The church tells active members that us ex-members are “confused, miserable, don’t have eternal life, have no life with God, have no peace and will never ever have peace.”
Like damn.
As ex-members, there’s something you need to understand about us.
When ex-members leave, there’s generally a lot of hurt on OUR end;
lots of conflicting emotions, pain, and devastation; as well as a sense of betrayal by the church itself…
And, usually a few traumatic stories to go along with those feelings.
Why?
Because do you know what ex-members really, desperately want?
It’s to genuinely feel heard, and understood.
But the Church doesn’t want it’s members to give ex-members that validation…
The church doesn’t want members to hear our stories, or very real pain and experiences…
They want their members to deny any pain or hurt we as ex-members may have felt from the church and it’s policies and doctrines.
There have been many times when active members have told us phrases that make us feel like we are crazy, like we imagined what we were taught growing up.
One good example;
The phrase:
“It was never about modesty!”
But WE grew up being told that our bodies would be literal, physical pornography if we didn’t cover up…
And when the church turns it around and gaslights members into believing “it was never about modesty;”
When it was, when we were raised in the church…
It makes us feel hurt, crazy, and betrayed by the church.
We spent our lives desperately seeking “modest” prom dresses, cutting pants into long enough shorts, making sure our shoulders were covered…
And now the church is gaslighting us into believing that was “never about modesty?”
It truly does feel like getting STABBED in the back by a friend you were once so very loyal to; a friend you desperately wanted to make happy. A friend you so deeply loved…
So it’s physically and emotionally painful when the church tries to gaslight people into believing “that’s never what the church meant…”
When we know for a fact that is what the church meant…
Because we lived through it!!
First-hand!
But when we go and try to explain that to active members,
They gaslight us.
Tell us we didn’t understand fully. We’re wrong. We’re making things up…
And we are left with zero validation of our real, and truly lived experiences.
So ex-members?
They just want people to believe them and the things they experienced.
As ex-members, we feel like we have to have receipts upon receipts upon receipts of PROOF as to what we experienced and how we felt being raised with certain teachings in the church.
“Well that wasn’t MY experience, so they must have just misunderstood…”
And even when we DO have the receipts?
It’s far too easy for members to shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes and say “you’re missing the greater scheme of things;” or “you’re misunderstanding the deep spirituality of this topic.”
But a lot of us ex-members?
We know we didn’t misunderstand.
A lot of us…
• Are seminary graduates
• read the scriptures front to back multiple times on our own growing up
• Attended youth trips, devotionals, EFY
• Attended Institute classes in college
• Did baptisms for the dead and obtained our own endowments
• Devoutly wore our garments night and day
• refrained from coffee, alcohol, etc.
• Served missions where we taught the doctrines and tried to get people to get baptized and join the church
• Became leaders as adults in the church
• Spent time being temple workers and memorizing all of the sacred prayers and rituals done in the temple
• Were sealed in the temple
But apparently, to active members who still believe…
That doesn’t make us “trustworthy sources,” in their eyes.
Because despite all of our first handed experience, over two decades of involvement…
Because we left??
We are no longer trustworthy sources; giving heed to “seducing spirits and doctrines of devils.”
The recent general conference talk talks about the pain that ex-members causedtheir loved ones who are still in the church;
(Making active members feel as though they are victim to ex-members who leave)…
Which 1.) Our decision is not a reflection on any loved ones and has nothing to do with them.
And 2.) It paints this picture that it is us, the ex-members who are hurting people by leaving the church…
Now THAT is an absolute falsehood.
The church wants active member loved ones to believe that the pain they feel about their loved one leaving the church is because of the fault of the loved one.
When in all reality?
It’s the church who creates that pain;
It’s the church who teaches that those who leave are abandoning eternal life with their families.
The Church is fostering that pain;
Not the ex-members.
The ex-members decided to leave those painful and harmful teachings behind;
But the church paints them, ex-members, as the villains; the ones causing pain and hurt on their loved ones.
WE didn’t hurt anyone by our leaving; that was a personal, individual decision…
It’s the Church’s Teachings about families that hurt them.
But the church has loved ones successfully placing the blame of their hurt on US.
We will not be returning to such an abusive and manipulative Religous organization.
We don’t need to change our hearts to be able to make ourselves okay with the psychological and mental abuse/gymnastics that the church places on it’s members.
Claiming that God will “Change our hearts” insinuates still,
that we are lost and confused.
But we aren’t.
We’re fine, actually.
So,
Family members of loved ones who have left the church…
You can either choose to believe us, and what we say about our own lives, from our own perspectives;
Or you can believe what the church tells you we are feeling.
We aren’t saying you have to leave the church.
But we are asking you if you will believe the experiences and stories of your loved ones who have left.
So…
Who will you believe?
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because of how negatively the church tries to paint those who leave, and how it convinces members that ex-members are the “problem;” and not the church itself.
“I don’t believe that you have to wear your garments all day every day; I believe in personal autonomy and that your garments are between you and God!”
People need to stop being scared of leaving an organized religion they’ve been in their entire life merely because it’s what they’re comfortable with, and know.
Growth does not happen within the bounds of comfort.
Talking with many active members today,
they don’t even believe half of what the church teaches!
But that’s the beautiful thing…
It is never too late to change our minds and find a spirituality practice that does coincide with our beliefs.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe in aligning themselves with organized religions that preach things that oppose their own morals and beliefs.
Believing in the Mormon church is a hard thing to do.
I mean, it takes a lot to believe that…
Joseph Smith was personally visited by capital G God Himself and told him that no one else’s church’s were true and that Joseph had been chosen to establish the true Church of God
Joseph Smith was guided to golden plates that almost no one else was allowed to see that were taken back up to heaven by an angel
Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates he found in his backyard using a stone in a hat
Heaven has a caste system
Your 10% in tithing is truly nothing more than a spiritual offering to God and not a way for the church to keep adding to its billions
What’s funny, is the church KNOWS it’s a little…hard to believe.
We chose to believe in the church our entire lives.
Despite our questions, ignoring the aspects of the gospel that didn’t make any sense, the concerns regarding church history and current statements regarding the lgbtq+ community…
Regardless,
We chose to believe in the church.
But then…
…we stepped away…
And all of a sudden,
our minds were truly open,
raw and real,
And for the first time ever,
We were able to actually evaluate what we really believed in for ourselves;
So even though D&C actively states that the word of wisdom is not to be done “by commandment or constraint,”
According to church leaders,
No; members of the church are not supposed to drink coffee.
But yet, Utah is the soda capitol of the country?? With 44oz caffeinated sodas and sugars??
And they can drink hot chocolate…
So the church isn’t opposed to caffeine or chocolatey drinks…
So
Why coffee??
Well,
there’s one idea that banning coffee was a retaliation of the men of the church against the women of the church who were opposed to the men’s use of tobacco.
And while for now, we are just talking about coffee…
Obedience for the sake of obedience can be a very dangerous thing…
In regards to alcohol,
I don’t think anyone would disagree that alcohol isn’t necessarily good for you.
Of course alcoholism is something to look out for;
It can definitely take over your life.
No one is arguing with that.
Alcohol is probably one of the worst “drugs” out there if you don’t drink responsibly. It impairs judgement, can be addictive, and like a lot of other things, can result in death.
However…
When we first left the church, and had our very first sip of alcohol,
We were confusedwith how much we actually had to drink in order to get “drunk.”
Our entire lives, we were raised believing that one sip of alcohol would lead to a full-on addiction.
But one sip of alcohol later,
We realized how false that is.
So our gripe with the church’s stance on refraining from alcohol isn’t the abstinence of it;
Many people choose to live alcohol-free outside of the church!
But our gripe with the church is the misinformationthey spread about alcohol.
The church demonizes alcohol instead of educates about alcohol;
Preaching complete abstinence over knowledge and education.
Just like its rules regarding sex before marriage.
There were a few things that surprised us and that we recognized when we first started tasting alcohol – things that we didn’t not know about until age 23; because all of our knowledge regarding alcohol up until that point had been “don’t drink it, one sip will make you addicted” from the church.
We learned that –
• SUGAR from an alcoholic beverage is usually what makes a hangover miserable; not the alcohol itself.
• Different alcohols affect different people in different ways
• Certain alcohols can make you react or act in different ways; happy drunk vs. sad drunk vs. sleepy drunk, etc.
• It usually takes 3+ shots of alcohol to really start to feel “buzzed” or “drunk;” not one.
• A nice, big margarita doesn’t have a lot of alcohol in it; it usually takes 2-3 to really feel the effects.
• Beers take even more than 3-4 cans to start to really feel the effects; that’s why people buy 12-packs.
• Beer sits heavier in your stomach; white liquors generally sit lighter.
• The faster you drink a beverage, the more “tipsy” you will feel. Drinking slowly and nursing a drink = a sober mind
• Eating and making sure you’re hydrated with waterbefore you drink alcohol reduces the negative outcomes of alcohol such as nausea and hangovers.
• Some alcohols with make you nauseous and some won’t; it’s all about finding out how your body reacts to certain alcohols and adjust accordingly.
So no, our gripe isn’t that people remain abstinent from alcohol;
It’s that the church makes them both abstinent and uneducated about the topic.
We say, educate people! Then let them make their own decisions regarding alcohol!
I mean, even Joseph Smith drank wine right up until until the day he died, after the word of wisdom was introduced;
Active members tend to wrongly assume that because a person leaves the church, that that suddenly means that this person will become a drunk or an addict.
I, the wife, was once talking with my younger sister on the phone,
And when I told her that I was working on my health and muscle gains, and that I only drank an occasional, single glass of wine maybe 1-2 times a month, with maybe going out with friends for drinks once every other month if not less often;
She, with a very surprised tone of voice, responded,
“Oh! Really?!”
I fear a lot of other active members share the same sentiment regarding those who have left.
While we agree the habit can be more unsanitary and can cause mouth cancers,
Using it once, like alcohol,
Will not result in immediate addiction.
How do I know?
Because I tried it and hated it; I’ve never wanted to do it again.
Again, education here is the important thing.
The way a member is educated about substances, is the way in which they perceive others and judge others based on how they decide to utilize things in their own life.
A member’s lack of understanding can paint false perceptions that they gain regarding a person and how they live their lives.
They may see photos of a girls night out with drinks and wrongly assume it’s a weekly or even nightly occurrence, and therefore an “addiction. “
They may see someone chewing tobacco and immediately correlate that person with being “dirty” and “filthy.”
“You misunderstand! The word of wisdom’s main point is to not surrender your own free will” to substances!
And, yes;
we partially agree with this take.
Because while the point of the word of wisdom is to not give up one’s own agency and free will,
At the same time,
The church robs you of your own free will by demanding that adherence to this word of wisdom is a blatant commandment;
And half of the items on the “banned” list don’t even have any rhyme or reason besides obedience.
Its hypocrisy by the church, is what it is;
Claiming that certain things will remove a member’s agency;
When at the same time, the church is actively removing that member’s agency of choice on the basis of fear of losing “blessings” and temple “worthiness.”
Do we see the double edged sword the church slices through its’ members, yet?
“You misunderstand! People always have their agency; but they can’t control the consequences of the decisions they make!”
And you’d be right about that!
So then…
Why does the Church think that they have the right to carry out those “consequences” themselves?? Against members of whom the church believes is “sinning” or “unworthy?”
Why not let natural consequences take hold?
Why does the church believe they have the authority to control those said “consequences?”
We already know that the church doesn’t like to give up control…
But I mean…
Surrender can sometimes be a good thing, after all, no??
Recreational and safe “drug usage” can bring greater spirituality and insights.
A good friend of ours once stated that when she participated in mushrooms for the first time, she had this sense that she was but a small dot in the entirety of the universe, and how incredible and spiritual her experience was.
But free-form spirituality doesn’t fit into the framework of organized or controlled religion;
Hence why religions tend to adapt to “COMPLETE ABSTINENCE!!” Expectations,
…rather than educating their people about safe and proper usages; including how to avoid dependency and addiction.
Why don’t religions see that there may be potential spiritualpower in certain plants or things that God left on the earth for humans to find??
Maybe, some of these plants, mushrooms, etc. were left by God on earth on purpose, to assist us with removing mortal blockages and allowing us to see through “the veil” that shields our mortality…!
There are different ways to access spirituality of course,
Different ways to access the divine,
To remove the barriers between our mortal selves and “God,” no matter what that “God” of spirituality looks like to you.
But what we don’t agree with,
Is criminalizing those who may utilize the plants of the earth for their own spirituality;
To calm their souls,
To allow their minds the ability to relax and feel.
Hell, half of my full moon rituals involve a glass of wine and a bubble bath; and my mind has never felt more relaxed and able to work on true, real, raw and open self-reflection, without the societal pressures and expectations that we all have placed on our shoulders.
My husband and I always joke that if our Mormon mothers would just try a bubble bath with a glass of wine every now and again, that a lot of their worries will melt away, and they’d feel so much more free, and FAR less stressed and anxious!
And yes, it IS possible to be “moderate” with alcohol, or other things…
And we know, because weare moderate with it.
So stop telling people that trying something once will bring destruction,
That the only option is complete abstinence…
Again;
Education is important.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe a religious organization should have complete, mandatory control over a person’s eating/drinking habits; and believes that humans should be able to make their own decisions without an organization threatening them with their level of “worthiness.”
I think what the Christian God means is that MAN is not allowed to kill…
But GOD is…
Allowing God to retain all power.
Some say that the deaths carried out by God are justified…
“Well, they were wicked! They didn’t obey God!”
You know who else has the same mindset?…
Maybe take a look at some other counties that are very religious, and have killed others for the “crime” of not being born into their religion or due to unbelief;
So although we may not believe that the gods are necessarily real in the humanoid, embodiment sense…
Their energies are real;
Therefore making the “gods” “real,”
In a sense.
And the energy of the Christian God??
That’s…
Not exactly an energy we would like to embody.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t want to follow the Christian God based on his track record of death, bloodshed, “tests” of loyalty, and horrific depictions of fire, destruction, and familial separation.
Because they discovered some dark and disturbing things about the Church and it’s validity, and finally realized that they were following a false organization.
If the followers of the church can get to the point where they genuinely believe that GOD HIMSELF will not allow a church leader to lead them “astray,”
Then it’s easy for members to give their undying loyalty to that leader…
Regardless of any horrific things those leaders may preach or teach…
Such as the following statements that a former PROPHET, Brigham Young,
It is undeniable that the church does not want its followers to disagree, criticize, or question the things of the church or the leaders of the church…
Here is an example of what my OWN weekly schedule looked like growing up when I was a member of the church, as a teenager –
(This schedule is depicted to show all of my generalized weeklyreligiousinvolvements with the church)
Monday:
6am – Morning Scripture study with family
7:30am – Morning Religous seminary class before school
8:45am – School
3:30pm – School ends
6:00pm – Religious Family Home Evening night
Tuesday:
6:00am – Morning Scripture study with family
7:30am – Morning religious seminary class before school
8:45am – School
3:30pm – School ends
6:00pm – Youth leadership counsel meeting at the church
Wednesday:
6:00am – Morning Scripture study with family
7:30am – Morning religious seminary class before school
8:45am – School
3:30pm – School ends
7:00pm – Youth church activity night at the church
Thursday:
6:00am – Morning Scripture study with family
7:30am – Morning religious seminary class before school
8:45am – School
3:30pm – School ends
6:00pm – study/read for seminary class assignments
7:00pm – Prepare lessons/talk/ideas for church on Sunday
Friday:
6:00am – Morning scripture study with family
7:30am – Morning religious seminary class before school
8:45am – School
3:30pm – School ends
6:00pm – Study/read for seminary class assignments
7:00pm – Prepare lessons/talk/ideas for church on Sunday
Saturday:
6:00am – Morning scripture study with family
7:00am – Cleaning the church building
10:00am – chores, errands, etc. to prepare for Sunday
(Possible youth temple trip day)
6pm – Prep church clothes and church lessons, talks, etc.
Sunday:
6:00am – wake up
8:00am – Mormon Mission preparation class
9:00am – 3-hour long church
12:00pm – after-church youth leadership meetings
Spend the rest of the day studying the scriptures
Long story short,
I spent HOURS every day doing religious/church things; alongside my regular school homework and exam prep/studying, my involvement in after school musicals and practices, my involvement in sports and school athletics/games, etc.
Seminary was treated as whole other education system, in which you had to have a certain amount of credits to graduate, have specific scriptures memorized, have a high attendance record, etc.
It was an ADDITIONAL, extra class I had to take before the first hour bell for regular school even rang.
And this was right alongside all of my REGULAR high school courses, credits, and college preparation.
But, after all;
The busier a person is,
The less time they have to see what the church is actually doing.
But I did eventually get to skip a few youth activities every now and again, and I did enjoy the fact that I didn’t have to spend any more additional time at the church building when I didn’t have to.
Weekly family home evenings are where the family sits down and basically does another church/gospel lesson in their own home, alongside a family “activity” and usually a sweet treat.
It didn’t matter that we had gone to church the day before for three hours and had three different church lessons in a single day;
Our families were also expected to do yet another church lesson and activity at home.
Sundays, of course, were our main, big “spiritual” days.
My mother would not allow us to watch tv, movies, or even recreational books. I remember my mother would see me, an avid book reader, reading a “recreational” book and tell me, “isn’t there something better you could be reading? Like studying the scriptures today, or a church talk or lesson?”
Needless to say;
I hated Sundays.
I already had SO much work, school, etc. and just wanted ONE DAY to read and relax.
My mother even wore her church clothes the entire day on Sundays so as to “continue the Sunday spirit” she got from church throughout the day.
My dad disagreed, however; and some of the BEST Sundays I can recall is when we would spend time together watching “American’s Funniest Home Videos” on Sunday, just laughing our guts out!
That’s the one positive Sunday memory I carry with me, actually, as an adult.
I was a member who attended college after serving a Mormon mission.
Women aren’t required to go, but, all of my male friends were serving. I felt left out.
Plus, I figured it was a good chance to travel! Wherever they were going to send me.
Maybe even learn Spanish, since my grandpa’s family immigrated and we had slowly lost the language and I was now a fourth-gen Latina who did not speak Spanish.
I ended up getting called to and serving in the New York New York City mission; Spanish speaking.
I hated every second of it, but you can read about why we disagree with missions now in one of our previous posts.
The church has such demanding schedules and routines daily, and weekly, for all its members at such a young age,
…so that the indoctrination is extremely effective;
…And they eventually don’t even question the unpaid and abuse of free labor and time that the Church demands from them.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t agree with a billion-dollar church expecting free manual labor and time from its members, as well as expecting members to pay the church to serve…
Under the false guise of receiving nothing but alleged “spiritual blessings” in return.
Would you allow your child to watch a tv serious or movie that involved the above topics mentioned in the scriptures?
