Why Christianity is Dangerous

WARNING: I think there are only 2 people who might read this blog and know the person I'm about to talk about. Mrs. Koda and a good friend of ours. If you don't want to know disturbing details about this persons life, might I suggest you not read this post. I'll use an alias, but it might be pretty obvious who it is.

For everyone else, this post may be rather explicit. While I know that that could be a considered as a huge "KEEP READING" notice, please just be aware that it could be a little disturbing. It's not the good kind of explicit.

There was a family in our last congregation that we started getting fairly close with about 6 or 7 years ago. We'd double date on occasion and I think we swapped baby sitting a couple of times as well. From the outside, they look like the quintessential good Mormon family. The husband, we'll call him Will, had a fairly good job, and the wife was a stay at home mom. They had two kids and wanted more, but unfortunately it wasn't something which I think the wife was physically possibly of doing.

They had a nice home, and both had fairly prominent callings in the local ward. That's probably all the background I think you need.

One day, shortly after I launched a home based computer consulting business, Will asked if he could come over and speak with me about something. He'd been reading a book about successful businesses, and the whole concept was based on forming a team with unique talents and he wanted me to serve as the technical person for his team, handling a website for his idea and all of that.

He's one of those people who is very outgoing and can tend to be somewhat condescending. But that said, his wife and mine got on great and it sounded like a good idea. He then started to talk about how the idea he had was something he considered himself an expert on, and he then confessed to me that he'd experienced several periods of significant addiction to pornography over the course of his life. Not exactly something I was expecting, but being a man, something I can kind of understand!

It turns out that he had actually been fired from a job a few years prior for looking at it while at work, but that he'd worked with his local ecclesiastical leaders and had repented and so now he was completely recovered, and had become an expert on the recovery process, and so he now wanted to pass that on to other people.

A week later he calls me again...

Turns out that for the last year, he's been getting back into pornography, and he'd just gotten back from speaking to the bishop about it and trying to get it resolved. Just for my non-Mormon audience's benefit. In the LDS Church, pornography is a huge deal. I think part of the reason it's such a big problem is that it's constantly talked about. "Don't look at porn, don't look at porn, don't look at porn". Anyway, it's a moral thing too, and the thinking is that it leads to all kinds of other problems too. Pedophilia, homosexuality, infidelity and the list goes on and on.

Again, I'm a guy and I can appreciate the urge to look at boobies and hu-hus, but at the same time, I tend to think my wife is somewhat of a hottie, and so why would I waste my time with a 2-d image, when I can experience the real thing...

Anyway, so kind of understanding his plight, I did the good friend thing and told him that if he needed someone to talk to, that I would be available for him.

Less than a week later, while my father was visiting from out of state, there's a knock at the door. It's Will and he needs to talk. It was also raining, so I donned my rain coat, and off we went into the rain to talk. I think we ended up being gone almost 2 hours.

I can't recall exactly what he said, but in essence... He'd come clean to his wife about the addiction, and understandably, she hadn't taken it too well. She'd dealt with this twice before and wasn't about to go through it again. Perhaps what was worse was that he'd spoken to the bishop (and me coincidentally) about it before telling his wife, and then he'd confessed to her, in a meeting, right in front of the bishop. The worst part of the whole chat, was that it was apparent that he could see absolutely no wrong doing on his part. His wife was the one with the problem. She was mad, when she should be glad that he was confessing and repenting. He was the good guy, and she just wouldn't let herself see this.

As time progressed there were a few more walks around the neighborhood, and gradually over time, he came around to see that he was in fact the bad guy in all of this, and his wife was the victim. The bishop got him referred to a councilor as well to help him work through the addiction, and as good friends we offered to watch their kids during the weekly sessions.

It wasn't very convenient, but a friend in need... and all that jazz. During this period too, their oldest kid wiped out all the data on my XBox as well... Not relevant to the story, but it pissed me off!

Things seemed to be going well for them though at this point.

When the whole thing had come out, the bishop had released him from his calling as the Ward Mission Leader and taken away his temple recommend. He's also been relieved of his home teaching too. I on the other hand, being one of the few who knew what was going on, volunteered to be the guy who home taught his family, so as to best help them out.

There was a bunch of other stuff which happened in the interim, but about 8 weeks after he first told me, he comes over for another visit. It turns out that his wife had just kicked him out the house. Well kind of... I guess he wasn't getting any action at night, and ended up having a 'wet dream'. His wife didn't understand this, and so he'd been giving her all the literature about masturbating, and how if you don't, these kinds of things happen. The book he gave her was the infamous Mark E. Peterson one - that covers tying your hand to the bed if you have a problem masturbating, and a basically just designed to induce shame and guilt. Interestingly enough too, shame and guilt are huge contributors to addiction - go figure?!

