Yesterday, the former leader of a splinter group from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was executed by lethal injection for the slaying of a family of five in 1989.
Articles: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lundgren/index_1.html http://www.axcessnews.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=11662
I thought this random tidbit of information would be irrelevant to me. I thought there’d be no reason for me to care, much less post, about the execution of a small-time cult leader who killed some of his own followers for questioning his judgment. I never knew the guy, nor do I know any of his flock.
But it strikes home for me.
September 11, 2001, I rode the bus, as usual, to work for a foundering, tiny software company called Talk2 Technology, Inc. Eventually, they laid off 95% of the staff and reinvented themselves as a company called “Spontus”. Icky name. Anyway, I arrived at work as was my usual habit, right around 6:30 AM and got started working.
My boss dropped in a half-hour later and said, “Follow me. You have to see this.”
He took me to the break room, where a half-dozen of us were clustered around the big-screen television set to watch the image of two towering skyscrapers aflame. A second plane had hit the towers just moments before I arrived in the room, and it had been caught by news cameras, the scene being replayed over and over again, with picture-in-picture and commentary on the spectacle.
The World Trade Center, on a normal day, housed over 50,000 people. I thought for sure the majority were dead. I was surprised to find out that the final death toll, including those on the airliners and in the other buildings which were hit, was so much lower.
I’m sure most of us remember where we were and what we were doing when that tragedy struck.
I did a lot of soul-searching during the months after that day. Once we got a better picture of who the men were who committed this heinous act, and their religious motivations, I eventually came to a series of stunning realizations about myself and my religious faith.
I had sworn my time, talents, and everything I had, including my life, to obey a man. A man who called himself a prophet of God. Admittedly, the current leader of the Utah LDS church doesn’t act very prophet-like. Few solemn pronouncements of profound import. Fewer still radical doctrines or even major procedural changes. He’s more an administrator and a life-long bureaucrat and ladder-climber than the voice of the Almighty. And I was totally OK with being a faithful member of the church while recognizing the lack of prophetic power from the pulpit.
And yet I’d pledged my life to my Church, and the Church had as a core doctrine that the testimony of the living prophet was more important than any scripture. And I bought it all. I believed, fully and wholeheartedly. Until that time, I’d never allowed myself to question. I’d shelved my doubts. Had the opportunity come to give my life in service to my church, I’d have been grateful for the opportunity to serve and mindful of the glory which awaited me for my valiant death while in the service of God.
This man executed yesterday fervently believed he was a prophet of God. He gathered a small group of followers who believed the same. There is ample justification for murder in both the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, and he played upon that, and his people’s faith in him, to justify killing five followers, three of them young girls.
And his flock went along with him willingly. Helped him by distracting the children while the parents were murdered before leading the girls to their deaths. Buried the bodies in the barn for their leader afterward.
In my studies and soul-searching, I eventually reached a point where I pledged to myself that I would never again accept any argument without analyzing it rationally. I would never again accept authority unquestioningly. I would nevermore allow myself to be convinced that any man — including a 2,000-years-dead guy named Jesus — is some conduit to God.
I’ve been repeatedly questioned by people close to me about why I made such an about-face five years ago. Now you know one small part of the story. The execution of this man brought back those memories like a sledgehammer, and reminded me why I refuse to cede my autonomy to anybody else’s judgment. Rejecting any earthly authority to dictate my spirituality enabled me to come to my own reasons for doing good, and I’m a better man for it.