I pierced my ear again. I now have two holes in one ear. To some, this may seem like a trivial life event to announce to an invisible audience of internet users, but it was a monumental step for me as an individual.
A little background perhaps? For 25 years, I grew up as a Mormon, to use the colloquial term. When I was ten, I was allowed to get my ears pierced for the first time. It was a birthday present, in fact. Most of my other girl friends already had their ears pierced, but my best friend, right about the time that I first pierced my ears, had a second piercing done in one of her ears. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I wanted one. At the time, I may have wanted it so badly because I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be like the other girls. I lived in a smaller town in northern California where the vast majority of the surrounding population was not Mormon, nor did they understand the way we lived or the "choices" we made. I felt different. I was different, and I didn't want to be. I worked hard to convince my mom to let me get another piercing. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually, she caved. What harm would a second piercing do? I wouldn't become a rebellious brat as soon as that needle pierced my ear lobe. I wasn't asking for a tattoo.
I was overjoyed! I worked hard, did my chores without being reminded, kept my room clean and kept the picking on of my siblings to a minimum, all in an effort to prove that I was responsible and capable of making decisions on my own. Then the hammer fell. The prophet (president of the LDS church) gave a talk about the appearance of young men and women. This is what he said:
"As for the young women, you do not need to drape rings up and down your ears. One modest pair of earrings is sufficient. I mention these things because again, they concern your bodies. How truly beautiful is a well groomed young woman who is clean in body and mind. She is a daughter of God in whom her Eternal Father can take pride."
No where in this paragraph does he actually say, you may not where more than one pair of earrings, or more than one pair of earrings is a sin etc. But that is how it was interpreted. In a church where whatever the prophet says is practically scripture, it became the immediate goal of every man, woman and child, to look for those heathens that refused to take out that second pair of earrings. It was a seeming witch hunt. No one was killed or arrested, but woman and girls who had more than one pair of earrings were treated differently. They were judged for this decoration of choice, and many, upon first meetings, were, and still are, assumed to be non-members. Because of one extra earring.
My own mother swiftly changed her mind about my getting another piercing and I never brought up to her again. She wanted to obey the prophets council. I didn't understand how something so trivial as another piercing could be pinpointed as a sin, but I obeyed my mother.
A very common theme in the church is how "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass". While this specific phrase seems to allude to a positive outcome, it's this very same phrase that is used to scare people into believing that one small act of disobedience will lead to others, until eventually you have turned your back on the gospel and lost your ticket into the Celestial kingdom. I was terrified that if I pierced my ear I would inevitably allow myself to break other rules and commandments until I was so far gone that God would send me to hell and I would never see my family again.The thought of that second piercing never left my mind though, and here I am, nearly 14 years later, having finally done it.
14 years! What drove me to obey that silly directive for so long? What drove the thousands of other women and girls to obey? What drives any member of a religious organization to follow their prophet? We are afraid. Afraid, like I said above, that if we allow ourselves to disobey a seemingly small directive, we will inevitably end up disobeying larger rules and commandments, thus making our lives more difficult than they need to be.
It's a tactic that religious leaders have employed since the beginning of religion. Fear ensures that people obey the rules that were allegedly bestowed by God upon humanity to avoid burning in hell. These rules allow the men that give them, and should I say, create them, to control masses of individuals and endow themselves with power. Out of fear, an individual can become incapacitated, causing them to become dependent on an illusory parent figure. A god, if you will. Out of fear of some "eternal" consequence, a person becomes willing to relinquish their power to choose what is right for themselves in order to feel safe.
When the president of the LDS church spoke about having only one earring in each ear he alluded to that second piercing as being a means to defile the temple of ones body. Mormons are big on the idea that ones body is a temple, which is why they've been instructed not to get tattoos, pierce their ears excessively, where revealing clothing or put drugs, alcohol and coffee into them. A very common scripture to illustrate how Fear is instilled in the hearts of these believers, is 1 Corinthians 3: 16-17.
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth within you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."
The prophet didn't have to come out and say that if you pierce your ear then God will destroy you because a prophet from a much earlier time had already come out with that policy. That scripture has been used in tandem with the principle of grooming in every lesson I ever had on the importance of modesty and the word of wisdom. Because of scriptures like this, I learned at a very young age that if I did something "bad" to my body, then God would destroy me. It kept me from wearing clothing that other girls my age were wearing, such as tank tops in the summer. It kept me from piercing my ear again. It made me question the length of my hair constantly. It made me afraid of caffeine for a very long time, especially coffee.
The Church preaches that God gave us free agency so that we can make our own choices, but is this god that so many religions believe really giving us that choice if our choosing the opposite of what he desires leads to our ultimate destruction?Am I eternally doomed because I've pierced my ear again? Should that extra hole really be what determines my standings with a higher power?
I pierced my ear because it was a physical act of distancing myself from the teachings of my childhood. This is my way of saying that I don't want to be afraid to live anymore. I want to use my right to choose and actually choose for myself, rather than operating under the illusion that my choices for the last 25 years of my life have been my own. They haven't been. They've been based on the decisions of others.
So I pierced my ear again. If there is a hell, and I go there just for this? I will be joined by EVERY ONE else that has ever lived on this world, because no one can live up to all religious expectations.
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