quit playing games with my heart

I am surprised and troubled by how often people endorse the fact that God, in a way, plays games with us by giving us cryptic, confusing messages from the spirit. 

Before, I would get a "prompting" to do something which either was 1) stupidly useless 2) an alternative to a task I'd made my mind up to do.  When I questioned this prompting because it didn't seem to make sense, then I'd think (or get a "prompting") of Isaiah 55:  " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."   Since we're taught that often our will is contrary to God's, I'd assume that was the case and that I needed to be humble and listen to this prompting.

FALSE!

This prompting was not from the spirit.  I believed in it because I expected to receive promptings, promptings to do something contrary to what I wanted to do.  I received a prompting because I expected one, if that makes sense.  What I mean is, if someone tells me that if I chew bubblegum then I will get a headache (which is untrue), I may very well get one because I expect to; the body is tricky that way.

The anecdote that brought this subject up:
A fellow ward member brought up a story in Sunday School where, on his mission, he was prompted to hitchhike at a certain area.  It was a spot off of a highway, where cars where both going 70+ miles per hour and could not stop to pick him and his companion up.  He didn't think this made sense, since it seemed illogical and futile, but he did it anyway because it was a prompting.  After a half an hour standing there, a security card on the other side of the highway called them over and asked if they needed money for a bus.  They declined, but gave him a pass-along card!  Just then, I family walked by, and the missionaries started talking to them.  Two weeks later, that family was baptized; and if they hadn't stood out there and hitchhiked, that never would have happened!

That just doesn't make sense to me any more.  It seems like a roundabout way to make something happen.  If they hadn't hitchhiked there and picked a better spot, the person who picked them up could have eventually gotten baptized, or the person could have dropped them off in an area where they hadn't been where they would have found some golden investigators.  I just don't think that God would give such an illogical prompting and make them jump through hoops to accomplish what he wanted rather than just telling them to cross the street and wait for the family?  Stories like this just confirm the idea that we should obey wacky promptings that don't make sense, because somehow, they'll be for our good.

fame

If you'd like to, please check out this news article about a peaceful protest in Salt Lake City.  I'm the subject of one of the pictures!  Hip hooray.  If I had to be in the newspaper, I'm glad I'm in it for something like this.

I wore my BYU sweatshirt to show that you can be a BYU student and still feel this way.

It was the first protest I've participated in, and it was a pro-gay one in Utah.  And afterward, my friends and I, all BYU students, went to a pub to eat dinner and none of us drank a drop of alcohol (Roy Rogerses are delicious).  It was a night full of contradictions.

We were all wearing black and sitting on the ground during the protest; a woman who was wearing a black sweat suit walked past, asked what we were protesting, then said grumpily, "I chose the wrong day to wear black."

A gay man who was protesting had a huge bolt of fabric that was tucked into the back of his pants and cascaded down like a train.  A woman with a stroller came very near to running over it, and he said quite dramatically, "Don't you dare put your baby on my chiffon!"  (He was joking).

intelligent, but not intellectual

I like to make collages out of pictures I find in books.  I wanted some photos of real people, so I checked out some issues of Newsweek from 1965.  At the same time, I'm both grateful for how the world has improved and appaled at how it used to be.

Two cases in point:

An article discussed a new higher demand for stewardesses because of the increase in international travel by plane and because so many of the current stewardesses were quitting because they were getting married.  Ads gave a height and weight range that potential employees had to conform to, and they had to pass rigorous tests, among them an IQ one (an IQ of 105 was required).  Stewardesses were important, because they brought that extra magic and hospitality that could make a man leave smiling even if his steak was cold and his margerita was in a paper cup.

Sure, these women are complimented for their manner and service, but they're important because they're serving the businessmen who fly on the plane.  Women may do a great job at what they do, but what they do is always subservient to men.  Also, the idea that bothers me to no end is that women work/go to school while they wait to find someone to marry, and then their life goes out the window.  Having a job is just a placeholder until you marry someone to support you.

