S.A.D.

I don't particularly like the holiday season. I want to, but I don't. Some might think I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (or S.A.D.). And while the timing seems to fit, I don't think it adequately describes my experience during the winter months.

First and foremost, I'm not really depressed. Sure the weather sucks, and I would rather it be too warm than snowy. But I can manage the cold, honestly. No, it is not depression that fills me, but anger. The holidays make me angry. I guess you could say I suffer from Seasonal Anger Disorder (too on the nose?).

So, why am I so angry when so many people around me are oozing joy and cheer? Why does the jingling of bells and conspicuous displays of trees decked-out with glistening, eye-catching trinkets get under my chilled skin? Religion. Of course it's religion. Religious people take their favorite holiday and spread it out over two seasons (yes, I'm looking at you, Costco). To them the "most wonderful time of the year" translates to about 5 months of overt proselyting. And when people push back and seek inclusion by saying something as innocuous as "Happy Holidays," Christians throw a hissy-fit about an alleged War on Christmas and a decline in American values, as if their religious traditions are synonymous with morality. 

I don't have anything against people being open about their beliefs and even arguing about them with others. I have done it plenty. But the holiday season gives Christians of all stripes a social license to be more brazen about it and they get offended by others doing the same. It isn't a level playing field. 

Some who have followed this blog or my other social media platforms might think that I am confrontational about religion and actively look for arguments with believers. While it is true that I have found myself in some pretty public arguments online and in person, I don't generally look for those opportunities, and I have even shut down many such conversations when I either didn't feel it was appropriate in the setting (mixed company, usually with children), or I simply wasn't feeling up for it. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I actually got into a religious argument with someone. It's probably been a couple years. 

I guess I'm just tired of the conversation. It is always with the same people (family members mostly) and I know it isn't a fruitful conversation to have most of the time. They are too defensive (they literally can't even entertain the idea that their religion might not be true) and my standards for evidence are too high for them to convince me (as if that's a bad thing). We are at a stand-still. Until something changes, I don't see the point.

Despite my reluctance to engage with believers, they routinely seek me out. Just in the past month I have been coerced through social pressure into participating in religious rituals (family members create situations where it would be perceived as rude if I refused), had the Mormon missionaries knock on my door and try to convince me to give them 10% of my income or suffer eternal consequences (when I told them I wasn't interested, they told me they would put me on a "do not contact" list if I gave them my name, which having been a missionary once myself I can tell you is not necessary), and an ultra conservative uncle of mine used the family contact list of all my extended family on my mother's side to send out a newsletter for his conspiracy-riddled Trump propaganda website. And I still have to make it through Christmas.

So, don't tell me "You can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone." I have been actively avoiding arguments with religious people for months (at least) and they keep badgering me. It seems they can't leave me alone. I would love to just let Mormonism be that silly little religious group I was a part of in my youth and move on to more important things, but they won't let me. They literally bring it to my house; they coerce me at family get-togethers; they advertise on freeway billboards and YouTube commercials; they make presumptuous jokes during staff meetings at work. Not a single goddamn day goes by that I am not reminded of the abusive, manipulative zealots that stunted my adolescence and young adulthood. And the holiday season just puts a bell and multicolored lights on it. So, please forgive me if I appear a little grumpy when I hear Bing Crosby in the grocery store telling me how wonderful it is that god sent his son to earth to be murdered because he--the all powerful, all knowing creator of everything--can't forgive his mortal children for touching their junk and drinking coffee without some good old fashioned blood-infused, death cult magic (it should be noted that as a child I was not allowed to watch the movie "Willow" because a sorceress tries to kill a baby so she can use its blood in a magic spell). 

You can leave the church, but the church won't leave you alone.





BONUS MATERIAL:




Christopher Hitchens on Mormon missionaries, among other things:

Christopher Hitchens on the death cult of Christianity:

STRAIGHT OUTTA DODGE

When the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, dove headfirst into the Mormon pool by producing the satirical hit Broadway play "The Book of Mormon" they received a lot of criticism and adulation from all sides of the religious debate. The Mormon church actually bought ads in the program inviting patrons to read the book after watching the play. The church was betting that many who saw the play would think, "Wow, that's so cool that they are good sports about all this. Maybe I'll check it out." When the more self-righteous mainstream Christians clamored about Mormons not being real Christians and that the play normalized a cult, Matt and Trey came to the defense of Mormons saying something like, "Yeah, Mormons are weird, but they aren't any weirder than the rest of you Christians. At least when we run into Mormons they are super nice and happy all the time."

