Stop Telling Me I Can't Turn Out to Be Good

Please, stop telling me that I can't turn out to be good.

Please.

I'm not talking about saying "You can't be perfect in this life." That's also not true, but that's a different topic for another time.

I'm talking about when people would tell me about my namesake being "Nimrod, the mighty hunter", who (according to... what is the highly dubious source on this, anyway? Hearsay? Tradition? Lost scripture? Commentary from uninspired writers?) didn't hunt animals, but souls; he made it his personal mission to drag as many souls to hell as he could before he died.

If I associate my own name with someone as bad as that, how would I possibly turn out to be a good person?

By the way, my namesake was Howard W. Hunter, who emphasized the importance of temple and family history work. But what do I hear about him my entire life? That he was only President of the Church for 6 months. People only seemed to remember him or mention him because they have to include him on every list of Latter-day Prophets. When your namesake is treated like someone who's not important, not remembered, and never mentioned by himself, it makes you feel like you're not important.

I'm talking about the people who told me for a year that I would be much less spiritual after my mission.

I recognize they were right, but wouldn't it have been kinder and more inspiring to wait until I was already being a less spiritual person (which would lead to being a worse person) and help me to become more spiritual instead of setting me up with an expectation that I'd be a worse person after I got home from the mission?

I'm talking about the people who heard that all I wanted was to help people want better things and would say "They have their agency. You can't make them do anything." Are you kidding me? I told them the deepest desire of my heart - the second highest and holiest purpose a human can have as Elder Holland said in his talk "A Teacher Come from God" - and they replied with a canned line that suggests that I can't really live like that, just because they don't know the difference between forcing someone to do something (something neither God nor Satan can do) and helping someone want to do something (something both of them do on a daily basis) or influencing people (something every single person does on a daily basis)?

On the topic of influencing people: I'm talking about the times when we talk too much about people influencing each other to become worse people (anything from Star Wars - Episode III to the cautionary tales we tell each other about not saying insensitive things that we literally couldn't even know about) and focus too little on people influencing each other to do good.

From what I hear, apparently, I can't influence anyone else to do good, but I can influence them to do bad without even trying to.

I'm talking about the hundreds of times I've heard people excuse someone from doing bad by saying "Well, they have their agency" without ever saying that agency can be used to do good.

I understand that we would never need to say "Well, they have their agency" about someone doing a good thing, since we'd be celebrating instead of trying to make an excuse for them, but when we discuss that "men... are free to choose liberty and eternal life... or to choose captivity and eternal death" (2 Nephi 2:27), can't we point out that Lehi immediately followed that statement with "I would that ye should... choose eternal life... and not choose eternal death" (2 Nephi 2:28-29)?

The point of agency isn't to give us an excuse to do bad. It's to give us an opportunity to become more like Christ as we do good meaningfully.

I'm talking about the times we talk about bad people in history without talking about the good people in history. I recognize that "the evils that men do live after them" and "the good is oft[en] [buried] with their bones", but if we keep talking about the Stalins and Caesars, besmirching the names of the Washingtons and Franklins, and completely forgetting the people like James K. Polk (the only President to actually fulfill all his campaign promises), we should expect people to follow in the evil footsteps of the people they hear about.

I'm talking about the times when we hear about the movies we make leading people to do bad things. Fight Club led to an increase of fight clubs across the nation. The Dark Knight led to a shooting. People talk about Disney animated classics leading children to rebel against their parents.

Has any movie ever led to someone doing something good?

I'm not asking if any movie has ever wanted to lead someone to do good. Tumblr users talk all the time about the morals that Harry Potter teaches and Steven Moffatt has a fantastic quote about why the main character from Doctor Who can encourages people to live kindly.

But does any movie or TV show actually inspire people to be better? People who aren't such devout Christians that they'll ignore every colossal failure in storytelling, film form, and talent all at once if it means this colossal failure will meet their bare minimum expectations to inspire them?

No, I'm talking about a movie inspiring normal people to be kinder, or to be wiser, or to work harder? If so, why don't we talk about how the movie actually encouraged people to do these things instead of just saying that Remember the Titans was inspirational and made us feel so good? Shouldn't we be saying more concrete things like "After watching Slumdog Millionaire, people donated millions of dollars into charities to help African orphans"?

For that matter, I'm talking about the times we talk about people doing awful things. According to studies and statistics, the news spends about 1/3 of its time talking about some kind of violence (as of 2016). According to the researchers presenting this data (I'm too tired to find the data right now), the news intentionally doesn't air many stories that are not violent so they have time to tell stories that are violent. This policy is so widely known that the phrase "If it bleeds, it leads" was quoted on a Jake Gyllenhaal movie (Nightcrawler) and an episode of Freakonomics Radio. The problem is, it leaves the nation thinking that about 1/3 of public life is violent, when the actual percentages are much lower.

I'm talking about the people who talk about men being inherently worse people than women, whether they're all the raging feminists, all the married men who say that their wives are so much better than they are, or all the gospel ignoramuses preaching the absolute heresy that there will be less men than women in the Celestial Kingdom because women are inherently better than men, a heresy that only has its grounds in a complete misinterpretation of Isaiah 4:1.

I hope men say these things to make their wives happy, but I seriously doubt it makes the mothers of their sons happy. It certainly doesn't make my mother happy when she hears that her sons are inherently bad just for being born male.

After a particularly annoying stretch of hearing that women are inherently better people than men, prayed for days before General Conference asking for a testimony that it's OK to be born male; that I'm not condemned just for being male. And you know what? God promised me an entire talk on the subject, and that turned out to be the second talk given. In the General Session. By a woman.

I grew up my entire life being told that I personally wouldn't be a good person. That I would either influence nothing or influence people towards bad. That I would either do nothing with my life or do evil with it.

I feel like Megamind, when we was told "You're a villain, and you'll always be a villain", except that all I want is to be good!

I feel like every time I tell people that I want to be a good person, people try to push me back down into being a bad person with canned phrases I hope they don't believe that basically sum up to "It's impossible to be good or to influence other people to be good, and it's an unwise desire in the first place." What do those people want out of life, then? To go with the flow and leave no impact on humanity? To make a bunch of money and die? To hope they can deposit enough Righteousness points into some heavenly account that they overcome the enormous amount of Unrighteousness points they assume they'll have?

I haven't been told much of this in at least a year, but it doesn't matter anymore. The stuff I heard all my life about how the world has already gotten in my brain and affected how I act.

I don't care about people's well-being; I care about my own well-being, and I'm kind because it's polite, expected, and a good way to lead to good things happening to me.

I don't care about the gospel; I care about money and about pleasure, to the point that I've been apathetic about the sins I commit.

Who cares about repenting? It's not like I can really overcome this sin. I've tried for years. It's the most addictive sin I could have possibly chosen, and Bishops kept using the phrase "It's OK" before saying "let's get you back on the right track", no matter how many times I came to them and said "I did it again", so they made it seem like it would be OK no matter how many times I did it.

I recognize that it's not about how many times I do this sin, but how I think and feel about the sin. Well, right now, I don't care.

Not just because people have always told me I can't be good. But that was certainly a good starting place.

But someone started to redefine that for me tonight. Someone told me that instead of thinking of Nimrod when she heard my name, she always thinks of a dragon slayer or a monster hunter, someone who tries to rid the world of dark and scary things. And when she thinks of my name, she thinks of someone who protects and provides, like normal hunters do.

And that opened up a little possibility that I might be able to be good again.

Please, stop telling me that I'm going to be bad.

And please, give me a little bit of encouragement to be good.

Because maybe if you do, I'll actually live up to that expectation.