Jell-O Does a Body Good?: Attractiveness and the Physical-Spiritual Dichotomy in Mormon Culture

I found out something rather sad recently; a friend of mine has been diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa (along with her other oh-so-pleasant issues). While it would be wrong to blame men for these things, neither do I think that we could go w/o some self-reflection. On the converse, while men are not often diagnosed with it (though it does happen), do women similarly hold standards to where they expect their guy to essentially be a freak of nature (at least a freak that happens to conform with their particular idea of beauty)? For our talk of spiritual compatibility, at the end of the day, are we just as superficial as the next Joe or Jane? Is the primary difference that active Latter Day Saints know how to keep their urges in check? What is the relationship between romance and spirituality, between noticing a pretty figure and "recognizing" (perhaps even in a Saturday's Warrior sort-of-way...heaven forgive me for ever enjoying that PR-nightmare of Mormon cinema) a "sweet spirit."

While I do not propose to delve into that can of worms about the difference between men and women concerning physical attractiveness, I do notice that the men in the Latter Day Saint community are no less concerned with physical attractiveness than most men...they just might describe their attractiveness in a more tamed way. From my experience, Mormons are not immune to the hormones that make the world go around. Yet the instructions we receive related to dating are remarkably (and rightfully, in my view) asexual. The cute aphorism in marriage is always to "marry your best friend." Yet we all know that many of us had that super-tight friend of the opposite gender that we wouldn't be caught dead marrying. We just didn't like them "in that way."

In my interactions with my fellows, when girls are beautiful, the first personality characteristic they are assumed to have is not spirituality. Rather, they are assumed to be "fun," "bubbly." And there are just as many complaints at BYU about guys going after the thin, could-find-shade-under-barbed-wire, girls as anywhere else. How often do we ask the rhetorical question of the beautiful single adults: "How is it that you are not married?" Not so with our resident "sweet spirits." Do we tend to mentally consign them to a life of lonely competence...perhaps working as a librarian somewhere? So I wonder: Have we set up a dichotomy between "spiritual" people and "beautiful" people?

And how vulnerable are we Latter Day Saints to the impact of the media? Sure, we might dismiss them as morally bankrupt and call admiring them our "guilty pleasures," but let's be honest: if the most morally questionable Hollywood star were to miraculously have an Alma experience and become the best Mormon YSA in her respective ward, you can bet that s/he would bump even the most solid guy/girl down the list for dates.

For men, (and I risk being seriously contradicted here), I am going to suggest that few men (LDS or otherwise) would call Cameron Diaz, the Brittany Spears of yesteryear, or most supermodels anything less than very attractive (provided some of them lose the heroin eyes and their horrifically layered makeup). but how much would even LDS men be willing to sacrifice by way of personality if the girls they were dating looked like them?

And for women, how many women would pick a younger version of Mitt Romney over the guys they are currently dating (imagine for a moment that Mitt Romney was not going to be ridiculously wealthy)? Or having a worthy priesthood holder who looked like Michael Phelps? If media is the source and marriage is eternal, then we must sadly conclude that much of our eternal life/marriage depends on that evil empire that we denounce week after week.

Or is theology for an explanation? Do Latter Day Saints Since we view the body in definitely more positive terms than traditional Christian orthodoxy does, do we tend to place a greater emphasis on physical attractiveness? Does this explain Utah's excellent ranking in national obesity rankings? (it ranks 45th?)

Finally, if I am correct, I wonder whether deconstructing such media images is worthwhile for the Latter Day Saint...can/should the LDS man/woman "deprogram" their preferences? I leave our friendly readers to decide.

Holy War: Tired of the Well-Worn Athiest Critique

"More lives have been taken in the name of God than for any other cause. I have seen grown men kill each other over who has the best imaginary friend."

And folks accuse the Christian Right (which I do not affiliate with) of using bumper sticker argumentation! Yet the typical response we give is normally a silently uttered sigh and an invisible roll of the eyes, followed by a few remarks about how "we can't blame God for what his creations do." And why not?? If, as Christian orthodoxy suggests, God is indeed "the First Cause" and free will is largely an illusion or at least no more than a product of decisions God made eons ago (which we must conclude if us, in all of our complexity, ex nihilo).