The caption below a photo of a stewardess quoted in the article read "the best school for brides."  I am glad at least that the article acknowledged that this phrase, appearing on ads encouraging young ladies to apply for a job as a stewardess, was just too much.

An article that did profiles of college students interviewed one Matilda Gholson from the University of North Carolina.  Here is an excerpt:

Matilda, the 22-year-old daughter of a Henderson, N.C., attorney, is a "straight-B" student, a senior majoring in education who chose teaching because "I like children and it seemed important."  But Matilda sees her true career with "a husband and a family."  She has no steady now, dates mostly on weekends, more and more for quiet dinners instead of swinging fraternity "combo parties."  She knows what kind of wife she wants to be.  "A woman's role is secondary to her husband's."  While at college Matrilda looks to her parents for direction.  "I like to think I'm not a conformist," she says, "but I am."

Intelligent, but not intellectual, Matilda sounds like the belle ideal of Southern womanhood.

So many things.  The idea that teaching was an ideal job for women because they work with kids.  And I say this as a female studying to be a teacher!   Look, if you want to stay at home and make being a wife and mother a career, that's perfectly acceptable;women don't get enough recognition for their household roles that really can be considered careers (except you don't get paid and don't get vacations!)  However, it is disturbing to me that this young lady said with her own mouth that her role will be secondary to her husband's.  Not secondary, Tilly—equal.  She believes this because that's all she hears.  I just wonder how often she thinks about these tenets and if at any time something in her brain tells her that there's something wrong with these thoughts.

It's a similar feeling I have when I hear people talk in sacrament meeting or in a class about how gracious God is and how they're less than dirt, etc. and how they're so grateful for forgiveness.  It's so often in a way that really insults them themselves.  We should be grateful for forgiveness, but not in a I-should-be-damned-to-hell-for-eternity-for-this-mistake-but-instead-God-is-SO-merciful-and-does-this-when-I-don't-deserve-it-at-all way.  It bothers me so, so much when people think that to elevate God or some other important figure that they have to debase themselves.

That last sentence quoted—I love that not being an intellectual fits in with being a Southern belle.  And I'm not sure whether the author's comment about her intellect should be taken as a sexist remark.  I watched a video on youtube that's a news story from around 1964 about the new popularity of the Beatles.  The reporter, a man, mentioned that so many girls loved the band, and "some of them can write," referencing to the amount of fanmail the Beatles received.  Not "some of them write fanletters," or "some of them do also write to the band," but "some of them can write."  It didn't stand out tome when I watched it, but someone in the comments brought to my attention how awful that can sound (yes, there were intelligent comments on a youtube video!!!!1!).

Trapped

I feel trapped.  The people who are less than close friends and who I know like me, and who enthusiastically and regularly tell me so, probably don't know what I would call the "real me."  They see the outside varied cheerfulness and don't expect the darkness within.

I'm sure this is a common problem.  "You don't know me!"  "If you only knew how I really was!"

I have a psychological need to confirm to them that I am like they think I am.  I plan ways to do emotional acrobatics to keep on a brave smiling face and not weasel out of social functions. 

What am I afraid of?  That they won't like me?  I'm trying to accept the thought that I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. 

I have to remind myself that their reaction will not necessarily be "she's got issues/she's an apostate/she needs some fellowshipping/she needs more attention than we're already giving her/she's wrong."  Maybe it's possible to be an example to them of a non-traditional Latter-day Saint whose opinions are just as valid.

Isaiah 25:4, 8

It's hard for me to read scriptures because the negative, chiding parts always jump out at me.  It's nice to find scriptures that are reassuring of God's love for you instead of ones that say you must change or face dire consequences.

For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.

"If I won't be gay in the next life, maybe I'll just kill myself."

Let me summarize what the problems with President Packer's remarks were.

