Bryan Erickson
I was distressed to read an article several weeks ago in The Daily Universe about another quasi-LDS herb shop popping up in this town. I’d like to share a little bit from my experience as an employee of a Utah County herb shop.
At first the owner impressed me as a sincere, diligent Latter-day Saint. As time went on, I became more and more uneasy about what the shop was all about. Like the new shop’s owner interviewed in The Daily Universe, my bosses mantra was “taking responsibility for your own health.” That idea was part of a larger philosophy that to rely on hospitals, health care plans and the prescription drug industry was to prostrate yourself before an arm of the worldwide, godless conspiracy maintained by the medical community and drug industry, designed only to drain our money on worthless remedies.
This sort of thinking was and is typical of my boss and many of his customers, who were also vehement about home schooling their children, due to a conviction that the public school system is also part of a worldwide conspiracy.
My boss used the “herb clause” in Doctrine & Covenants 89 as proof that herbal health care is the Lord’s way, and was an escape route from the secular health care conspiracy.
As part of my duties, I regularly traveled to other herb shops all over Utah and Salt Lake counties to exchange products. From what I experienced, I have to say that similar extremist philosophies are the rule, rather than the exception.
A fervent interest in home health care and home schooling is a current that is heading in the direction of superzealot apostasy.
