More talk of Parrots · 6 August 2007, 18:54
I was visiting my family on Sunday, and the usual discussions about the week’s occurrences took place as we sat around, allowing our meal to digest. As it was Sunday, it was only a matter of time before a church-related discussion took place. This week, it regarded the day’s fasting and requisite testimony meeting, in place of the usual sacrament meeting. As if ribbing my sister with an inside joke, my bro-in-law asked her “So what did you say when you bore your testimony?” It turns out that he was earnest in his desire to know, as he had been dealing with my screaming nephew outside while she was at the microphone, but the air of inside joke eminated from the fact that she responded in such a curious manner.
“I don’t even know.”
I’ll admit, my sister and I share the wonderful ability to draw a blank on things that just happened, so it seemed as though her husband was teasing her about it. Had that been the end of the conversation, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
However, my sister-in-law piped up.
“Oh, I know! I never know what I say up there,” followed by my mother’s proclamation that “you really shouldn’t… you’re being moved by the spirit!”
I couldn’t take it. I had to say something.
“Wait… you never know what you’re saying when you’re bearing testimony? Shouldn’t you know what you are stating aloud as belief?”
My mother looked at me perplexed. My sister in law chimed in “No, but you’re being moved by the spirit!“
I decided not to get into it—talking to my family about religion or politics just gets ugly, as it usually turns to questions about why I don’t go to church any more. However, let’s carry this thought out a bit, shall we? Define a testimony, especially as pertains to Mormon belief and terminology. More or less you get:
- Testimony
- noun
a declaration of one's religious beliefs, a public recounting of a religious conversion or experience.
So essentially you’re getting up to tell people what you believe to be true, what your beliefs are. It would stand to reason that this is a highly personal thing, and thus, no one should be telling you what you believe (don’t get me started on the practise of whispering a “testimony” into the ear of a waiting and scared 2 year old for the child to repeat into the mic), nor should anyone else but you be able to proclaim your beliefs for you. I mean, seriously, right?
What was being said, that night, however, was that when they get up and profess their beliefs in regard to god, jesus, jos. smith, church and other dogma, they don’t know what they are saying, have no control over what they are saying, and essentially, are allowing someone else to dictate their beliefs (even if that someone is “the spirit”). Now, if I were to talk about the spirit guiding someone—never mind my non-belief for a moment, this is purely for illustrative purposes—whilst speaking, I’d generally like to think, as far as my Mormon upbringing and tutelage lead me to believe, that the person being guided is being told something, which they will cognise, process and then repeat. What they were describing, though, was more along the lines of a possessing experience, as though “the spirit” had complete control over their mind, to the point that they have no recollection of what they said. This smacks of something, but it is not the supposed “still small voice” I was taught of as a child.
I was never taught that when professing personal belief that the spirit would knock you out of control and take over. If the spirit were to tell you what to say (once again, hypothetically, since I don’t believe in the mormon/christian concept of the holy spirit) in a personal belief proclaiming experience, wouldn’t it be that the spirit were reminding you of a great experience, or helping you say something important, but all the time, saying it to you, for you to think about and repeat? To say something takes over you and speaks for you when you are stating your personal beliefs is to say those beliefs are not personal, and they really aren’t yours—even if you do believe the same. Belief is personal, and if someone is controlling what you say when you state your beliefs, and you have no recall of what you said… well, I hate to use the term, but you have to say that tastes an awful lot like brainwashing. Or at very least (and this may reach believing Mormons better that the b-word does) it seems like evangelical speaking in tongues, only the words being spoken aren’t gibberish, but memorised, socialised rote recitations. Mormon readers may turn off at the sound of the word brainwashing, but I know they’ll cringe at being compared to evangelicals speaking in tongues, but really… it’d have to be one or the other: if there is some spirit controlling the speech, it’d be like speaking in tongues, and if not, it has to be some level of brainwashing or memorised recitation of socially-accepted rote phrases.
Either way, it gives me the creeps and makes me feel a bit sad for my family. I’d like to think that if they really do believe Mormonism to be true, they’d actually be able to say it themselves without entering some blackout zone.