I am Paul Malan. I take pictures. I write. I read. I ride my bike. I married Wendy a decade ago and count myself lucky that she seems to like putting up with me. We have 4.5 kids.For a while last summer, Corbin enjoyed spending time with a certain girl in the neighborhood whose family is ultra-Mormon. They're quite nice, mind you, but everything about them, from the father's job in HR at the Church Office Building to the blustering naïveté of their MTC-bound son, just screams orthodoxy. Their youngest daughter, one year older than Corbin, is a real troublemaker--or, at least, her personality mixed with Corbin's made a lot of trouble--so we were glad when she decided she had a crush an another neighbor boy and moved on.
This is the girl with whom Corbin prayed for a miracle in May of this year, and while they were playing frequently I began wondering just how often their family says prayers, since Corbin's nightly prayers adopted some vernacular never really displayed by his own parents. Here is the perfect example--a prayer I scribbled on a page of Wendy's planner immediately after he said it in April. We just came across the note this week.
Our dear heavenly father, I know the Church is true, and that the Easter Bunny isn't real, it's just your parents trying to trick you. And please bless this earth, and we hope there's food up in heaven. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
After the prayer I skipped the trickier issues and asked instead why he was worried about food in heaven. He explained that his friend told him there wasn't any. I asked if he thought there should be food in heaven, and he said yes, but that we didn't believe that. By "we", I think he meant Mormons, and I quickly explained that if he thinks heaven should have food, there will be food for him to eat all day long when he gets there. I also told him that he should always check with me when his friend tells him things about heaven, because she doesn't get to decide what he believes.
This abuse of collective pronouns like “we” and “us” isn't reserved for children. Last week at Church, Wendy and another woman in the ward were discussing earrings.
"I haven't worn a second pair since the prophet said we should only wear one," her friend said.
"Me either," said Wendy, "but only because I didn't mind obeying. I don't really think God cares how many earrings I wear."
Her friend seemed a little taken back. "But the prophet said we should only wear one pair," she persisted.
"I know," Wendy said. "But other than being obedient, I don't really think it matters."
"I... I guess so," said her friend, obviously biting her tongue.
Whether it's something obscure and irrelevant, like there being no food in heaven, or something more recent but no more relevant, like the number of holes in a woman's ear, it seems there are some people whose group identity is so strong that they unwittingly adopt the ecological fallacy in any social situation.
It would be difficult for me to assume that my beliefs about Mormonism are shared by all Mormons, because I recognize that my beliefs just barely qualify as Mormon at all. But for mainstream Mormons, there seems to be an enormous temptation to assume that everyone with a temple recommend shares their every belief in common. It simply isn't so, and one need only take a short tour of the Bloggernacle to see it for herself.
Wendy is slowly convincing me that orthodox Mormons--people who believe that God’s word is in every tiny crumb that has ever fallen from their leaders' collective plate--are the vocal minority, while the vast majority of Mormons believe what makes them happy, and shrug off the things that don't make sense. It's a theory I'd love to test by asking everyone at Church the kinds of questions they would never be comfortable answering, but since that's not realistic I have to hope that Wendy is correct. If most of us wear white shirts because of social pressure while quietly believing that God doesn't really care, or if we accept the whitewashed history of the Church because the Church then doesn't change the way the Church helps our family now, I feel quite comfortable fitting in.
Corbin was right--the Easter Bunny isn't real, and in a way it is just his parents trying to trick him. But the Easter Bunny makes us happy, and as long as most people who celebrate Easter accept the jelly beans without demanding that the bunny be everything we thought he was as children, I don't mind at all staying for the celebration.
