I DARE you to ask me that

“So, are you still active in the church?”

Right now, I’m going through some seriously vintage articles at Mormon Matters, and this one caught my eye. I’m also a college student, but I guess I can’t say my bishop has ever gotten the chance to ask me that question (protip: I don’t see him enough for him to get the shot).

I remember seeing him often enough after my first year, so I could become an elder, but after that…not so much.

But no, the best part about this post is not the post itself. It’s in the comments. Let’s read:

I believe if your bishop is truly inspired of God then he may well have felt something out of place with your son. No parent likes to hear that, and he the bishop may have been better advised to conduct this more privately. It’s also not out of the realm of possibility that the inspiration hit him in mid sentence and he just went with it.

I suspect your son has been reading “anti” materials presented to him by others at college, and associating with young people who are proud to be atheists. This can be very damaging. Unfortunately, with the bishop perhaps getting the sense of this and being too blunt, he may have driven your son to look at even more of the information from the adversary.

My son also attends college. I talked with his roommate’s parents before school started this past year, and they told me about their son. I was satisfied. I met the boy and his parents when they boys moved in. The roommate seemed like a nice fellow. The parents assured me that this roommate, call him “Adam” was a devout, honest, church-going young man. During the course of the year as I talked with my own son, I found out that not only does Adam not attend church, he gets drunk regularly, and is homosexual.

Now, I’m not making any claims about your son, but we really don’t know what goes on when they get away from us. I have learned from some reliable sources about some of my son’s behavior at college that really surprised me as well.

I’m just saying, don’t discount your bishop’s likely inspiration. There may be something that the bishop got a little insight on from a reliable source “upstairs”.

And, regarding the question of activity. What value is going to meetings if it doesn’t bring about a softened heart? Why would your son be so shocked or offended if he weren’t hiding something. Counseling may be in order.

Egads! Anti-Mormon literature? Atheists!? Terrible college dangers.

It’s great to have bishops that are so inspired that they can see beyond all the crap into the troubles in a young man or woman’s life.

Now, unfortunately, I can’t say that at my school, I’m reading too much anti-Mormon literature (it’s just as unappealing to me, after all), and I’m not really hanging out with many other atheists (although, with all of the proselytizing I get in just ordinary conversation, I’m tempted to see what the University Atheists have to offer)…but I guess I’m my own worst enemy, since *gasp*, I’m proud to be atheist.

I think that if my parents were to find out from “reliable sources,” they’d find out that I wasn’t doing anything unspeakable. Unless atheism itself is unspeakable.