Since, by and large, the already-convinced read this blog, I must acknowledge that I will probably not be moving any hearts to a new vistas. In addition, if I sound cavalier when talking about terrible things, it is sad necessity. All too often, argumentation requires coldness, at least when one is faced with space limitations.

It's a well-worn (and well-worn) trope of the recently popularized Athiesm movement a la Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Indeed, some fellow Latter Day Saint historians writing on the Mountain Meadows Massacre place their inquiry squarely into this discourse, asking rhetorically whether citizens would be "better off without religion." They seem to prefer that we worship ourselves (leading us to believe that whatever we do is right? Would that not have the same horrific effects that the wars of religion have had??)

Our critics assume that religiously motivated attacks are particularly heinous (one might ask Eugenia Ginzburg...the 18-year survivor of the Gulag...whether she was thanking her lucky stars that Stalin didn't say his prayers daily...spoiler: she wasn't...she even had a few moments of religious conversion herself as her German friend began reciting the Psalms to her as she traveled on the Siberian railway to Vladivastok...touching indeed). They might cite some terrible crimes (such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre or a few others) to demonstrate how terrible they were...though I'm pretty sure I could find equally terrible instances from folks who hadn't gone to church, read scriptures, or said a prayer in years.

And here is where the critics find themselves indulging in a bit of tautology: "Well, any war/violence is promoted by a "faith" of some kind, even if it is in a secular faith in Pol Pot or Stalin." Odd, indeed. If we believe that names and labels can inform us at all...and aren't just cogs to promote some kind of Foucaultian power structure...is it really honest to blame Stalinism on the idea of faith? Would the critics prefer that our religion be small, mnanageable, and ultimately insignificant?

It useful for critics to believe that -isms make the world go around...not people. As David Horowitz (who, while pursuing certain noble goals which I share, all too often resembles a right-wing hack) so noted: "To the revolutionary, 'the people' matter far more than the people themselves." It reminds me of my friend in Utah (who shall remain nameless) who, though wildly articulate, has a penchant for knee-jerkness when she sees an injustice. Blame religion, blame capitalism, even blame communism...but just make sure you blame the ideological system. Doing so helps the thinker to feel particularly big, like an ideological dragon-slayer. Normally, no solution is proposed other than ideological genocide. Interestingly, just as these theorists accuse the religious fanatics of "otherizing" the enemy, so do they "otherize" the ideas they attack.

Indeed, I would suggest that when we speak of religion as a motivator for war, we cannot view it as an independent variable that influences one's prejudices aside and apart from other motivations. They speak as though belief in a higher power alone is cause sufficient to bring about pain and suffering; never mind that the patient might also have other diseases that could kill even more quickly. The Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, has far more to do with secular nationalism of the 19th century. heodor Herzl wanted Israel to be a secular state; indeed, German rabbis opposed the formation of his World Zionist Organization. Indeed, the Ottoman empire of the 19th century, while no Shangrila of religious cooperation was hardly the madness we see now in "occupied territories" of the Middle East.

Motivations for war are often-multi-layered...and those who suggest otherwise are either polemicists or ill-informed. They speak as though every soldier were muttering "Allahu Akhbar" or "Every Knee Shall Bow" while wielding his sword or firing his gun. The best evidence we have regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, for example, does not draw a direct correlation between the emigrant trains' religion and the militia's decision to kill them. These prejudices only surfaced after it was known that an army of thousands were en route. Indeed, if religion were an inevitable cause for war, What are we to make of the times of tolerance in world history? Maria Menocai has written an excellent work on the vibrant culture of arts and sciences which medieval Spain produced through a convergence of Muslim, Judaic, and Christian faiths.

My friends, let us all do better at answering the athiest critique of war. It is as much of a bumper sticker campaign as anything you will see in on the pickup trucks of backwoods Appalachia.

Mormon Academicus: Mormon Intelligentsia and the Crises of Orthodoxy

I’ve been a nerd since long before Bill Gates made nerdiness kind of cool. When I played
basketball, the other team would call out: “Don’t be ball hogs; give Russ the ball! *he he*” The rest of the time, I was roaming the halls, in almost pedantic fashion, as people would ask me to name for them the Presidents of the United States aka my willingness to be a freak show so that I could win friends...I really needed a life...

So as one utterly lacking a life, I did what most good, quality no-lifers do...go to graduate school. Traumatic. The structures that I had known all my life crumbled beneath my feet. Assumptions, core values, and folk beliefs were attacked at every turn by friend and foe alike. Before too long, I just didn’t know what to believe anymore...the earth was shaking underneath my feet...

