The Truth!

The following was written by Shem in response to the Chad Phares Article. He presents some very good arguments althoug I do not wholly agree with everyone he says. It was just to good not to post.

Thank-you Shem and feel free to respond to anything that I write in the future with your insite and wit.

Well, I finally found your blog. I dunno. Maybe you can be more specific as to what you disagree with. Some of what he said struck a chord of agreement with me. Here's my spin on it.

In Utah, and more than likely Idaho as well, there is this horrible cloud of "pseudomormonism" as I will call it. The thought of it sends chills up my spine. A seething mass of people devoid of independent thought. And because they cannot think for themselves, they turn... to the church and solid doctrine? no. To the Deseret Bookstore. Because if you fill your home with enough Janis Kapp Perry music and your kids read all of the Tennis shoes among the Nephites books, your kids will not end up doing drugs and getting pregnant. That's the theory, I guess.

Mind you, I'm illustrating the worst case scenario. But oh, how I loathe the barren wasteland where people quote from the same miserable faith-promoting stories and myths and poems but not from the scriptures. Where they can talk for three hours about the Work and the Glory, but never actually mention Christ in their testimony because they're too busy thanking people and talking about food storage. People who can give you ten explanations about the origins of the dinosaurs or why blacks didn't have the priesthood, none of which are doctrinal, but yell at their kids and kick their dog.

I know no one is perfect. But I've seen people with real genuine faith, where things like charity and kindness mean more than the position of Kolob or the latest John Bytheway talk. And I prefer that to this cloud of mormon culture that so often obscures anything even close to the truth.

I had a seminary teacher who cried as he bore his testimony of Star Wars episode I because the Jedi building looked like a temple and the Yoda's council had 12 people like apostles. He was a nice man, I sincerly love him, but please. Teach me of Christ, of repentance not Yoda or Ender or Micheal McClean. Not that any of these things are bad in and of themselves. But "Sunshine for the LDS Soul" won't save me on Judgement Day. Neither will Temple and the Cosmos or any of your "deep doctrine" about the name of Heavenly Mother and stuff like that. Take me away from this cursed land where everything is too shallow or too deep. Let's get back to basics.

Plus, I work in the library, and every day we get another LDS romance book. These things are crap. Take the cheesiest drug store romance novel you have, change the sex scene into a talk about the temple and the characters into a relief society president and a BYU football star, and you've got the story.

Terribly written, and there's a billion of them. These folks would never be published in the real world. But I guess we're so desperate for something clean that we crank out this "Charly" crap.

Same goes for music and in some cases even art. And so not only are the people deprived of real literature and music because they favor the dumbed-down pop-mormon counterfeit, but the shelter-bubble gets bigger and they become even less able to relate to anything non-mormon. While simutanously they drown in the sleaziest, stupidest mucus the world has to offer, just so long as it's PG-13 and not R. Okay, I'm done.

All this aside, there are lots of people in Utah and everywhere else who humbly, consistently live the true gospel. If you look for the good, you'll find it, if you look for something to complain about, well, it's here too.