I get it. Mormons seem quaint and quirky to outsiders. A lot of people view Mormons in the same way they do the Amish: a little backwards, but ultimately harmless. And sure, maybe they aren't as subversive and nasty as some religious zealots can be. But that's how they get ya.

You see, for a Mormon, there is an ulterior motive to their overt pleasantness. They are literally selling you something. For the low, low price of 10% of your income, you, too, can achieve eternal life. Act now and they will even allow you see your family in heaven.

Their greatest marketing tool is their kindness. By being nice to you, the customer, they hope that you will be impressed by their graciousness and want to join their church. It is not unlike Coke-a-Cola spending millions to advertise their charitable givings during the Superbowl. And Mormons are not subtle about it either. They literally talk about it as a way to encourage non-Mormon friends and family to talk to the missionaries and get baptized whenever they have Sunday school lessons about how every member is a missionary. In fact, as an actual missionary one is required to do weekly public service so that locals will see the church in a favorable way.

In my mission we offered free English classes at the church for anyone who wanted to attend. I remember one time we were starting a new round of classes and we pushed extra hard to have a great turnout. We printed new eye-catching posters and plastered the city with hundreds of ads. It took us a week or two to post them all. When the class started we had our highest attendance ever. Dozens of people filed into the entry level class, most of whom I had never seen before. We were ecstatic. Another missionary and I were teaching together, and I started the class by explaining who we were, and what the class would be about. Suddenly, I felt "impressed by the spirit" to bare my testimony that the church was true and the Book of Mormon was a real historical document and all the other typical sound bites Mormons use during a sales pitch. Part way through my testimony, which was starting to drag and feel a bit forced (as they often do), the other missionary interjected and started writing basic words on the white board. He turned to me and whispered, "You gotta include more English, man." I was deflated. I really felt like god wanted me to say what I said, and that I would touch the heart of someone in our captive audience. After all, we were missionaries in post-communist Bulgaria. Business was slow and we were desperate for success.

The next week maybe 25% of the students came back. The week after we were back to our regular crew of about half a dozen people for all three classes.

Sometimes I think about that incident and regret sharing my testimony. Maybe I could have done some actual, no kidding good for the local people who obviously had a desire to learn English (learning English meant having a better chance of winning the Green Card lottery and moving to the USA). Maybe then my two-year mission wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. Other times I think it was a good thing that I put off so many people on the first day of class. At least that way they were able to see our true intentions--and let's be clear, converting them to Mormonism was our intention--and get out while they could.

Maybe it's a wash.

Fast forward to this past weekend when my wife and I went to her parents' home for dinner. We had a pleasant evening. There was good food, we played a board game, my dog got to spend some quality time with her third favorite person in the world. As the night was wrapping up, I thought to myself, "wow, this was actually a nice little get-together." When it was time for us to leave, my wife announced that we needed to get going, and without hesitation my father-in-law said, "Let's have a family prayer." It wasn't a question.

I was livid. I reluctantly stood by as my in-laws and my wife all kneeled on the floor and my father-in-law said a prayer about, well, I don't know, I was too upset to pay attention. The whole evening was a sham. It was coercive, passive-aggressive manipulation. He was betting that we wouldn't want to be rude after such a pleasant evening and would just go along with it. Then god would "do the rest" and soften our hearts and we would leap back into the Mormon pool once again.

Was is a big deal? Could I have gone along with it? Sure. I have in similar situations. But my wife and I have had conversations with her parents about Mormonism and our relationship with the church (we have both removed our names from the church's records). They don't know all the details, because my wife isn't all that eager to get in to it with her parents. And that's fine. She gets to dictate the pace with her family. But her parents know enough about our position to be able to reasonably infer that at the very least things like prayers and firesides and sacrament meetings and General Conference and reading scriptures is touchy for us and very likely to make us uncomfortable. Especially when put on the spot in front of other family members who may not know as much about the situation. What if our roles had been reversed? What if I made it a point to have a movie playing which I knew would offend my guests as they come in? What if I had steered the conversation to things like the health benefits of coffee and tea, or the moral case for abortion. What if before they left my home I insisted that I read a passage from Christopher Hitchens' book god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything? At the very least I would be a poor host. But when religious people pull that nonsense knowingly in mixed company, they presumably get a pass. Frankly, it's rude and shows a lack of respect for our beliefs and boundaries. But Mormons don't care. The ends justify the means. In their view they are doing us a favor. They are offering us eternal life, after all, for the low, low price of 10% of our income. And if we act now we can spend eternity with pushy, self-righteous assholes.

I really need to get out of Utah...




BONUS MATERIAL:




Christopher Hitchens on how religion poisons everything.

