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Can we talk about CPS? I mean, of course, Chosen-People Syndrome, or the belief that one belongs to a race, people, or organization that has a unique and special relationship to God. Latter-day Saints generally believe that we fall into this category, but there is nothing special about that. Most people believe, and have always believed, that their kind of person is special.

But I don’t want to debate the issue of who is, and who is not, favored of the Lord. I want to talk about what it means to say that one group of humans has been selected by God to be holders of a unique truth or recipients of extra attention. What does it mean to be a “chosen people”?

Well, for one thing, it means that you are probably wrong about a lot of important stuff.

I don’t say this lightly. It is the result of many hours of reading and carefully contemplating the scriptures. If there is a single unifying theme to the LDS Standard Works, it is this: the chosen people always get stuff wrong. They always misinterpret their chosenness as an example of God’s extra favor (which it is not) and not as a charge that gives them extra accountability (which it is). And this is why God usually has to smite them.

The chosen people are pretty much wrong across the board: the Israelites, the Nephites, the congregation at Corinth, the early Latter-day Saints. Our scriptures are a sustained and eternal testimony of the fact that God does not give people any extra intelligence or morality when He singles them out for a special relationship. He waits patiently to see if the truth will change them. Usually, it doesn’t.

When it works, the Gospel will effect a mighty change of heart—it will make us different kinds of people, the kind capable of building the Kingdom of God on earth. When it doesn’t work, true religion generally just turns us into insufferable moralists who try to use God as a stick to beat other people up with. And religion becomes one more weapon that we can use to defend being who we always were.

This is why prophets—the bug-eating kind who come out of the wilderness wearing gunny sacks and having perpetual bad hair days—always get sent to the chosen people. God rarely takes the time to chastise unchosen people. What would be the point? It is the people who hold “the truth” at any given time who receive the greater condemnation for not following it—for not allowing it to change them at a fundamental level. For mapping eternal truths onto their very earthly biases.

This is why I have never been that concerned about the fact that my views on a lot of things—mainly religion and politics, but also love and art—don’t sit will with the body of the Saints. I don’t see things the same way as most Mormons do. I don’t even see Mormonism the same way that most Mormons do—a fact which has been brought to my attention many times by people with more orthodox views, generally with the understanding that I had better get on board or face eternity as a ministering angel or worse.

I’ll risk it. I’m not just being a contrarian. There are plenty of places where my beliefs intersect nicely with the majority of my fellow saints, and I am happy to acknowledge it when it occurs. And one can be just as wrong crying in the wilderness as one can be huddling with the sheep in the valley.

But I flatly reject the notion that there is anything inherently good about thinking the way that other Latter-day Saints think. There is nothing in the scriptures that suggests that the truth is any more likely to be found in the body of believers—even believers in things that are true—than anywhere else. Nor have I ever found any scriptural evidence that being “chosen” is, in fact, a good thing. Usually it just ups the chance of getting smited.

I don’t really know whether or not Latter-day Saints have been selected by God for a special relationship or a unique claim to the truth. I hope we have not. Sometimes my most fervent prayer is that God will not consider my people special or remarkable in any way. Because if He does, we are in big trouble. And if we are indeed chosen, we are almost certainly doing it wrong.