17: Brandt Malone Testifies

 I secretly wanted to name this episode:

Brandt Malone: Cow Eater, Cow Molester

I appreciate your open mindedness in the ME discussions. As I have de-bugged and de-programmed myself I have had to take a similar metaphorical approach and wring out the positive nutrition in the church.  I teach the 12-13 year olds and it is really difficult to program them as I am trying to deprogram myself…..thus we teach them to be good, kind citizens…as you mentioned.  This is where the church needs to be….but they don’t know how to moderate without bringing down the house…. Thank you for keeping the ark steady.

I was so fully enculturated in the Mormon mindset that when I went to the temple I quickly adopted it as being significant. I was surprised at first, thinking, “Wow! This is what has been going on all these years. This is what my family has been doing.” I went nearly every week or two from May until December 2002 when I left for my mission. I sat for hours in the celestial room absorbing and relishing in the experience.

In the salt lake temple I felt connected to the pioneers. I felt like I was sitting in a royal palace. I reflected on the ceremony as a journey through life to become a God. And, I spent a lot of time in the celestial room just feeling like I was ordained to be a God. It was a very beautiful experience that I cannot discribe with justice here.

The experience did not startle me. It surprised me, because it was different. But, I always considered it symbolic. Symbolic of the journey from the premortal life in the presence of God, through life in the lone and dreary world, to be resurrected at the veil and admitted back into the presence of God into Celestial Godhood. The hand symbols represented accepting and using the power of Christ and the priesthood to resurrect me at the veil to become a Celestial Being. The covenants were designed to make me Holy to God, to become a God in the resurrection.

Symbolically, the temple fit to convey the mormon narrative of becoming “a king and a priest” in the Celestial World. It was a coronation ritual, to crown me. Or, to give me the first anointing like David in the old testament. Symbolically I was called to be faithful so the time would come for me to be ordained a king and a God in the life to come. For me, it was beautiful. I really wish I still had the conviction that my eternal potential is to be a God. It is the hardest doctrine for me to no longer feel certain about.

On my mission to Alabama the most powerful revelation experiences were connected with the acknowledgement that mankind has potential to be Gods in eternity. I really embraced that idea with all my soul. I even experienced reading Abinadi’s story, envisioning it from the point of God, seeing my hardhearted son Noah killing my other son Abinadi because I, the Father God sent him to give my message. That experience gave me a sense that when I became a God, I would have to send my faithful children to be sacrificed for my message. I mourned at the death of Abinadi. In that moment, I did not experience reading as observer of history, rather as a participant in the shoes of God himself. That is how powerful the doctrine of becoming a God worked on my religious experience.

There is far more symbolism in the temple that I loved. It all makes sense to me in the context of belief and conviction. Many cultures have believed in deification, mostly of their kings and rulers. The vision of Mormonism is that all people can be made into a literal God. Ritualistically, we convey that message. The current church leaders are not so bold as to preach it at conference. But, that is the root cultural experience for a literal believing mormon when they come to understand it. All doctrines and rituals in Mormonism lead to Godhood as the climax.

How could I know that perspective of eternity is revealed by God? Maybe it is fabricated by men and revealed by the culture they built up to convey that narrative. The founding thinkers and prophets of Mormonism leave me questioning what inspired that life narrative. And, the churches backing down from openly talking about it does not serve the experience. I always tried to convey that experience to others to show the depth of the message. But, the meat of the gospel message has been blended up and diluted into the milk, so as to keep members sucking on the nipple of the curriculum committy, not allowing them to chew the meet.

Yes exactly, I think there’s narrative expectation. However much Mormons like to deny that there are rote phrases or prayers or whatever in their religion it’s just human to fall into patterns and the greater the jeopardy (in this case religiously) the greater the tendency to express the experience in the expected words.

If only that could be acknowledged, and if only it was also acknowledged that an awful lot of an extreme experience, especially one that spans two years of a very young life, does NOT fall into those prescribed patterns.

I know so many missionaries who feel like failures because their missions didn’t follow (always) what they were taught was the ‘correct’ path.

Maybe if more emphasis was placed on the individual journey – that the person who is going to get the most from a mission is likely to be the missionary – and less on the miraculous two year sacrifice? Maybe that would cut through the martyr syndrome somewhat.

 So, it was meat before milk.

I’ll take your word for it, because he comes off horribly, at least to me.