Leaving Home - Continued

Well, I moved around for a bit from one relative to another, then moved in with cousins that were mormon. Well I went to some of their meetings and read a bit and liked the philosophy of their teachings and started to attend their church more regularly.

Interestingly enough, they were "monogamous". So many anti-mormon groups say that the mormons are still polygamous and just pretend to be monogamous, but in all my time around the mormons, and making some very close friends among them, I have never seen any polygamy among them. Other than the monogamous polygamy that is rampant here on the North American continent. You know the type, people switching partners more often than switching long distance carriers. Of course the "monogamous" people do not refer to moving from one partner to the next, or having more than one partner at a time as polygamous, unless of course the "M" word is mentioned. In fact, the main thing that I have noticed with the "monogamous" is that they are perfectly content to allow polygamy, as long as everyone involved is "monogamous". Or at least committing adultery, or moving from partner to partner on a regular basis. Then they are happy. An interesting, though shallow, psychological phenomena.

Anyway, I showed an interest in the phylisophical ideologies of mormonism and stuck my nose into every book that I could find. I read everything that I could, including anti-mormon material. Well, after four months or so, I was hooked. It was a great phylosophy, and I decided to join.

A small note worth mentioning, is that I was very crass in my speach, dress, and deportment, and several mormons made it quite clear that I was an evil person. I was often harrassed and made fun of in church, but I stuck to my convictions that the underlying phylosophy of mormonism was good and that I would struggle through anyway.

The constant harassment did not end after baptism. In fact, my baptism was not a completely happy occassion. I was young, and a little unrestrained, and very excited to be getting baptized and allowed myself to speak happily and loudly. (Sometimes I do have trouble controlling my voice, due to a hearing disorder, perhaps largely on account of the abuse suffered as a child.) But that is no excuse for my behaviour. I was excited about baptism and did not keep my voice in check and as a result was chastised for speaking loudly. My topic was of course my impending baptism and joining of the church, I was just too loud.

I realize that I am being vague in my descriptions, but I do not feel that all the details are necessary to convey the fact that the "monogamous" mentality and people were not God's chosen people just for the sake of being monogamous.

I did find friends among the mormons, but it was difficult negotiating all the lies. I say lies, because that is how I saw that type of behaviour. The mormon culture is really a unique culture in and of itself and a person would do much better among them being aware of how they interact with each other. They are often not outright honest when dealing with each other. They like to play a game. To talk between the lines. They justify themselves with 'everyone knows what I mean' and things like that, this way they feel like they are being honest. Needless to say, I did not fit in. I had a bad habit of telling the truth and saying what I meant, and therefore had very little success among them.

The simple bottom line was that the mormon ideal was great, but several of the mormon people were not quite willing to live up to that standard. Leaving the red-neck society in which I was raised, and moving to the mormon culture, most mormons could not accept that I was progressing. They only saw all the low brow behaviours that I was desparately trying to leave behind. With a lack of funds, I was often ridiculed for my lack of proper church attire. For my learning disability, I was often ridiculed for my inability to function in a conversation or in a sunday school class. At one time, I was playing basketball with my cousins, who were instrumental in bringing me into the church, and I was losing badly, but a member of the Bishopric (church leaders) came onto the court and started yelling at me and shoved me. Instictively, and much to my shame, instantly I was back in my abusive childhood and defensively I shoved back. The church leader was caught off balance and fell to the floor. I just stood there, wondering what went wrong. Why would a church leader become violent with me? It was a question that would plague me for years. Well right then and there I became terrified. I may have been struggling to leave behind my red-neck upbringing, and move into a new class. What I had originally thought was a better class. But it was a joke. They looked more acceptable to society, they spoke better, and had better jobs, but they were still the same. I was looking in the wrong place. The gospel was not to be found in class distinctions.

As time went on I found that there was a lot of animosity displayed toward me, and others. It was rampant in that church. No matter where I looked it was there. People were always out to hurt each other and to get ahead. Men were controlling, women were manipulative. The mormon women were some of the most accomplished manipulators that I have ever seen. They could manipulate their men into doing anything, then making the men feel as if it were entirely their fault and that the women were oppressed. I befriended a woman who let slip a few things and I learned that the women even held classes on how to manipulate. That was a revelation!

