The jokes that weren’t funny

It happened more times than I care to remember. I would see an LDS friend or teacher or co-worker on campus, we would say hello and make small talk, and then he or she would say with a grin, “So Jack, when are you getting baptized?” This cavalierly dismissive attitude towards my own faith was as perplexing as it was frustrating, and I never quite found a short and simple response that I liked. I would usually just sigh and reply, “I’ve already been baptized, thanks.”
I never understood what was going through the heads of the people who asked me that. Did they actually think it was funny? Was that their craven method of initiating a proselyting conversation? I’m fairly certain that if I had gone around asking my LDS friends, “When are you accepting Jesus as your personal savior?”, they would have grown annoyed for the exact same reasons. Most Latter-day Saints do view themselves as having accepted Jesus as Savior, while most evangelicals have been baptized into their own churches. We can quibble about different Jesuses and priesthood authority being necessary for baptism all we want, but the bottom line is, we each believe that we have fulfilled that part of our soteriology to the best of our ability. To imply that another person has not been baptized or has not accepted Jesus as their Savior works out to an abrasive, ham-fisted rejection of that person’s sincere efforts and intentions.
The baptism question was indicative of a larger problem I ran into at BYU: people treating me as a conversion interest instead of as a committed representative of another religion. I wrote about my abject frustration in my journal on Friday, October 18, 2002, when I was a junior at BYU:
But I grow so tired of this place. The whole non-member thing. … And the endless baptism jokes. I wish they would just stop it.
The entire first presidency plus Dallin Oaks had lunch with Pastor Dean [Jackson] over the summer, and that wasn’t the first time they’d met. I don’t know what those men talked about, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t spent the lunch hour making baptism jokes about my pastor and trying to convince him of the truthfulness of their beliefs. They respect him, and it’s because they don’t see him as an investigator or a non-member who needs to be converted. They see him for what he is: an evangelical Christian who has made a very conscious and deliberate choice of his religion.
If their own prophet can have that relationship with my pastor, why can’t they have that relationship with me?
(I recently posted this in the comments at Times & Seasons, but I’m allowed to plagiarize myself, right?)
I’m sure President Hinckley would have loved to have seen Dean Jackson convert to Mormonism—but I sincerely doubt he spent much time trying to bring that to pass. I would love to see any number of my LDS friends embrace evangelical Christianity. Is that a good reason to make every conversation we have into a proselytization attempt, especially once those friends clearly tell me “thanks but no thanks”?
There’s a time and a place for direct proselyting, and there’s a time to just dialogue and hope that the good you sow will one day come back tenfold.
P.S. — I don’t need anyone to apologize for the ill-placed baptism jokes or the people at BYU who were so dismissive of my faith. Evangelicals are just as often guilty of that behavior in their own ways.

Comments

The jokes that weren’t funny — 9 Comments

  1. I think sometimes people make jokes like that because they want to have the serious discussion but don’t know how to get it going—something is bothering them and they want to talk about it. In some cases that something might be that “everyone should be Mormon.” More often I’d bet it’s that the jokester doesn’t understand his friend’s beliefs and wants to. I don’t mean to interpret your friends, mind you, just going on my own experience with such awkward encounters. I try to take them as my friend saying, “I want to ask you about _____ but I don’t think we’re close enough for me to come right out and ask.”
    I’m pretty sure they didn’t spend the lunch hour making baptism jokes
    True, but it’s kinda funny to picture them starting their lunch this way and then sitting in awkward silence for an hour.
  2. Every once in a great while one of my LDS friends will ask when I’m making the switch. I usually remind them that I have a few cousins in the church and that if it really comes down to it, I’ll look forward to taking advantage of my posthumous baptism.
    That’s probably a little insensitive. But they’re still my friends anyway :) .
  3. Whitney, that is so what I should have said! “Jack, when are you getting baptized?” “Into your church? When I die, from the looks of it.”
    Man, I wish I’d had a blog in college.
    You’re right Brian, they were probably well-meaning and I should have had a better attitude about it or tried to be more understanding. Just seems like they could have opened with something less controversial like, “Have you taken the missionary discussions?”
    True, but it’s kinda funny to picture them starting their lunch this way and then sitting in awkward silence for an hour.
    That’s what they did at the first lunch date, and then they arranged the second one to apologize and make up for it.
    No. I have no idea what they did. My pastor was 6’3″ with a 2nd degree black belt in Judo, and he looked like he could break you in half. Maybe the baptism jokes melted away in the face of that.
  4. I doubt the First Presidency is afeared of a 6’3″ judo expert. I think Dieter Uchtdorf looks pretty mighty, to tell the truth! I’d hate to cross him. He knows how to fly big planes. :-)
  5. This was in 2002, Rob. The FP was Hinckley, Monson and Faust, and I always thought Hinckley looked like you could pick him up and put him in your pocket. He reminded me of Yoda, in a good way.
    Here is a picture of my pastor.
  8. LOL Great post. I’m LDS but I’ve grown tired of my own constantly measuring people up as a conversion candidate. But as most of you know, in their defense, they’re trying to be a good “member missionary.”
    Have you ever considered this may not necessarily be a Mormon issue? Just musing here but there’s no real text out there on how to approach the subject necessarily, which means people have to wing it when approaching the subject. That also means they have to be somewhat socially sophisticated when asking that sort of question.
    I think Mormons fall into a normal curve of sophistication (A broad spectrum) when it comes to that measurement. Most people aren’t that good at it, which is why it’s totally understandable how when people blurt it out you’ve been taken aback. And why wouldn’t you be?
    I don’t mean to laugh at your annoyance, rather once again I find myself chuckling at other Mormons – there’s a lot of humor in much of the dorky stuff we do!
  9. It’s just as annoying when a youth leader walks up to an 18 year old Mormon boy and jokes about when he’s submitting mission papers. Enough of that and the kid will wait six months just to tweak at all that passive aggression.
Categories:

Related Post:



0 коментарі:

Post a Comment

ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity