choice – Life on the Frogstar

Indoctrination

Education Week. Once a year Brigham Young University hosts a week-long indoctrination extravaganza lovingly referred to as Education Week. My wife told me that this year, over 21,000 people took advantage of this opportunity to come to the BYU campus in Provo, Utah, and learn from gifted scholars and speakers about the finer points of Mormonism.

My wife, my oldest son, and my mother. They were just three on campus this week. Yesterday my wife exuberantly said, “You have to come.” And I emphatically said, “No.” And my mother also said, “You have to come.” And I also told her, “No.” So why am I here?

Continue reading “Indoctrination”

Wisdom

For work this week we had a series of business meetings with people gathered from across the country. As part of the team-building activities, we met for dinner afterward. As a Mormon, a major focus of the practice of the religion is refraining from alcohol. It’s almost as bad to drink as it is to commit adultery, at least in the way that you are accepted socially in the church. But since I no longer believe in the church, I also no longer believe that a prohibition on drinking is the will of God.

So I had a perfect opportunity to choose what I wanted in contrast to what I was taught was expected of me. Continue reading “Wisdom”