*Quivering lips* *slight sobbing* I had come to the disturbing realization that the ivory tower was a cult...

Surprised? Whatever one wants to say about the Molly Mormons, Peter Priesthoods, or Dark Princes of Mormon anti-intellectualism, I quickly learned that if academism was the purest form of freedom, then academism was an odd form of freedom indeed. After more than a seminars where the conclusion seemed to be (ad nauseum) that we should blame *groan* dead white men for (name your favorite social problem), that goodness and evil were basically constructs, at least when uttered by a Christian’s mouth. So I come to you as an “academic-in-exile”–to borrow from Lavina Anderson’s fitting phrase...an academic apostate of sorts. I see my relationship to academics as D. Michael Quinn sees his relationship to modern Mormonism (though I do lack that nice bonus called a Yale degree).

Full transperancy: I am a touch bitter. And I am going through an academic crisis of faith. But hey, I’m in good company. Nietzsche went through it (except that the brain tumor didn’t exactly help the situation either). I do not suppose myself able to cover all of the intersections between traditional academism and Mormonism in so small a post. Rather, I point to the distorting influence academism can have when it is divorced from their attendant, checking-and-balancing, gospel principles. Lest anyone think that I bear ill-feelings against any particular Mormon intellectual, please know that much of my disillusionment comes from personal experience...and alas, I have never had the chance to meet any of the famous Mormon dissidents.

In 1990, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote his wildly entertaining (though obnoxiously esoteric) book, Homo Academicus–a sociological study of academics as a social class. He calls his study a “comic scenario, that of Don Juan deceived or the miser robbed.” The analyzers of man become the analyzed. Bourdieu notes early that “no groups love an ‘informer,’ especially perhaps when the transgressor or traitor can claim to share in their own highest values.” So I come to you also as a fellow-believer in the life of the mind...as a believer that the “best books” (see D&C 93) are not *eyeroll* just the scriptures (as my hardline friends have once suggested). I visit your happy e-home as first a seeker of truth (my Latter Day Saint faith), second, a Mormon (that being defined as a cultural association), and third, a nominal informant.

As I spent the summer in Utah, I felt like the stock figure of the Mafia member who goes straight and tells the cops about the Mafia’s dirty secrets. I was the anthropologist returning with his ethnographic study on that most fascinating class of natives called “graduate students.” What was their manner of dress? What kinds of foods do they eat? Did they have “noble savages”?

If the traditional Gentile scholar might be called Homo Academicus, what then might be the makeup of the Mormonus Academicus? In particular, what does that native called “the dissenter” think, feel? What are his/her mating habits? Eating habits? How does it relate with other native peoples? Do they live in a “limited geography” or are they spread across the continent? Thus, in my travels as ethnographer/former Mafia man of the mind, I have observed four tendencies amongst the Mormon intelleligensia. I do not suggest that the “dissenter pathology” is any worse or better than that borne of other ideological systems. Indeed, in 1971, Elder Maxwell himself noted that without the attendant virtues of love, absolute truth is prone to create behavioral abnormalities

1) Sticking it to the Man a.k.a post-structuralism unplugged

Dissent is really just deconstruction with a political agenda. While I am aware about the ideological tussles between post-structuralism, feminism, and the whole litany of other -isms, one element they share is the foundation that Michel Foucault established. To Foucault (and others such as Derrida, Sarte), we owe credit for realigning how we view intellectual politics. To grossly oversimply, Foucault essentially redefined ideas as “structures of power” that were created to ensure racial and sexual superiority–not exactly something that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Furthermore, Foucault (and others) emphasized the corrupted nature of language...so corrupt that to pretend there was any essential meaning to it was to only delude oneself.

Yet what happens when the tools of this analysis are turned on itself? What happens when post-structuralism itself becomes the so-feared watchword of Foucault: le structure de pouvoir (“the structures of power”)? What happens when the language of postmodern thought realizes its hypocritical state? The words revolt against us...and society shuts down. Post-structuralism unleashed eventually turns on itself, for what happens after one deconstructs an idea? S/he is left with remnants of ideas...which also must be dismantled and subverted. Before long, all that remains is the idea of the post-modern itself. The truest form of postmodernism, it seems, is simply a desire to watch the ideological world...not sparing one’s own house. Therefore, breaking down a hierarchy of any kind.–especially that old bugaboo of religious hierarchy–becomes a prime target.