CRAZY FOR JESUS

Note: I found this saved as a draft from last February. I never finished it and I don't really remember where I was going towards the end. I gave it a kinda sorta conclusion so that it didn't just end. Mostly I'm publishing this because I was going to write a similar kind of post about another recent occurrence of Mormons mormoning all over the place. I'm sensing a pattern...



I work in mental health treatment and the facility where I work has specific guidelines concerning the way in which staff should talk about certain topics with patients, the long and short of which is staff should generally avoid controversial topics, especially religion and politics. Living in Utah County, where everyone assumes locals are Mormon and "every member is a missionary," this is easier said than done since many people feel a strong desire to save souls from damnation and, after all, Mormonism is totally 100% true, so obviously it can't be a bad thing to use one's influence over vulnerable and impressionable patients in one's care to bring them to the truth which will totally change their life for the better.

You get the idea.

One would think that Mormons, of all faiths, would be able to respect this therapeutic boundary since they believe that those who don't join the church in this life will have an opportunity to do so in the afterlife. This, in turn, raises the question of what the deal is with those tens of thousands (notably not hundreds of thousands, Mr. Holland) of young pre-adult missionaries whose sole purpose is to convince other people that their worldview is fundamentally wrong and they should join the Mormons instead. What could possibly be the purpose of missionary work if the afterlife will surely tie off any mortal loose ends? (Tithing. The answer is tithing.)

The other day a few co-workers and I were chit-chatting between meetings. Apparently some Mormon co-workers not in the room have been bad in this regard. Very bad, indeed. Even after a superior lectured them and told them to stop trying to convert the patients to Mormonism, they kept doing it. And now they got one, because of course they did. Some time in the next couple weeks a mentally compromised and impressionable patient will be baptized into the Mormon church in part because they want to make their Mormon mentors happy. And because this is Utah County, other than a second slightly firmer talking-to, there will be no corrective action for the staff who broke this very important legal boundary (the fact that the staff broke this boundary could open up the institution to a law suit, although it's unlikely).

One person present in our conversation was very vocal in his opposition to proselytizing patients in our care. So much so that I thought I might have found a secular ally. That is, until he went on to clarify his position that although he would never talk to a patient about his personal religious beliefs, he really likes the fact that part of the treatment program at our facility emphasizes the importance of having a Higher Power and how it invariably helps in therapeutic treatment.

I was taken aback by this comment for a few reasons. First, I had completely forgotten that this was part of the program as I have literally never heard anyone--staff, therapist, nurse, psychiatrist--mention a Higher Power as part of the program in the two years I have work for this company. During training meetings prior to starting the job, I didn't make too much of it at the time because, again, this is Utah County and that kind of thing is pervasive within the professional community.

The second reason this mention of a Higher Power struck me was the apparent contrast, no, contradiction it has with the boundary staff are expected to hold regarding discussing religion with patients. I had never realized this before, probably because I had never been presented the two conflicting ideas so close together.

How can a treatment facility simultaneously promote the notion of a Higher Power as an integral part of its program and discourage staff talking about religion with patients? As my co-worker explained, it is because "a Higher Power can be anything."

Well, how is that not just offensive to everyone involved? Believers, non-believers, deists, Buddhists, everyone should find the idea that "a Higher Power can be anything" utter nonsense which belittles all worldviews. Allow me to explain.

For a non-believer (this would include Buddhists and other eastern philosophies which do not necessarily promote a god or deity which would intervene in our affairs) the notion that a belief in a Higher Power is necessary to be successful in treatment is offensive because it implies that since they do not believe they will not be successful. In addition to being offensive, this can be very damaging to the patient, and I have seen this first hand. Furthermore, the notion of a Higher Power in a therapeutic sense originates from Alcoholics Anonymous, which started out as Christian support group during the Prohibition which sought to bring vulnerable and dysfunctional drunks to Jesus. It is inherently religious. Only in recent years has AA and its affiliate organization NA (Narcotics Anonymous) softened the religious verbiage in order to reach a broader base. But the supernatural roots are still there. It should also be noted that the success rate of AA and NA is no better than other secular support groups, because what is really important in treatment and sobriety is social support.

For a believer in a specific, monotheistic god, like a Mormon, say, the fact that a Higher Power can be anything (i.e. a rock, a bag of chips, Donald Trump's dentures, etc.) suggests that the supposed benefits of believing are literally in one's head. What could be more offensive to a believer than to imply that god is psychosomatic, tantamount to a delusion?

For a deist, a Higher Power which would intervene and help a person with mental health issues runs contrary to the central tenet of deism which is that whatever Prime Mover started the Big Bang has left the universe to its own devices. Divine intervention is incompatible with deism generally. Even the softer notion of a Higher Power which would not intervene directly but would simply be disappointed if a person relapsed runs contrary to the core of deism. A deistic Prime Mover simply would not care about a person's treatment.

