When I was a boy, my mother taught me that the treatment for
a sore throat was to swab it with a Q-tip dipped in turpentine. This makes me
laugh today because I know that turpentine is toxic… a poison! She could have
done no worse to us had she used gasoline! But she was a firm believer. Her
mother administered the same treatment and her mother’s mother probably did
too. I remember going over to visit her and Charles a few years back when they lived around the
corner from my present home and finding out that she was “under-the-weather”
with a sore throat but had taken care of it with turpentine. In a modern world
of easily accessible information and a horde of available “legitimate” and
affectively safe remedies, her misconceptions could not be changed. For me, the day I left home was the first day
of never again tasting turpentine! My high school education was all it took to
bust that myth.
To illustrate my point, let’s turn this story around. Let’s suppose
that my mother taught me religiously to always use turpentine and although it
did seem to be effective, she eventually learned, to her horror, the potential
dangers of that remedy. How could she correct the wrong that she so diligently
instilled in her children?
Here’s an interesting article. When you read it, consider the
tactics of organized religion… in particular, the LDS Church. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/03/AR2007090300933.html?hpid=moreheadlines
When I read it, I shook my head incredulously and envisioned
my home teacher, high priest’s quorum and Sunday school teacher… all the church
members and friends who mentally have called me apostate (because I can read their minds!) who refuse to participate with me in any conversation on the subject of church history. I
realize now that I spent a lifetime swabbing my children’s throats and now that
I have real facts and realize the mistake I made, try as I might, as the Washington Post's article points out, there seems
to be no way to right my wrong. I'm told how devastating it is to them that I have given up turpentine but, in another way, it is devastating to me as well.
