By Jim Heffernan
My wife and I were sitting at the dining room table talking about our latest TV diversion*, when two strangers appeared on our deck entrance to our front porch. My wife was apprehensive, but I was thrilled. I knew who they were immediately. Mormons!
My wife left for the quiet of her upstairs computer and I hurried to open the door for them. “Come on in, get out the rain, sit down and let’s talk. Let me get another chair.”
The two young men were dressed in crisp blue matching pants and jackets and wore ties under their jackets. They had badges that identified them as “elders”. Their hair was carefully molded in styles that took me back to the 50’s when long hair on males was forbidden.
They sat down and seemed a little spooked.
“You’re probably not used to this sort of response.” was my opening.
“No, we get the door slammed in our face a lot,” the bigger one responded.
I was half-way through a marvelous book, “Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy” by Jonathan Rauch and the book had primed me for them.
I don’t want to spoil my upcoming review of the book, but it is centered on the sentiment expressed by John Adams in the 18th. Century, “…… we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Current day events prove John Adams right and affirms that Christianity is the load-bearing wall of our democracy. As Christianity has been weakened and debased in our lifetimes, democracy has suffered a similar fate.
I praised them for their idealism and for devoting themselves to a cause and an institution beyond themselves. I told them we need more like them.
They were from Utah and Arizona, doing their missionary stint. They probably hoped for Costa Rica or Belize but landed in Tillamook instead.
We talked for a long time. I monopolized the conversation a little with talk of my “roll-your-own” religion based on the “big bang” and “spaceship earth” but they talked too, and I learned from them.
I talked about a new word to me, “theodicy”. It was a gift from Jonathan Rauch’s book and refers to reconciling a good and loving God with the pain and evil that befalls good people. They read scripture from the Book of Mormon to me and proved they understood the problem and thought about it.
They asked me if I believed in God. I admitted I did, only I call mine the “big bang”.
They asked if I believed in a “hereafter”. I admitted I did, only I call mine an electro-magnetic spectra of my thoughts and feelings that persists when the body quits and is a part of “spaceship earth’s” cargo.
From my point of view, it was a completely satisfying interchange. We met as very different people and learned that we really weren’t so different after all. We parted without anybody proving anybody wrong.
I imagine they felt the same glow I did, but they may have just been glad to finally escape from a crazy old man. But hey, I ended up with a free “Book of Mormon”.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com
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*The program is “Home Town” on Discovery+ and is a home improvement program with no news or politics and hosted by Ben and Erin Napier who are the good people we all aspire to be.