I could probably keep going, but you get the idea. What I'm driving at, despite my meanderings, is that I'm just tired of Mormonism. I left the church over a decade ago and I'm frankly exhausted. I guess it's true what they say, "You can leave the church, but the church can't leave you alone," or whatever...

FUDGEY NUMBERS

Every so often I go to the ExMormon subreddit. I try not to go too often for mental health reasons...

Today I saw a repost which caught my eye:

Normally such a post would yield a "huh, makes sense" response from me and I would be on my merry way to more positive forums on Reddit, like r/scotch and r/bourbon. But today... today I'm feeling a little salty. Maybe it's the Laphroiag 10 Year I recently purchased (it's like they bottled a campfire on a foggy ocean beach). Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe the drivers on my morning commute were especially obtuse (Utah County shouldn't be allowed to have this much construction all at once). Yeah, that's probably it. 

At any rate, I did some digging. It turns out that the original news article is no longer available. Not a good sign regarding the veracity of statistics. Luckily, the DABC reports on such things in their annual report. And it turns out that the numbers are even higher than the Reddit post suggested. In 2018, Utah liquor sales contributed $45.43 million to the school lunch program in Utah. This is a no nonsense, no strings attached charitable contribution for those in need. Pretty cool, huh?

The second part of the post is pretty vague. It simply states that the Mormon church donates less per year than the amount collected from liquor sales. So, I had to dig a little deeper. First I found that the Mormon church claims to have contributed $2.2 billion (with a "B") in charitable aid worldwide since 1985. Bold claim. Too bad I can't verify this beyond what the Mormons say since their financial records have been undisclosed since the 1950's. But, let's do the unconscionable and take them at their word. $2.2 billion over 34 years averages roughly $64.7 million per year. Not bad. Certainly not chump change. But that's not a very firm figure, so I dug deeper still.

According to the church's own newspaper (why would they lie, amirite?), one of the highest level leaders of the Mormon church, Dallin Oaks, claimed that the church contributes about $40 million per year to charitable causes worldwide, and has done so "for more than 30 years." At $40 million per year over 34 years (to 1985), that comes to a total of $1.36 billion. Now, I'm no math wiz, but $2.2 billion does not equal $1.36 billion. That's a pretty sizable discrepancy. $840,000,000 to be approximate. 

This tells me a few things. First, the church's newsroom and the church's own newspaper and the church's leadership are not on message. Come on, guys. Fudging numbers only works if you're all united. Second, if both claims are roughly true (again, I'm throwing them a Pangaea-sized bone here), then we would have to assume that Mr. Oaks is citing more recent contributions whereas the other figure is more long-term. This seems more than fair if we grant Mr. Oaks was summarizing off the cuff. If these colossal and beyond generous assumptions are true, then it would mean that in recent years the church has contributed at least $14 million less per year than just a few decades ago.

Furthermore, Utah liquor sales contribute more to the welfare system of Utah per year than the Mormon church contributes worldwide.

It should be noted that in that same time the Mormon church claims to have gained more than double the members (1985 reported 5,919,483 total membership; 2018 reported 16,313,735 total membership; over 34 years reported gaining 10,394,252 members worldwide). This means that when they had 5.9 million members worldwide they were contributing roughly $64.7 million in charitable aid worldwide, (possibly more since $64.7 million is the average and earlier years would probably have been higher to off-set the $14 million average loss in later years ($14 million + $64.7 million = $78.7 million)) and now that they have 16.3 million members they are only contributing $40 million per year. In other words, if the numbers they provided are accurate, the Mormon church has contributed significantly less in worldwide charitable aid in recent years than in years past despite claiming significantly more members. 

To put this all into perspective, in 2012 the Mormon church funded a brand new mall right next to the church's headquarters in Salt Lake City to the tune of $2 billion, which is almost as much as the more generous of the two estimated charitable contributions since 1985. Huh, makes sense...

None of this takes into account the common stipulations put on the church's welfare system (like paying the church 10% of your annual income before receiving financial aid--yeah, let that sink in), which I actually have firsthand experience with. As a missionary I was a branch president for a small congregation in Bulgaria. Several members asked me in person for welfare from the church, but since they did not meet the church's requirements for welfare (not full tithe payers) I was not allowed to give anyone any assistance. Let me repeat, when I was in charge of a Mormon congregation in a developing part of the world I was instructed by church higher ups to not give anyone welfare money because they did not give me money first. We didn't have any other charity to offer either, unless you count the free English classes we missionaries offered twice a week. That's it. That's literally all we did for the local community. The rest of our time was spent going door to door trying to convince people that if they didn't join our church and give us 10% of their income they wouldn't be able to see their family for the rest of eternity. 