Would you be okay with your children reading stories like the ones mentioned in the scriptures out loud in public? Scriptures about incest, rape, gore…?
So why then
Would it be appropriate for children to hear these stories at such a young age…
Just because they’re considered “scripture?”
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the Church –
Because they don’t believe that children should be subjected to texts and stories that are far above their appropriate developmental understandings, and believe that these stories can traumatize and instill fear-based teachings in children at a young age to get them to comply and obey as they get older.
The “Progressive” culture of many LDS members today,
To be honest,
Kind of…
pisses us off.
Now hold on;
Let us explain.
One of our biggest pet peeves is hypocrisy.
And it’s not necessarily the members, but the CHURCH that’s full of it.
We don’t blame the members for “fence-sitting;”
We blame and despite the fact that it’s the Church that makes members feel as though they’re constantly have to “fence sit” and choose between their personal morals or church expectations.
Fun fact;
We decided to leave the church Before drinking coffee, not wearing our garments, trying a glass of wine, etc.
Because the church RAISED us to not be a “fence sitter.”
So I suppose, that’s one aspect of the church that has stuck with us.
But we also don’t blame the fence-sitters, either.
You have to understand;
We grew up being told that we can’t be lukewarm.
That we couldn’t be fence sitters.
That we couldn’t have our cake and eat it to.
It wasn’t an option for us to both be a part of the church, and be a fully “active” member.
It was THE CHURCH that taught us we couldn’t “pick and choose.”
It’s like “lukewarm” or “fence-sitting” members are accepted now, and somehow believe that they are still temple “worthy” and will obtain their celestial glory.
Now us??
We believe in personal autonomy.
We believe in making decisions on your coffee intake, what you wear, how to speak and act, based on your own perogative.
We actually agree with a lot of, apologies for the term, “jack Mormons,”
Because we believe that’s how religion should be;
Different for each individual who practices.
Not having to live by a singular set of rules, requirements, or levels.
BUT…
According to the Church??
There ARE sets of required rules, lists, and measures of how to be a fully “active” member in the church.
So even if you, as an “active” member, decide that wearing your garments is between you and God;
You’re right…
To an extent.
But the CHURCH requires its members to wear the garment day and night.
So if you’re wearing short shorts and showing your stomach, and you’re choosing not to wear your garments? maybe modifying the garments a little to fit under slightly more revealing clothing?
Tithing is a church requirement that gets you a temple recommend, which gets you temple admittance, which gets you ordinance access, which gets you to the Celestial Kingdom in Heaven.
Now we strongly disagree with Religious organizations making tithing a requirement to have access to temple “blessings” and access to the highest heaven of the celestial kingdom.
We think donating first-hand to a charity of your choice would be better than giving that 10% to the church, actually.
Your money should be under your ownership;
It should notbe so heavily controlled by a religious organization in exchange for promises of “eternal salvation.”
In fact, we like when members practice bodily autonomy and don’t give their money to the church.
BUT…
If you’re an active member,
who claims that you’re still a very much so active member,
who doesn’t pay their tithing;
You’re wrong.
According to the Church.
And lastly.
6.) “I’m an active member of the church, and I have sex before marriage because it’s my body and my own autonomy; it’s between me and God.”
It breaks our hearts because we see the personal morals of LDS members constantly in battle with the opposite things that the church teaches.
Morals vs. Religous Expectations.
Having to choose between the two is a war in itself.
But the church expects members to push aside their disagreements about lgbtq+ individuals and love,
And instead adhere to the church’s religious expectations.
After all;
The members don’t want to lose their eternal salvation or family members,
They don’t want to lose their “priesthood authority” or “blessings” that the church has promised them.
And so they sit;
Stuck
On the fence between the Church and their own personal morals and beliefs.
And it’s devastating to see these members at war with themselves.
A good friend once casually stated years ago,
“If the religion doesn’t align with your belief systems, you can leave!”
“You can leave!”
“You CANleave!”
I’m going to say that again;
You
CAN
leave.
And live the life of a belief system that properly aligns with your morals and values.
Life isn’t linear.
There isn’t ONE way to do it “right.”
There isn’t any way to know which of all the 100’s of religions out there is actually the “right one,” despite their many claims.
You CAN leave.
You CAN change your mind.
You CAN live a life that’s more aligned with your personal morals and values.
You CAN.
You CAN.
You CAN.
We took that good friend’s advice that she unknowingly gave me those years ago…
And we’ve never looked back since.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they hate how the church pits a person’s own morals and values against church teachings and doctrines and makes it so that many members have to feel like they’re constantly at war within themselves and their inherent-born human empathy, compassion, and sense of justice and equality.
Thanksgiving originated from the fact that the pilgrims, (U.S. Americans), infiltrated the land inhabited by the native Americans.
And it wasn’t exactly a happy thing for the Native American people,
Who were the original inhabitants of the land on which the pilgrims decided to take over.
Many Native Americans suffered because of the pilgrim’s arrival and settling.
And let’s just say that decades later, the Mormon church did not exactly…help…in the difficulties Native Americans continued (and still continue) to face as a result of the pilgrim’s arrival.
The church’s involvement with Native American children being bought into indentured servitude by Mormon families hasn’t exactly sat well with us;
and every Thanksgiving, we watch as LDS members celebrate,
Give gratitude as they stand upon the land that was robbed and stolen from the original native Americans,
Give thanks to their God that allowed them the “freedom” of settling onto a land that wasn’t theirs to conquer, as they eat and “celebrate” their freedom and blessings,
While Native American people continue to suffer greatly today.
Still.
There is a long, extensive history of Native American peoples being murdered and massacred by pilgrims.
In fact, the “Thanksgiving” term was coined because the pilgrims were grateful for the safe return of their own people…
…from their mission of slaughtering 700 Pequot Native Americans.
The background and dark history with the Native American people makes the Thanksgiving “holiday” and “celebration” a little difficult for us to continue to “celebrate” as we did when we were younger.
…NOT a celebration that was originally founded on the conquest and slaughter of Native American peoples that was justified in the name of “organized religion” and the “Christian God.”
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t want to celebrate any holidays or religions that associate themselves with or were founded on the basis of the slaughter and persecution of Native American people.
Mormons also pray for forgiveness of past errors and mistakes, and use those mistakes to propel themselves forward into continually doing better and being better.
It brings personal reflection, learning about oneself, and striving to grow as a person.
The church’s encouragement of personal journaling, does the same thing as well.
What do you need to change?
How can you grow spiritually?
How can we be a little bit better every single day?
Both patriarchal blessings and tarot cards require tapping into that spiritual energy for guidance, direction, questions, and personal insight and reflection for you life.
What do the LDS do when someone is sick and needs healing?
They utilize medicines and prayer of course;
But they also have specific blessings that are done where hands are placed on a persons head, and a prayer is said by a man who is tuning in spiritually, with the specific purpose and intention of healing the other person.
How beautiful are blessings of babies?? It’s a ritual full of love, hopes and dreams for the future of such a young, new life that has been brought into the world!
We’ve always loved baby blessings.
What better gift to give a fresh new life and well-wishes and love that they can carry with them during their journey on earth?
Going up in the priesthood and slowly achieving each temple ordinance is said by the Mormon church to gain the ultimate level of celestial spirituality.
Unlocking each spiritual Chakra allows for energy to flow through you more freely and allows you to reach your higher sense of self.
There are levels to everything.
And spirituality is no exception.
Energy work is crucial in everything we do, say, and engage with.
It’s not exactly something that someone can just avoid. Spirituality is a big part of the human experience; even if spirituality for you is merely spending time with loved ones or going on a hike!
Either way;
Spirituality and energy work are integral parts to the human experience.
We have no issues with the way Mormonism practices its rituals, ceremonies and symbolisms.
Sure, we don’t exactly like the sexism and such.
But overall,
The act of the rituals and “ordinances,” we really don’t mind much.
It’s the fact that the church says things like THIS –
Because they want to practice spirituality still, but without the misogyny, patriarchy, and man-made rules imposed on them as to how they can and can’t be spiritual.
Religous people tend to accept belief systems and teachings, (generally speaking), more easily than those who do not believe in, follow, or practice religion.
Religion says “choose to believe, even if you don’t understand.”
Intellect says “Don’t believe everything at face value; research it, study it, find the actual, true facts about a topic before forming beliefs about it!”
3.) Religion claims to provide many things to people.
However;
Being intellectual,
ALSO gives people
those exact same provisions.
Religion assists people in coping with the fear of death.
Using intellect to understand and accept inevitable death as unavoidable and a normal, natural part of the human experience does the same.
Religion gives people direction and guidance; rules to follow to help them through life. How to be a good person, how to be charitable, how to love others.
People who utilize their natural intellect create their own sets of rules and guidelines for life based on how the reality of world is around them. They do not need a book or religion to tell them how to be a good person or how to live life in a specific way.
Religion can offer people a sense of significance and importance, high value in the eyes of a deity. It can give them a “reason” for their life.
People who are intelligent generally analyze humanity and recognize their own value as a human inherent; they don’t need external validation to feel like their life has meaning or importance; they tend to believe that their life is important and has meaning for merely existing.
All in all,
According to the study?
The more Religous a person is,
The higher the likelihood is that they score lower on an evaluation of their intelligence and cognitive thinking skills.
Now on to this claim –
“But the mostintelligent man on earth has claimed that God exists!”
This man is an OUTLIER to the studies mentioned above.
If you’ve ever done a research study, you know that there are always outliers.
However, we will dive into this outlier in particular, as we have seen many Religous folk re-post this news all over their socials!
We saw MANY people share articles like this ALL over social media when this news broke out.
But this is where media literacy and bias take place.
For one; the Instagram post has a LARGE caption/title in BOLD letters; meant to grab immediate attention and draw people in.
People who are Religous would be more likely to automatically agree with such a bold title/headline, and then re-share it without doing any research beforehand.
despite what religious scientists may try to get people to believe.
For one, the “most intelligent man on earth,”
Dr. Younghoon Kim?
We looked into him. And…
He has a BIAS.
A very BIG one, at that.
Dr. Younghoon Kim studied CHRISTAIN THEOLOGY.
Already, he has roots in a very biased perspective.
Bias is well-known to CLOUD scientific fact and studies;
This is why researchers must disclose and be aware of personal bias when conducting studies and tests.
It’s very common for religious people to be able to connect the dots of spirituality with that of science; people see what they want to see. They engage heavily in the confirmation bias.
And we all do it!
But we have to recognize that BIAS, does not equal PROOF, or evidence, just because you study and delve into your own confirmation biases.
This is why many intelligent people still believe in God and religion;
Confirmation bias.
They see what they want to see; focus on discoveries that their background and confirmation bias wants to believe.
And call it “proof.”
Even the smartest man alive is not except from confirmation bias.
Utilizing religion as a coping mechanism for life, as a way to stay alive, as your reason for feeling like you have a purpose of existence in this world?
That’s not a bad thing.
In fact, it can be very good for everyone who has struggled with suicidal ideology and attempts to find meaning in life;
Like the musical artist Noah Kahan once said in his lyrics,
“Medicate, meditate, swear your soul to Jesus….Give yourself a reason.”
Many people utilize religion as a means of giving themself purpose, and to cope with the inevitable reality of death;
To find hope in their lives.
However,
Utilizing religion as a coping mechanism does not inherently mean that religion and the existence of a God is a foolproof FACT.
Especially with the underlying bias behind the claim.
With the underlying bias of a person utilizing religion after struggling to find a way to stay alive on this earth.
Again, it’s not a bad thing to use religion as a crutch if that’s what’s giving you hope, giving you a reason to stay alive. I can’t say that enough!! Please by all means, use religion if it means staying alive! Saving your own life!
BUT
Again…
One man’s experience and spiritual belief systems;
Does NOT equate universal proof.
Intelligence is notuniversal.
An intelligence or IQ score does not all of a sudden mean that the “intelligent” individual is suddenly a “God of all knowledge.”
Just because someone may have, say, a PhD in the field of psychology and human intellect/behavior,
Does not automatically mean that they have the same level of intelligence of knowledge regarding Human anatomy, in the way a person with a Doctorate in the medical field does.
Intelligence in one field does not automatically cover all of the others.
If a person were to be debating us on the topic of godly and religious things,
And then threw in the argument,
“I have a PhD!!”
Immediately,
We are turned off to the debate.
Because in that moment,
We realize that the individual with whom we are debating,
Has fallen into the falsehood whereas they believe that a PhD gives them authority and an automatic “higher intelligence” than those with whom they are arguing.
We realize that the individual simply believes they are correct about their own personal Religous belief systems,
Simply because they were well-educated at a university.
However, it is as we stated earlier;
Holding a degree or a PhD does not automatically make a person’s knowledge and intelligence equal to all the things that exist in the entire world.
A well-educated person should, on the other hand,
Understand and know that the pursuit of knowledge is a life-long journey, one that never ends. There is ALWAYS much to learn.
And claiming a higher level of intelligence due to a PhD or degree,
Automatically demotes yourself as an intellect.
As someone who is closed off to other studies and findings.
Now if a person has a degree in the field of which we are debating;
That’s a different story.
Well take what you have to say far more seriously, as our debate specifically regards your speciality; the area in which you studied, experimented, and examined for years!
However, we also have to remember;
Science and personal belief do not go hand in hand all the time.
A background in your field of work, especially religion,
Is a biased take.
There’s a reason people evaluate the person behind the studies.
“Where does this person come from? What’s their experience like? What have they studied?” Etc.
There is nothing wrong with being Religous, necessarily;
So long as you’re not forcing your beliefs on other people, using it as an excuse to hate or shun other people, utilizing religion as a valid reason for abuse…
But as the statistics have gone to show;
The less intelligent you are,
The more likely you are to be religious.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe in blindly accepting a fixed-set of beliefs and values, and instead value building a foundation of study, research, and cognitive thinking to see all factual sides of an issue before constructing a fully-built house (belief system) on top of it.
The priesthood is set up in a the form of a Hierarchy. Different levels of priesthood, obtained at different ages as you get older; each bearing more weight and responsibility than the last.
The older you get, the more that’s on your shoulders.
At each level of the Heirarchy of the priesthood, you are responsible for the levels below you; you only increase in duties.
Once you are ordained to the priesthood, you recieve a “line of authority” of everyone who came before you; the line that follows who gave the priesthood authority and power to whom; who then gave the priesthood to YOU.
It’s a big responsibility for a young boy; living up to his spiritual ancestors, not letting them down.
It also creates a very large sense of authority and pride in being able to hold the priesthood; the power to act in the name of God.
But with that priesthood duty, comes a multitude of other responsibilities.
It’s drilled into young men that their sole purpose in life is to provide for his wife and kids, be the priesthood holder for his entire family so they have access to God’s authority (since women aren’t allowed to hold that power), and to take care of literally everything under the sun such as finances, house, and cars, etc.
The man’s authority which acts as an umbrella covers her; and as such, her “failed” duties must be covered by her husband.
The weight of the entire household is fully on the shoulders of the husband.
And although the wife has very demanding expectations of her in the church as well, everything that the wife does, is a direct reflection of the husband that presides over her.
Burdens, weight, duty.
It explains why Mormon men tend to seek out “righteous wives” in the dating pool;
Because their wives’ abilities are a reflection of their husband and his authority over his family.
Mormon men are drawn to women who are less likely to complain about kids and house cleaning.
Because if she fails…the man has to sweep in.
Everything that is hers?
Is also his to oversee.
And it bears a lot of weight in the public, social eye of the Mormon church.
The husband, the man, is also at risk of getting released from church callings if he is struggling to make ends meet or provide for his family;
Because, as my husband told me; “How can you fulfill a simple calling if you can’t support your own family in your own home?”
I believe my husband used the word “Condescending” multiple times.
The Mormon men hold each other to an impossibly high standard; not necessarily a fault of their own, but rather due to the high expectations and teachings of the church.
So when one fails?
The quiet judgement and condescension towards each other as men is there.
They don’t let eachother live things down.
They internally and quietly police one another.
As my husband states; the men of the church are “Supportive in the most condescending way possible.”
But as stated above; he is supposed to be responsible for everyone else as well.
If someone needs help, say an external family member, it is expected that you help them regardless.
It is expected that you, as a priesthood holder, should be able to care for yourself, your family, and even external family such as your own mother and father in their older age.
Talk about a HEAVY weight to have placed on your shoulders;
If one of your children “fails” in the adult world, the man should have set himself up well enough to be able to continue care for that child, and is socially financially responsible for them still. Even if they are an adult.
Your child’s failure becomes your own;
Your child’s failure is a reflection of you.
So you better do what you can to get them back on their feet.
It all falls on the man. On his shoulders and reputation.
Church teaching or not,
The societal church expectations makes this a requirement of the men; outwardly or quietly.
There seems to be a pattern of negative mental health amongst the men in the LDS church.
There’s such insane pressure on the men to be successful, to provide, to “be a real man;”
They are told that it is not their job to take care of themself, but rather it’s their job to focus their care on everyone else;
To only engage in selfless service.
“By taking care of everyone else, God will take care of me. Everything will work out.”
This mindset absolutely wreaks havoc on men’s mental health in the church!
Men are taught to ignore any personal internal depression and suffering; because their emotions don’t matter. Everyone else around them is what matters.
External validation covers up the actual problems men battle internally every day.
They are taught to jump in and fix every problem and issue that arises immediately! Like it’s a personal duty to cater to everyone else;
even at the expense of their own self care and mental health.
My husband told me that they were taught that there were the Ten Commandments;
But that for the boys, there was an 11th.
And the 11th commandment?
To serve a f****** mission.
No excuses.
Hence the social shame if you do not go.
The church treats a mission like a simple ask;
But it’s asking a boy straight out of high school to pay the church to spend two years in a foreign country speaking a language they don’t know without seeing any family, friends or loved ones, susceptible to all sorts of diseases, sicknesses and injuries as well as foreign laws, governments and hospitals…
Why are we shaming boys for not wanting to do something like that?!
Since we left the church, my amazing husband has learned to accept any and all emotions he may feel; including anger, sadness, disappointment…grief.
He has worked very hard to learn to accept and really feel the emotions he feels, rather than shove them deep down inside and slap on a fake happy smile to cover them up.
I’m sure his family would say that leaving the church had made him lose his joy and happiness that they saw in him growing up…
The false, toxic positivity he always resorted to to handle his emotions;
Even when he lost two friends to suicide.
My husband told me that the men were taught that if they do everything right according to the church, doing everything you should be doing,
that you should be happy.
That discouragement would have no place within you.
That depression would have no place…
But the reality is??
Sometimes life is just shitty.
And covering up all emotions deemed as “negative” by the church with toxic positivity?
It doesn’t address the issues;
It just buries them.
And the men continue to learn to keep everything inside.
My husband once told me that he had a mission president who stated that he wanted to be in the “Hall of fame for daily repentance.”
And interesting thing to state.
Now, as humans, we are in no way opposed to the idea of daily self reflection and change for the better.
However,
Repentance is different.
Repentance is falling to your knees in weakness and begging a higher being for forgiveness of thoughts, actions, or behaviors that are deemed as “wrong” by the church.
Repentance focuses more on the sin and weakness of the person; not necessarily the betterment or development of the person. The focus of repentance is about accepting that you are lowly and need someone to save you.
Teaching people that they do things SO wrong that it’s considered a spiritual transgression and SIN,
every single day…
Is a psychologically abusive manipulation tactic.
And it’s drilled HARSHLY into everyone, men and women;
But men more so; what with their “higher authority” and “calling to the priesthood” in the church.
As we saw with “sexual purity,”
Men tend to be eaten alive on the daily by their imperfections and thoughts.
We aren’t saying that women aren’t;
But this post is focused on the men.
How do you build self Confidence as a man in the church with this type of rhetoric being drilled into you all the time?
“Doing better and being better” is not a bad motto for life. We all change, grow, develop. It’s a normal human thing.
However.
It can be taken to the extreme.
Men who are taught that they need to “become increasingly pure” all the time, for the rest of their life? To constantly seek worthiness, purity, and perfection?
That will do a number on a man’s mind.
And not in a healthy way.
My husband once told me that he repented when he stumbled over his words, when learning a second language on his mission.
He repented for not speaking a second language he was actively learning perfectly.
He also told me that he repented once because when he was on his mission, his mission companion would not wake up on time, and he felt as though he had failed as his companion. He felt as though he had sinned in his inability to look out for and keep his companion on the “right path,” doing the “right things,” and being “exact in obedience.”
He repented because he felt responsible for his “companion’s actions.”
And this just goes to show how deeply the idea of “become increasingly pure” that the church teaches can be taken to extremes so easily.
The men are given two options regarding their “worthiness” to hold the priesthood.
ONE,
They can be honest and admit their sins to a church leader; admit that they are not worthy to hold the priesthood, and go through the “repentance process” to regain the priesthood; BUT they will be silently, publicly shamed when it is noticed that they are not participating in priesthood duties in the church; a quiet humiliation.
Or TWO,
Stay silent, and don’t say anything to anyone about your “sin” and continue to participate in the priesthood duties of the church, keeping your own things private; BUT receive spiritual damnation by God for participating in things as an “unworthy” man and you “shall not have forgiveness in this world nor the world to come.”
Because using “God’s authority” unworthily brings damnation upon yourself. You are “mocking” God in acting in alleged “sin.”
But anything can be forgiven, right?
Apparently not; according to scripture.
The men just can’t win, either way.
And sin is subjective, by the way.
Every religion has a different idea about what counts as “sin.”
The shame on men for not being considered “worthy” according to the church’s standards, (drinking coffee, normal sexual self-exploration, not paying tithing to the church and instead skating directly to charities, etc.)
It runs DEEP.
Men naturally have desires to feel like they are successful in life. That they are valued, appreciated, that their life has worth, that they are loved and admired;
As does everyone.
But the church uses human desire as a weapon against its own members.
As young as age 8, you can be quietly, socially shamed if you don’t want to be baptized.
As young as age 12, you can be quietly, socially shamed for not being “worthy” and fulfilling your duties and responsibilities.
As young as age 18, you can be quietly shamed for deciding that a mission is not for you.
As an adult, you can be quietly shamed for having to ask another man to come and give your wife and children priesthood blessings under the roof of your own home, because you drink coffee and are now “unworthy.”
And it just keeps going.
The mental manipulation and abuse of men is endless.
And we wonder why there is such a crisis regarding men’s mental health.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe that men should be under so much intense pressure of having to carry literally everything on their shoulders, and that men’s mental health and self-care matters.
In the Mormon temple endowment ceremony for adults,
A big part of it involves bowing your head before God and angels, with your hand raised in the air while you say “yes,” and covenant deeply-bonding promises to the God above you are expected to uphold until the day you die.
So it’s not a surprise that even children start young, and sing “We bow our heads,”
Before they have any sort of inking or idea of the temple ordinances and spiritual bindings they will have to participate in later on in life.
The earlier you can desensitize a person,
The easier it is to get them to agree and go along with some more, abnormal, things later on in life.
Get used to bowing your heads before God, children.
But we feel as though people forget that the stories of Jesus entail eating amongst whores, destroying tables at the temple, and cursing the Pharisees and government.
Religions twist the tales of Jesus to get children to be “good,”
To behave. To sit still. To obey.
But it is possible to raise your children to be good, kind, generous, and loving people,
Without the feelings of obligation which come from following a person of which they are told literally suffered, died, and bled for them.
Does a child singing “I’m trying to be like Jesus” also entail the bleeding, pain, gore and death he went through?
Does a child singing “I’m trying to be like Jesus” also entail self sacrifice to the extent of death for others?
There are far less gruesome ways to teach children how to be good people.
“THIS is what truth is, children. The church. the stories. THIS is truth. So let’s sing about it; make it a catchy tune so it will stick in your heads young!”
Teaching children young to utilize toxic positivity prevents children from understanding and accepting the other emotions they will feel as they go throughout life.
It teaches them that happiness is good. A smile is GOOD.
But anger? Sadness? Pain?
Hide it away.
“Turn that frown upside down!”
Your other emotions are bad; negative.
Only be happy!
How is that not a harmful thing to teach children?
Now that’s something straight from a horror movie.
Because they believe it’s one thing to manipulate adults…but it’s a whole other thing and a whole lot worse to do it to children before they can even understand what’s going on.
I had a friend; also a born and raised member of the LDS church. One of the girls who hung out with us in homeroom. We’ll call her Ally.
She and my other friend, we’ll call her Bree, came up to me one unexpected day and informed me that our fellow classmate, Catrina…
Had a crush on me.
I remember hearing the news and feeling a little stunned.
Not because I was offended, or grossed out by the thought of being liked by a girl.
But because I had never even considered the possibility that a girl could like me in that way.
I remember running to the bathroom and calling my mom.
I told her about the news I had just discovered,
“Mom, a girl likes me.”
She paused.
I asked her what to do.
She told me to treat Catrina just like I would with a boy who had a crush on me.
I nodded in agreement, we ended the call, and I headed back to class.
“Treat Catrina like a boy.”
The only thing is,
Catrina wasn’t a boy.
She was a girl.
As the days passed of continued time spent with the girls and Cass,
I found myself secretly hoping that Catrina would continue touching my hair; braiding it. Brushing it.
That she would still come over to my desk and talk with me in the mornings.
I found myself hoping that the word of her crush on me getting out would not deter her from wanting to be around me; to spend time with me.
If anything, the news of her crush on me made me want to spend even more time with her.
Internally, I was giddy at the thought of her liking me.
Of course, being raised mormon, I told myself I couldn’t like her back; didn’t even consider the possibility that maybe I had liked her as a little more than a friend.
But I was definitely secretly and internally excited that a girl could like me in that way.
Sadly, our friendship became distant.
Maybe it was because of the news that escaped about her crush on me,
Of her liking girls.
Of the social norms of middle school that made Cassie’s crush on me feel like a ground-breaking news story.
Of the whispers in the hallways.
Maybe it was because when I felt her growing distant, I let it happen;
because after all, being gay was a sin, right?
Catrina was in the wrong.
Right?
So although I became sad at her becoming more and more distant,
I found myself also turning my back on her.
Allowing her to silently hide away.
Ignoring the jolt of disappointment I felt when she changed her desk in class to be at the very back of the classroom instead of near mine.
And I shrugged my shoulders and carried on my merry Mormon way.
I still think about her sometimes.
And wonder what life would have been like,
…if I had been raised to be allowed to like her back.
Liking boys and crushing on them was normal for me.
Expected, even.
Whenever my family asked me about crushes, it always revolved around “he/him.”
Hanging out with male friends was always more closely examined than any of my associations with my female friends.
In middle school, I also developed a crush on this boy; let’s call him Liam.
He was tall, muscular, strong, athletic, and had a head full of blonde hair.
One of the “popular” boys.
I pined after him for a long time; always tried to talk to him, be around him. Always got a little rush of excitement when we would brush by each other, or he came my way.
And actually;
He ended up being my valentine for one year in high school.
I remember he got me a box of chocolates.
The best chocolate I had ever had in my teenage years of young crushes.
But not because the chocolate was actually good, of course.
I really liked this guy. Crushed on him pretty hard.
But then a foreign exchange student from Germany came along, and well…he followed after her, instead.
Regardless, I could remember how it felt to be around him;
The goosebumps that would crawl across my skin,
How my heart would race when we touched.
It was the same way I had felt about that girl in middle school when she braided my hair…
A couple years into marriage, I finally came to the realization about my sexuality;
…roughly at the same time as my Mormon faith deconstruction was crumbling regarding the lgbtq+ community.
He held me while I cried, and sobbed.
He talked and walked with me through my “what-if’s,” even if it hurt him to hear.
He stood by me when I decided to come out to our loved ones.
He grounded me and helped me to not retreat when others criticized me with assumptions of “are you sure it’s not just a social construct that makes you believe you feel this way,” and bombarded me with questions about “if I was sure,” and “how did I know?”
Because they can’t imagine how an organization could place limits on the way that loving a person of the opposite gender would be more acceptable than loving a person of the same gender;
Instead of personal peace; we found stress about making sure we were obeying and keeping all of our commandments, promises, and covenants with God.
Instead of love, we found judgement in every little tiny action and deed we did that did not 100% align with the church teachings.
Instead of fulfillment, we found ourselves running our bodies, minds, and energy straight into the ground all day, every day as we tried to keep up with all of the church’s demands for us to live by.
And worst of all?
We grew up hating ourselves.
Hating that we were a fallen, imperfect wreck of a human.
Hating that we were so weak and helpless without a savior to save us.
Hating that we were unworthy, and full of such a negative, evil nature.
These were the church teachings that formed our internal dialogue of our own self-worth and importance…from a VERY young age.
Does that sound like uplifting, positive self-talk to you?
And what’s fascinating is that the church will pair THESE harmful, self-deprecating teachings right along positive ones, such as claiming that God loves them so much that he sent His only Begotten Son to die for them. That their worth of their soul is great in the eyes of God. That there is hope and salvation for them because God loves them perfectly.
But these words are to disguise what’s going on underneath…
The use of self-deprecating language and teachings about oneself and who they are as a natural, human being,
reinforces the negative self-talk that humans already seem to have in their systems from society alone.
This rhetoric feeds on people’s negative self-image; and when people hear the words of being nothing, being worthless, needing to be saved by someone else…
It makes them feel heard. Understood.
Gives them almost a sense of peace and validation in their own self-hatred.
They find comfort in the negative self-importance,
Because it’s what they’re already used to telling themselves on a daily basis.
It feeds into negative self-talk,
Instead of helping to try and achieve peace and love for yourself and who you are naturally.
Because they don’t believe in teaching people that they are incapable, weak, fallen sinners, and nothing…without someone else coming to save them; in teaching people to reject their inner abilities, turn away from themselves, and learning to rely on external validation.
Sure, Joseph’s story is definitely an entertaining one; full of magical guidance and visions by angels, lost records of a long-forgotten people, the re-welcoming of priesthood “magic” back into the world…
But do we really have to go so far as to believe the story is 100% factual?
I mean, any good story teller will most definitely change some details to add more flare and emphasis; may change the story line a bit every time it’s told.
It’s what makes stories so entertaining and incredible to listen to.
While we are not opposed to tales of magic and folklore, and actually do believe in the functionality of spirituality and tools to manage that spirituality;
The difference between us and Joseph Smith,
Is that we see our spirituality as an individual, personal, and beautiful practice;
Whereas Joseph Smith?
He saw the desperation and need for spirituality,
And turned it into a way where he could marry young girls, lead a cult following, and establish a very wealthy cult-like organization.
The church claims that Joseph Smith was not a well-educated man.
They teach that it was by the miraculous power of God that Joseph was able to translate these golden plates that he had found. That God had provided tools for the translation.
At least, that’s what we had always been taught growing up in the church.
However, Joseph smith WAS educated in one particular area…
And that was,
the Bible.
A man who has an incredible gift for story telling, a man who had a history of con artistry, a man who claimed that he possessed magical abilities to find treasure and Gold, a man who was very well-versed in the Bible…
Is it really a surprise to consider that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon himself?
That he was able to imagine all of these fantastical ideas of enchantment, the devil, the raising of the dead, of lost and slaughtered civilizations?
That he was able to create and write stories that fit like a puzzle piece with the Bible he was so well-versed in?
That people loved his stories and claims so much that they eagerly grabbed the Book of Mormon that had so many other unheard stories to tell?
We are supposed to believe that Joseph had the golden plates and translated them into the Book of Mormon…
But nobody else saw them?!
Except for a few fellow leaders of this newly established church and organization?
Does that not raise at least a few red flags?
Should we really base our entire belief system and lifestyle off of a couple of guys who tell their followers to “trust me bro, I saw them! They’re legit!”
And to live our lives blinding following a religion that was started by a story-telling con artist?
People really truly believe that Joseph was told by God to marry multiple young women and take multiple wives, some of which were taken without Emma, his first wife’s, knowledge?
I mean, Warren Jeffs did just that as well!
We’re supposed to believe those were spiritual Sealings?
We’re supposed to believe that Joseph didn’t see that his power over people could benefit him and that he was “just doing what God commanded him?”
Some days we greatly fear that people have lost their critical thinking skills.
Sure, it’s easy to believe in fantasy tales that promise us hope and a surety of eternal families and life.
But can also be dangerous, and keep us in an echo chamber that restricts us from exploring the world; from exploring other sources of spirituality.
Joseph Smith claimed to have these incredible gifts of visions, revelations, and even translation given to him by God.
And yet, the kinderhook plates debunked his claims almost immediately.
If you are unfamiliar with the story of the kinderhook plates;
These plates were brought to Joseph Smith and the people who brought them claimed they were similar to the scrolls found amongst the mummies Joseph had translated, etc.
Joseph Smith took the kinderhook plates and then “translated” them by the “power of God.”
And once Joseph translated the plates,
The people who brought the kinderhook plates to Joseph admitted…
That they had made the whole thing up.
That the kinderhook plates contained nothing but gibberish.
Joseph Smith had not translated a single thing.
But had acted as though he had.
His claims of his godly translation gifts were debunked.
People STILL believe that Joseph Smith genuinely found and translated golden plates into what is known today as the Book of Mormon by the power of God.
They don’t want to believe that Joseph’s gift of translation is a fraud, because, going by the church’s own rhetoric;
If the translation wasn’t true,
Then that means that the Book of Mormon isn’t true,
Don’t fall for the hoaxes of con men who want to be adored and followed.
Follow yourself.
Follow the guidance you were inherently and naturally born with.
Don’t let society convince you to limit yourself,
To box yourself in,
To rob yourself of true life!
Use your head.
Think critically.
Don’t take everything as 100% truth based on your own personal hopes.
And that’s not advice that’s limited just to religion.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because Joseph Smith was an obvious con man who they refuse to blindly follow based on the claims of other people, emotional feelings, and “blind faith.”
Joseph not only married other women, but he did so behind the back of his first wife, Emma Smith; all in the name of following alleged “revelation” to participate in the practice from God Himself.
And while the LDS church debates and argues that the marriages “weren’t for sex,” “just for eternity alone,” etc; the fact of the matter remains, in which Joseph was involved with multiple women;
At the expense of the heartbreak of his first wife, Emma.
I mean, it was all done in secret as well; hidden from some of the church’s own members.
Joseph knew what he was doing. And he was trying to normalize the polygamist relationships; slowly introduce it. Desensitize his followers to it.
And members to this day still try to defend his actions; try to claim that Joseph truly was acting in Godliness.
I mean, the church does indeed have a history and current-day tradition of sexism and the abuse of women; banning them from holding spiritual priesthood authority, claiming their biggest value is at home raising children…seeing women as sexual objects.
A little group called the FLDS; the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints.
The church likes to claim it has no relation or connection to the FLDS.
And yet…
The FLDS are a group of LDS members who broke off from the LDS church when the LDS church discontinued the practice of polygamy due to social backlash.
The FLDS believed the practice, introduced by Joseph smith, should continue. And so, the FLDS were created.
The church constantly claims that they have no connection whatsoever to Warren Jeffs or the FLDS. The church preaches that the practice of polygamy was discontinued because, well, God said so. The LDS church condemns and rebukes the fact that the FLDS continued the practice when the LDS discontinued it.
However,
It’s like the church seems to forget that THEIR PROPHET was the one who introduced the practice in the first place.
But this would be just like claiming “it was normal back then for women not to have voting rights. It was normal back then that women would not have their own bank account or property. It was normal back then for women to have to rely on the men around them for survival.”
Any person that can justify the marriages of young girls to grown men in the name of God…
Are blind, ignorant, and actively choosing not to see the truth.
Who in their right minds would agree and defend a grown man who claimed that God told him to take multiple wives, some being minor girls, and claim that his actions were legitimate??
These are the same actions Warren Jeffs involved himself in.
And yet, the active LDS members refuse to see the connections;
…much like the current-day FLDS groups who refused to accept Samuel Bateman for participating in the same things their previous leader, Warren Jeffs, did.
The people within the cult are generally strategically blinded to the bias within their own walls.
Although, some active members may try to deny this fact about the church; say we don’t understand Sealings, claim that it’s something spiritual and not sexual; claim that the sealings in the afterlife is godly knowledge that we don’t understand until we die.
Convenient.
And yet, men may be sealed to multiple women while alive in this lifetime; but their other “wives” are merely already passed away.
So the men may continue to practice polygamy and have multiple wives in the afterlife.
A “patriarchal blessing” is generally understood as an individual, written-down blessing that members of the church receive ONCE in their entire life.
The blessing is done by a man called by the church to be a “patriarch;” this calling is a lifelong calling, and the man holds this calling until the day he dies.
The blessing is performed only after the patriarch is given a day or more to “study,” “ponder,” and “pray” to receive inspiration as to what will go into the blessing for the specified-requesting individual.
The blessing is performed by the patriarch, where he places his hands on the head of the recipient. The Parriarch then beings the blessing, and says “words of inspiration” that come to him, and it is believed that these words are “directly from God.”
It is widely believed that the words spoken in the blessing are PERSONALLY FOR YOU. Individual, unique, and literally direct guidance from God Himself, given to you through the patriarch.
Another fascinating aspect about blessings is that the church asks that the patriarchal blessings you receive, NOT be shared with anyone else, except maybe close family and a future spouse because they are “sacred;” direct guidance from God for your life.
We recently stumbled across a website created by someone; we aren’t sure who. It could be an ex-member, active member, etc. but regardless, it was this website that we found.
The website was created to compile and compare different patriarchal blessings that were given to members of the LDS church.
