Westbound Day Four

Today we walked around and saw everything in Temple Square here in Salt Lake City. I was very excited to see all of this but by the end of the day I would say that we were annoyed if not frustrated. The sights were fascinating and it was interesting as far as pioneer history but after viewing two films in the Welcome Center Theatre it was clear that the story of Joseph Smith as they tell it and the beginning of Mormonism is the largest piece of revisionist history trash I have ever seen. To hear the "sisters" and "elders" talk about it as if all of this happened and as if Joseph Smith was a hero and a prophet is absurd at best. What we did not hear about at all was how many times he was arrested for fraud or treasure digging. We did not hear about how they tried to fraud people out of money in Independence and Nauvoo and anywhere else they went and that is why they were kicked out of town. They were bad citizens, plain and simple. What it did present however is that they were martyrs and were suffering for their faith and nothing else. Most of the presentations and exhibits made you want to feel sorry for them, that is if you don't know the real history of Mormonism. I walked away from our time there sad and frustrated. Sad that so many people buy into something so fraudulent and crooked believing by what they would call "faith" instead of using their minds and studying the history from reliable sources not made up fairy tales. The real enemy of Mormons aren't Indians, outsiders, or pioneer towns but history. And history is an enemy that Mormons will never be able to defeat.

Their stance on family life is respectable but I swear at every exhibit the focus was about how you could live with your family in celestial heaven for all eternity. What if you have a screwed up family? Not only is this an incomplete gospel that they have made out to be the gospel in its entirety but it's not even an appealing doctrine to those who have grown up in bad homes. You truly do have to have a perfect family for Mormonism to be appealing. The saddest issue to me are all of those who probably really don't believe the story of Mormonism but just wanted to have a strong sense of community and family and saw this as a place where they would be loved, respected, and cared for. I wish that the Christian Church had the same sense of community and brother and sisterhood that the Mormons do. Not in the creepy, we're nice all the time in every situation community, but in the fact that they take care of one another and their families. How do people get sucked into Mormonism? The story is obviously completely unbelievable by faith or by intellect, so how does it happen? I wish I knew the answer.

How can a fraudulent upstate New Yorker claim that he found golden plates from heaven with magical spectacles that only he could see and start a new religion out of it? Or rather, as the Mormons would say, "once Jesus died, he was unable to maintain authority over scripture and his church so God had to send another prophet to restore the tainted gospel which he did through the Book of Mormon". Unfortunately, God apparently did not know how to spell when He wrote the book, loved the phrase "And so it goes that...." , but was not however sure of what he wanted in the future. At one time, as I heard today, plural marriage was needed, but then so many years later a prophet found out from God that He had changed his mind and plural marriage was not necessary anymore because women could take care of themselves. I could go on and on, but the greatest feeling I walked away with are that these people are insane. I wish I could be more sensitive about it, but after being over there all day, i'm afraid I can't right now.

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Tomorrow it's on to Boise, ID.