1. The logic that God wouldn't pre-set someone a certain way and not allow them to change it is faulty.  Every day children are born with mental and physical handicaps which they can't overcome.  You can't pray away Down Syndrome or AIDS.  I don't at all mean to cast being gay in a negative light by comparing it with disorders.  Also, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think God sends down temptations and challenges like Jove sends down lightening bolts.  He doesn't hurl one at a baby in the womb and say, "You shall be born with a missing toe!  Muahahaha!"  There are so many steps that are included in forming a child.
2. "Remember, He is our father."  So if God doesn't "pre-set" people that way, then that means it must be purely a temptation from Satan.  That really isn't a cheery thought, and that's not reassuring.  "It's not God's doing!  It's just Satan!  So you can overcome the temptation!"  Except when you can't and you can't change the way you feel.
3. Gay people already have a hard life cut out for them by being different from the accepted norm.  Add to that the pressure of being a teenager, and perhaps being misunderstood and not accepted by parents and friends ("You don't have to live with this problem!  You can change!  All the problems associated with it will go away."), and you can see why so many gay teens are depressed and suicidal.  Saying that homosexuality does not exist in the next life gives gay teens quite the reason to commit suicide.  If they try and try and can't change and "fail," then maybe death seems like a better option, especially if it is supposed to bring relief from same-sex attraction.  "If I won't be gay in the next life, maybe I'll just kill myself."
4. What you call "impure" and "unnatural," they call love.  Please show some tact and compassion.

Overhaul on sex ed, please

The way morality and chastity is taught in the church is damaging and out of whack.  I think this mainly comes from leaders not putting themselves in the shoes of their audience members and trying to treat a symptom, not a disease (that's only a metaphor, and I don't mean that sex is in any way like a disease).  Instead of lecturing kids how going too far brings guilt and remorse and that you won't be pure, leaders need to think about the reasons kids choose to have sex.  They need to recognize that that desire isn't bad, and not all kids are just bundles of hormones who decide to have sex just because everyone else is doing it.  They try to claim that "those feelings" are "normal" and "natural," but in the same breath say that they need to be squashed.

Regardless of whether some church leaders' stances on homosexuality is even correct, it needs to be taught and discussed a different way.  If you are gay, it is not helpful to hear that your desires are perverted and that you need to change again and again.  In a church where marriage and family is so often stressed, kids who are gay who do want these same things but just aren't attracted to the opposite sex will feel like there is no path for them.  Sure, they want to get married, but it's impossible because they won't marry someone of the opposite gender; so they're trapped.

Elder Boyd K. Packer made some disastrous assertions during a General Conference talk, which are no doubt results of his age and sexual orientation.

Some suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and the unnatural.  Not so.  Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?  Remember, He is our father.  Paul promised, 'God will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able.  But will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it.'  You can if you will break the habits and conquer the addiction and come away from that which is not worthy of any member of the church.

I am trying to prove that this statement is wrong even under the paradigm that homosexuality is immoral.  Bear that in mind.

By saying that someone is not "preset" and that God would not do that, what exactly is he saying is the alternative?  That it's your fault?  You're giving into the temptation to think that way?  He tries to be comforting by saying that God wouldn't do that, but the implication that you weren't born that way and that you can totally stop it is even worse.  I believe everyone has a predisposition toward things which are considered "immoral" that have to do with his/her personality and struggles.  To some, doing drugs is a huge temptation; to others, it's not but being dishonest is.  It's ridiculous to tell those people that God didn't make them predisposed to want to do drugs and that it's their fault for being tempted.

I don't know if God "tempts" us like some people say anyway.  That scripture from Corinthians that Elder Packer quoted  makes it sound like God sends us temptations, which doesn't seem right.  Plus, it's an overgeneralization that you will always be overcome temptation.  Mainly because people label too many things as "temptation," like being depressed.  I don't think we can always overcome our circumstances—what about all those pioneers that died en route to Utah??  They would have made it if they had had more faith?

