Warning! Emotional Content Follows. I still debate in my mind if I should post this or not, but since I have only about three readers (high estimate) that read my entire entries, it is probably fine. Besides everyone needs to vent a little frustration from time to time.
The world continues to be a lonely place for me. I am not sure how much of my feeling of being alone is self inflicted and how much is not. I recently heard a quotation attributed to the Iron Lady of Britain slamming the notion of consensus or compromise. The highlight of the quotation was that consensus is an idea that no one opposes, but no one believes in. I am generally not a compromising person. I may even be a stubborn person. I might even be wrong in some of the things I believe in. But if I did not believe those things were right, then I would not believe in them in the first place.
My inability to compromise or form consensus does lead to a very lonely position. It is this stubborn streak in me that isolates me from much of the world. Not only the world in general but specifically it isolates me from the mainstream culture of Utah. My stubbornness also separates me from a significant portion of the Christian minority culture I belong too. To state it in more simple language. The Mormon culture of Cache Valley, Utah isolates non-members, especially apostate or former members. The Mormon culture of Utah excludes outsiders and is mostly for its own people. As a former member who no longer believes that the Mormon Church is the only true church nor in any of its distinct beliefs and practices, I have become an outsider to most church members. I have started in many friendly conversations with my Mormon neighbors in Logan. But the tone quickly turns sour when it is revealed that I am not interested in their beliefs or that I am a former member. It is my uncompromising position that Mormonism is NOT Christian that causes the greatest irritation not only to my Mormon neighbors but to some of my Christian friends, as well. This isolates me from the majority culture in Logan, since it is estimated that seventy to eighty percent of the population in Cache Valley is Mormon.
But that does not make a lonely world. I have Christian friends, well I could say that I still have some Christian friends. Some of the people I used to consider friends appear to no longer be friendly toward me. It is a complicated story, but I have recently and voluntarily moved my fellowship from one Christian church in the Cache Valley to another. The details of my leaving are not that friendly. In some ways I would term what happened as a coup d’tat. Perhaps the events were not intentionally meant that way, but the end result was the same. Simply stated, I now regularly attend a different church.
It is said that the value of a tree can not be measured until it’s downed. Its height, its weight, its age or even its affect on the forest can not be calculated until it is no longer in the forest. It is probably most shocking to the felled tree that its importance was not as great as believed. Or the felled tree over-valued itself in the forest. It may be a biased or incorrect calculation but in my absence there appears no loss to the church I left. So I have gained another group of people that ignore my very existence. My world shrinks even smaller.
But even that does not make a lonely world. Then yesterday and after months of guessing and asking for counsel from various friends and family. It was not absolutely confirmed, but as best as can be determined, my youngest child was diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum. It was not a surprise; It was even expected; But the words are still hard to swallow. And once again my world shrunk even smaller.
I have no aspirations to become a champion of Autism to the world. I just want to teach my child to become a productive member or contributor to society and interact appropriately with others. I want to teach my child to love the Lord and to love others. My child did not wake this morning any different than any other morning, but the world is a different place today than it was yesterday. Some how it seems a little bigger, a little more divided, a little more out of reach, not only for my child, but also for me. Some call this a grieving process that all go through when dealing with loss, and as nearly as I can tell within that process, if there is such a thing, I am in the lonely stage. The place where for me it is my tiny little world, us, against that gigantic monster out there called them; and it seems that the them side keeps on getting bigger and the us side keeps getting smaller.
I do take comfort in one small fact. As long as, the us side still has the True and Living God on it, how can we fail. And I do believe there will be victory, not only victory for me or even in me helping my child and my family, but ultimate victory for the us side. But also defeat for them. But the battle, the every day grind of life, does not go without wounds or injuries to those that fight. And my mind tells me that the us side is not as small as I think it is, even though it feels like it is.
There are larger forces that also seem to tip the scale to make the other side seem larger, national issues. Issues of unhappy people desiring change because the current system is not working well for them and elected change, not considering that the newly created system may become even worse than the old.
The change being ushered in looks and smells like Socialism. Socialism is shared unhappiness. It is the taking of happiness away from those who are not yet unhappy and changing that happiness into misery and evenly spreading it out to everyone. Happiness can be measured by freedom or hope or money; and socialism takes it away and replaces it with control or emptiness or unfulfilled promises. It is the lack of freedom including the forcing of some individuals to act against their conscience. It is self destructive.
In the end I really don’t care if national health care is passed or not, but one thing that bothers me most about it is that I do not want the value of my actions to produce evil? Translation, I do not want the money I earn and pay for government to act on the behalf of its people to be used for evil purposes. Money from my labor paid for the government intending for it to be the guardian of life and freedom to be spent on death and captivity. Publicly funding abortion has me asking the fundamental question, should I pay my taxes? Or in other words, It forces me to contribute to evil against my will. Obviously I must pay my taxes, even Jesus said, Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but Caesar can not have what belongs to God–my devotion, my worship–my will; Caesar can have all my money, but not my heart, and if he, metaphorically, attempts to take it, he must cut it from my cold corpse. I am an American citizen, but my primary citizenship is in God’s Kingdom.
I do not mean that the American Government is going to ask me to start worshiping it, but when it limits my freedom to worship according to my conscience within reason, then it has gone to far. I do believe in the separation of church and state, but that separation is aimed at the state staying out of the church in dictating what the church can and can not do. Specifically as it relates to hot-button issues like redefining institutions like marriage, and forcing every to accept the new definition. It demands more than just toleration of aberrant behavior, but silent acceptance. Some things I will not quietly accept.
I may have wander a bit from my original thought, but many things do contribute to me both being alone and feeling alone; some of them I can affect. Some of them I can not. But stubborn as I may be, compromise and consensus are not things I am able to do, well at least with those principles and beliefs that are at the heart of many of these issues. Some separate them into spine and rib issues. Saying that you should only die for one and not the other, but I need all my bones; Bones are the structure of our life, without them we are nothing more than shapeless blobs of flesh; but you (singular for them) can each have your pound of flesh at least until it is all gone. I am going to keep my bones (support system) and my heart (will). By the way my support system is called Biblical Christianity and my will is all ready surrendered to the God and Creator of the Universe.
