Woe is me, dear reader, woe is me.

My personality lies at the intersection of several very dangerous tendencies.

First, I am curious to my own detriment. When someone accosts me on the street and drunkenly yells in my face “Would ya like to see ah magic trick!?” my thoughtless response is always “Sounds GOOD to me!”

I need to know what’s under that rock everyone is telling me not to turn over. I want to watch a situation play out. I’ll always give you the benefit of the doubt, even when I shouldn’t. You could knock on my door at nine pm with a big knife in your hand and I’d probably assume you were selling Cutco. When my drug dealing next door neighbor is roaming the block with two Samurai swords or when he takes target practice with his new crossbow in the front yard, I don’t get stressed. Let’s see what happens next, I tell myself.

I give him a friendly, neighborly wave.

“Mornin’ W*****n! Beautiful day for some shootin! That thing from Cabellas?”

Second, I am haunted by my inability to say no. Keep in mind it was hammered into me from a very young age to be a nice person. Ask and ye shall receive, be a good listener, give to the one who asks – that sort of thing. This particular Bible verse has gotten me into a lot of trouble:

If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.[1]

Swindlers love me. I’m like walking magic scratch off ticket.

I have a face that seems to say: “I will support your mental and/or financial needs. While others turn you away, I’ll listen. And I’ve got a twenty spot in my pocket that I’m just dying to give to you.”

As a naïve college student, I once prayed with a man at the Marathon gas station in St. Charles Missouri for an hour then gave him half the money out of my savings account.

And Menard if you’re reading this, I treated you as I’d want to be treated, so you’re more than welcome to hit that Patreon button at the top of the home page and return the love brother!

Thirdly, I am a troll. I’ve been trolling since before I even knew the word existed. People often ask me if I’m joking or not, and to be honest I can’t even tell anymore. Somewhere beneath the surface I want to break through the veneer that life on this planet and the activities we do are such serious business.

These three unfortunate impulses collided one sunny Arkansas afternoon in 2004 as I laid in my dorm room bed watching TV. A commercial was playing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the tag line at the end said, “For your free book of Mormon call this number.”

Free? What could be better than free? I dialed the number immediately.

An eager woman picked up the phone and I told her I’d like to claim my free book of Mormon. I gave her my contact, address, details etc.

After handing over my information she said “Now we can send you the book in the mail…OR if you like… we can have two missionaries come meet with you and explain what the book is all about and answer any questions you might have. How does that sound?”

You’re going to give me a free book AND have two missionaries come to my house and explain it all to me? An unthinking burst of enthusiasm came over me.

“Sounds GOOD to me!”

***

Our first time we met at a coffee shop, which I found out later is like going to a sleezy dive bar or opium den for the missionaries because coffee is forbidden.

That should have been my first red flag: No coffee? I hadn’t even opened my free book yet and was already starting to not like this new religion.

I was a college student. My university was a conservative southern bible college in the middle of a dry county (as I've written about previously). Caffeine was our only biblically acceptable mind-altering substance and these missionaries would have to put something really awesome on the table for me to walk away from my drugs.

They arrived early and sat in the corner looking uncomfortable with their black suits and sparkling waters. In the late morning, the shop was nearly empty.

I sat down with my large coffee and they began to give me the spiel.

Now, I won’t even try to re-convey here what all they said to me during that first meeting. It was a long and winding summary of the Bible, the book of Mormon and all the details that make up their religion. There were some things about Noah’s kids and original people, a brief history of Joseph Smith and his prophecies, aaaanddd…….. some other stuff.

Lest we misunderstand what this blog post is about, I’m not here to make fun of the Mormons or their missionaries. They were very nice people and the presentation was well organized. Of course their story sounded ridiculous, but let’s not get it twisted, it was no more ludicrous than the story hear at my own church each Sunday (a guy brutally dies and comes back to life? Tough sell.)

Their story was no crazier than the beliefs of atheists, Buddhists, or the awake-far-too-early-in-the-morning Muslims. In fact, it was less crazy than the self-flagellating football-based cult of Detroit Lions fans, wasting their lives for a salvation that will never come.

