When 'Oh My Heck!' won't cut it.

Please don't get the impression that my weekend entirely sucked... On Saturday I dropped my time on a triathlon by almost 16% from last year, and when it comes to Church, the class of 15 and 16 year olds which I teach are some of the nicest and funnest kids around. Unfortunately following that class was when the whole day went South.

I usually try and sneak home for the final hour of the Church block with a kid, either to get a head start on lunch, clean the house, or catch up on work. Somehow yesterday I ended up without a kid, and hence without an excuse to leave, and a wife who urged me to attend the final meeting. She has since apologized.

I walked in, and discovered that it was a combined meeting of men and woman. I found a seat at the back and began to listen. Some high-up from the Stake Presidency was doing the presentation. He started off with a couple of jokes about light bulbs. Those who read regularly might know the significance. I'm pretty much over that whole incident though, and they were almost funny, at least for jokes that were older than the guy telling them - and he was pretty damn old...

Anyway, he starts with a graph on the board...



This he explains, is a worthiness graph. The bottom axis is time and the side axis is worthiness. The top line, represents God's standard for worthiness. The next is the worthiness level of the Church, and the bottom line is the worthiness of the world.

Before I even get into explaining what he was talking about, let me point out some major problems with this assumption - and despite that he claims it came from "The Brethren", and by Mormon deduction is then directly from God, I believe it is an assumption, and a flawed one at that...

First, worthiness is a perception thing. I feel it has to do with how you feel personally, and is nobody else's damn business.

Second, so with God's line so much higher than the Church line, it pretty much shows there is no way we'll ever measure up. This man is probably convinced that the fact that Utah has a higher usage rate of anti depressants, has nothing to do with it have a huge Mormon population who are constantly told they just aren't good enough.

Third, I'm of the impression that we're getting better as a civilization. Sure things are changing, but I'm not sure I'd classify this as decreased worthiness.

Fourth, according to what he said, Church worthiness is lower than ever and lower than the worlds worthiness of several years ago. Whatever.... And excuse me, but wasn't the early leader of the church a guy who would marry 14 year old girls in the name of God, so he could basically "Get in their pants" and wasn't the guy after him a racist bigot? Wow! Things must be really, really bad now....

OK, so his whole point was that the reason this is happening is that Home Teaching is not doing so well. I could start on a whole other tangent here, but I'll save that for another post. Perhaps I could introduce what I like to call the Playboy principle...

The Playboy Principle

Some years ago I heard a story about a Mormon security guard who had been fired from the Playboy mansion because they discovered what his religion was. He was suing. The guy on the radio made the comment that they shouldn't have fired him, instead they should have hired another Mormon security guard, and then they could be assured that at least 2 security guards would not be monkeying around with the bunnies!

I didn't get it at the time, but recently the penny dropped and I realized what he was talking about. The thing is, when you have multiple Mormons, they'll watch each other, and in a way keep each other out of trouble. The thing is, they're not doing it because they want to do the right thing, it's because they're terrified that someone else will see them, and tell on them. If you can see someone doing something wrong, you get:

a - the great feeling of being better than them in your heart.
b - the opportunity to put them down publically, thus making yourself look better publically by comparison.
c - the opportunity to brag about helping another brother or sister see the error of their ways, and possibly get back on the right path, even further elevating how much better you are.

Anyway, so the bottom line is that we need to start being better at Home Teaching to stop the level of worthiness dropping. For those who don't know, Home Teaching is a program where once a month, 2 men go out and visit some assigned families. I've had a couple of really good ones in the past visit my family, but by and large I don't like the program. Nothing worse than having to sit inside on the last day of the month, while 2 men who you don't like and who don't want to be there and don't care about you or your family, sit and try to act interested. The only thing that makes it exciting is if somehow they can report to the Bishop that you are having trouble financially or spiritually, and then it goes back to the whole Playboy principle.

I have a good Mormon friend. He cares more about my family that any home teacher ever has. He and his wife are there for us whenever we need them, and not because of an assignment or anything else they genuinely care. I genuinely care about his family too, and hope he feels that. I know where he stands spiritually, and temporarily, but it's not because I try to find out that stuff, I know it because we're good friends. That's how community and church is supposed to work, not by assignment and reporting of stats and crap like that.

Anyway, as boring and pointless as that meeting was, I wasn't in a particularly bad mood when it was over. I had wasted 45 minutes of my life, and my sweet wife had already apologized for talking me into sitting through it, but things were about to take a turn for the worse.

As I'm running out the grab my kids (Because the old man had droned on well past the finish time) I get called aside by one of the baseball guys from last week. He's sitting with Todd. Todd is an asshole, pure and simple. 4 weeks after the light bulb incident, it was he who stood in front of the entire congregation and began a talk with... "My wife said as long as I don't do something dumb like pull out a lightbulb, my talk will be fine" In hindsight, I should have flipped him off given him and the Bishop a loud "F*ck you both!!" at that point, walked out the Church and never returned, but I didn't.

Todd the asshole, is also the guy I'm supposed to visit a couple of families with. I have chosen not to, since - well, the guys an asshole, and who wants to hang around with that...

Apparently baseball guy had asked Todd how his home-teaching was going, and Todd has responded that he didn't even know who his companion was. They called me over to introduce us. He tried to find out when I'm available. I wake up at 4am and don't get home from work till 7pm - I'm not available. Still he tried to work out something. We kind of figured somethings out, and then Todd (who claimed he didn't know who I was...) put the Cherry on the top.

"It's good to meet you in person - especially after your famous talk a few months ago." I said nothing and kind of wondered off. Perhaps let me share my minds thoughts as I did so...

"What the F*&k?!?!? You f*&king piece of Sh*t!!! You son of a F&*king bitch!!!"

And it pretty much just got worse from then on... I'll spare you.

Todd S********n is a f*&king dickhead. Unfortunately I need to do something in Church next month for my sweet young baby girl. When that is done, I gong to tell the powers that be, where they can stick their precious little home teaching assignment.

Like I said, some things did go really well this weekend. The triathlon rocked!!! I'm going to have to focus on that today, just in case I feel like going postal.