested in trying to salvage some of my spirituality, and I have been reading a fascinating book by Karen Armstrong, titled "The Case for God." Due to my scientific background, I reject a literal Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, but Armstrong presents a metaphorical view of the Garden of Eden story that I find highly appealing.  In her book (pages 27-30), she states:

It is a typical lost paradise myth . . . . Like any myth, its purpose is to help us to contemplate the human predicament. Why is human life filled with suffering, back-breaking agricultural labor, agonizing childbirth, and death? Why do men and women feel so estranged from the divine? 

Some Western Christians read the story as a factual account of the Original Sin that condemned the human race to everlasting perdition. But this is a peculiarly Western Christian interpretation and was introduced controversially by Saint Augustine of Hippo only in the early fifth century.  The Eden story has never been understood in this way in either Jewish or the Orthodox Christian traditions. . . . The Eden story is certainly not a morality tale; like any paradise myth, it is an imaginary account of the infancy of the human race. . . .To know pain and to be conscious of desire and mortality are inescapable components of human experience, but they are also symptoms of that sense of estrangement from the fullness of being that inspires the nostalgia for paradise lost. We can see Adam, Eve, and the serpent as representing different facets of our humanity.  In the snake is the rebelliousness and incessant compulsion to question everything that is crucial to human progress; in Eve we see our hunger for knowledge, our desire to experiment, and our longing for a life free of inhibition.  Adam, a rather passive figure, displays our reluctance to take responsibility for our actions.  The story shows that good and evil are inextricably intertwined in human life.  Our prodigious knowledge can at one and the same time be a source of benefit and the cause of immense harm.

The story of Adam and Eve has become an integral part of the culture of Christianity because of its transcendent ability to connect with our experiences.  Adam becomes a symbol for Everyman.  I find my life to be an almost disturbing parallel to the Adam and Eve story.

Start with my disaffection, it was my wife who first "took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis 3:6).  This was the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Our eyes were opened to the inconsistencies and contradictions in church history.  We could not shut our eyes again and felt driven from the paradise of being believing members of the church.  But as with Adam and Eve, we would rather have true knowledge of things, rather than belief in things that are false.

The same pattern followed our acceptance of homosexuality.  My wife accepted that she was lesbian first.  She also recognized and accepted that I was gay first.  She then encouraged me to discover my homosexuality for myself.  Sometimes I think she regrets feeding me the "fruit".

But my eyes have been opened, and MAN! how they've opened.  I never knew there were so many cute guys out there!  It seems I've spent years of my life trying to be attracted to the wrong demographic.  I didn't realize that the men were always there.  My wife says the mechanics of how I check out guys hasn't changed, but now the connections are being made in the brain.