Their story was exactly on par with the man on the street drunkenly asking to show me a magic trick, and you may find that judgmental, but look at your own beliefs and have the self-awareness to admit you’re not certain beyond a shadow of a doubt what this universe is all about either. We all take the information we’re given and make a choice, based in faith, on how we run our lives and choices.

No, dear reader, the person I intend to make fun of in this post is myself, not they that had chosen a different theological path.

Because their missionary strategies were arranged in a way that left my three above mentioned vulnerabilities exposed. First, my curiosity was piqued by this strange story and these two well dressed elders who were nearly drooling over the prospect of a new convert – one from the local Bible college no less!

Second, though it made me uncomfortable to be evangelized, they were the exact right amount of pushy but not too pushy to make it hard to say no and walk away. (Sales staff use this all the time to get me to buy warranties I’m ambivalent about having. Waitresses use it to hoist unwanted desserts onto my dinner tab.)

Third, I was trolling. Right?

I was clearly not interested deep down in what they were saying. I didn’t believe any of that. Or maybe I did? It was hard to tell if this were a drawn-out performance piece or if I was actually curious. I had crossed the line into that murky place where I can’t tell where the joke ends and life begins.

These three factors, along with their enthusiasm and presentation materials, converged to create the perfect proselytizing storm, all but ensuring that this would end poorly.

They finished their presentation.

“So, that’s just part one of the lesson. If you want to hear the entire story there are five parts total. Should we set up a time in the next few days to meet again and keep going?”

I wanted to say no, but what I heard myself say was: “Sounds GOOD to me!”

***

The frequent phone calls started almost immediately. This was pre smart phone, in the days when everyone picked up because it could be literally anyone calling!

They were checking in. How was it going? Was I reading the materials they’d sent? How was I feeling about the whole process? It was like when you anxiously text your new girlfriend immediately after hanging out with her. They couldn’t just let it be a good time, they had to confirm how good it was to see me. I was rapidly cycling between amusement and annoyance, my circuits being blown as all my weaknesses were triggered.

They were so excited by the prospect of a new convert straight from the clutches of the local Christian college. It was going to be an absolute coupe for their small missionary outpost in the heart of the deep south Bible belt.

At the second meet up we gathered again in our secluded corner of the coffee shop. They proceeded with the five-part teaching and let me tell you lesson number two was a real doozy. And though their theories on heaven and hell sounded unbelievable, I would also be quite satisfied if it turned out they were right.

According to my dim understanding of what they told me, heaven is a multistory nightclub with different levels of exclusivity. This is called three degrees of glory [2].

On the top floor you have first heaven (celestial heaven), where God themselves and all the Mormons are luxuriously dining on heavenly rays of holiness. One floor down from that you have all non-Mormon Christians in the second heaven.

(There is no Seventh Heaven, so you can stop preparing yourself to make that dumb joke right now).

Below that is (telestial) third heaven, where normal people who are sometimes good, sometimes bad walk the streets with reformed murderers, liars, and serial philanderers. I verified with them and third heaven is a lot like Michigan – certainly not a destination, but also quite livable.

Beyond those three heavens was a place called the “outer darkness” where Satan and his demons play shuffleboard with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and the guy who produced all those albums for the Beach Boys.

Lest we be too judgy, let’s remember that none of us know beyond a shadow of a doubt what happens when we die. Do we fade to black? Will we swim in a lake of sulfurous fire? We will return to this world in the form of a golden retriever puppy, just in time for the holidays?

We don’t know – hence the term faith.

But what they were telling me didn’t quite add up because such specificity is suspicious.

We had been on our second meetup at the coffee shop, and as the time was wrapping up I could feel some pressure for a third date. I knew they wanted to set up a time, but I was ready to get off this ride.

Oh me! How those three weaknesses were working against my desires at that moment! Why couldn’t I just say no?

They asked when we could meet again, but rather than politely declining, instead I asked if next time I could bring a friend along as well. Eyebrows raised, looking excitedly at each other, they smiled.

“Sounds GOOD to us!”

***

By that third visit we had entered some new level in their evangelism database. The check in calls were daily and they had arranged for us to have dinner with the Bishop of the entire southeast region of the church. No longer just a cold call, we were solid leads for new additions to the flock.

