TG Day Memories With the Mormons

As per tradition, we gather with friends and family on Thanksgiving Day to eat and be together. Naturally, you can't have a reunion without religion being thrown in. Allow me to share some of my encounters with the Mormons on TG-Day:

I happened to have a can of Coke in my car. I was planning on using it to mix with a good drink later, but ended up drinking it at the reunion. As I was enjoying my drink, I was solicited to help with a small problem. Someone had put a pitcher under the tap to fill it with water. However, they had forgotten it was there and the position of the pitcher allowed the water to run out onto the counter top and from there to the floor. I was recruited to retrieve the pitcher and clean up the water.

As I was turning off the water and wiping up the spill, I heard a comment from a young man, "That's what happens when you drink Coke."

What? What happens exactly? You spill water? You get asked to clean up spilled water? Do you honestly think that my drinking Coke is related in any way to the phenomon of gravity pulling water towards the floor? Are you telling me that everyone who drinks Coke simultaneously spills water? Are you telling me that, since you have never drank Coke, that you have never spilled water? The kid who made this comment is going to make a fine Mormon; a complete lack of any type of logic or critical thinking.

The moral: Don't drink Coke unless you want to clean up water that someone else spilled.

***

I have mentioned in posts past how the patriarch of the family has inquired of me as to the delay in baptizing my children. I have politely informed him that when they reach the age of adulthood (18) they can make that decision for themselves.

Well, today, patriarch was not asking me about junior's baptism... he was asking my wife.

Wasn't the answer I gave you before sufficient? I am the parent. I know that you think I have thrown my life in the trash and am therefore incapable of making parently decisions. However, that is just your opinion. My children won't be baptized just because you want them to. They won't be baptized just because it's what everyone is doing. My children will be baptized when two things happen: one, they are old enough to make that decision for themselves; two, and most importantly, they will be baptized when they understand and accept all the commitments that baptism represents. I simply don't believe that eight years old is anywhere old enough to make such a commitment.

If my children understand and accept the commitment at the age of 18 or older, then they will have my blessings as they are baptized. But when you're eight, do you even have the capacity to comprehend the law of tithing or chastity? No, and since that is the case, no baptism at eight.

***

Driving from one party to the next, I had a chance to talk with my oldest son. I made the following analogy to him:

"Since the church house is the house of god, then being in heaven must be like being in church all the time."

That was all I had to say. My son sneered and said, "Then I'd rather go to hell!"

Amen and amen!