And for the first time; we were able to read and compare our blessings to those of others.
And we were SHOCKED by what we found.
Because while we had believed our entire lives that these blessings were so personal, individualized, and from God directly to us…
We discovered that the blessings were meant to MAKE you feel special, loved, and individual.
But the actual verbiage and wording used in the majority of blessings
Turned out to be repeated on hundreds of others.
While there is some verbiage that is bound to be the same, such as certain requirements for the prayer,
A lot of the promised blessings were EXACTLY the same as that of 100’s of other blessings.
They all gave the same promises of marriage, church callings and leadership, having children, being a “leader amongst the women of the church” (I had that one).
And while the church claimed that the blessings were individual and personal by God,
We discovered that the blessings were nothing but a copy-and-paste ritual that was yet another thing to keep members holding on to the church.
People want guidance, and someone to tell them that they’ll do great things in life.
People want someone to tell them how to make decisions, what routes to take, where to go.
And who else can understand you than an all-knowing, all-loving deity in the universe; right?!
So members cling to these blessings and promises that God “gives them individually and directly,” as a means to feel seen, heard, and understood by an eternal being who can understand them better than any other human on planet earth.
After all, it can be very lonely, feeling like no one understands or sees you as you truly are.
The patriarchal blessings provide that sense of being seen, loved, and understood.
So of course, people are going to clutch them as tightly as they can.
Study them their entire lives.
Devour them like individualized scripture from God’s mouth himself.
One listen to the girlscamp podcast “patriarchal cursings” had tears streaming down my face by the end and I listened to stories of how patriarchal blessings have vastly impacting their lives for the worst;
And we recognized that these patriarchal blessings have a powerful psychological effect on people;
To the extremes.
And that’s when we realized that these blessings, for the first time ever,
Could possibly be dangerous, even
With how great of a psychological influence they have on the members of this church.
After all; it’s directly from God.
So why wouldn’t you take its advice? Heed it? Mark it? Study it? Pray over it? LIVE by it?
But is it really GOD who’s giving those blessings to you?
Or do you just want to believe that it is?
We know by now that people will believe what they want to believe,
Even if contradictory evidence stares them directly in the face.
The church tells people, “don’t share patriarchal blessings!”
Why?
Because you’re worried people will find out that their blessing is just another copy-and-paste paper like everyone else’s?
That these blessings aren’t actually personalized from God Himself?
That the blessings just act as a retention effort to keep membership numbers in the church up?
That the blessings promise people things that can take waiting their entire lives or longer to be fulfilled; so long as they “remain faithful in the church??”
Sounds like a retention effort to me.
Don’t be deceived;
The blessings aren’t from a deity directly to you.
They’re made up to give you false hope of “promised” blessings.
To keep your retention in the church until the day you die.
And with certain houses come certain “blessings,” I suppose.
Like being good with animals as a Hufflepuff, smart with words like a Ravenclaw, stealthy like a slytherin, or brave like a gryffindor.
The church is heavy on “family history” and “lineage” work.
They get their members extremely involved in their own personal heritage, lineage, stories of loved ones. The church creates beautiful connections between living persons and their past ancestors.
And then the church takes this love of genealogy, and tells members that if they remain “faithful” and “worthy,” that they can receive their patriarchal blessing in which they will find out what “lineage” they come from.
People eagerly jump on this opportunity, with the hope of a deeper connection with ancestors, tied with a desire to feel seen, loved, and guided by a being who knows them so deeply and personally.
And thus the connections between members and their “patriarchal blessings” are created.
And they have a hard time letting go of them,
Or even allowing a single thought in that permits them to even consider the idea that maybe these blessings aren’t from God;
But yet another manipulation tactic to keep membership numbers high.
Because who wouldn’t want to believe in such beautiful promises, hopes and dreams?
And how manipulative is that for the church to use human hopes and dreams against it’s own members,
Just to keep them paying and contributing to the church with exploited free labor their entire lives?
“Oh, your promised blessings haven’t come true still?? Oh don’t worry…they’ll be promised after you die!”
“Just remain true and faithful to us your entire life,even if the blessings aren’t coming true! Just wait until you die, then you’ll get those promises!!”
What a convenient little loophole to tell its members.
Your blessings from the patriarchal blessing you received are coming true?? GREAT! See?? We told you God would fulfill your promised blessings!!
You’re living a true and faithful life in the church and your blessings aren’t coming true?? Don’t worry! They will! They’re promised once you die! Just keep going and keep living! You’ll see it fulfilled eventually!
And the echo chamber makes a re-appearance.
And confirmation bias roars it’s head.
And members spend their entire lives donating money, exploited free labor, and countless brutal hours to the church
Until the day they die,
All in the name of a false promise.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church,
Because they disagree with using the natural human desire to be seen, loved, heard and deeply understood by someone, as a manipulation tactic to coerce people into being exploited through unpaid labor and financial contributions to a billion-dollar organization until the day they die all in the hope of obtaining a false promise.
Because they don’t like billion-dollar organizational manipulators who change and adapt their business belief systems and statements just to become more relevant and popular to the modern crowds, so as to not lose followers.
We have heard many an active member state things along the lines of,
“The church won’t cut you off from your family! There has to be a way you’ll see your family, even in the afterlife! God will make it work out!”
“I don’t think God would actually do that to us! I think there will be ways to see one another again! I don’t think we’ll truly be cut off from our family!”
Etc.
This is shocking, as it makes us think
“Did we even go to the same church?? Did we not read and hear the same things growing up?”
Because the church most definitely states that if you don’t keep your covenants,
Utilizing the love family members have for one another to police each other,
Is manipulative and cold as f***.
The church subtly teaches family members to ridicule one another, judge each other, criticize and “correct” eachother if they believe a family member is not “living up to gospel standards;”
Because what’s at risk?
An empty chair at their table in heaven.
A lost and cut off loved one.
And so family members justify the criticism, ridicule, judgement and harshness they use on one another;
Because if they’re just following the commandments and what the church wants them to do,
And convince themselves that they’re doing it because they want all members of their family to be in heaven together,
The church even goes so far as to PHYSICALLY exile certain families from the temple if they aren’t “keeping their covenants” or living up to church standards;
An example of what will happen in the afterlife if one does not keep their “covenants;”
These members stand outside, while the rest of their family is inside the temple watching a sealing, or participating in an ordinance.
This individual is quite literally and physically “cut off” from their family.
And people don’t believe the church teaches that you’ll be cut off from your family if you don’t obey all their commandments and covenants?
It’s very OBVIOUSLY evident that they will do just that;
You don’t want to lose your mom, your dad, your spouse…
Your kids.
But the church?
It weaponizes it against you.
And uses fear to get you to comply.
–
Suggested additional reading:
Blog post: “Reason 23; Fear/Guilt-based coercion and compliance”
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church,
Because they don’t want to be a part of an organization that uses a person’s fear of losing their family, as an internal weapon against themselves; because they don’t want to be a part of a church that divides families.
To start, take this above quote. “It will not be possible to survive” already is a fear-based teaching.
What are people scared of?
They’re scared of death; of the uncertainty as to what happens or doesn’t happen after it. They fear death; and therefore, the church utilizes language such as “it will not be possible to survive…”
“Unless you follow us.”
“Unless you do what we say, follow the commandments we follow,”
It’s funny to us to hear family members say things like “why do you think we would judge you for leaving the church?” Or “why wouldn’t you just come talk to us about your struggles in the church?”
Because
don’t they see what the church has conditioned them to believe?
How the church had conditioned them to respond to automatically defend the church and it’s “principles”
They don’t even recognize the own bias or conditioning the church has implanted so deeply into them.
They don’t even recognize what the church is really teaching them in between the lines,
Sheltering themselves with rose colored glasses about the church.
But we digress.
And so the fear of the last days, the second coming, the terrible return of a great God who will smite the earth, the unknown after death, the fear of losing your loved ones;
It all influences them to stay.
Fear is a powerful influencer.
What a thing to do;
using the love you have for your family and friends to coerce you into obeying the church.
“But I’m not scared of death! I live this way because I love god. It’s not fear!”
• Most people are not honest with themselves about their deep subconscious fears.
“The warnings sound like threats to the wicked because the wicked are living in such a way that the message is scary to them! If you’re righteous, you have nothing to fear!”
• Is that what you tell yourself to settle your own personal fears that you’re too afraid to explore without religion as a coping mechanism?
“I just like having a belief in something after death; we may not know 100%, but I have faith in the church’s teachings and gospel that my family will be together forever!”
• It’s not bad to hope or have faith in the idea of a beautiful afterlife in which you will be with your loved ones forever.
But you do realize that you can believe that;
Without religion…
Right?
You don’t have to follow a certain religion to have your own belief system.
All belief systems are made up of something, came from somewhere;
Came from people.
You can believe what you want to believe,
Have hope and faith in what you want to have hope and faith in,
Without religion.
Without the added fear.
But I digress.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church;
Because they don’t believe that natural human fears and spiritual coercion should be preyed on and used to manipulate people into following and contributing money to a billion-dollar organization for the rest of their lives.
This is probably our longest post yet; and we feel VERY passionately and personally connected to this one, as we are still dealing with some of the painful traumas and after-affects that come with serving an LDS mission.
–
In the LDS church, missionary work is often widely discussed.
The church suggests that missionary work can include a variety of things, such as actually putting on a tie and knocking on doors to preach the word, inviting friends and loved ones to come to church and activities, participating in teaching others about the church, or even just “leading by example,” as they call it.
All in all, missionary work is one of the foundations of the LDS church…
As is LABOR…
And while we are not in any way OPPOSED to hard work or labor;
In the church, only the men “hold” the priesthood, which is the “power and authority to act in God’s name and in HIS behalf.”
And as such, the men are held to a certain level of “standards” and “worthiness” to be able to retain that authority and power. This alone is an entirely different topic we could dive into, however that is for another day.
But the ability to “hold the priesthood” includes the expectation of priesthood DUTY for men to participate in this very demanding type of missionary work.
The young boys are able to serve a mission at the young age of 18, FRESH out of high school. Many of these kids have never before lived on their own or been away from their parents and families for such an extensive period of time. And yet, the church’s expectations, combined with church societal expectations, puts immense pressure on their young boys to go and serve these missions immediately upon the completion of high school.
The church likes to call these young kids “men” at the age of 18. And while the legal age dictates “adulthood,” I think we can all agree here that age 18 is a baby age; a 0-year-old adult. Very fresh and new to the “adult world;” with their brain only about halfway towards full psychological development.
It sounds exaggerated, but as my husband and I both have personally served LDS missions, mine being in New York City and my husband’s being in the country of Chile,
We can tell you from first-hand experience that the rules and strict requirements are NOT exaggerated.
You quite literally eat, sleep and BREATHE the church for 1.5-2 years straight.
I remember one time on my mission, when I was extremely depressed and sad. I was on “exchanges,” which is where you leave your assigned area as a missionary and go into the assigned area of another to “gain experience” from fellow missionaries and how they each do their missionary work.
I had played music for YEARS, participated in orchestra all throughout middle and high school. Music was my escape; my coping mechanism.
And I was going CRAZY with only being permitted to listen to church music for 1.5 years.
So once, during an exchange with a fellow missionary who was considered a “missionary leader,” I noticed that they had a ukulele in their New York apartment.
I was immediately thrilled!! My own instrument, the cello, had been far too big to bring with me on my missionary endeavors.
And so, thrilled, I picked up the ukulele!
Now, I only knew ONE song on the ukulele, as I had only played it once or twice, and it was “I can’t help falling in love with you,” by Elvis Presley. It’s a slow, sweet and simple song, and i always loved to hear it strummed on guitar. And so that’s what I started to play on the ukulele.
I got goosebumps, chills of peace and joy that ran up and down my arms and body; and as I played, for the first time, I felt like my mental health wasn’t so bad.
Until my fellow missionary the “sister training leader” ran over and physically YANKED the ukulele out of my hands, stating “THAT is not an approved song to play! No love songs!” And she walked away with the ukulele in her hands.
I remember sitting there, stunned.
There was no need to be so rude…
She didn’t even try to talk to me about it; just physically yanked it away from me.
I still have some pain and hurt when I remember that memory, roughly 7 years after my return from my mission.
But alas, this has become a great simile as to how I felt growing up in the church my entire life.
Having every little enjoyment and pleasure that brought me peace YANKED from my hands;
It is interesting, how the church demands that while missionaries are serving their missions, that they refrain from crushes, flirting, or any type of dating at all for those 1.5-2 years.
My fellow sister missionary was SHOOK by hearing a simple love song play on the ukulele without any lyrics.
And with missionaries being so young as they are, you can imagine what a FEAT this is to restrict; I mean, developmentally, these kids are at those stages of sexual growth and development. But the church teaches them young to push down that desire and place the church first.
I do have to laugh a little, however, as it says “with someone of the opposite gender.” I imagine that provides a good loophole for closeted lgbtq+ kids; and as they should! Love is love!
But it is strange how the church demands complete celibacy not only during missions but during life in general,
And then expects these kids to go home, get married as their next goal, and NOT have intimacy issues in the bedroom?
Education is more important than restriction, in our opinion.
Regardless, dating and ANY emotions regarding human love or sex;
Once a week, missionaries are expected to sit down together with their missionary companion and hold “companionship inventory.”
Where, basically, you tell each other some positives about the other…
But then discuss where you think your missionary companion could change or be better. And THESE were never fun.
For a lot of missionaries, at least in my experience, they bottled up all of their angry emotions towards their companions and waited until this “companionship inventory” to UNLEASH all of their anger and frustrations on you.
It was miserable.
That sister who took my ukulele? Snatched it right out of my hands without even talking to me?
She tried to conduct a “companionship inventory” an hour later. She acted like everything was fine; laughing and smiling and acting like she didn’t JUST torn something right out of my hands. In her mind, I was in the “wrong,” after all, which gave her the right to treat me in that way.
I refused to talk to her; feeling hurt and unseen, not trusting myself to say anything kind, trying to regulate my own emotions.
She got angry at me that I wouldn’t talk, that I was working through things internally without lashing out at her.
On top of never being alone, being forced to participate in “companionship inventories,” and being cut off from your other loved ones, friends and support systems…
Missionaries can’t bring their personal phones.
When I served my mission, I had to buy a specific-type of phone that was able to download and utilize an app that LOCKED DOWN the phone in the ways the church desired.
The only apps that the phone would allow us tto download were church-approved apps and sources.
Of course, we had our “area book” app that we utilized to keep records of EVERY, and I mean EVERY single person we came into contact with.
If we got their name, number, and were able to sneak a tiny church lesson in there; they technically were qualified by missionary standards to become a “new person” to teach in our missionary records.
And even if we moved out of the area to a different one;
The records of every person we came into contact with in that previous area, remain in that area so that the next set of missionaries can track them down.
But anyways, the phones we were allowed to bring, which we had to buy for ourselves by the way; the church didn’t provide them for us;
Were SUPER locked down.
Meaning, no social media, no movies, no “secular” music, etc.
As missionaries, we would have to share music through downloaded songs onto a Google Drive in order to have music to listen to; music that was church-approved, of course.
And on top of that;
We weren’t allowed to utilize the phones without our missionary companion being able to have eyes on our screen at all times.
At least, that was the rule for MY mission, anyways.
Who else is better able to keep an eye on the missionaries and if they are following all the rules or not;
Than the missionaries themselves?
We were always told that these “councils” would prepare us for our future marriages. (Marriage grooming at age 18, 19 at its finest).
But in my experience?
It just gave missionaries the chance to be cruel to each other;
And claim “I’m just being honest, and doing what the church wants!” As an excuse.
The church takes the the young, ignorant developing minds of young kids and sends them abroad for two years, with little family contact, doing nothing but eating, sleeping, talking, walking and BREATHING thechurch.
And why the young women of the church are only able to serve 1.5 years instead of the full 2 years like the boys? Great question. It’s one we’ve never found an answer to. But we chalk it up to the classic case of sexism and misogyny.
Regardless, missionaries are COMPLETELY enveloped in the church, living away from home, and being formed and raised by the church in those very crucial years of brain development and growth.
But that’s how the church likes it.
6.5 days a week of CHURCH WORK.
A .5 day of “freedom;”
But even then; that half day “off” is not all what it’s cut out to be.
They get one HALF day a week; called a “P-day,” or “preparation day;” where missionaries utilize that time to do what they need to do to prepare for their work in the upcoming week.
But that is the only time during the week that missionaries are able to do their grocery shopping, laundry, and talk to their families.
I had plenty a mission companion who would chew me out if I even suggested doing laundry on a day that wasn’t our assigned preparation day.
It’s not exactly a restful day, either.
For me, lugging my laundry through the streets and public transit of New York to the laundromat and hauling groceries to and from the store on buses and trains was some DRAINING physical labor.
Not even CLOSE to being a “rest day” or a “break.”
I spent the majority of my phone calls with my parents crying because of how drained and exhausted I was ALL the time.
And I know I’m not the only missionary who was alone in this.
The schedules these kids are expected to follow are excessive and unhealthy.
It’s abusive to force these kids into exhaustive labor from sunup until night for 1.5-2 years straight with no breaks at all in between, and expect these kids to PAY for it themselves, too.
Do we not see how inanely abusive these missions are to missionaries??
I have been depressed before.
But not as badly and as deeply as I had been serving my mission.
But I brushed it off; said that maybe “Satan” was just trying to discourage me, get to me because I was doing “God’s work.”
I went to a CHURCH-assigned therapist in Manhattan to help me get through the feelings I was having, how much I was struggling.
The therapist just told me to keep pushing forward in the work, and that it was only 1.5 years.
But I kept going to therapy anyways; it was the only time I was able to feel like I could see the city and explore. The only time I was permitted to take a lunch in Central Park every now and again and sit in nature and breathe.
But eventually I quit going all together, as she just kept telling me the same things every time. Just keep pushing forward in the work.
And so I continued in the work. Still depressed, still drained, still struggling to survive.
I remember being so mentally depressed and struggling so bad, that I would try so hard to do things like have “movie nights” with approved church media, such as the Book of Mormon videos that the church was slowly releasing at the time. We would watch the weekly 20 min. Video with popcorn. And I couldn’t tell you how many times we watched the Joseph smith movie.
We craved so deeply to have any sense of normalcy, that we tried very hard to create that within the guidelines of the mission.
But it never really helped to alleviate the stress and insane strenuous schedule we were required to follow.
And our “P-day” was always exhausting; not restful;
We never even had the full day to do what we needed to do; we were always stressed trying to cram all of our chores into the hours we were given to be able to complete them.
The church even outwardly ADMITS that their “P-days” are NOT really a day off; that they don’t give their missionaries a day off.
Many times I heard on my mission, “If the only person you convert is yourself, then you brought one more soul closer to God and can call it a success!”
