My Bishop called me to be a teacher when I was 19, knowing I didnât believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. He said he was trusting me not to betray the trust of my student's parents by directly teaching anything theyâd disagree with. When I asked what to do if I strongly disagreed with the lesson, he said I had permission to replace it with a different one.
(He got called to be a mission President a year after that - when he got home it was the first time I'd attended church in since he left. I still call him my Bishop. He was, and remains, a great man.)
Anyway, it was the BoM year, so the number of lessons I skipped was non-trivial. I think I repeated the 3rd Nephi, Chapter 17 lesson alone at least six times to avoid some of the dumber ones. Sometimes the kids just wanted to play outside so weâd sneak some of the teaching aids out of the library (mostly fake crowns and other costume gear) and go to the grass. Iâd tell them we were reenacting BoM scenes, but it was always just silliness. The boys loved it when I joined their stick battles and they could all gang up on me and chase me around the lawn, and the girls liked when I joined their dramas. Especially murder mysteries. Theyâd present me with some sort of weird 8 year old parking lot jungle juice in a paper cup, and Iâd take a small sip and then spend a minute or two âdyingâ from poison. Sometimes I barely had to fake it. I'm pretty sure they gave me straight gasoline once.
There was a set of fraternal twins in that group, a brother and a sister, and one day the boy asked why I wasn't on a mission yet. I told him I didn't know how to answer that, and he apologized, and I told him you have nothing to apologize for. His sister looked appalled as soon as he brought it up (mission stuff is a huge Mormon taboo) but when the day was ending, she stayed behind to help me fold chairs. And when that was done she asked if she'd see me in heaven.
And it struck me how much it must have been worrying her, for her to stay late and to overcome the taboo of asking. So I told her I would do my best, and she said that had to be enough, and I gave her a hug and walked her to parents, then got behind the wheel of my ridiculous half-spackle car and bawled like a little kid. I cried so hard my shoulders hurt. Then I went to the gas station and got a hotdog.
The people making these policies aren't afraid that the kids are going to be confused. They're afraid that they won't be. That they'll look up at you, and love you, and tell you that whatever you're doing has to be enough. They're afraid that if you helped their kids be happy and live a good life, those kids would love you, and then they would have to love you too. And so to keep their hatred safe, they throw you and what you could offer your kids away. It is cowardly, and selfish, and so sickening that it is hard to look at.
And in the end, all I could do was stop looking.
