Chatting with a Mormon Missionary: Take 4

You are speaking live with James, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Information provided in this session is to provide assistance only and is not an official statement of the Church.

James: Has transferred you to Matthew

You are speaking live with Matthew, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Information provided in this session is to provide assistance only and is not an official statement of the Church.

Me: Hello Matthew

Matthew: Hellos Angie! This is Matt, how are you?

Me: I'm doing great. How are you?

Matthew: I'm doing great!
(My, he's chipper!)

Me: How long have you been Mormon?
(translation: How old are you?)

Matthew: 19 years. What about you?
(Even if it all goes downhill from here, Matthew wins the Shift-Key Award!)

Me: Well, I'm not Mormon. I do have some questions though. I studied a bit about LDS founders like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young in American History.

Matthew: Really? What questions do you have?
(His Shift Key use is so endearing!)

Me: Why do you think God waited so long to reveal his words to Joseph Smith? LDS is a pretty young church compared to a lot of world religions.
(Typical hard-question pause. Hmmm... I probably don't have enough time to run outside for a cigarette though. Oooh! He's back already - under 2 minutes!)

Matthew: We know the LDS church to be the restored church of Jesus Christ. After the people rejected and killed Jesus Christ and his apostles, Christ's gospel was taken off the earth. Because of the people's choices at the time, Christ's church wasn't able to be on the earth.

Me: Well, actually the Early Christian church didn't start until after his death, to my understanding. Like during the 1st century AD/CE
(Writing out both versions reminds me of the band AC/DC.)

Matthew: But Joseph Smith restored Christ's church back to the earth in its fullness!
(So far, this one seems so sweet and earnest. I don't want to burst his bubble, and yet my mission to cast seeds of doubt must go on.)

Me: Well, can you explain what you mean by the "restored church"? You say that Christ's gospel was taken off the earth. Do you mean the actual message recorded in the Bible, or something different?

Matthew: Christ's true gospel meaning the authority to act in Christ's name was taken off the earth. His priesthood died out with his apostle's death. Therefore, during the first century after Christ's ressurection all true authority no longer existed on the earth
The same church that Christ had while He was on the earth exists today.

Me: Wow, I've never heard that before. So do you think that the earliest Christians who spread the word and actually put together the Canon of the Bible - they had no authority to do that?

Matthew: I have to go Angie but thank you for talking with me!
Have a great day.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us and for your interest in the Church. Please know that you are welcome to worship with us any time, request a visit from Mormon missionaries, order a Book of Mormon, or continue to browse our Web site to learn more answers to life's greatest questions.

He hung up on me! And I hadn't even had a chance to be offensive. Since you have to enter your name and email address into the chat applet each time - and I've been using the same one - apparently it only took 4 visits for them to be onto me. Hopefully they're not also logging IP addresses, because you know this is NOT the end.

What have I learned? I've learned to get the doubt in early, in case their supervisor tells them to click off. I've learned that a group of late teen boys can be terrified of the name "Angie" if it poses enough hard questions. (James didn't even say "Hello".) I've learned that not ALL Mormon missionaries like basic typing - in fact, young Matthew does indeed win the Angie the Anti-Theist Shift-Key Award! The grand prize (should he choose to accept) is a series of links to ex-mormon and atheist-friendly websites, and a personal invitation to be my Friend on AtheistNexus.org. (Check out the banner to your right if you'd like to accept this prize yourself!)

Tune in next week when we'll discover whether Mormons track IP addresses...

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I watched Daniel Dennet's presentation at TED recently, and was struck when he mentioned that "Every time you read it or say it, you make another copy in your brain".

This can be very useful when studying. In college I would carry a single small notebook in my purse, and jot down practically every single word one of my professors would say. Once I got home, I'd recopy these notes into separate notebooks for each course. Each weekend, I'd review the notes for each course, and as exams approached, I'd go over them once again. For classes which required a lot of memorization of specific facts or definitions, I'd also make flash cards, and keep these in my back pocket to review while standing in line or between classes or at red lights in traffic. I made repeated copies of the information in my brain, so that I could recall it with ease in the high-pressure setting of an exam. I would know the right answers, because I had drilled myself on them so many times.

I got to thinking about what this meant in terms of religious practice. As a child, prayer was woven into the fabric of everyday life. We prayed over meals, in the mornings before traveling, and at night before going to bed. We went to church every week, at least once a week, and sang the same songs over and over every year. We made copy after copy after copy of these ideas in our brains. Perhaps this is exactly why so many religions emphasize the importance of daily devotions, bible studies, offices of prayer, and weekly church attendance. Each of these activities acts as a form of memorization, embedding the ideas more and more thoroughly into our minds, so that they occur to as the "right" answers, much as the notes I studied before exams.

I quit attending church services regularly after my son was born. For one thing, I was tired all the time. He was sickly as a young child, and I was nursing him, which was difficult when the church wanted me to leave him in the nursery, where he wouldn't be a distraction during the service. I also didn't fit very well in my "Sunday best" anymore with the addition of baby weight, and happened to break my ankle when my son was only a few weeks old. The combination left me at home a lot of Sunday mornings. As time went on and I could reasonably have begun attending services regularly again, I had begun to appreciate the heathen thrill of sleeping in, or lounging around in my pajamas, on a Sunday morning. I didn't quit attending church because I didn't believe in God, but as I failed to go to church, my belief waned. I'm not sure it would have been as easy for me to disbelieve as it was, if I'd been hearing the counter-message "God is true, God is real, God is here, God loves you, God cares inordinately about your sex life" every single weekend.

Many former believers I know talk about still having fears of hell, or dreams about church attendance, long after they leave their faith behind. I think this concept of "making another copy in your brain" may be the root of it. There are some things I learned in college I doubt I'll ever forget, like the principals involved in the "Corrupt Bargain of 1824" (when John Quincy Adams stole the election from Andrew Jackson). In the same way, I don't know that I'll ever forget the words and sign language to "Jesus Loves the Little Children" which I must have sung a thousand times in my early years of life. So when thoughts of God or Christian songs pop into my head, I don't need to give them any more credibility than the memories that they are. I was taught a myth as truth for over 20 years; it seems reasonable to believe, it may take some time before these ideas fade. In the meanwhile, I can study and drill and read and write over and over again the things I know ascertain to be true - the universe is a weird and wonderful place, no more designed for me than for the influenza virus. And I'm going to enjoy every guilt-free moment of the brief life I have in it.

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