Sometimes I don’t think that people realize…
The purpose of a mission isn’t just to recruit more people into the ranks of the church (so that the church can add to it’s financial wealth);
It’s to convert the kids themselves who are already in the church, so as to retain them and their financial contributions in the church’s organization; hopefully for the rest of their lives!
Because if they can solidify and convince kids at a young age that the “church is true,”
Missionaries study and learn how to explain the gospel to others they encounter and teach;
They learn how to strategically justify and back up the church in the face of opposition.
They learn how to convince themselves to believe what the church teaches.
And that’s what the church wants from them, ultimately;
To become pros at finding loopholes and justifications for the church; to convince themselves of the church’s “truth.”
And unfortunately;
it works.
It’s why debating or arguing with an active Mormon member regarding their religion; generally seems to just go in circles and not do anything.
Members are PROS at convincing themselves the church is right.
And that’s why it’s nearly impossible to get them to genuinely see things from the outside; unless they are willing to actually step outside those church boundaries.
Members will scream into the echo chamber as much as they can and convince themselves of its truth, despite all obvious evidence that is set right in front of their noses.
I know when I debated non-members back as an active member of the church, I didn’t see myself as close-minded, discriminatory, or other;
I genuinely thought that I was on the right side of things; and that those with whom I was debating were just not understanding the gravity or the fullness of the gospel and church teachings.
I genuinely thought I was just a more progressive LDS woman, and that God would figure all things out! We just had to trust Him!
Until I actually dared to take a step outside of the church;
Escape that echo chamber.
And only then was my mind TRULY opened, with realclarity and understanding.
Missionary work ties deeply into one of our it last few post topics as well; “Divine Trauma Bonding” and “Collective Effervescence.” Reading those two blog posts will allow a deeper dive and understanding into the aspect of missionary work, and how these things go hand in hand for member retention and “conversion.”
The church always has vocalized concerns over “retention” and “conversion.” But they tell the members of the church that it’s because they want all of God’a children to come back home.
What they don’t tell the members is that the church works like a pyramid scheme; they need the money from those on the bottom to support the organization at the top.
We can choose to live a life of fantasy if we want;
But at the end of the day, that’s how the world works; organizations run on the backs of followers, free labor benefitting those at the top;
It’s a corrupt world and Religous organizations are a part of it.
Without followers, the organization would fade away;
until the next “prophet” who claims he is to start yet another new religion arrives.
Missionary work for boys is considered a mandatory “priesthood duty.”
So that totally excuses the fact that the church doesn’t allow missionaries to contact their families except but once a week or maybe on a holiday, right?!
It totally excuses how these kids are not able to visit home or allow family to visit them during their missionary service; right?!
It totally excuses isolating these kids as much as possible from their lives and loved ones for 1.5-2 years of the most intensive work they’ll ever have to pay for the right to participate in because it’s a requirement of the church, right?!!
We SOBBED with joy when we were told on my mission about the rule change that missionaries would be allowed to call their families once a week, instead of just on holidays.
That alone shows how isolating a mission can be; how much emotion there is in being so separated and cut off from your support system back home.
I can’t tell you how many times I, as a young woman in a skirt, found myself in precarious situations on my mission.
We were followed by gang members and men, stepped over the bodies of people on the street, ran from hooded men who followed us for blocks, and found ourselves knocking on the doors of random strangers in the projects of New York City at night while a helicopter flew above us searching for a suspect.
There was one night where we were searching for a certain person that we had found in our missionary records of someone who may be interested in hearing about the church;
We heard gun shots around the corner.
My missionary companion and I froze, and RAN back to our vehicle and went straight home;
not because we were scared, we were, trust me.
But because it was late at night and we had to be home soon anyways according to missionary rules. CRAZY.
And my husband could tell you that he was robbed at gun point not once, but TWICE on his own mission.
Overall; missions are NOT safe.
Have you seen the movie “Heretic?”
My mother asked me if I, as a missionary, would have gone inside the home.
And I told her truthfully; “yes, yes I would have.”
Because nothing stops the missionaries from seeing sharing the gospel as their first priority.
And as missionaries, we believed we would be divinely protected by God for the work we were doing.
Missionaries are in foreign lands, countries, and cities that they are unfamiliar with.
Half the time, these missionaries have to learn and entirely new language to preach the church’s gospel in; my husband and I both had to learn Spanish for ours.
Missionaries don’t get to pick where they go; they just put their name in the lottery and have to accept where the church decides to send them.
And they’re knocking on doors and talking with people who’s cities, countries and cultures are unfamiliar; which can be extremely dangerous for young missionaries, especially have no real-world experiences yet as the majority of them come straight out of high school.
It is not a good or safe environment for these young kids to be in.
These kids have their time, money and energy exploited by the church – my husband and I have experienced it first-hand.
But the church proclaims that the gospel must go forth to all four corners of the earth.
Regardless.
The church likes to tell stories of these DANGEROUS situations that missionaries can be placed in;
And then preach that the missionaries were saved “by God.”
But what about those who weren’t?
Why are we GLORIFYING these horrifying situations missionaries are placed in??
And why are we placing missionaries in areas where things like this could happen in the first place??
To these young kids??
It’s abusive, manipulative, and exploitive.
It’s quite literally a traffickingof labor; where the kids are sending all their money, time and energy to the CHURCH; for the church to inevitably benefit from the missionary’s backbreaking labors, but not guaranteed to benefit the missionary in return.
Don’t believe it’s a case of borderline human trafficking still?!
Let’s take a look at questions to analyze when it comes to trafficking victims;
If anything, we are just happy when missionaries are able to make it back home safely. Now THAT is something we will celebrate.
THAT is why we’ll attend missionary homecomings. To be someone who understands the gravity, weight, and difficulty of a mission.
Someone who can help these retuned missionaries manage their mental health and issues that may arise once they come home.
My husband and I STILL are dealing with a lot of negative experiences from serving a mission;
• We both developed severe OCD from believing that we have to do everything a certain way and follow all these rules and commandments so as to not “die” spiritually, that we have to attend therapy for now as adults
• Being away from home and feeling cut off from secure loved ones triggers some intense emotions and depression in us; that’s why basic training for the military, which we both went through, was insanely difficult on us both mentally and emotionally.
• We have to navigate these same feelings when we travel for work, have to spend a few weeks away from home, etc. and reassure ourselves constantly that we are safe and that we won’t die spiritually if we go out and have drinks with co-workers for one night and are apart from our “companion” (spouse).
• We have both become very type-A, high anxiety induced people who have to help one another regulate our anxiety and panic attacks.
• We both struggle with feeling like every tiny mistake we make is not completely devastating or the end of the world; that’s it’s okay to mess up and break some rules sometimes.
And yes, our therapists have both told us that these struggles are in part resulted from the way we were raised in such a high-demand religion; and that our missions did NOT exactly help us with these struggles, but possibly increased them.
Some people wonder why missionaries leave the church after they serve a mission; after they spent 1.5-2 years living “such a spiritual high!”
But I remember sobbing after I was released from my “missionary calling” upon my return home;
And it wasn’t because I was sad to leave my mission.
It was because I was so relieved to finally be home.
Missions are abusive to these young kids.
And we don’t care HOW you try to justify it.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe in the exploitive labor, money, time and taking advantage of young kids for a billion-dollar organization’s benefit.
• Financial requirements to remain in good standing
• Sexism
• Harmful rhetoric (lgbtq+, gender roles, etc.)
• The grooming of young girls for marriage
• Forcing missionaries to PAY the church to do something for the church
• Odd rituals/ceremonies that (used to) encourage death upon one who breaks their covenants (but the idea is the same, it’s just a threat of “spiritual death” now rather than physical).
• Given new names to erase individuality
• The clothes, secret handshakes, secret passwords…
Etc.
(Google)
“Don’t share that stuff!! It’s sacred, not secret!!”
First off, we got these images from GOOGLE.
They’re already out there.
And yet, the church desires every single person in the world to eventually participate in these rituals, no?
So why keep it so hush-hush?
So that the church can slowly indoctrinate it’s newer recruits before showing them the ceremony they have to participate in,
so that they’ll be more willing to engage and won’t be as freaked out and run when the time comes?
We all know why the church tries to claim it’s “sacred, not secret.”
And it’s because it’s,
Well…
CULTY.
It’s weird.
Now look; we aren’t opposed to weird things. Hell, we aren’t opposed to rituals, or symbolic clothing, or symbols and signs in general.
Many things in this world have symbols and signs.
But the Mormon church makes their rituals and rites secretive; mandatory to make it to the highest degree of heaven; an exclusive club that only those deemed “worthy” by the church can participate in.
Idk;
Sounds culty to us.
(Google)
“But LOTS of religions and groups have their own rituals, clothing, rites, etc! It’s not just us!”
Well you see,
There’s a reason we don’t believe in religion in general…
It’s ALL a little culty.
It ALL demands a certain level of devotion, financial contribution, levels to accomplish…
All for the HOPE of a return to live in the presence of a “godly being” after our inevitable death.
A ton of religions string people along and get them stuck deep inside their organizations, to the point where “religious psychosis” is a thing.
We don’t think ANY organized religion really is healthy for anyone.
In fact,
We even dare say that religion can be extremely harmful.
And the Mormon church?
Let’s just say, it damaged us GOOD.
#therapy
(Google)
While certain aspects of the ceremonies have been changed; the inherit gospel behind it has not.
Sure, things like the temple blood oaths, the oath of vengeance, etc has been officially done away with.
But the ideas behind this harmful ceremony still stand.
I can clearly remember the booming voice in the temple stating over the loud speaker during my first ceremony;
“GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED.”
And
“If they don’t live up to every commandment they make in the temple this day, I will drag them down to hell” (or something like that), sincerely, Satan.
Talk about emotional and manipulative abuse!!
And people don’t see this as “culty??”
The ceremonies make you swear to never break your promises or you’ll face damnation and “spiritual death.”
Because fear mongering people is love; right?
(Google)
In these temple ceremonies, you promise to
• Agree to obey all of God’s laws and commandments
• Commit yourselves to the law of sacrifice; of sacrificing yourself and everyone and everything for the church.
• Keep your sexual relations in your pants or just between you and your spouse
• Dedicate all of your time, talents, and “material blessings” to the church.
Do we see it yet??
Do we see why this religion is categorized by many as a “high-demand” religion?
And the members don’t just participate in these rituals for themselves;
Just like baptisms; they also do it for the dead. Without their prior consent. Which they cannot give. Because they are dead.
Also, why is the church SO pressed and focused on adults and their sexual urges??
The church is like a parent that never allows its children to grow into fully mature adults;
always imposing laws and rules on them well into adulthood.
What do you mean the church doesn’t allow adults to have safe sex in the ways ADULTS choose to do so?
A little weird to have a billion-dollar organization make its followers promise to keep it in their pants unless they’re married to make it to the highest kingdom of heaven; no??
(Google)
“But it’s called an “endowment” because it’s a gift to us from God!”
A gift from god to you?
To what?
To learn more “knowledge” about HIMSELF? About God? Sounds a bit narcissistic though, no?
What a gift.
(Google)
Oh, you get the gift of being able to be strengthened to do…what again exactly?
Members of the church are promising EVERYTHING to God;
And in return?
They recieve “invisible promises.”
Members commit everything,
And receive nothing in return.
“Come enjoy the temple and earn the right to finally get to wear the sacred garments…!”
“…which you have to buy for yourselves, because it’s a commandment to wear them now; even though we’re a billion-dollar organization and could provide them for free if we wanted to!”
Recieving nothing but the hope of a promise that you will never know is true,
And the right to wear a garment that you have to pay for, that you’re commanded to wear now.
And yet, you commit yourself to keep paying the church, keep burning yourself out, keep drowning yourself in rules and laws and boxes.
All for nothing tangible in return.
Nothing but hope to possibly distill our fear of inevitable death.
Is the story of the “great and spacious building.”
Remember that story?
The one where Lehi had a dream that the righteous walked a path of darkness but if they held onto an iron rod, it would lead them to the “tree of life” who’s fruit was “most delicious?”
And across from the tree was a chasm, and on the other side of the chasm was a “great and spacious building” full of people who mocked those who ate the fruit of the tree?
The church always told us that the building was full of the “wicked,” who chose not to eat the fruit of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But us?
We’re starting to think that it’s actually the opposite.
I mean, we’ve been mocked and ridiculed more by active members of the church who attend that “great and spacious building,”
The exclusivity of the temple, despite proclaiming that anyone can enter if they do XYZ, is pretty sus, is it not?
And what’s funny is that we have learned that even active members don’t have FULL access to all of the secret (sorry, “sacred”) rituals that the church provides and performs.
“Yes it’s kept private, but the church has been more open lately about what goes on in the temples now, without revealing any of the sacred signs and symbols! They even have temple prep classes! What about open houses, too?”
“You just have to have faith; dedicating and promising so much to God, and to keep our covenants, is an act of faith in God! Of course the blessings we receive from God are spiritual and faith-based!”
“Having to do certain things to work up to temple ordinance ceremonies is no different than pre-requisites you have to take in college before you can advance in certain courses. It’s not malicious!”
Then tell me,
• While the temple may be more open about how the temple looks, what members wear inside, and have revealed that there are “signs and symbols” exchanged, tell me…
Do they tell people that the temple includes the fact that members who get endowed are commanded to wear their garments every day and night once they participate? And that members have to pay for them out of their own pockets??
Does the church tell people that to qualify for a recommend, they are required to pay 10% to the church to have access to their eternal blessings?
Does the church tell people that they use fear-based tactics, such as a loud speaker that will proclaim to people in the temple that if they don’t keep every single covenant, Satan will have dominion over them, and “God will not be mocked!?”
• “It’s faith-based” is fine. If people want to believe in a hope to console themselves regarding inevitable death, then sure; why not.
We suppose that people have every right to believe in invisible and non-guaranteed promises if they so desire.
• And the matter of working your way up to the temple? Temple “pre-requisites” per say? Let’s just say that college pre-requisites give you a degree and the ability to practice in a career field.
The temple “pre-requisites” involve the deep evaluation of a person and deem their souls as “worthy” or not,
And it has people make promises with a divine deity to always commit themselves, their skills, and their entire lives to an unproved God until the day they die.
Two VASTLY different things.
But then again;
People can believe in what they choose to believe, I suppose.
But it does not erase how culty the Mormon church Actually is.
And people actually go and do this for date night???
What a world.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t want to be involved in discriminatory, lifelong, cultish rituals and commitments, in exchange for invisible, un-guaranteed, empty promises.
The church has an “echo chamber” on the knowledge it’s members have.
The church has both actively and subtly discouraged the use of the internet or external sources to research answers regarding the church and church doctrines that it teaches.
Instead, they request that members focus only on church-authorized sources.
Why?
To keep it’s members believing what the church wants them to believe.
Research and evidence takes years and decades to discover and study.
And as new information comes to light, the church has the audacity to state that newly revealed information “lose their worth quickly when new theories or trends emerge.”
Well yeah;
Isn’t that the point of research and discovery? How we have new advanced medicines and knowledge about our solar system?
The irony of this however,
Is that if a prophet were to reveal new revelation or information to the church,
The church would call it “miraculous” and “a gift from God.”
The church has always encouraged its members to use “prayer,” “scripture,” “attending church” and “living the gospel” to promote their “faith” and belief systems.
With the rise of technology, it seems that the church has found it more and more difficult to censor it’s members from what they don’t want their members to know about them and the church’s history.
The banning of blacks from the priesthood
The massacres and enslavement of native Americans and their children
Joseph marrying wives behind Emma’s back
The actual ages of the wives Joseph and Brigham young married.
The internet has discovered and exposed many of these knowledges regarding the church and its history.
So what does the church do?
It creates it’s OWN re-telling of how things happened…
To control the narrative that it’s members are seeing, reading, and studying.
How they manipulate it’s members into believing certain medias?
Into only trusting church-based sources?
Sure, some sources might not be true.
As it is with EVERYTHING in the world.
But it’s not a bad thing to encounter new media, research other sources regarding it, and come to a new conclusion time and time again.
That’s how knowledge works.
And you can’t go around running away from every uncomfortable feeling you have just because you hear something the church didn’t tell you about, or things that ignite emotion.
If you remain an emotionless, numb, blind-faith follower,
The church straight-up tells its members to “choose to believe.”
Something we find super intriguing.
When we left the church, and our view of the church shattered;
We did NOT feel like it was a choice.
In fact, we fought against it for a LONG time; we held onto our faith and our belief in the church for YEARS.
We desperately sought to try and keep our faith STRONG; not diminish it.
And yet,
It shattered anyways.
And we’re sure there are active members walking around the church right now who’s views have also been completely shattered,
That keep numbly attending church, paying tithing, and attending activities because they are trying to “choose to believe.”
Trying to “choose the church” over the evidence that they are well-aware oppose the church,
But they carry on, still clinging to that hope that the church had given them for so long
Because they’re scared of death.
Scared of not having answers for everything.
Scared of the threats of being cut off from their family if they break their covenants.
But we say
Be brave. Take a risk.
Because high risks,
Usually have a high reward,
If you are able to break through it.
–
If you’re saying,
“The church ENCOURAGES us to study and research, they don’t prevent it! That’s how Joseph Smith founded the church in the first place!”
Then tell me;
• Why does the church tell you to study, but then say that your best resource is prayer, the scriptures, and God?
It’s a way for the church to act like it’s members are free to research,
While at the same time shielding members from research they don’t want members to do.
“I’m a member of the church and I have done external research and I’m still a part of the church! See? I’m proof you can research and find that the church is correct!
Then tell me.
• What’s your background in the church like? Have you spent more years INSIDE the church than out? Has your mind been conditioned to the things of the church from a young age?
Are you believing certain things in the church because you’re choosing to believe in the church? Despite the evidence around you?
Are you staying in the church because you’re terrified of death? Because you like that the church has “answers” that console your fears as to what happens after death?
Maybe some internal perspective here would be good.
And if you know about all of the rhetoric about the church,
At least be HONEST with yourself about why you’re still choosing to remain in the church;
Maybe you like having “answers” about the purpose of life and want to hope they’re true?
Maybe you enjoy the community and like having a village?
Maybe you love the fact that you have access to the pretty temples on every street corner?
Cool. Whatever. But at least be HONEST to yourself about it.
You deserve that much to yourself.
“They say to trust God because God can see all things and know all things! Humans are imperfect and messy; that’s why the only valid source we can trust is God!”
Then tell me,
• The existence of a God is a topic that has been debated for thousands of years. And no one can agree on any proof or evidence of a godly existence.
So basically, you’re choosing to blindly trust this hopefully-real godly being that’s telling you how you can and can’t live life,
Over the facts and evidence in front of you?
I mean…alright. To each their own, I suppose.
People will believe what they WANT to believe I guess; even if they don’t actually believe it.