Tell me again how churches are inherently good for society and deserve tax exempt status...

DEAD HORSE WALKING

When I was a young Mormon boy I listened intently as the adults around me split hairs about whether or not it was appropriate for a young Mormon boy, such as myself, to wear a light blue dress shirt while passing the sacrament to the congregation. They settled on "it's not necessarily inappropriate, but a white shirt is preferred."

When I was a young Mormon man, I listened to my fellow young Mormon missionaries discuss the same topic, which had the added complication that many of the men which attended our congregations were too poor to afford clean, sterling-white dress shirts (post-communist Bulgaria in the early 2000's), and such a restriction would result in not allowing very many "locals" the "opportunity" to distribute chunks of white bread and tiny cups of water to the parishioners. The consensus was "It doesn't matter if it's inappropriate to wear a blue shirt or not; what choice do we have? Surely the Lord will understand our predicament."

And so on...

It seems that the blue shirt vs white shirt debate has been going on for generations and resurrects, as it were, every so often. I suppose this argument dies particularly hard because for many Mormons it is the closest they will ever come to theological nuance.

Invariably, whenever this dying horse finds new life, thereby prolonging its obligatory flogging, a secondary debate emerges: culture vs doctrine.

As one who has left the Mormon church, I rarely find the opportunity to join in these debates with believing members. And, for the record, I'm okay with that. But I do recall a few instances discussing philosophy and epistemology with Mormons and this topic has briefly come up. Since it isn't really that important to my overall critique of Mormonism (believers have no compelling reason to claim their positive feelings about the truth claims of the church are, in fact, from god, and, therefore, have no compelling reason to believe the church is true), I usually skip the debate between culture and doctrine in the moment. But I tend find myself thinking about it some time later. It's a curse.

The long and short of my argument is that you can't separate culture from doctrine just because you don't want to appear pedantic over minutia. The culture of the church is a reflection of its doctrine. There is a reason leaders of the church have stressed these seemingly minor things over the pulpit. Because, according to them, it matters. It is a way of gauging one's dedication to the church, and I don't mean this cynically. For church leaders it really is an effective shortcut for worthiness.

For example, the Word of Wisdom (Mormonism's rather underwhelming code of health) recommends against the drinking of coffee. As with the blue shirt vs white shirt debate, Mormons have debated the topic of coffee consumption for generations and I know of a few devout believers who look forward to the day when drinking coffee will no longer prevent one from entering the temple and going through the ordinances necessary for one's salvation (that's right, Mormons believe that drinking coffee is a serious enough transgression to warrant god denying the "sinner" eternal salvation). But as more and more studies come out which show that coffee has at least some health benefits (depending on how much sugar and cream one adds to it), more and more Mormons are finding abstinence from the drink to be less and less tenable on the grounds of health and wellness (this is important because Mormons generally believe that their more obscure beliefs will eventually be validated by the scientific community, thus allowing them to smugly taunt non-believers with a hearty "told you so."). And for this reason Mormons are focusing less on the health debate (because, again, they are losing it) and instead tout the point that sometimes god asks mankind to do things for reasons they don't understand as a test of one's faith.

Fair enough, I guess. However, before anyone claims this frail bit of reasoning to be innocuous, keep in mind such reasoning could give way to another Abraham and Issac situation (or, for any Mormons eyeing an apologetic response about the literalness of the Bible, Nephi and Laban (according to the Book of Mormon, god told Nephi to chop off the head of Laban while he was drunk and defenseless, then go to Laban's house, dressed in Laban's presumably blood-soaked clothing, and steal Laban's stuff and kidnap his servant, who Nephi also threatened to kill; and Mormons believe this was a moral thing to do.)), and who knows if round two would yield such a favorable outcome (regardless of the outcome, it was still an immoral thing for god to ask of Abraham or Nephi).

Well, the debate between culture and doctrine seems to have been lit anew as one of Mormonism's very tippy-top leaders, Dallin Oaks, while speaking to a large congregation, reinforced the importance of using the correct hand to partake of the sacrament. Let me restate this. One of god's representatives, a man who claims to be a "prophet, seer and revelator" (whatever that means) and also claims to have such a personal relationship with the resurrected Jesus Christ that he can unequivocally speak on his behalf, chose as his topic to a mass of believers the importance of using your right hand to eat bread and drink water instead of your left hand.

And they wonder why members get hung up about blue and white dress shirts...