There was all the usual shenanigans that went on in "monogamous" society. Adultery, was rampant, child abuse was very prevalent, manipulation and abuse between the spouses, lying, deceiving, farming out children, leaching off the system, thieving, and the ever persistent struggle to get to the top, all and more were there. It was really no different than any other place in "monogamous" society. And of course, the mormons had nothing good to say about those who still practiced polygamy.

Early in mormon history, their founding prophet began a church and brought forth a book of scripture, written by prophets on the american continent. The story is that there were people here on the American continents at the same time that there were people in the mediterranian. The ancestors to the american aboriginals, we were told. Well, since God loves all his children, He spoke to a few people on the American continents and those prophets taught their people the same gospel that was taught in the old world. An interesting idea is that since the Bible had been translated numerous times, into several different languages and much of the gospel had been perverted by the translators, that now there was a second book that also taught the same gospel but had only been translated once. This would certainly help undo a lot of the mistranslations that had occurred in the Bible. But I digress. I began this paragraph to say that the first mormon prophet had set up a church for those who were searching for the gospel of Christ. Then he had also set up another organization, one that was based on the higher moral standards of the gospel, similar to the nazarites of the old testament. Those nazarites lived in small communities where they had everything in common and dedicating themselves to God, tried to live the gospel to a much higher standard. They shared everything, and forsook the treasures and comforts of the world to spend their time in the service of God. Joseph Smith Jr. tried to set up a similar organization among some of the more pious members of his early church. In that organization, they struggled to live lofty ideals of laws of consecration and chastity and morality. It is my opinion that if anything, the mormon prophet should be commended for his struggle to live to a rediculously high standard, and not have bad things said about him. Anyway to continue, both organizations were established, the main church, and the inner church. Comparatively, few members of the main church were also members of the inner church which lived the laws of consecration, plural marriage, etc. Of course these days, both histories are intermingled and only the studious historian will see the obvious. So now even most mormons believe that those histories were one and the same.

After the mormon prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were murdered, there was a coup in the leadership of the church and eventually after several years it was established that Brigham Young would be the next church leader. It was Brigham Young who took the mormons the rest of the way west to the mexican territory of Utah. He led his people out of the United States to try and find some reprieve from the persecutions that had abounded, from those who had fallen away from the inner church, and some of those who had fallen away from the main body of the church. Anyway, it was Brigham that combined much of the inner and outer church and made them into one. And to do so there had to be many, many compromises in the gospel. It was a difficult time for many people. From my own study, I would suggest that each of the following 'prophets' of the mormon church gave up a piece of the gospel that was established by the first mormon prophet Joseph. Until, now at this present time, the mormon church is very similar to any other Christian religion, with a few isolated exceptions.

I suppose I should get to the point with the last couple of paragraphs, and it is this. The marriage laws that were established in that inner church were quite lofty. To share all a person has is difficult, but to share a spouse takes the greatest of self sacrifice and the pursuit of the most noble and godlike of qualities. It is a shame that the focus of plural marriage is now focused on polygyny, as if the men were the only ones in control and that the women were just subservient. Yet it is not a hidden fact that they also cross married. In order for a man to have more than one wife, a woman would also have more than one husband, and there are many evidences to support this fact which has been highly written about in anti-mormon literature. Well, just the amount of self control to live in a situation where there were many husbands and many wives in the same family is astounding. I often wonder if I could live up to such a standard. Anyway it is looked at, the modern mormons do not espouse plural marriage as a currently acceptable method of marriage. In fact they are quite vocal, and venhemently opposed to such a thing. Which I find ironic. It is a great irony that their own books say that they must live to the lofty ideal of plural marriage to enter into the highest heaven, and that if they should ever depart from that ideal and the Lord remove that law, then they shall not reach the highest heaven. If they want to reach the highest heaven, they must follow the laws for that level of heaven. And here they are now saying that they will still get to that level of heaven without living according to the laws of that heaven. Such a parallel to the children of isreal thinking that they would be saved to the highest heaven, even though they would not abide the higher law that was brought down from the mount by Moses. So the Lord having compassion, gave them a lower law, one that the people were willing to follow. As with all things, the Lord is willing to have compassion on people, and even warns them that if they give up the higher law, they also give up the rewards of living the higher law, namely the higher heaven. Anyway, enough with irony.

So there I was, struggling to keep the higher ideals of the gospel, while at the same time, being put down by those who should have been helping me. Well, I just could not take it any longer. I decided to pursue my own relationship with God and not let a church or church leader dictate to me, what ultimately is my responsibility.