So Will tells me that, and then drops the nuke...

He tells me not to judge his wife too harshly, which was interesting, because I wasn't at all. He'd been starting to get his little "I'm the victim" attitude again, and quite honestly the only judging I was doing at this point, was that he was being a bit of a tool.

Just another warning here... The following gets a little graphic...

Apparently he'd been getting into bestiality, and then he felt the need to explain to me that he'd been "smearing peanut butter on my dick, and letting my dog lick it off." Why the hell he felt the need to tell me this I have absolutely NO IDEA! Because of that his wife - understandably in my mind, didn't really want to have anything to do with that part of his anatomy.

He'd also been instructed by the Stake President to destroy the dog, and his wife was not willing to do this. Again the attitude that apparently she just didn't want to help him. The whole dog argument had escalated into him not willing to stick around if he couldn't have sex, and so the "Kicking him out" incident, was actually him deciding to leave.

With that he left, and I was left trying to deal with it all. It's one thing to know about weird things people do, but it's quite another to find out a person who you thought was a good friend was doing this kind of thing and have him explain it to you, in person.

At this same time I recalled an incident from a year before, where I had been teaching a kids Sunday school class, and his 6 year old son had been drawing on the blackboard with the rest of the class. The next thing I know there is an image of a man on the board with a huge erection. "That's my dad!" says Will's kid. I erased it quickly, and figured he'd just walked in on his dad, first thing in the morning, and had been overwhelmingly impressed.

Now looking back, I realized that there was probably a good chance that there was more going on than this scumbag was willing to share. His kids had some interestingly behavioral issues too, and so I had to wonder.

From that point on, while I didn't share details with my wife, we decided that neither he, nor his kids were to have access to our kids, in any form at all.

Now here comes the problem with Christianity and religion...

Several weeks after this, having gone to counseling, reconciling with his wife and undergoing Church disciplinary action, the bishop pronounces him clean and allows him to return to normal church activity.

While all this was going on, he'd been encouraged to share his testimony each first Sunday in the main meeting, and so from what the majority of the congregation saw, here was just a ultra righteous man with unshakable faith in Christ. He'd even cry at the pulpit, which means he was really, really sincere. He may well, have been, but who can really tell.

First thing that happens is that he gets back on the home teaching list, and is assigned my family to visit. Having a piece of crap like this in a position of authority in the eyes of my children was not going to happen, and so within minutes of my finding out, I had it changed. It was pretty obvious to me from the way he reacted that the poor Elders Quorum President had been asked to assign him to my family (I suspect the bishop wanted me to learn to forgive him), but fortunately he changed it.

Next he gets a calling. I missed the Sunday they put him in, but had I been there, I would have stood and shouted a loud "NO" when they asked for any votes opposing his new position. Again for non-LDS folks... When a person is picked for a position, the congregation votes on it. Since the position comes from God (apparently) the vote is always in favor, and dissenting votes generally result in disciplinary action of some form against the dissenter.

There is no way at all that God decided this man should be the scout leader for the 11 year old scouts.

When I found out what had happened, I immediately emailed this bishop, and explained the erection incident and told him that it was wrong for this man to serve in such a position. I have it on good authority that the Boy Scouts of America would share my concerns. He told me that he would discuss it with his council and get back to me. I told him that as bishop it was his responsibility and he didn't need to get back to me, he just needed to do the right thing.

To my knowledge, he remained the Scout Leader for sometime after this, and no further action was ever taken.

Here's my problem with all of this.

Chances are he's not a child predator and that he's just some sick freak, who gets his jollies from nudie pics and his dog. But with that said, the odds that he could be a predator are significantly higher than your average member of the LDS Church.

But because he found Jesus (for the third time now) and has repented, somehow, we're supposed to forget his prior actions and actions and entrust him with kids...

I'm all for forgiveness, but that's just stupid.

These same people won't let their kids be anywhere near a monogamous lesbian couple in the neighborhood, in case their kids get molested, and won't let their kids play over at the neighbors house, because the dad is drinking a beer on the back patio.

Religion screws up peoples sense of reality. It doesn't matter how much of a scumbag you are, if you talk the talk, you're instantly forgiven and trusted, and that is a HUGE PROBLEM.