And within academia and Mormon academic circles, this is certainly the case...yet the holders of that power carefully seek to retain their minority status. They must protect their own house. They do so by reminding their listeners that they deal with “anti-intellectualism in high places.” To retain their status, the mainstream membership of the church must be established as “the Other.” And thus the stock stereotypes are rolled out: denim jumpers, high-pitched primary voices, and wealthy businessmen. Accounts of side remarks made in the foyer about “those ‘intellectuals’” are stringed together. Common phrases within the Church are associated with intellectual laziness or even dishonesty (“‘Meat before meat,’ y’know, just means you keep the wool over their eyes until they like how wool feels...”). Given the plenitude of records in this church, there are enough bizarre remarks to provide more than enough fodder. As long as the structures of power cease to be in the hands of the hierarchy or even those Jell-O lovers from the other side of the family tree.

2) Martyrdom

The academic culture that associates itself with Mormonism seem to have made a particularly noisy show about joining in with the cult of the dissenter: generally with blaring bands and waving banners (Gileadi being one of the prime exceptions). It is hardly new...any academic who studies anything at all about the 20th century probably sees him/herself as some kind of activist. The current Church organization certainly helps some: whereas traditional Protestant culture had normalized dissent as a modus operandi, the hierarchical Church provides dissenters a full venue in which they can be the martyr to “the Corporation of the First Presidency”–like a lamb to the slaughter.

A powerful mythology about the Martyrs is developed, mythology that even seeps into mainstream LDS discourse (“Don’t learn too much; you’ll lose your testimony”). The book of martyrs (not unlike the Book of Life) is kept whereby future dissenters might find inspiration. Legends are circulated about the final days of the martyr: how he was ill or she faced a boardroom of twelve Stepford husbands. That the General Authorities all wear business suits certainly don’t help their cause in the minds of the dissent-cultists–robber barons and Enron executives wear business suits too.

Lucian Aurelius criticized the early Christians tendency toward suicide in this manner; suicide was honorable enough–if only they wouldn’t make such a theatrical show of it.

3) Reclaim the Heathen

As with academic culture, there is a real sense that the Mormon intelligentsia–being so misunderstood by the masses, friends, and family–need each other for emotional support in their endeavors. We have told ourselves: “They just don’t understand (actually, they often do, in my experience) about our need for the truth.”

But the battle goes on. The missionary work must be done subtly, the most astute suggest to themselves.

They make subversive comments in Sunday School...not too much (and they mustn’t bear their testimony about Christ or Joseph Smith’s prophetic role–that would turn the subversion into a faith-building exercise...can’t have that). They “ mention “members would be surprised to know that...” often. They seem to revel in Joseph’s (and others–except for fellow dissenter...don’t mess) flaws.

But they always remember their undergirding principle: milk before meat.

4) The Mormon Academy: Extensions of Power

To believe that Mormon academics don’t like the power that their research brings them is, I suspect, quite wrong. I, in my humble gospel doctrine classes, even began to soak in some the egotism borne of so many “such a good lesson” remarks. What happens when the deconstructers (or the dissenters) are questioned? The response is swift: retrenchment, “steps backward,” apologia. In such an environment, dissent has become its own idol with its own religion, rites, and sacrifices. Its priests who gather at academic symposia imply that mainstream members should kiss their rings (which oddly resemble newly-minted PhDs). As one professor mentioned to me, liberal arts take words even more seriously than students of scriptural studies...and frankly, he’s right. I can’t say I have ever studied a verse of scripture as in-depth as we have ever studied one particular paragraph of Derrida. And the reason we study it that much? Because, we’re told, Derrida was communicating some kind of truth that our minds had not fully grasped yet; we should just study our “scriptures” harder.

Those that do receive the privilege of becoming a member of their loyal following become folks who need deprogramming against the wiles of “the Correlation Committee.” If they do not, then the heathens must be cast aside as a mentally atrophied "conservative," at best a slave to the ideological state apparati (hat tip to Althusser) and at worst a knuckle-dragging neanderthal who really does like his Jell-O mold with carrots. If you defend the hierarchy, you must be merely a cog in the machine, a hack.