But regardless,
It’s not a secret that the church cautions it’s members about external research.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe in information censorship and think that everyone should have free and open access to knowledge, education, and research so they can come to conclusions about things themselves based on factual evidence.
“MANKIND is here on earth to be tested and tried; and the animals were created for MAN, so humans are of a higher intelligence because they’re being tested by God.”
“Animals have a lower intelligence because they aren’t here to be tested; they’re perfect and they were placed here for humans.”
“Maybe God is testing us with making transgender animals; Seeing if we will take the bait and use the animals as an excuse to be transgender the way Satan wants us to distort gender!”
“But that’s not how God meant for us to be! Being human means that mortal trials will just naturally exist, like being transgender or gay!”
“Gender is important because it brings spirit children to earth to fulfill God’s plan! Messing with gender violates that!”
“The bible/Book of Mormon states…XYZ. The prophets have said…XYZ. And they recieve revelation from God!”
“I don’t understand this part of the gospel, I’m sure it’s hard for those who are transgender and lgbtq+! It doesn’t make sense to me; But we just have to have that faith and trust in God!”
Then I just have a couple things to say.
1.) Your religion is one belief system of thousands. Believing your religion or spirituality is the only true church or way of life is close-minded and discriminatory.
2.) Science and facts versus blind faith are completely different things. Science and facts are based on evidence; faith is blind trust in the unknown. Why do you prefer to base all of your knowledge on blind trust in the unknown, rather than what is RIGHT here in front of you? And yet, humans are of a “higher intelligence?”
3.) Believing people have to live a certain way in a certain box is small-minded, cruel, and transphobic.
If you don’t “agree” with people who cross-dress, people who don’t adhere to societal or religious gender norms, or people who change their genders; you are
Transphobic.
No matter how much you try to tell yourself that you’re not.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they believe all people should be loved and not discriminated against, no matter what.
While I personally believed in a God that was all-loving;
The church had been proclaiming the opposite.
And like me, a lot of members had no idea.
Odd how that works;
Members not realizing what the church actually is preaching and teaching it’s members.
The church compared “Love” to words like “immortality,” and “eternal life.”
The church categorizes “Love” into separate, distinguishing features;
The belief that God loves us so much he made it so that none of us go to outer darkness (hell) and at least have some degree of glory in the afterlife.
Versus informing members that although God loves you enough to get you into the lowest kingdom of glory,
You have to earn the rest of his love
Through covenant and commandment-keeping.
“God has shown how much he loves you. Now prove it back!!”
“Or the limits of God’s love will no longer be able to reach you!”
“Understanding that divine love and blessings are not truly unconditional can defend us against common fallacies such as…”
“Since God is love, he will love me unconditionally, regardless…”
Tell me, active members;
What do you make of that? Genuinely?
So;
Active members of the church who claim that the God they believe in will love them no matter what, but might just be disappointed in some of their actions…
Are wrong.
Or at least,
Misinformed
About what the church they follow actually teaches.
“My love is a short stick because I want you to be truly happy…earning MY full love!”
Because that’s where we all want to be, right?
Trapped in a never-ending cycle of trying to earn the full love of someone else…
That is what the church deems as “happiness?”
To maybe, hopefully do well enough in this life to make it back to our “loving” God who made us spend our entire mortal lives trying to “prove ourselves herewith?”
“You’re taking things out of context. You’re misunderstanding the message that…xyz.”
“God DOES love us unconditionally! It’s why He sent his son, so we wouldn’t only have two options of either heaven or being cast off into outer darkness (hell)! The kingdoms of glory prove He loves us unconditionally! It’s because of his love we don’t believe in the traditional hell!”
Not a traditional hell, maybe.
Just a belief that those in the lower kingdoms will serve those in the celestial and that they will always regret living single-y and not making it to the celestial level.
• Please tell me how offering your children the “lowest” degree of heaven by default is all-loving? And how getting into the celestial kingdom requires extra “proof of love?”
• And this is old news, right? They don’t teach this anymore?
“Men are godly too! What about them? What’s all this talk about women?”
“God has existed since Adam and Eve. Jesus came before menstruation and the symbolism wasn’t stolen from women.”
“The church doesn’t talk about heavenly mother because she’s too sacred! It’s out of respect! God didn’t reveal much about her!”
Then tell me.
• Generally, who is the most oppressed sex? Women. Why? Not that this is a gender war or comparison of gender difficulties, but…Just think about it.
• There is a such thing as facts and science, versus biblical mythology and stories.
• Hiding away a woman and stating that it’s “for her own good,” is not the flex the church thinks it is. In fact, hiding away knowledge of femininity will do more harm to the women of its church, than good.
Stating that “well we just don’t know much about her”
“Not much has been revealed about her”
Is not an answer to the women who seek representation.
• Many scriptures depict a gender-less god-like being. Although women are naturally more the creators; why are men placed on the pedestal? Why are men and women not seen as equals, instead?
The answer:
Womb envy.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they are sick of feminine things being twisted to satisfy male agendas and envy.
Now they don’t actually baptize the bodies of the dead.
They act as proxy for those who have died; believing that a physical and mortal human body is needed to receive baptism and ordinances for the afterlife.
To they get baptized, multiple times, again and again;
On behalf of those who are dead.
Honestly, I kind of love the creepiness of it.
But I am a bit of a Halloween, skeletons, and ghosts spooky kind of fanatic!
Spookiness aside;
The dead have no say in if someone gets baptized on their behalf or not.
I mean…
They’re DEAD.
And it’s not like the church is one to pull out ouiji boards to ask in advance.
“A chance for us to do for those who are dead what they can’t do for themselves.”
This could be interpreted as a very good thing.
Think of a living person who is disabled and needs immense help in their life; bathing, dressing, eating, using the bathroom.
It can be extremely beneficial to do for others things that they cannot do themself.
But for other things…
It doesn’t work so well.
And baptism is one of them.
The baptizing of already-deceased persons strips the dead of religious autonomy.
The LDS church is notorious for preaching that they are the only true church on the face of the earth.
They will see the truth and will be sad that they didn’t have the chance on earth to accept all the “ordinances” they needed to get into the celestial kingdom;
Because they end up in a spiritual “prison.”
For not following the Mormon church.
Or rather, not having the chance to in the mortal life.
Imagine that this family member of yours believed that in order for a person to be “saved” in the afterlife,
You have to destroy something you love to demonstrate to your deity that you are willing to give up everything for them.
And that once this thing was destroyed in the ritual,
Signs and tokens and code phrases would be revealed to enter the afterlife’s paradise.
And the bigger the sacrifice it is, the more dedicated you are to your faith and your deity.
Now let’s say you don’t believe in their belief system or these practices. But you allow them to practice what they so desire anyways, because, you know; freedom of religion.
You are aware of the rhetoric from this family member, of what their belief system teaches about how people who don’t participate in this ritual will end up in a spiritual dungeon,
That people who don’t accept the ritual won’t have the spiritual keys or access to paradise in the afterlife,
Etc.
But you just kind of ignore it and live your life.
And then this family member keeps bugging you
More and more and more
About participating in this so-called ritual.
“Don’t you want to be with me in the afterlife?” They say.
“Don’t you want to live in spirit paradise when you die? With all of your family and loved ones?” They exclaim.
You don’t want to. And you tell them this.
Or maybe it wasn’t a family member; maybe you had their missionaries knock on your door and you politely declined their invitation.
Or maybe you hadn’t even heard about this religion or this ritual during life at all, and died without knowing about it?
Regardless,
You die.
You never accepted or had the chance to accept participation in this ritual during life.
And since you are dead,
You have no say
In the fact that this family member, missionary, or even random church member
took your beloved dog or cat that you left behind in your death,
And slaughtered it for the ritual.
On your behalf.
And then while you sit there in a spiritual prison,
Another who had died in life, a ghost maybe. Comes up to you and says,”
“Good news!! Your family member partook in the ritual for you, and they killed your pet! It was quite the sacrificial offering to our deity; what an honor done on your behalf! Here’s all the signs and codes to get into paradise!”
And your own ghost sits there and quakes with rage at the idea that this family member took it upon themselves to slaughter something so beautiful and beloved by you,
Without your consent.
But the fellow ghost tells you;
“Oh I can see you are not happy they did this on your behalf. Well.”
“But I guess now you have two options.”
“You can accept the sacrifice and ritual your loved one did for you;”
“Or you can remain here in our dungeon and rot forever.”
You may call this a gruesome comparison, exclaim that you don’t slaughter animals, etc.
But that’s your defense mechanisms talking.
Do you not see that this is how this sounds like to people who did not want any part of the church when they were alive?
Or how this may impact the spirits of people who have passed, (if they exist in that sense after death anyways,), and rattle them when they spent their entire life dedicated to one belief system, only for another to say “congrats! We baptized you into OURS now! Everything you knew was completely wrong!”
While you may see this analogy as gruesome;
This is genuinely how many people feel about the idea of Mormons baptizing anyone and everyone who dies into their belief system…
With no regard to spiritual autonomy.
And without prior consent.
It’s f***** up.
And as much as the church likes to CLAIM it knows what’s going to happen after death;
The odds of an Atheist and a Mormon being correct about life after death;
“Well once you die you’ll see the truth and why wouldn’t you accept it if you see the truth finally right in front of you?”
“Well, it’s about having the faith in the unseen and unknown, trusting the revelation from God!”
“People can accept it! Of course we can’t get their consent before they die; and some people don’t ever hear of the church while alive! That’s why they’re given the choice to accept it or not in the afterlife!”
Then tell me.
• Does your church have a 100% foolproof knowledge of life after death? No. Because if it did; everyone would follow it.
Anyone claiming to know exactly what happens after death is a fool.
•If claims of visions from god by a man is what you’re basing your faith on; maybe you should start looking into more concrete evidence; or even other belief systems that exist without taking the word of another person and their “revelations” and “visions.”
• Today, does the LDS Church still teach that all who deny or reject the baptism and ordinances done on their behalf will receive a lesser glory than that of the celestial kingdom? That they’ll be in spirit prison until the “resurrection?”
It’s not much of a choice to tell the dead they have to accept or spend eternity wishing that they had.
“I know we groomed you since age 12 to get married and have kids and now that you’re married at 19 and broke and don’t have anything in life figured out you’re scared; but just stop being scared and do it!”
Do we not hear that this is the rhetoric so many of us grew up hearing in the LDS Church?
Why so many of us who leave Mormonism choose not to have children?
It’s because we finally feel like we have a CHOICE.
“Forget the fact that you’re only 20 and newly married; start pumping out those babies before your brain develops!”
Additional note: having children involved in a marriage makes divorce a MUCH more complicated task; and encourages couples who maybe got married too young to “stay together for the kids.”
“Limit the kids you have? Why would you do that?”
“Why close spirit children off from engarce into this world?”
I don’t know; maybe because
They can find entrance elsewhere.
If those “spirit children” are really meant to come to this earth and live this life;
“God commands that you allow the man to penetrate your body”
“And leave a being known as an unborn child with parasitic-traits to grow inside you”
“To drain all of your nutrients and energy from you”
“And then you have to go through the pain of birthing said child”
“And then it is your primary responsibility to care for that said child for the rest of your life.”
Wow.
And women still believe that the church actually teaches equal partnership?
It’s time to read in between the lines.
The way the church rhetoric is about pregnancy fosters situations of abuse.
Of being stuck with an abuser.
A teen pregnancy that occurred by an adult man is swept over,
Because that teen married that man and they raised the baby together.
A “traumatizing” pregnancy of a teenager by an adult man gets overlooked because the church doesn’t approve of abortion, and she didn’t abort the baby.
Making the church happy.
Happy in the situation where a teenager is impregnated by an adult man.
Because she didn’t abort the baby.
Do we see the issue here yet?
And of course this is just an example.
But the church loves it’s young girls, and their marriages and impregnation.
And calls them “worthy” when they don’t abort the result of abuse.
And if you don’t think a teenager getting pregnant by an adult man is abuse,
Because the teenager “also made the choice;”
Then maybe we need to take a little refresher course on mature brain development.
End of the story is;
The church takes the complicated life choice of having children
To a whole other extreme by claiming god himself commanded us to have children.
Talk about additional pressure.
–
If you’re sitting here thinking;
“But my husband helps raise and care for our kids just as equally as I do!”
“The church doesn’t pressure women to have kids! Men are a part of this, too!”
“It’s a commandment to have kids because all spirits have to come to earth and gain a body to experience this life! That’s the whole point of the plan!”
Then tell me.
• Today, does the family a proclamation still state that the mother’s primary responsibility is to raise the children? Does it say the same thing for the father?
• Today, are men told that staying home and raising kids is close to divinity in comparison to their careers to provide? The way women are?
• Today, do 100’s of other different belief systems exist in the world than those of Mormon theology and the plan for life?
I know the majority of active members of the church have good hearts.
They WANT to believe that the things the church commands and says are well-intentioned.
After all,
No one would like to find out that the love of their life is actually their abuser.
It’s earth-shattering.
And we spend the vast majority of our lives doing just that when it comes to the church.
BUT…
We have to read between the lines.
And sometimes we don’t even have to read in between the lines! It’s just…there!
But we still have to be willing to take off those rose colored glasses
And be willing to be okay with not having set answers to every question about life.
Willing to permit the eyes we were born with
To truly start seeing.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe that men have the right to dictate or command what a woman does or doesn’t do with her own body.
When people get together, something amazing happens.
We feel it.
Collective effervescence.
The feelings of unity,
Of peace
Of empowerment.
At concerts the music vibrates through our chests as one, as we all sing the same lyrics and dance to the same beat.
We bond through song, dance, and human emotion.
In book clubs and tea parties
People meet up and share similar interest, get good conversation flowing, and leave feeling uplifted and understood.
And at church,
People gather and sing songs together. Read scriptures together. Join in unity against similar life struggles; help one another feel as though they are not alone.
They feel united to their tribe; their ward. Their congregation. They feel the support system that’s systematically set in place. The collective tears and shared struggles result in one finding it difficult to leave.
And while it’s important to have your own support system,
The church is one that is not to be bought into.
Because once you taste the beauty of collective effervescence within church walls;
They pull you into deeper things, such as paying money to enter heaven, threats of being cut off from God if you don’t obey additional commandments, fear of being separated from your family in the afterlife.
So it’s not that the church calls “collective effervescence” “the spirit.”
Sure, call it “the spirit.” Why not?
It’s the fact that the church utilizes and preys upon these intense emotional bonding moments
And pulls members into its corrupt and abusive Religous system.
Don’t let people trade your euphoria and joy in for a pretty penny and a fear-filled life of rule-keeping.
Be free, and get lost in the collective effervescence of being human.
Just human.
It’s a beautiful thing, without corruption.
–
If you’re stating things like,
“But I feel this unity even when it’s quiet!”
“Well duh, anything that is good and uplifting comes from the spirit! Including concerts and more!”
“People can always experience these feelings; but the restored gospel really is what gives people the chance to have this companionship with them for always!”
Then tell me.
• Have you considered the idea that maybe it’s the fact that you “feel the spirit” when it is quiet, because the very idea of unity and collectivity is what brings you peace?
• Have you considered the fact that some things that make you feel good and unified, go against the doctrine the church teaches? Why then, do you “feel the spirit” in those settings? When things there actively oppose what the church preaches?
• Do you understand that the LDS church does NOT have a monopoly on human emotion? And that categorizing human unity as one thing, the spirit, is designed to draw people in? To keep people in their church?
And I don’t know about you,
But oftentimes
I feel WAY more fulfilled, heard, seen and understood in environments where collective effervescence is present…
And the church is not.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe that any organizations should take advantage of natural human emotions, and that these human emotions should not be used in manipulative or abusive ways to fulfill a selfish agenda.
And many religions abuse this human need for help.
And they get people to rely on religions. On churches. On organizations.
So much so, that the members allow themselves to be financially exploited into paying tithing to the church in order to qualify for eternal exaltation and entrance into the “highest level of heaven.”
And the church jumps on the chance to use that fear to keep its members.
To keep people involved and contributing to their billion-dollar organization.
It’s never about religion.
Or one’s personal bond or relationship with God.
It’s about control.
–
And if you’re sitting here thinking,
“That’s not what it is; it’s the spirit!”
“We don’t starve kids on trek! They get fed!”
“Why would it be such a bad thing to rely on God in hard times?”
“But we CAN’T do it alone; we DO need divine help!”
“The whole purpose of this life was to come to earth and experience mortality and struggle!”
Then you’re missing the point.
And the church has it’s claws in you SO deeply,
That you don’t even see it.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe that teaching people not to trust themselves, and instead to rely on a church, organization, or unknown being instead, is healthy or safe.
A part of the church’s actual, literal doctrine is that in order to make it to the highest degree of heaven, the celestial kingdom, you need to be married and sealed in a Mormon temple.
That is the final, highest ordinance that the members of the church can achieve to reach their highest level of “heaven” in the afterlife.
And seeing as how this is the reason behind the push for marriage;
It makes marriage seem transactional; something one is just “supposed to do” in the church,
Rather than let things occur naturally.
To form true bonds with a person
To give yourself time to truly and slowly fall in love.
To analyze red flags before rushing into an engagement after only a couple months of meeting them in the first place.
What’s interesting about how HIGH of a demand it is from the church to get married as quick and as young as possible,
Is that it reminds us greatly of the accusations against the church regarding the sexual abuse and grooming of children. (See “The Sexual abuse of children” blog post).
Why the church is so fixated on sex, sexuality, body policing, grooming children to marry young…
It’s all designed to keep its followers in the church.
To never leave.
Like the one hotel scene from the Percy Jackson’s movies where they eat the lotus flowers and can’t see clearly;
They play games, get sucked into the world
And only when they stop eating the lotus flowers do they realize the true reality of the world in which they had been living.
“Get married young before your brain develops.”
“Before you can think rationally.”
“Before you’re stable and secure in yourself.”
“You’ll be forced to cling to each other to survive, and thus cling to the church as well.”
“And you’ll solidify your reliance on the church.”
“And you’ll never leave.”
At least; that’s what the church hopes for, anyways.
The pressure to marry because of the salvation at risk is an abusive manipulation tactic by the church.
Not to mention, the church prohibits even safe sex before marriage; and therefore the sexual urges a young person may feel forces them closer and closer into the marriage arrangement the church desires of them.
Shaming people into a forever marriage situation and using fear tactics against them to gain compliance to Religous expectations has never ONCE backfired…
The church is far too accepting of child grooming;
Especially of girls.
The church is not only a part of it;
But they ADVOCATE and GROOM for it.
And while today they may deny or justify the marriages of young girls to the founder of the church,
They continue to advocate for the grooming of young girls.
And it’s wild to think that people believe that this sort of push and rhetoric is actually healthy,
And even “ordained of God.”
And we will have no part in it.
–
If you’re sitting here, thinking
“The church doesn’t do that anymore; they encourage girls to go to school and value education now more than ever!”
