Morm Porn

I unexpectedly received a brown paper package in the mail on Friday. What's this? Hmmm. Mom sent it. Feels like a book. No, two books. Thin books. This isn't going to be pretty. I thumbed open the envelope and slid them out. The top book says, "Classic Best Seller" at the top. Oh, good. Some light reading for my Memorial Day vacation. My eyes slide down to the title: "The Worth of a Soul, A personal account of excommunication and conversion" by Steven A. Kramer. The second book is by the same author and is titled "Conquering Your Own Goliaths Through the Atonement of Christ".

My wife asks, "What's that?"

I reply, "Why does my mom keep sending me crap like this?"

Seriously. Why? She didn't enclose a note, so apparently she saw a book about excommunication and thought of me and felt that it was just what I needed to turn my life around and come back into God's one and only true church.

Despite what most people think of me, I try to have an open mind. I have strong opinions, but if you disagree and can articulate the reasons for your opinion and back it up with evidence and sound reasoning then I'm willing to change my mind or at least sympathize with yours. So, I've been taking little bites of "The Worth of a Soul".

My initial impression is that if the church published the moral equivalent of Penthouse, then this would be an extended "Dear Penthouse" letter. Wait. They do. It's called the Ensign.
Anyway, I think that Spencer Kimball and Boyd KKK Packer would get major wood reading this book. It just touches all of the major mormon sex, guilt, punishment, and forgiveness after extended humiliation buttons. The book as plenty of flaws in the details that reveal that it is either a faith-promoting fabrication or else a story that has been richly embellished to make a point.

So, far I'm trying to get through the story that leads to his excommunication where he comes clean on his grave sin. So far, it seems that he was guilty of the grave sin of masturbation enhanced with pornography. I don't know if he does anything else, but so far that is it. A struggle with "self-love" (at least he doesn't call it self-abuse like my bishop did when I was 14) since he was a child. He tells that he was introduced to this degrading, filthy, evil practice by an uncle who was later convicted of abusing young men in his ward. He recounts all the guilt and struggles as he became an adult and got married.

Anyway, his descriptions of guilt and resorting to religious fanaticism to soothe the guilt ring true. It is sad is that the church makes such an innocuous thing into such a problem for its members to the point where it becomes very destructive to them.

The book is short so I'll try to finish it. The only question now is how I respond to my mother. I've told her in the past not to send church material to me or else I'd respond with anti-Mormon material. I seriously don't know how to respond to this.