Since Joseph himself seriously sought to “revolutionize the whole world” with his theology, we thus have even no less than Ralph Nader appealing to the Latter Day Saint’s tradition of “revelation, resistance, and dissent” when speaking at the (in)famous alternative commencement (one which I attended). In The Mormons, it is interesting indeed that nearly all the academics whose research was highlighted per se were lukewarm or excommunicated Mormon scholars. Avraham Gilealdi, one of the September Six who later rejoined the Church, was not mentioned once. Prodigal sons apparently don’t always make for good press.

What kind of results does this cult of dissent bring about? After all, it is not the truth-seeking that gives academics the reputation they have in the church. q

As the Church has moved into the torrent of information publicized about it over the previous decade, it has been the conservatives who stare down the tanks and who face the lynch mob of “broad-minded” secular critics. Yet in the face of this attack led by the arson's torches, the conservative must demonstrate that he too can brandish fire of his own. And while the mob is bent on watching the world burn, the conservative can respond with a simple gesture: a firedance.

Something I can’t really do...but I am in desperate need of a hobby...

Should I Come Out of the Closet?: The lessons Asthma taught me

I have a problem. I was ashamed of it growing up. When it was found out, the other folks in school would look upon me in that "you're-not-one-of-us" kind of way. It showed in my eyes, and frankly, the girls were not exactly attracted by it. But it now it is time that I be honest with myself, that I let myself "be free." I want to tell the world...I have almost died from asthma on three different occasions. And I'm proud of it.

Believe it or not though, this post is actually not about asthma, though asthma will play a role. It's about the cliche (yet cachet) themes, that dominate the bull sessions, organizational behavior seminars, and "team-building" activities: love, determination, faith, and kindness--those qualities that still manage to strike a chord within humanity's (and I don't use the term carelessly) collective experience Yet it is also about the here, now, and pain that we can all help to ease...the pain of those in our faith with same-sex attraction (SSA).

First, to any fellow Saints who struggle with same-gender attraction:

I understand that Latter Day Saints have had a checkered record in our treatment of those who deal with this issue. I offer no excuse or apologia for it. Chesterton noted that if any doctrine from the gospel of Christ were unleashed from its other virtues, that doctrine would become either lame or wild. While I believe the man-woman family unit to be of the utmost, even vital importance as a matter of doctrine, I also believe, as a matter of doctrine, that our idealization of this unit does not give us the license to paint those who struggle as inherently sinful or odd. It is our error that we do. In saying this, I speak in the most solemn tones of orthodoxy--and of the business-suit Brethren kind. As we have with other groups that differ from us (whether they be the intelligentsia, minorities, or otherwise), many Latter Day Saints have failed you in our efforts to love, to "clumsily try to comfort (or chastise) you." And for this, I offer my heartfelt regrets.

I would also make a request...while I shake my head in shame at those who have either intentionally or unintentionally isolated you from us, I would also beg you to not isolate yourselves from us. Believe it or not, you are not the only ones I know who face trials that could theoretically prevent a fulfilling life of marital bliss. Even more common are those who have faced in-born ailments that prove to be tremendous trials. I have been there, my friends. I faced a double-lung collapse, a drama-filled LifeFlight trip through a cloudy sky that almost had to turn around. I had to learn to walk again. Other friends, while bright in mind (almost brilliant), face the tremendous obstacle of a cursed wheelchair. As one such friend said to me: "There had better be some SERIOUS payback in the afterlife."

I recognize that, unfortunately, these individuals might have a leg up, in the eyes of those with SSA. After all, they're viewed as "special." Yet let me tell you from personal experience that any ailment can turn a "special" person into a very, very bitter one. My ailments came with the package for me...I did not choose them. And on more than one occasion, I have quite frankly done some complaining against both God and my parents for my troubles. Didn't exactly fit that nice picture of the pious, sickly Tiny Tim or magisterial Neal A. Maxwell who either just wants everyone to have a smiley button or even more, can raise the roof of the Latter Day Saint mind with contemplations on discipleship. Elder Maxwell came through as he did because of a lifetime of preparation. I refused to prepare, and thus, I had an axe to grind against the man upstairs. Asthma might have blessed far more than it did; instead, I insisted on turning it into my personal trump card to use against my dear Heavenly Dad.

