Thanks for your measured response, CompSciGuy. It’s more gracious than my obvious sarcasm deserves, so let me take a deep breath and a Lortab and see if I can react a little more appropriately.
I totally agree with you that “bizarre” is the exact word to characterize any teaching “that Jesus is here on earth in person, human form, living in Utah and making prophecies.” It just strains my credulity to think any of our missionaries would actually claim anything that dopey as being a teaching of our Church. I can only think that it wasn’t “our guys” or that there was some kind of total breakdown in communication between them and the girl in your group.
To be sure, doctrinal “loose cannons” can be found among our people just the same as with any religious group. And the vast majority of our missionaries are drawn from the pool of our 19-21 year-olds, which age group also happens to embody our least experienced and sometimes least doctrinally informed members.
But our leaders are well aware of that fact, and pretty tight control is kept over the content of what it is the missionaries are to teach. They are to stick with the core doctrines of our Church and the foundational truth stories of its establishment. “Jesus in Utah” not only doesn’t fit that mold, it’s not even in the realm of anything I’ve ever heard taught in my life in the Church. Nor am I aware that this is a teaching of any “splinter group” that has broken from us. Those people are typically one-trick-pony polygamists who live in a totally closed society and don’t send out missionaries.
Great line about wishing you had my “calculus dog!”