“That’s not accurate anymore. We believe in not rushing weddings! Lots of people even do civil ceremonies alongside temple Sealings now!”
“We don’t groom girls for marriage anymore; now we do more outdoorsy activities like rock climbing instead of marriage-centered!”
Then tell me.
• Today, is marriage still a requirement for the celestial kingdom?
• Today, are young women’s lessons still incorporating discussions of marriage and child-rearing at the young ages of 12? Or even earlier, in primary lessons?
• Today, does the expectation of an ideal life outcome resulting in marriage by the church still exist?
•Today, do church and family members still press return missionaries about finding someone to marry?
Although modern ideas of members may be more progressive and open-minded;
The Church itself STILL continues to have these high pressures and expectations of marriage of their young people.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe in grooming children, especially girls, into believing that their eternal salvation hinges on if they get married or not.
If all the men on the face of the earth were to suddenly disappear; the women would be screwed, spiritually. No access to their “saving ordinances.”
And yet, some members actually believe that the LDS church is NOT patriarchal; that it’s actually EQUAL for men and women.
The church is amazing at gaslighting. I’ve discussed this.
The church covers its misogyny by claiming that women DO have access to the priesthood, “but in different ways.”
Such as relief society, prayer, raising their children, etc.
But you know what’s fascinating about that?
When I was a temple worker in the early years of our marriage,
Women WERE authorized to USE the actual priesthood power to perform ordinances for the women of the temple.
I washed, anointed, and blessed women in the temple through oil annointings, the laying on of hands on women’s heads, etc.
The EXACT same thing that the men were doing for the men of the temple.
The EXACT same saving ordinances needed for salvation.
The women in the temple performed priesthood duties.
However, one differing thing remained:
All of these ordinances performed, were done under the direction of the temple president; a man.
All ordinances overseen by a man with authority.
So, it’s not that women CANNOT hold the priesthood…
The women in the temple use the priesthood actively in the same way the men do.
But it’s more of the fact that the patriarchal set-up of the church desires to keep women’s use of the priesthood power and authority of god HIDDEN, tucked away in the temples.
Overseen by men.
NOT for the public to see.
The men are granted use of the priesthood, oil annointings, and blessings and the administration of ordinances outside of the temple.
While women are restricted to their use of the power being hidden within temple walls.
In fact, WOMEN Used to bless and heal the sick, back in the early days of the church.
However, the church denied the miracles seen by women; the authority the women used to heal the sick.
Instead, the men griped and stated that “well, they didn’t do it with the priesthood, they did it through prayer and faith!”
So close, and yet so far.
Is that not how priesthood blessings are performed??
Through the faith and prayer of the one administering it?
The SAME way women do it?
The only difference being gender.
The only difference being that MEN are “officially ordained” and publicly recognized as religious leaders and authority figures.
A societal preference.
NOT a legitimate spiritual one.
Women’s spiritual gifts are always blown off as “lesser” than men’s;
Of not containing any “actual” authority from god.
But the church spins it; and tells women that they have power still to bless their families through faith and prayer;
Which is the SAME way the men do it;
But still provide the messaging that only MEN are actual authority figures of God…
…because the church only “formally recognizes” men’s spiritual authority.
The contradictory teachings are insanely sexist against women.
But the women of the church who are so loving and desperately want to cling to their faith and a relationship with the divine;
They CLING to any little piece of spiritual autonomy the church gives them; they eat it up because they want to remain in their faith, in their culture, in their church and community.
Everyone loves to feel like they belong somewhere.
And so they eat the lies they are fed – of no fault of their own.
“A woman can reinforce HER HUSBAND’S position as head of the home…”
Not “equal partners.”
But “partners” as in, the woman is the man’s secretary.
His advisor.
But HE is the one to make all of the ultimate decisions.
The church SIMULTANEOUSLY states that men and women are equal, while ACTIVELY practicing sexism.
It’s quite impressive to balance that, actually.
But ultimately,
Women must follow their MAN; because HE is the one with the authority. HE is the one with the priesthood and power of God. HE is the one who receives revelation for the family.
And the women, with their “lack of spiritual power,” have no choice but to follow the man. Let Him lead.
After all, they have no authority to perform saving ordinances.
How many women versus men are in leadership in the above pictures?
The answer is 9.
NINE.
9 out of 143 pictured.
Only NINE are women.
And you still want to believe the rhetoric the church tells you, about women and men being “equal but different?”
No no, my love.
The men hold ALL the power:
And you have been brainwashed to believe it’s equality.
Told that you still have access to all the blessings of the priesthood!
(Through the MEN, of course).
But don’t blame yourself; the church is DAMN good at their brainwashing strategies. It’s not your fault.
Has been doing it for decades.
What if we visually looked at the reverse, to put things into perspective?
What if all of these leadership roles were gender-swapped?
Let’s swap them, shall we?
What if the leadership of the church looked like THIS, instead? –
What if only 9 of the 143 pictured were men?
What if Josephine smith went and prayed in the forest, and a heavenly mother and her beloved daughter appeared to her in a bright pillar of light?
What if she was visited by a woman angel who told her where to get the gold plates and how to translate them and start the church?
What if Josephine Smith proclaimed that she was God’s chosen, that she received revelation from God?
What if she started writing down her revelations?
What if she proclaimed that WOMEN were chosen to receive and be sustained with the priestesshood authority of god?
That everyone needed a priestess member to recieve their saving ordinances?
That women could be sealed to multiple men, and men could only be sealed once, to one woman at a time?
That women can bless and heal the sick; that it was they who lead the household while men were expected to have primary care of the children.
That men need to seek out women if they need a healing blessing, or a blessing of comfort?
That MEN needed to cover up, don’t show their shoulders, don’t be pornography to the women.
That only a couple men talk and pray at general conference, while the majority is carried out by the women because the women hold all of the priestess authority?
What if men only had general authority over the children’s group of primary?
What if men only had general authority over a club made just for men to make themselves feel equal and important, their own “relief society.”
–
Does switching the genders put things into perspective for you?
I know it did for me.
Being able to see how things were set up in such a patriarchal manner;
now THAT is something that really helped me to take the blinders off; and see things as they really are.
They ignore the patriarchal way the church is organized and set up.
Because
Well
They simply don’t want to believe it.
They want to believe they are equal.
And so
They do.
–
And for those of you who are saying,
“I’m glad the church doesn’t teach any of this anymore and was removed from the curriculum.”
“I’m glad the church changed its wording to be more inclusive to women.”
“I’m glad there’s more of a current, modern emphasis on equality now.”
These are classic ways the church gets its members to believe it is progressive, inclusive, and fair to women.
So tell me.
Today, right now, in this day and age –
• Can women today obtain their saving ordinances without having to go through men to obtain them?
• Can women today receive blessings of healing, comfort, and guidance without having to go through a man to receive them? Can women GIVE these blessings to others outside of the temple walls?
• Can women today pray over, and bless the sacrament that is used to cleanse the members of their sins each Sunday?
• Can women today take part in a leadership position in the church such as a counselor to the bishop, or even bishop themself and inform members when God has forgiven them of their sins?
• Can women today become patriarchs and give patriarchal blessings to others?
• Can women be sealed to more than one man in the afterlife yet? The way men can with women?
While the church may archive the messages I pulled from,
The sexism.
The patriarchy.
IS. STILL. THERE.
The church has just gotten a LOT better
At hiding it.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t agree with women being seen as second-class citizens and given lesser authority and choice than men.
To desperately grasp at ANY straw of any sort of bodily autonomy that the LDS church will give them.
Something we NEVER thought we would ever hear in a million years!
And we were THRILLED! For the new freedoms LDS women will have with how they can dress with garments. Clothing styles opening up. More freedom of self-expression.
But, while there were may positives to this change…
As a young woman, I, “the wife,” grew up with this type of messaging –
“COVER your shoulders.”
“No low-cut in the front or back.”
“No extreme styles.”
Imagine how insane it sounded to me when I became an adult, and witnessed women buying the low-cut v-neck breast-feeding garment tops to accommodate lower-cut shirts.
Or when the church announced its tank top garments.
Recently there was a family gathering on my husband’s side.
It was on a Sunday; which, honestly, was kind of progressive for my husband’s extremely-Mormon family.
But of course, it being a Sunday, half of everyone was still dressed in their Sunday best, their church clothes from going to church earlier in the day. I don’t know if all households were like this; but my mother would stay in her church clothes all day on Sundays to “keep the spirit of the sabbath.”
We had recently left the church, and so I picked a very pretty Lacey top. It was brown, with thicker tank top straps, and was not see-through. While the v-cut was slightly deeper than a normal tank top, I being a smaller-chested girl, it did not show any cleavage.
I wore it with a regular pair of jeans and some sneakers.
I believed it to be perfectly acceptable for the family setting, while also being something I thoroughly enjoyed wearing and felt beautiful in.
Everything was going just fine;
Until I was waiting in line for food, and my husband’s aunt, dressed in a floor length jean skirt and full-coverage, very Mormon-modest top, came up behind me and stated, sarcastically;
“Wow, aren’t YOU dressed for the weather!”
It threw me off, and I couldn’t think of something to say quick enough.
My husband jumped in, irritated slightly, and told her “well yeah, it’s really hot out!”
His aunt didn’t say anything after that.
The comment on my shirt was completely unnecessary.
The point of her comment?
Absolutely nothing.
Nothing but to point out the fact that I wasn’t wearing garments like the rest of them.
–
Growing up, even before I was endowed, I was NEVER allowed to wear tank tops, and my shorts practically went to my knees. I envied the girls who were allowed a little more freedom of choice in their fashion decisions.
I have a vivid memory of being on the women’s basketball team, and how the team wanted to wear their jerseys to school for the home game that day. I remember wearing my tank top jersey that day to school; my first time ever actually wearing a tank top to school;
The sleeves were capped; it was barely considered a tank top.
But still; I felt like I was rebelling; I had a rush of exhilaration of being able to wear something I had always wanted to wear, but was never allowed to.
But I also felt shame; and started questioning myself at age 13;
“Should I have just worn a basketball team t-shirt instead and changed into the Jersey right before the game to stay modest?”
“Were people talking about how I was dressing wrong today?”
The thoughts were all in my head, of course. And no harm occurred from wearing my barely-considered-a-tank-top basketball jersey to school;
But the way the Mormon church had programmed me, had me spiraling all day over the decision to wear my jersey.
I overheard my mother and little sister recently talking about the new garment tops. And they made a comment that stuck with me –
“It was never about modesty.”
This statement was sharp like a knife.
Because my mother herself was the one who raised me, and taught me, before I was even endowed, that I needed to cover up;
don’t show my shoulders. Cover my stomach. No bikinis. Longer shorts.
And now here she was, 10 years later, claiming that “it was never about modesty.”
It’s interesting.
I still get a little nervous dressing “immodestly” (according to Mormon standards) around my family members.
I told this to my mom, and she responded with “We don’t care what you wear; why would you think we would care about that?”
This, coming from the same woman who refused to allow me to wear any tank tops (even thicker-strapped ones), mid-thigh shorts, any shirt that didn’t fully cover my stomach, or swimsuits that revealed even an inch of stomach.
And she had the gall to ask me why I would be nervous wearing what I wear now, around her?
It was as if she genuinely did not remember the pressures she put on me growing up.
And that’s the magic of the church’s subtle brainwashing and gaslighting.
So then, if it was never about modesty; why was I denied the chance to wear what I wanted growing up?
Nothing crazy, just an occasional tank top or shorts that went slightly above the middle of my thigh at times.
If it was never about modesty, and was instead about covenant-keeping once endowed, why did I grow up with such a strict dress code before I reached endowment age?
If it was never about modesty, why did my mother refer me to the for the strength of youth handbook multiple times to read up on what I could and couldn’t wear in regards to what was “modest” and what was not? At least; by the standards of the church.
And don’t get me wrong; we’re thrilled there are more options for LDS members and things are becoming more progressive.
However, to gaslight ex-members who are upset over the garment and modesty-standard changes,
Is extremely close minded and oblivious to the ways the church originally taught and preached modesty – to women especially.
To tell young girls that dressing “immodestly” meant DEATH?! Spiritual death.
DO WE UNDERSTAND the gravity of how DEEP that type of wording burrows into its victims?
The trauma and FEAR of spiritually DYING for wearing a tank top?!
This is the type of rhetoric a lot of us ex-members grew up with.
So yes; while we are thrilled for current members who get a little more freedom;
We are deeply hurt by the shame and guilt the church laid on us about exposing our bodies; even just our shoulders.
And many ex-members struggle to know how to dress themselves today, as a result of that harmful messaging and rhetoric.
The stories of girls being shamed at girls camp or youth activities are endless; all you need is a simple google search or to talk to those around you about their stories.
When I was a young women’s leader, I remember becoming frustrated with the youth activities.
The boys could run around shirtless, carefree, with bathing trunks as short as they wanted.
The young women, however?
They were told to cover up. No bikinis, only one-pieces.
Half of our girls were wearing oversized t-shirts to cover the inch of stomach that was showing in their swimsuits, just so they could participate in the water activities the ward so loved doing.
The hypocrisy is roaring.
Why do the girls need to be sitting uncomfortable in a sloppy, soaking wet t-shirt just so the boys can feel better while they run around completely shirtless and carefree?
The difference – girls bodies are sexualized merely for existing.
If you’re going to make the girls cover their stomachs; at least make it fair, and make the boys wear shirts, too.
The LDS church used to have very strict and obvious standards for dress.
Standards we women were shamed for not following.
Not being allowed into “Mormon prom” or stake dances if our dresses showed our shoulders, were “too high” above the knee, if the back or front dipped too much, if our stomachs showed even slightly…
And while we are ecstatic for current members;
The pain and memories of being shamed for our bodies remains.
And that’s something that needs to be acknowledged;
It was the first couple of days after being endowed and starting to wear garments, that I was driving with my mother in the car.
I was getting extremely overstimulated with the garments; they felt tight; restrictive. Wouldn’t sit right. Kept rolling up and having to re-adjust. Uncomfortable.
I couldn’t breathe.
I felt like clawing them off of my body.
I remember yelling about it to my mom; how I HATED these garments.
And my mom? She responded by shaming me for speaking negatively about the garments.
“Be careful how you speak about your garments!”
I brought this memory up to my mom once.
She claims she doesn’t remember it.
But it is such a vivid memory in my own mind; I’ll never forget it.
“The garments are more important than your ability to breathe.”
That was the subconscious message I got from it.
So I sat still, scared after what my mom said to speak out against the garments for fear of retaliation of my soul by God Himself.
And I silently suffered, struggled, and tried to figure out how to feel beautiful in them.
I can understand where it comes from – the idea that the sealing/wedding ceremony is God-focused, and “not worldly.” That “putting off worldly things” in the church’s eyes brings one’s focus towards God.
But then a couple’s wedding ceremony doesn’t become about them and their love;
It becomes all about god, and how marriage is just the next step to get into that highest degree of heaven.
The church’s desire to have “plainness” in clothing reminds me of the FLDS break-off, where women wear the exact same wrist-length floor-length dresses and hair styles.
I try very hard not to get angry or irritated when I see active LDS women not wearing the temple garment the way I was raised to wear them; every night and day. Not taken off if you can help it.
But I have heard current, active members state “it was never about modesty;” and half the time, if they have that mindset, they oftentimes don’t wear the garments on a regular daily basis.
They wear whatever tf they want;
even after being endowed and given their garments.
And honestly; HELL YEAH.
More props to them!!
HOWEVER…
…making the claim that states that “the church said garments are optional and between you and God,” however…
NOT a true thing.
The church does indeed have specific regulations and mandates on how its members are supposed to wear their garments;
And they even made it a temple recommend question;
one you have to pass to qualify for a temple recommend to enter the temple.
Which you need to enter the highest degree of heaven, in Mormon theology;
So although we applaud the bold LDS women who are taking control of their own bodily autonomy and not allowing a religion to sexualize their bodies or dictate what to wear or what not to wear;
According to the CHURCH and THEIR standards;
The garment IS supposed to be worn night and day, for the REST of your life.
But women are drowning in the lack of bodily autonomy.
And they’re coming up with justifications to try and live within church standards without living the church standards;
I’ve seen many an LDS woman living in gym clothes or active-wear; justifying that “because they’re working out at 2pm today, I don’t need to wear my garments at all today since I need to wear my gym clothes.”
“It’s summer and hot and I don’t want the sweat to yellow them, so I’m just not going to wear them all summer.”
“I’m not modifying the garments, I’m just stretching after I put them on, and they’re naturally going up my legs and getting shorter in that way.”
And don’t even get me STARTED on “garment-checking.”
The church has done such a good job at getting into it’s member’s heads about covering up,
That their own members act as their internal “police;” always watching each other, analyzing one another’s outfits, whispering and gossiping about who’s wearing their garments and who’s not.
But your body, and your modesty, is supposed to be a relationship between you and God; is it not?
–
Body policing is SUFFOCATING.
Stop trying to police people’s bodies.
Bodies are bodies and no two bodies are exactly the same.
The sexualization of girls as young as they are, of children, leads to body image issues, shame, eating disorders, self harm, and a lack of reporting sexual assault and harassment.
It teaches boys that girls’ bodies are to be lusted over; not admired in non-sexual manners.
To make them feel guilty for liking the way a girl looks.
For feeling attraction to a girl before marriage.
It’s unhealthy, and intervenes in normal, healthy growing pains in both girls and boys.
Sexuality needs to be talked about; not ignored.
The ideas of sex being taboo are old-school; out the window. Gone.
Sex is a normal part of life.
Your body will grow, it will change; it will feel attraction.
But how society and religions handle that;
Well;
That’s what determines the outcome of mental health, healthy bodily relationships, knowledge of one’s own body; body image issues, eating habits, etc.
A body is a body.
Stop sexualizing it for merely existing.
Especially the women.
Especially the little girls.
–
If you find yourself saying things like
“That’s not how it is anymore! Modesty is between you and God!”
“We can show our shoulders and wear bikinis; it was never about modesty!”
“It was always about the spirit of the law regarding modesty, not the physical covering of our bodies!”
Then tell me.
• Today, is wearing the temple garment and not being able to modify it still a question to obtain a temple recommend?
• Today, do you still find yourself noticing when others who are endowed members of the church aren’t wearing their garments? And silently take note of it? Wonder why they aren’t wearing them?
• Today, have you heard or seen others commenting on or policing what women and girls are wearing to church; to activities?
• Today, are online “garment friendly” influencers trying to find creative ways to make outfits that LOOK like they aren’t wearing their garments, but still are? As a means of attempting to try to self-express within the box the church has placed them in regarding what to wear?
• Today, is there still an expected dress code for youth church activities and camps?