Some might suggest that sexual temptation is a "special" kind of temptation, a kind of personal fulfillment that is given us by God, a fundamental characteristic. We have faithful and single Latter Day Saints (I know one) who view sexual intimacy as A SERIOUS temptation. Indeed, their almost-addiction to this almost messes up their lives. But if mastered, think of how they could succor their fellow Saints!! This goes for almost every temptation…most temptations bring a sense of fulfillment at one level or another...whether it be a sense of martyrdom (pride) or self-righteousness (more pride).

So why shouldn't I identify myself as an Asthmatic with "Asthma Pride"? Because it simply isn't healthy. Yes, asthma is fundamental to my being in that it is indeed hard-wired into me. Yes, it influences many things I do. If I so desired it (and I have desired it before), I could make asthma into my defining characteristic. I recognize that your trial is of a particular kind...and much more difficult as you cannot give full expression to your feelings whereas heterosexuals are granted more room. Then again, there are many things that I, others can't ever do that you have had full room to do, at least physically (owning pets, even reaching in the cupboard for a glass). How much better it is, I’ve found, to find joy in the things that are available to me. This will help prevent suicide more than “consciousness-building” exercises. Trust me…I know what it’s like (in ways other than asthma) to dwell on one aspect of a person’s identity while letting the other elements atrophy. It’s not healthy and has only brought me pain.

Now lest anyone thinks I am letting my fellow Saints off scot-free...

As most of us have seen, major gospel conundrums (such as the problem of pain or of evil's existence in the world) are seldom fixed with a few comforting words about how "natural" heterosexuality is. And those awkward glances that we are all capable of? Yeah, those don't help either. And while, yes, homosexuality is a sin, it does not behoove us to blare this tune with a marching band and sparkling banners. We, as a people, can do better and serve those who deal with these issues more effectively. I myself need to do better.

"But they dress so differently and talk about it all the time!" Yes, perhaps they do. And from the Lord's perspective, they would ultimately be happier if they tried His way (which does not, contrary to MOrmon folk doctrine, constitute just "doing the right things" aka marry and "fake it"). But if we claim to have the absolute truth about mankind's existence, that truth needs to be coupled with absolute love. How that love can be shown is something that is seldom revealed beforehand...but signs(read: miracles) of love follow those who believe in Christ's love. And most remarkably, you will hear the miracles being uttered by your own lips. We would (I hope) happily help the paralyzed with their wheelchair, pick up some dropped things by limbless man, or *gasp* talk to a fellow Saint who had broken the law of chastity. Are we capable of treating those with same-gender attraction with similar charity? I hope I can.

I understand...this requires that we revisit what it means to have same-sex attraction. We must stop viewing the feelings as sinful, instead viewing them as the product of a world where we come closer to Christ through a world filled with irony, imperfection, and experience beyond our everyday walk of life. I do not ask that any of us forsake or dilute the principles in the Proclamation; I ask that we not divorce the Proclamation from its accompanying virtues of peace, temperance, and kindness. I ask that we view our SSA brothers and sisters in terms no different than we view people who must face a limited lifestyle due to confinement to a wheelchair or other physical limitations. They have much to offer us. My religion says to take all the good we can--giving the gospel teachings and standards their proper due. Otherwise, we will face our SSA brothers and sisters in the afterlife and feel very sorry indeed that there was a soul we might have blessed, in spite of their very temporary/mortal condition.

"Poor Sister Jones": Approaching Physical Disability within the LDS Culture

I was talking with my very good friend the other day about the mysteries of the kingdom...and more particularly, the mysteries of the genders (the grand irony: I can make more reasonable sense out of the meaning of the word, Kolob, than this intricate web of complexities called, "gender relations"). My friend thinks on her feet and has a strong wit about her. Yet when it comes to dating and marriage, she faces one stumbling-block: she is in a wheelchair.

Does the image of the glowing newly-weds standing in front of the temple so captivate us that we simply have a difficult time imagining the bridge/groom sitting instead?

To be sure, there are many filters that we use in choosing a spouse, most of them fairly irrational. Height, weight, hair color...none of these have anything to do with the eternal merits of a spouse. Yet it is quite common for at least men (and more than a few women, I know) to declare that certain characteristics are just a complete "turn off." More than a few girls can't be taller than their boyfriends, many guys can't stand too much of a waistline. The merit of this approach (which I fear is one of the inescapable bonds of a mortal existence) is another topic for a different. But I will say this: we don't often hear the overweight or the acne-filled faces approached at Church with "comforting words" about their lack of marriage potential in this life...my friend does...and far too often.

