The slippery slope of believing

I have not yet had the opportunity to see “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway, mostly because I’m incapable of planning an evening of theater a year in advance. Which is what’s required if you don’t want to spend as much for a pair of tickets as you would for a family vacation at Disney.

But the other day on Youtube I was hunting around for the first fifteen minutes of the Tony awards (which I’d missed) and came across a video from the previous year’s Tonys of Andrew Rannells as the show’s “Elder Price” performing “I Believe.”

In that song, the conflicted Price musically recites a litany of his deeply held beliefs, all of them accurate reflections of Mormonism.

It generated many laughs from the tony Tony crowd, but what I found intriguing were the things that the audience did not laugh at. It prompted me to consider the thought process of audience members when faced with Elder Price’s belief system.

“I believe that the Lord God created the universe,” sings Price.

No laughter. Okay, I’m with him so far. I believe the universe was created at the whim of a great unknowable entity.

“I believe that He sent his only Son to die for my sins.”

No laughter. Sure, everyone knows the aforementioned entity impregnated a human woman—just like Zeus did to create Hercules, except that’s just myth—to produce his son, the human sacrifice. That tracks.

“And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America.”

Big laugh. That’s ridiculous! I mean, yeah, a small group of people were selected by the entity to build a boat and turn it into a floating zoo during a massive act of God-sponsored near-genocide, but Jews building boats? Hilarious notion!

“I believe that God has a plan for all of us.”

No laugh. Absolutely. The unseen entity has a detailed plan for every single person on earth, including the victims of random violence, and the children who die from cancer, and…

“I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet.”

Huge laugh. How absurd to think that, like the Little Prince, he’d have his own world. I’ll still be chuckling over that idea when I’m sitting in heaven on my own cloud.

“And I believe that in 1978, God changed His mind about black people!”

Big laugh. As a Jew, I found that one particularly hysterical because I still remember in 1965, God’s reps changed their mind about Jewish people. My parents, who had never been invited to a New Years Eve party by any of the neighbors, got three invites that year. They stayed home. Funny stuff.

“And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri!”

Gargantuan laugh. That’s hysterical! Everyone knows the Garden of Eden, the place where the entity formed modern day man (screw evolution) out of clay and ribs was situated in…okay, I don’t know where. But it wasn’t in Jackson County, and the reason I know this is so because…well…



“A Mormon just believes!”

…a non-Mormon just believes.

It occurred to me, in watching the Tony audience laughing at the beliefs held by upwards of fourteen million people, that if the popular school of thought was Atheism, or perhaps a religion that had no ties to either Old or New Testament, that you could have a real knee-slapper of a song with what most people consider to be common knowledge, if you strip those beliefs (and practices) to their essence and reference them as scandalously as possible.

“I believe that ancient Jews spoke to God through flaming shrubbery!”

“I believe that God doesn’t want you to eat shrimp at Red Lobster!”

“I believe in communing with God’s son through acts of symbolic cannibalism!”

Personally, I don’t care what people believe, as long as it gets them through the day and it doesn’t involve harming others. But that may just be me, because one’s personal beliefs have become part of the political scene in a way that it hasn’t since people feared JFK would be taking his marching orders from the Vatican.

On one side we have people expressing deep concern about Romney because of seemingly laughable Mormon beliefs. A recent Gallup poll shows that eighteen percent of those polled would not consider voting for a Mormon. You ask me, it’s probably higher; it’s just that not everyone wants to admit truths that smack of bias to pollsters. In a poll taken this time last year, it was twenty two percent. On the other hand, that same poll also said that thirty two percent would never vote for someone who was gay, and forty nine percent wouldn’t vote for an atheist. Presumably they figure that a gay President would disgrace the office in a way that a randy heterosexual never would, while only an Atheist could possibly violate his oath to uphold the Constitution because swearing on a Bible wouldn’t mean anything.

On the other side we have people accusing the Christian Obama of being a Muslim. Not that most of them know what the Muslim faith entails, any more than they really understand what Socialism is. It’s just something to be afraid of. Because every other religion makes so much more sense, and we all worship a God who’s benevolent except when he’s killing tens of thousands through such “acts” of his as earthquakes and floods. And Mark Twain said, “If there is a God, he is a malign thug,” and he also said, “If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be — a Christian.”

I’m just saying that if you’re going to allow a candidate’s personal beliefs to determine your opinion of him, you’re on a slippery slope. No one’s religion is laughter-proof when examined from the outside in. Besides: “Judge not, that ye not be judged.” I read that in the Bible. So it must be true.

PAD