Monday, April 14, 2008

Normal Mormons Do LDS


Having been shamed inspired by Casey's blog, ahem, I must rise in fervid defense of my faith!!!

First of all, I'd like to point out that those freaks in Texas have NOTHING to do with my religion. They can claim that fundamentalist crap all they want to, but all I'm gonna do is hand them a shovel and tell them to keep diggin'. And I'll wear a sturdy pair of noseplugs to block the stench of what they're shovelling. How's that for religious tolerance, huh?!

I have no patience for this sort of thing. My religion is little enough understood as it is, but to have people associating this kind of evil with it really chaps my hide.

For the record:
  • Polygamous Mormon is an oxymoron. It was a practice of limited scope and duration, and has not been used in over a century. Let it go, people!!
  • Anyone who treated their kids the way those people have would be ex-communicated before you could say Joseph Smith.
  • We do not hide from the world. Indeed, we are encouraged constantly to "be in the world, but not of it".
  • We do not believe the world is populated with Satan's minions. People are good!
  • We are encouraged to educate ourselves, to be of service (both personally and civically), to keep our minds and bodies pure, to create homes that are havens for our families and their friends, to be loving, honest and honorable.
  • We believe in the power of repentance, faith and forgiveness.
  • We DO NOT believe in isolation, torture or repression or in forcing people to do ANYTHING.
  • We believe in eternal families, eternal life, and eternal joy.
  • We believe that pretty much everybody is going to make it to heaven.
  • We are, first and foremost, believers in, followers of, and delighters in Christ. He is our Rock and our Salvation. There is none other before Him. It is our goal to pattern our lives after Him, so that through Him, we may return to our beloved Father.






Along this note of fallacies, misapprehensions and downright falsehoods that seem to float endlessly around regarding my LDS faith, my friend Colton and I were comparing some of our favorites. My personal favorite has to be a tie between my high school finance teacher assuring me with grave intensity that he "knew all about the Ceremony of the Squirrels" we held in our temples, and the new kid at my cousin's school who stared at her all day before finally screwing up his courage enough to ask where her horns were. Come on, people! I think I'm going to have to add Colton's to my list and call it a three-way, though.

Here's his story:

A man approaches him and says he knows what the towers in Salt Lake temple are for.

'Sat so?, says Colton. "Well, maybe you'd better tell me, 'cause I've been in 'em and I didn't see anything."

The man, disregarding this empirical evidence, states emphatically, "You use them to hide your virgins for your secret sacrifices."

"Well,if they're so secret how do you know about them?" Colton reasonably queries.

"One of them escaped."

"How'd she manage that?"

"She jumped out of the window into the Salt Lake and swam away."




To which Colton wisely responded, "Then I suggest you go find that girl and recruit her for the Olympic team. Because even with a 200 ft. high leg up, anyone who can jump over a mile is well worth pursuing for the track team!"


Eh-HEH.(In the interests of fairness, this man was Canadian and clearly had not the slightest ability to use Google Earth knowledge of the geography of Salt Lake City.)

What about you, Bloggers? What ridiculous myths exist about your faiths? Do you have any favorites you'd care to share?

6 comments:

Marni's Organized Mess said...

Wow, what a letter. What. a. letter.

I didn't know who Danny was, so thanks for the intro. :)

Marni's Organized Mess said...

Oops that was meant to go on the previous blog...

Anyways, I'm not too much into religion, but I do want to say that I know a few WONDERFUL LDS friends and I highly highly respect the religion out of love for these wonderful people in my life.

My husband was raised Mormon and has no interest in going back... but we don't go to church (shame on us huh?).

Anth said...

Nicely said. :)

Melissa said...

Perfect letter explaining our beliefs. The things people believe about us say more about them than about us (did that make sense? What I'm trying to say is, anybody who is gullible enough to believe the horn thing...). My story--one day a guy came by trying to sell us new windows. He pulls out his nifty spiral-bound booklet in which there is a picture of the Salt Lake temple and tells us that their company headquarters are in Salt Lake, in the temple. We tell him that no, his company headquarters are NOT in the temple. He assures us that they are. "Maybe they rented out a floor." Uh, no. We finally convinced him that he needed to have a talk with his boss, as his boss is the one who allegedly told him that his company was holed up in the Salt Lake temple. And if I had a dollar for every time someone saw the picture of me and Jacob in front of the Salt Lake temple and asked us if we got married at Disneyland...well, I'd have two dollars. But still....

Melain said...

I've never been more offended then when my best friend in Junior High asked me if I really had to give my virginity to my father. REALLY?!! Don't you know me AT ALL?!!! I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Who even starts all these sick rumors anyway?!

I liked your clarification of the faith. It made me smile that warm safe smile that I only get at church. Love you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.