HUMAN NATURE

Sorry I haven't posted for a couple of moons. Life has been wacky at best.

I am careful not to bash human nature. People are driven by many motives. However, I can't accept the "Devil made me do it" excuse either. I know some people just hate other groups of people. After all, I hate smokers. I hate hypocrites, too.

When I lived in Utah in 1998, I hated the Lakers. I hated Shaq and Kobe. I went to NBA playoff games and I hated Laker fans. I probably wouldn't have killed one of them, though. I would have checked my hatred just short of stabbing. Like all humans, I have passions - strong ones. I just try to govern them with common sense, and I realize that killing Laker fans would have no reasonable defense in a courtroom.

In Utah it is fashionable to hate polygamists. It is the state sport. Some people know exactly why they hate polygamists; others have no clue why - they just hate them. It might be hereditary, because people have been hating polygamists for hundreds of years. It's also a doctrinal thing. Church leaders make public statements that polygamists are adulterers and criminals, and everyone can scurry behind the excuse that hating plyg's is ecclesiastically endorsed. What could make you feel more clean and sanitized than falling asleep at night knowing that there are polygamists in Utah, and you aren't one?

Problem is - it's all based on a big lie - the lie of monogamy. Now, it's none of my business to tell people not to get into monogamous marriages; it's just important for most women to realize that, just because their husband does not have another wife, he still usually spends his entire life wishing he could have one (or a cute mistress). Monogamous men are forced to lie to keep the peace.

Last night (in Chihuahua, Mexico), some Mexican drug thugs shot two young American fathers in the head and threw them in a cemetery. I don't think they were murdered because they live somewhere near a Fundamentalist Mormon community. The perpetrators had more venal motives - like reprisals for the imprisonment of some fellow gang-members. I did, however, notice some blog commenters saying that it "served them right" for committing crimes (polygamy) and having to leave the safety of the U.S. as outlaws (?!). Sadly, these cartels are "equal-opportunity" terrorists, having recently also kidnapped a former LDS temple president.

Human nature can get us to say and do a lot of low-down, dirty-rotten things.

I like the bumper sticker that reads "Jesus is coming, and boy, is He p!$$@d !!" I have a pamphlet authored by the august former LDS Church president, Ezra Taft Benson. It is titled "This Nation Shall Endure". I get a kick out of this every time I think of it. I mean, he was the Church prophet, right? It just seems so silly that he forgot to read the words in the 87th section of the Doctrine and Covenants - especially verse 6, which promises:

6. And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;

You can't have it both ways. Truth is - this land, America, is Jesus's footstool. When the pilgrims arrived, they dedicated it to the 13 tribes of Israel as stewards till Christ came back. Sadly, we tribes have abdicated our destiny and contaminated the land. The currency/interest manipulators have a gameplan - to enslave us all - and soon. Jesus has a gameplan for them, and for any who cater to them ( " . . because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication" [Revelation 14:8]).

I think we just need to be careful when we point the finger of condemnation at other folks. Clearly, God has had a gutful of our waywardness, and it won't be long before He sends someone to clean things up and settle the score. Sectarian divisions and religious elitism only make matters worse.

I pray for the families in Colonia LeBaron who lost their loved ones in such a horrifying way. Their lives are not worth less because they might have embraced the fullness of the Restored Gospel. It is time for the saints to unite - not divide. We should set aside our biases and stand up for correct principle.