Can Love Wait? by Mike Carselle

Can Love Wait? by Mike Carselle

Author:Mike Carselle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: duty, mormon, trust, trust and love, trust god, trust in feelings


Chapter 6: The ‘Spirited’ Debate

December 1999, Gulliver, Michigan: The Evans Residence

"So, are you a religious girl, Zoe?"

It had to happen at some point. No matter how much I begged him to keep the Church out of it, just for a single night, my father just had to grill Zoe while he had her captive at our annual Christmas party dinner. I could see her pale just slightly and squirm a little. She knew very well how important the answer to her question was, but I told her under no circumstances to lie to my father. I winced, but before I could finish opening my mouth to object, my father held a finger up in my direction, indicating that I'd better let her answer.

I felt like my chest was going to burst open and extend a pseudopod of pure I'm sorry/I love you/it's OK to pet Zoe with. Zoe, however, took it well. "I'm a spiritual girl," she smiled a winning smile, "but I have a problem with religions. They all claim to be right, and they all claim to have proof. Statistically speaking, choosing any one of them is likely to be wrong...so I don't."

It was true. Mrs. Danfield regularly chose a church at random to go to on a given weekend, and just showed up to participate. Zoe had been in mosques, churches, temples, and several other exotic kinds of places of worship. The idea of settling on any one of them didn't sit well with her. My father, of course, wasn't having any of it.

"What kind of proof do you need?" he smiled a contented little smile; this was one of his favorite lines of conversation to take with people who were interested, but not ready to convert.

Zoe blinked in surprise. "Something that wasn't subjective," she began. "Something that objectively showed that one organized religion was the one that God liked best."

I was amazed. I couldn't have thought of a more perfect foil to my father's usual line of argument if I had tried. He used the same theme that they had been teaching missionaries since the dawn of the Church; tell people to pray, and that the Spirit will give them the answer they seek. By specifically narrowing her parameters to objective proof, she had just stripped away my father's entire argument.

Or so I thought.

"What does 'objective' proof consist of? What would that look like?"

Zoe pondered. "I don't know...maybe something like an angel coming down from Heaven and telling everyone."

My father nodded. "What if it was better than an angel? What if it was Jesus?"

Zoe nodded also. "That would work."

"Well, it's already happened." My father looked triumphant. "Jesus Christ himself came and spoke to Joseph Smith, and told him that he would recreate the original structure of the Church. The structure that Jesus himself began."

Zoe shook her head quite firmly. "That's impossible." I felt my heart sink as my father's Spock-like eyebrow cocked in one direction and his head cocked in the other. It was his 'I'm both intrigued and offended' face.



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