How do we treat the disabled within our faith? I must admit...I am hardly one to preach, but I can certainly ask a few piercing questions of myself (in hopes that you all might profit thereby). We speak of the disabled in glowing terms (and deservedly so). They face such trials "that the glory of God might be shown within them." They are on the fast-track to the celestial kingdom. They will receive blessings untold for staying true in the midst of such difficulties, we say. I know how this phenomenon is...much of my childhood was beset by numerous medical trips (I was even the poster child for the March of Dimes!). Folks constantly pestered me about my health, asked me how it was, if I had been feeling better. They would offer effortless words of rather cheap consolation about how sports weren't really that big of a deal (and if you had stellar musical talent, let's face it...they were...unless, of course, you were willing to sell your social soul for a mess of pottage to that roaming band of Star Trek worshippers...yes, you know precisely whom I'm speaking about).

Yet Chesterton spoke poignantly when he noted: "If disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture." These same individuals whom we call "blessed," we also tend to "otherize," placing them in their own special category that plays by its own rules. You might object, suggesting that those with mental disabilities really do have special needs that do not fit with accepted societal norms. Tis true indeed...yet I speak not of these but of the fully cognizant disabled...those with wit, verve, physical beauty, indeed, even brilliance. Some might even be able to drive a car (they have wonderful hand controlled cars these days). Their mode of transportation is simply a set of wheels rather than a pair of legs.

Yet these same disabled hear from their fellow Saints comments about how there will be some great guy/girl waiting for them in the afterlife (Translation: "So you're saying that not only do I get have a sucky situation on earth, but that I also get to have it alone?? Thanks for pointing that out.") These are well-meaning comments intended to comfort, but they assume that our fellow Saint both needs and wants to hear such unoriginal news, as though they are supposed to just melt with joy because Brother X told them that they were essentially unmarry-able in this life.

These situations lead me to think that we tend to not treat the disabled as fellow Saints but as venues to perform our imagined roles as "comforters," as a proverbial workout gym to release that extra "comforting energy." When the love workout is over, one walks home feeling himself to have been so charitable to that poor girl/boy in the wheelchair. When the play is over, the actor/actress smile confidently to themselves at their ability to "mourn with those that mourn," never minding that the audience hears about the play constantly from the performers in his/her own head or that they don't exactly appreciate sitting being acted upon in this very important matter of eternity by those who fancy themselves to be amateur therapists. Eternal marriage equals a fulness of joy/blessings, men are that they might have joy...can we see this might not exactly strike the sister as comforting?

I do not entirely blame those who say these things, esp. when they really do try to help. I believe the Spirit really does come into play here, even if it means helping to insulate the hearer from my stupid remarks. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote: "To those of you who so suffer and who, nevertheless, so endure and so testify by the eloquence of your examples, we salute you in Christ! Please forgive those of us who clumsily try to comfort you. We know from whence your true comfort comes."

Please, my friends, be wise in dating

So summer lovin' has hit its full force...with young lovers everywhere to be slammed with that perfect storm of hormones, compatibility, and spirituality. We want it. We crave it. Some of us would die for it.

My friends, all I ask is that we all just "be wise" in our dating. As Elder Packer so noted, "The gospel does not exempt us from common sense." The gospel is an intricate system of theological, biological, sociological, and psychological checks and balances...with the Atonement being the foundation. Once any of these elements are thrown out of check...we see gospel-based eccentricity (rather difficult to address as the victim of it uses gospel language to justify their particular fetish).

In other words, no matter how good a kisser the person is, how successful s/he may be, or how promising the compatibility looks, just think twice, nay, thrice...actually, many times over. Jesus Christ is a God of miracles and therefore can provide marriage partners through his channels of Providence that can even force a crusty-old skeptic like me to catch his breath with wonderment, but if we convince ourselves that we might as well do it now, because, after all, "we know that it's right," then we wish additional grief upon ourselves. A confirmation of rightness alone does not itself require haste in a decision's execution. I am in no position to dictate specifics to any couple; however, as a guiding principle, I urge moderation in some readers' haste to marry. Certainly, the marriage could still, and often will, come together with all its attendant beauty...but should we make an already-difficult endeavor more taxing? I think not.