Mormon Urban Legends

            When I was fourteen, I attended a Mormon youth program called “Especially For Youth”, which was a week-long activity meant to inspire and motivate the youth of the church.  The week was filled with talks, activities, and testimony meetings.  Every night, the girls in my group gathered together for a spiritual thought before heading to bed.  Towards the end of the week, my counselor Laura* gave us all a piece of paper with the following message:

You were in the War in Heaven and one day when you are in the spirit world you will be enthralled with those who you are associated with. You will ask someone in which time period he lived in and you might hear, "I was with Moses when he parted the Red Sea," or "I helped build the pyramids," or "I fought with Captain Moroni." And as you are standing there in amazement, someone will turn to you and ask, "Which prophet time did you live in?" And when you say "Gordon B. Hinckley," a hush will fall over every hall, every corridor in heaven and all in attendance will bow at your presence. You were held back six thousand years because you were the most talented, most obedient, most courageous, and most righteous. Are you still? Remember who you are!

            I felt very solemn when I read this slip of paper – I had a great destiny to fulfill.  I didn’t feel more faithful, but here was an adult telling us that we had been saved for a special purpose.  I was both uncomfortable with the idea of having been more faithful in the pre-existence and sad that my youthful levity meant I was failing at the great destiny that was expected of me.  

 A few years later, I discovered that this statement was in fact an urban legend.  In the meantime, I heard this quote from multiple sources – we were special, we had a great destiny, we had been the elect spirits who had been saved for the latter-days for some great purpose.  This quote was repeated by teens and adults alike with all of the solemnity of gospel-truth.  I was grateful when I heard this quote was false, as I was uncomfortable with the implied superiority of this statement. But discovering this quote was false also went a long way towards increasing my cynicism about Mormon culture. 

In 2008 – nine years after I first heard this quote - the Mormon Church issued an official statement denouncing the falsity of this statement.  But when I first heard this quote, I believed.  I believed that I had been saved for a special purpose – and I felt like a failure for not living up to my destiny. 

Note: After posting this, people were nice enough to point out that the truth was a little more complicated than I had thought.  For a more in-depth discussion, I would recommend reading this follow-up post.