Us joining their church would certainly make for a splashy headline in their quarterly newsletter: “Bible College Student Walks Away from Everything After Seeing the Light.”

You could hear the stories now – after the second lesson he brought his roommate along with him! He was converting people even before he himself was converted!

Just imagine taking off my college clothes, putting on that suit and tie and name tag. Leaving all my friends behind to go spread God’s truth on the streets of Baltimore or Stuttgart or Chennai.

They high hopes for this bright young prospect and I certainly didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

The third visit was in the bishop’s home, which oddly enough was directly next door to the house my roommate and I attended weekly bible study. That group always had the best southern food and lots of girls, several of whom I dated briefly.

The bishop had laid out some finger foods for us to snack on – veggies and dip, those tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and some Chex mix. The atmosphere in his house was a bit stuffy. We sat in a large circle in the living room, my roommate and I at one end, flanked on the right by the two young Elders, the Bishop’s wife, the Bishop’s three young children sitting motionless on the couch, and finally the Bishop sitting directly across from us guiding the proceedings.

He had a big, thick, Bible, the size of which I had never seen before. It was the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and then all the updated prophecies throughout the years (for instance they heard from God in the 1960s that it was now acceptable for Black people to sit anywhere they wanted on buses).

The young Elders updated everyone on what they’d taught us so far and we were invited to share some of our thoughts. Then they opened it up to any questions we had about the faith.

For every question we had, there seemed to be a really good answer in his big Book. It was all in there – dinosaurs, ethics, rules for living. But surprisingly the Bishop redirected most of our questions to his three young children.

“Answer me this Bishop, why does God allow people to suffer!?”

“That’s a really good question. Kaitlin why don’t you take a crack at that one?”

Then seven-year-old Kaitlin would give me a the most cogent answer to man’s oldest question I had ever heard. It was incredible, they had memorized all the answers from the book.

Over the course of our extended conversation Kaitlin and her younger brother Spencer answered every single theological, existential, and paranormal question my roommate and I could lob at them. By two hours in we were starting to get mentally winded. I felt like one of those old men watching the boy Jesus read scrolls at the temple – you just wanted to smack those smug little know-it-alls.

Having totally shot down any of our counter-theories about the nature of the universe and God, Kaitlin basked in her checkmate moment. She and the rest of the group had their expectant eyes upon us, waiting for us to admit we’d seen the light so they could move on to lesson four.

But despite them being right about everything and anything, we weren’t ready to convert. Even though we logically should have become Mormons that day, I wasn’t ready to say farewell to my worldly pleasures at the university. After all, as true as religion could be, we were still college students and the appeal of parties, girls, and intramural flag football was too strong.

The meeting had been going for over three hours and was starting to take on the feel of an impromptu hostage situation. Were they going to dismiss us? Should we excuse ourselves? I had reached the backstop of my curiosity and niceness.

(Unknown to me were the events of the weeks ahead and all that would happen – the checking in, the hounding, the avoiding of certain people and places because you might run into your ex-missionary. And the phone calls, that would start out in a low volume then build to a crescendo. The emotional tone of their voicemails turning progressively sour.)

But at that moment they were trying to nail down a time for the fourth meeting. I know they sensed the change in my tone. Instead of saying “Sounds good to me”, I just replied “Let me check what I’m doing that night and get back to you.”

***

I’ve been through it a thousand times, dear reader. Interactions are so friendly when there’s still hope of getting what you want. And then as it dawns on you that I’m finally saying no the conversation turns ugly. You’ll be friendly then sad, then angry, then spiteful. A predictable trip down the slide of your emotions.

My problem is I just want to be friends with everyone, whilst the world comes at me with their agenda.

So, tell me your tale, show me your magic trick. I’ll hear you out, I’ll see the world as you see it, and you’ll think “He’s one of us.”

But it always ends poorly for us doesn’t it? You’ll claim I strung you along. You’ll call and call and call. You’ll leave angry messages and tell me what a bad dude I am. Meanwhile, I don’t have the heart to tell you it’s not me, it’s you.

Instead of getting together, what would you think if we were just friends instead? Cause that sounds pretty GOOD to me…

REFERENCES

1. Luke 6:29

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrees_of_glory

Let's Just Be Friends