Elder Packer makes being predisposed to liking the same gender sound like a stupid excuse.  God wouldn't do that?  So what's the alternative?  Now telling someone that being gay is an "addiction" and that their feelings are completely "impure and unnatural"—that's something Heavenly Father would never do.  Remember, He is our father.

Problem: What defines "righteousness"? The pharisees were wrong.

One problem I've found that we have is judging how good a person is based on some details that are misleading and/or superficial.  Many of the tenets of the Honor Code can be observed based on your outside appearance: do you have piercings?  Do your sideburns not extend below your ear?  Is your skirt knee-length?  Are you smoking?  But really, none of these details is saving.  Details about a person that you can quickly see without even taking to that person are not as telling as people think they are.

Often, someone who is an RM, attends the temple regularly, has a calling and is active in church, doesn't drink, etc. is held up as the standard of righteousness.  BALONEY!  Yes, someone with all of these qualities can be an upstanding citizen, but it doesn't automatically make him or her one!  You could be living the Word of Wisdom and going to the temple every single day, but if you're heart's not in it and you're going through the motions only, it's not much benefit.  And even more importantly, if you're a judgmental jerk who talks condescendingly to lesser mortals, that's much more telling than if you're a full tithe payer.  It's harder to be kind and compassionate than to dress modestly.

I'm tired of people with certain qualities being automatically defined as righteous.  This is not because I do not like these actual people; it's because other people who don't do such obvious "good" things but are still great people aren't considered so.  I'd rather live with a stoner who was nice to me than with someone who doesn't even drink caffeine but is gossipy.  This reminds me of a Board question written by a girl who clashed with her roommates: she seemed to be a stereotypical super Mormon girl, while they skipped church and class and had non-member friends over.  I do not know this girl at all, and my assessment of her might be inaccurate.  I feel that she is one whose heart is in the right place who is trying to do the right thing, but is getting caught up in all of the extra things and ignoring the center of the Gospel.  This sentence sums it up for me: "I am really trying to be more religious and do better with scripture reading and journal writing, etc."  Writing in your journal doesn't save you.  Although it is a great idea, it is really eclipsed by more important actions.  A nice little Mormon girl can sit in her room with her cap sleeves and long skirt, reading scriptures about repentance and writing in her journal, but that's really not what it means to be righteous.  At all.

The asker of the question also mentioned how it was hard to feel the Spirit with the roommates' friends over.  This is a big one for me, because having the companionship of the Holy Ghost is a huge deal in youth.  If you so much as step foot in a less-than-great area, the Spirit will apparently flee.  To that I say, "NONSENSE!"  The Holy Ghost isn't uptight and he wants to stay with us as much as possible.  It's one thing to seek out the dark places, but if you somehow wind up in a situation, the Holy Ghost is going to stay there to help you; it would be ridiculous for him to run away when you need him most.  In addition she said how her roommates left church after sacrament meeting.  Also, at least the roommates are going to sacrament meeting, which is arguably the most important part of church!  

Anyway, perhaps I'm misjudging this girl, but she seems to embody so many of the beliefs that I am against.   Too many people act like Pharisees and judge someone's spirituality based on public actions Another perfect example of this belief, and the thing that inspired this post, is this nice little flyer that you find around the library:

I agree that music piracy is a major issue for this generation--that's not my complaint.  My complaint is the first part, which is trying to show that Brad is a righteous guy!  Why is he righteous?  Because he's an eagle scout and an RM!  Seriously?  

And yes, I suppose that the "Be Consistent" does kind of fit with my view, because it's saying that being married and an RM doesn't guarantee you're living all areas of your life well.  But still, it still is rather judgmental, and it's proof that the belief that certain things seem to guarantee you're a righteous person does exist.

Happy Old Maids

Oh how I love this quote from Little Women:

"Better be happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands."