Sometimes, I really just can't deal with Mormons.
For real. They drive me insane. We are such a weird people! We do weird stuff! How many twentysomethings do you know that go to church that aren't Mormon? And of that number, how many of them make it a significant part of their life? Like, talk about it (their religion) all the time? Or think things are really cool?
Maybe that's just the cynic in me. To me, a religion isn't supposed to be cool. It's a belief system, one that is supposed to help you through tough times and explain the answers to questions that you might not know you had. It's supposed to answer the deep questions of your soul, the ones you ask yourself when you really seek to know just who you are.
I guess that could be defined as cool. But I don't see it that way. I never really see the need to talk about what I believe unless someone asks me a specific question. For me, religion is all about the intensely personal relationship I have with my God. That's it: me and Him. I suppose Jesus works His way in there, too. So yeah, a relationship between me, my Savior, and my God. Three beings. That's it. Nobody else needs to be a part of it. Indeed, nobody else SHOULD be a part of it.
[Feel free to skip this part: it's only tangentially related.]
[Random rambling: It is for this reason that I have a hard time with these religious freedom bills that are appearing in statehouses across the nation. In my view, people should not have to feel like extending their business' services to members of the LGBT+ community is committing a sin. If I were in their place, I would not feel like it was a sin to serve other human beings. Christian businesses don't exclude Muslims from services, even though Islam would be wrong from the Christian point of view. Why should sexual identity be any different? It shouldn't. And I would go so far as to say that God really doesn't care if you bake a wedding cake for the gay couple that came into your bakery yesterday morning. He's not going to hold you accountable for the couple's actions, sinful or not. And it's not a sleight on your Christianity to serve other people. Christ served everyone He met. We know He met with publicans and sinners, which meant He was willing to work with people.
Random rambling, cont.: The personal relationship comes into play here. To me, my religion and my personal relationship with my God should not be used to deny people rights. Just because I believe (or don't believe) something to be wrong does not give me the right to prohibit others' civil rights. A quote from my US History textbook guides me to this day: "My right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." It's this concept of my rights ending as soon as they infringe upon someone else's. So, my right to believe that my religion's way of doing things is the best way ends as soon as that way binds the rights of others' to it.
Random rambling, cont.: To be fair, I don't get to tell people what they believe or how they feel. If they truly feel that baking a gay couple a wedding cake is going to send them (the bakers) to hell, then by all means don't bake a wedding cake. But I would hope that that belief is really and sincerely a belief that guides those bakers' actions. If not, denying service becomes discrimination, and I would hope that we have moved past that sort of behavior as a nation. Who knows, though? Some lessons take awhile to learn.]
So, to be here at BYU where people talk about religion so openly is weird for me. People use their testimonies as evidence in papers that they bring to the Writing Lab. Professors teach about the difference between searching for truth and searching for Truth. People bring up quotes from General Conference as answers to questions in my political science classes.
This sort of behavior strikes me as bizarre. It's just weird to me. I've even taken part in it when professors have specifically asked me to. I don't like to because it doesn't feel scholarly to me, and the whole reason I'm at school is to gain an education. Granted, religion can be a part of that, but we have church on Sunday. And I can't use churchy evidence/logic if I'm going to be proving an academic point to peers who aren't Mormon (spoiler alert: that's MOST of the world).
Finally, there's a sort of arrogance that gets worn among the Mormons, especially here at BYU. I've had a few Elders' Quorums that have fallen prey to arrogance. They all get talking about morals and values, and then the more brash ones make claims on which morals and values are right. But what they don't seem to get is that behind the morals they are bashing (usually using quotes/ideas from general authorities) are people within their own quorum who actually believe that opposing view. I'm one of those people fairly often, and I don't feel like I can safely express an opposing viewpoint in that situation. And so, only one side gets said; and without any apparent opposition, the brash become even more emboldened. They start to believe that they truly are right and must be so because no one disagreed.
That sort of attitude makes Priesthood an exceptionally hard meeting to attend. Granted, I'm not a psychic or an actual Jedi, so I cannot read the thoughts of these so-called "brash ones." Perhaps they are not as bad as I make them out to be because they truly do believe. And maybe I'm just sensitive because I feel singled out for daring to think differently. But still, perceived or not, it's an attitude that I don't like, and there are plenty of Mormons who have it (in Provo and elsewhere).
And that's why I sometimes can't stand Mormons.
Luke
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