While individual members may view themselves as more progressive;
As more open towards when and how to wear the garments or not;
How to dress before they get endowed…
The church itself still has expectations towards the ways women cover themselves through the garment,
As well as its members who shame others into covering up.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t believe young girls’ or women’s bodies, (as well as men’s), should be sexualized and policed for merely existing.
To think that a “loving religion” ‘s members would even think to blame murder and massacres on native Americans.
To think that people can JUSTIFY this, and state horrible things such as “it was different back then;” “it wasn’t the prophet who ordered it;” “it was individual members of the church who did that, not the church itself!”
To think that one would justify such horrific actions by immediately DEFENDING their religion and the people in it – rather than seeing the horrors it caused on innocent people of a “minority” race.
Yet another instance in which native Americans were murdered, killed and blamed due to the spread of Christianity; of yet another mainly-white religion.
But many people already know about this instance.
One we didn’t know about?
The enslavement of Native American children by Mormons.
I personally heard it many times while I was on my mission –
“I’m going to go home from my mission and marry a Latina/Native American girl!”
And, believe me or don’t,
“I’ll flirt to convert!”
“I’ll convert a Lamanite wife to the church!”
White superiority at its finest.
Evident in the minds of 18-20 year old missionaries.
In the years of 2018-2020.
The white superiority that the church fosters;
Is STILL very prominent.
–
So if you’re sitting here, thinking;
“But that’s the past! We don’t believe in racism anymore!”
“We don’t believe in the superiority of a white education!”
“We don’t believe Lamanites or darker-skinned races of people need to be saved by white people!”
Then tell me.
• Today, does the church still build massive, pure WHITE temples in countries of minorities?
• Today, does the Church still have everyone who comes into the temple wear white; the color of purity, cleanness, and salvation?
• Today, are white missionaries still sent into foreign “minority” countries to convert the people there to “white Christianity?” (Mormons claim to be Christian’s now, do they not?)
• Today, do people still believe that native Americans, Latinos, etc. are descended from the Lamanites? A group of people who were seen as the “wicked” in the Book of Mormon?”
• Today, do young white missionaries fetishized the thought of marrying a “foreign girl” from the country in which they served their missions? The place they spent years trying to convert the people there to a white Christian religion?
So while you may not personally believe in the modern-day racism that exists;
The effects of what the church has taught regarding the Lamanites, and their history with the native Americans, and their current-day attempts to convert everyone to a white Christian religion…
Remains in place.
It’s just hidden better.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t find the “white savior” missionary complex that the church has appealing, and want all people to be treated equally regardless of skin.
We call it “refusing to accept people’s choices and differing belief systems because they believe their religion is the only true one and trumps over every one else’s in the long run.”
But it’s not okay when ex-members share their stories of leaving online – when they “don’t leave it alone.”
We don’t know any ex-members, personally, who would want to return to a religion that proclaims love but makes those who “love differently” (lgbtq+) stand outside a temple while their loved ones are inside.
But yet, they try to recruit us into these boxes; these limitations.
But the ex-members are the enemy when they refused to exist in the boundaries the church tries to impose on them.
–
If you find yourself saying,
“But I don’t go out and knock on peoples doors as a member! I respect their space!”
“I don’t try to force people to come back to church with me!”
“I don’t think it’s bad that ex-members left and want to share their story and their side of things!”
Then tell me.
• Today, does the church still do “ministering assignments” to both members and “less-active” members? And ask for a report on how those people are doing after you check on them?
• Today, are there still thousands of comments on ex-Mormon influencer posts and pages that criticize the ex-members for their experiences leaving the church?
• Today, does the church still affirm that it is the ONLY true religion to exist on the face of the earth? And send missionaries out to convert the world?
• Today, have the church leaders in general conference stopped preaching about praying for those who have left the church to return to the fold?
• Today, are less-active members still discussed in ward counsel meetings, discussing how to reach out to them and bring them back to church?
You may be very progressive in the mindset of allowing people their freedom to practice personal spiritual autonomy.
However;
The church still teaches its members that it is the only true church.
That people need to be brought back into the church.
The expectation of seeking out the less-active,
Of bring them back or into the religion?
Still remains today.
The LDS church does not respect personal spiritual autonomy.
–
Imaging shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they feel suffocated, chained up, and stuck by the tight grip the church tries to keep on them?
The church loves to tell its members to love those who have left.
But it also likes to use the language of
“Staying strong” when loved ones leave the church.
Subtly stating that those who have left have “given in” to Satan. That their faith was weak. That members need to “stay strong;” as if someone leaving is an active threat to those who stay.
And…they are.
Those who have left.
They ARE an active threat to those who stay.
Because those who leave, have taken off the rose colored glasses.
And the church wants its members to keep them on.
And disguises taking off the rose colored glasses as “temptations,” or “Satan trying to lead you astray.”
So of course, the church wants its members to stay.
Hence the loud proclamations of “love those who have left”
Side by side with the subtle, subconscious thoughts of “but leaving is wrong;” “those who have left are wrong,” “they made a poor choice.”
And that is why it is IMPOSSIBLE for a person to fully love and embrace another…
…when they have subconscious thoughts and judgements about those who have left the church;
Hidden internal judgements about their lifestyle.
Who they love.
What they wear.
What they drink.
These subconscious beliefs and thoughts feed into judgement against those who have left.
And separate loved ones from each other, rather than unite.
It makes it hard for a family member who has left the church, to be able to talk freely about their life with loved ones who are still in it.
“Yeah this weekend was really fun! We went out dancing at the bar…”
And the internal thoughts of their loved one who is still an active member feels that internal irk, revolting at the thought of a bar…
…and ignoring what their loved one said about how they had fun getting dressed up for the first time in months, got to catch up with friends, got to sing and dance to their favorite songs.
But the active member mind tends to stick to the words “bar” and the associated presumption of “alcohol;”
And the subtle, subconscious judgement is there.
“I am so excited to try the new pumpkin spice coffee!”
Irk.
“I got this new tube top today that’s so cute!”
Irk.
“I’ve been mapping out this new tattoo for ages, I finally got it scheduled to get it!”
Irk.
“I’m going to this concert on Sunday…”
Irk.
Irk.
Irk.
The subconscious mind of the active member, trained by the church to judge those who have left.
To judge a lifestyle that differs from their own.
To judge those who do not fall into their “box.”
And it’s not necessarily their fault; members don’t usually realize they’re doing it, either.
It’s the way the church uses their subtle rhetoric and propaganda to get their members’ minds trained to be this way – without the members’ notice.
However; the ex-members notice it.
They notice in every word and interaction with their loved ones who are still very actively inside the religion.
And it results in divided family relationships.
And in the impossibility of being able to love and embrace one another fully.
Active members tend to picture those who have left as similar to “Alma the younger;”
A character in the Book of Mormon who “led many astray from the church…”
And they fear for us and our souls; for the “path” we are taking…
Instead of realizing that maybe the goal of ex-members ISN’T to lead others out;
That we haven’t been manipulated by an invisible devil and are now trying to “lead others astray;”
But that maybe, just maybe, it’s to help those who HAVE left, to feel less alone.
To be someone who understands the pain of religious deconstruction to others.
A shoulder to cry on.
A listening ear.
To shed light on an organization that chased them so much harm, pain and hurt first-handedly
That they just want to be able to voice their concerns;
To protect their loved ones…
Just the same way that active members believe they just want to protect and save their loved ones who have left the church.
That’s one thing that active members and ex-members have in common, anyways.
A loved one who was once close to us recently told us that “There are a lot of assumptions about how we feel about you leaving the church.”
And that was sad to hear;
As the majority of things we had discussed with this family member and their reaction to it, their comments in response, etc.
Is what determined and shaped our perception of the amount of support and love we were able to receive from this family member –
How open and willing they were to actually listen to and hear our story.
Telling us that we are “assuming” they’re homophobic;
While at the same time telling us that they actively contribute money to a church that does not permit gay marriage.
And sadly, it wasn’t a lot of love or support, or true open-mindedness on their end.
As it seems that the things I pointed out or noticed, fell on deaf ears as our loved one prioritized the religion over the experiences of their relative.
This loved one also told us that “this might be a sticking point in our family – a lot of attention from you about leaving the church.”
The irony found in this statement is quite sad, actually –
The fact that active-practicing family members can send unlimited general conference quotes, talks, church articles, etc.
And they’ll keep talking about their religion for the rest of their lives.
And yet, those same family members tell their loved one who LEFT the church, that, basically, their family member who left the church, needs to let it go.
To move on.
To leave behind the 25 years of their life that they spent inside the church.
The hurt and harm they felt.
To stop talking about it and move on.
Why?
To make the family members who are still in the religion more comfortable.
To remain in their bubble; keep the rose colored glasses on.
Any experiences that oppose their belief system being seen as a “threat” to their own faith – rather than trying to genuinely see and hear the stories that another had experienced.
They get “tired” of hearing about the experiences of one who left the religion…
It makes them uncomfortable to hear the experiences of those who have left;
Because it tends to rattle the glasses they try to keep on…
…But they don’t consider how tired those who have left may feel about hearing about their experiences still being IN the religion.
A double standard.
Not all of us are trying to become ex-Mormon influencers;
Some of us just desperately want to be heard and understood by our loved ones.
Another statement made by this same family member to us.
As if our discussions about leaving the religion is merely because we are in our heads and paranoid about what others are thinking about us and our decision to leave.
When in all reality;
We don’t discuss these things because we care what others think about us; or what their perception is regarding us.
If we cared what others thought, we’d do the opposite –
Stay quiet.
No.
We merely talk, discuss, and debate
Because of how lonely and crippling the experience is of a faith deconstruction journey actually is;
How isolating practicing members can make you feel.
And so we reach out a hand to those who may be struggling
Silently
Like we did.
We make ourselves open and vulnerable to those who DO need someone to understand them
And their journey
So that they do not feel alone.
And in the process,
We can articulate and make sense of the traumatic experiences we ourselves had for those 25 years in the church.
Help one another out in this journey that only those who have actually left will truly be able to understand.
Active members can place those doubts and questions on the shelf;
However,
Until that shelf breaks…
They will NEVER truly, deeply understand the experience of those who have left.
As it was with us.
And so…
Love your loved ones who have left.
But be unable to embrace them fully.
Choose not to attend your child’s wedding because they’re marrying someone of the same gender.
Shame your child for drinking their morning coffee around you.
Criticize your child for shopping on Sunday.
Ridicule your child for posting photos they feel beautiful in on their own social media because of how they’re dressed.
Be unable to embrace your child fully.
Until your own shelf finally breaks.
And then maybe, you’ll understand.
–
If you’re thinking,
“I don’t shame people for leaving the church!”
“People have every right to leave and do what works for them; that’s agency!”
“I don’t think less of ex-members. I think it’s complicated.”
Then tell me…
• Today, has the church stopped preaching to its members about praying for those who have left the church yet?
• Today, are ex-members shamed online for sharing their negative experiences in the church?
• Today, are family members still judgmental and critical about those who have left the church?
• Today, do you feel a slight, subtle twinge when someone does something around you that doesn’t meet your religious standards, such as drink a coffee or decide not to wear their garments that day? Do people talk about these people and how they are living differently from the church?
• Today, do active members excessively share their religion to others but then state that ex-members just need to “move on?”
The indoctrination regarding those who have left the church remains in the minds and bodies of the active members.
The church made sure of that.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they believe there are hundreds of different ways to live life, and not just one.
It’s no secret that the founder of the LDS Church, Joseph Smith, practiced polygamy.
Joseph had multiple wives; and depending on who you ask, it was either godly or disturbing.
It’s debated, the ages of Joseph’s wives, how much Emma smith knew about it all, etc.
Today, the church has stated that they distinguish themselves as different from the FLDS, a break-off group from the LDS church that wanted to keep the practice of polygamy.
But regardless, it is a known fact that Joseph Smith had multiple wives and practiced polygamy.
The Church tends to take a stance on topics by using a common phrase of “many details are unknown…”
Which, as it translates to many, actually means;
“We know this practice is controversial and actually not a great thing, but we have told our members that it was revelation from God, so we’re going to say that we just don’t know all the things of God so that the fire isn’t under our ass about this.”
“We know it’s bad but we still have to justify it because we told everyone it came from god”
“If we admit this was not a great thing, it ruins Joseph’s credibility as a prophet”
“If Joseph’s credibility as a prophet is gone, the entire church falls.”
The concept of polygamy was practiced by many religious leaders – Warren Jeffs, Brigham young, Samuel Bateman – to name a few.
What is fascinating is that the concept was proclaimed to come from God.
And yet; the LDS Church admits that participants were asked to keep things confidential.
Why keep things confidential, if the commandment is really from god?
What do you have to fear?
The answer is people. The fear of retribution from other people about the concept of polygamy and young marriages.
People like to claim that things were kept confidential because it was a “hard commandment” from the Lord that mortal minds can’t comprehend.
That it was a godly commandment that only God Himself really understood.
So, keep it on the DL from those who “will not understand it.”
In other words; “We know this is not an appropriate thing, but let’s spin it and get people to believe it’s from God. Then we can marry many wives in peace as people slowly accept it.”
–
Joseph Smith, the early prophet, is known for creating a “book of revelations” known as the “Doctrine and Covenants.”
It was a book of alleged revelations that the proclaimed prophet Joseph Smith received directly from God Himself; written out for all the members to know, read and study.
One such revelation, regarding the introduction of polygamy and Joseph’s first wife, Emma Smith, was this –
The one he married before polygamy was introduced.
Told through Joseph Smith’s “revelations” from God that if she refused to accept polygamy, she would be destroyed by God.
But also that if Emma rejected the idea of polygamy, her husband Joseph would be blessed by God for practicing it still; regardless of her feelings about it.
Oh, the classic spiritual coercion and manipulation being under the guise of “godly instruction and revelation.”
Joseph wanted to marry multiple wives.
And when Emma had a problem with it,
He received a “revelation” stating that she will be destroyed by God if she did not comply, or “obey his commandments.”
And many members in the church to this day still believe that the commandment came from god;
and don’t recognize the possibility that it wasn’t from god, but that it was possibly how Joseph controlled Emma to get to the point where he could “marry” multiple women, regardless of how she felt about it.
A lot of active members of the church seem to turn a blind eye to this topic – polygamy.
Brigham young, a successor of Joseph Smith, actively and outwardly practiced polygamy, even more so than Joseph Smith.
Men in the early days of the church loved polygamy so deeply, that the FLDS is a branch broken off from the LDS Church that wanted to keep it going – which later produced the infamous individual of Warren Jeffs.
And yet members of the church today seem to cling to the phrase of “well, we don’t know all things that god knows” and shrug off this complicated past.
Some members even make up excuses, say things like “back in the day women needed to be taken care of when their husbands died,” “it was different back then,” “it was just sealings,” “it wasn’t sexual,” “it was normal back then for girls to get married at age 15 or younger.”
Tell that to Brigham young who, as one of Joseph’s successors, married quite a few young ladies and had many, many children with them.
And while it is true that we will never know first-handedly what things were like back then, except from journal entries, historical reports or documentation,
It seems that the LDS church was indeed persecuted by people around them; chased from town to town, etc. due to some of their controversial beliefs.
and then found herself facing damnation if she did not allow her husband to marry other women.
Who’s husband “married” other women behind her back.
Who’s feelings, according to the church, of which “not much is known.”
But it’s not hard to imagine how she felt; is it?
–
Are you sitting here, thinking –
“Well not all the marriages were sexual, and there isn’t a lot of evidence for the claim that Joseph slept with the young girls!”
“A lot of the marriages were sealings, not mortal marriages!”
“It was a hard commandment from God, that’s why they kept it on the down-low!”
“Well, we don’t practice that anymore.”
Then tell me.
• Today, can men still be sealed to more than one wife in heaven? And are women still only allowed to be sealed to one man at a time?
• Today, does the church still teach young women’s lessons to girls as young as 12 about marriage and getting ready to marry a “righteous priesthood holder?”
• Today, does the church admit that when Brigham young practiced the same polygamy that Joseph introduced, he had many children with his young wives?
• Today, does Warren Jeffs remain incarcerated for continuing to practice the very polygamy that Joseph Smith originally introduced?
And tell me…
• If Joseph’s practice of polygamy was a commandment of God that was received through revelation…something that, as the church has stated, was “practiced by many prophets in the Bible;”
Then what is stopping polygamy from making a return in the modern-day age of the church?
The only border to polygamy starting up again today
Is the prophet receiving “revelation.”
While many members want to turn a blind eye to this topic and focus on the positive aspects of the religion so that it doesn’t “rattle their faith,”
Joseph smith did indeed introduce polygamy.
Brigham young slept with his wives and bore children through the same polygamy Joseph smith introduced.
Warren Jeffs and the FLDS branches off from the teachings that stemmed from Joseph himself and the Church.
The act of polygamy was a secretive and dark “commandment” from God that the church’s members practiced and taught;
And staying “we don’t know all things that the Lord knows”
Is merely a justification to turning a blind eye to the possible grooming and abuse of young women in the church.
I mean, after all;
The church today, STILL encourages young marriage.
Still teaches young women’s lessons about getting married
Still grooms it’s little girls for marriage.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
Because they don’t agree with how Joseph treated his wife Emma, of him telling her that God will destroy her if she won’t let him marry multiple women, and then married other women behind her back, claiming that it was of God to justify it.
Who are we to announce what type of love is of God and what isn’t?
Wasn’t it God who created all animals and humans and deemed them “good?”
To say that one type of love may marry in the temple and be sealed to their loved ones forever, but that another is banned from entering altogether?
With rhetoric that internally creates the harmful ideas which tell people that “because you love differently than I, you’ll go through shock therapy to fix it because we have made you believe that something is very inherently and deeply wrong with the way you love.”
If all animals and humans in nature were created by God, and homosexuality is not condemned in animals…
Why are we condemning other living beings who were also created by God?
Wasn’t it He that made them, too?
We once heard someone close to me claim that homosexuality was wrong in Humans because “we are of a higher intelligence and know better.”
That argument was like a stake through our hearts.
This person was inherently telling us that because humans have the ability to drive cars, create cities, and pay bills,
That they are not supposed to engage in homosexuality because we are “too advanced” for that.
What does that say about people who DO live true to themselves as a part of the lgbtq+ community?
Are we saying they are of a people of “lesser intelligence?” Because they aren’t able to “resist the temptation of homosexual urges?”
What a hateful way to think.
And as a bisexual woman married to a man, I couldn’t have been more offended at the implication.
Once, when my mother-in-law found out that I, the wife, is bisexual;
She made the statement to my husband over the phone that we were not to open up our marriage.
We were INFURIATED.
Not because we were ever planning on opening our marriage;
But because it is no-one’s place to tell another person how to love or what their love should look like.
To insert yourself into another person’s marriage and make claims of what it can and can’t be.
The misunderstanding of lgbtq+ individuals and misinformation/rhetoric the church preaches absolutely contributed to the assumptions of my mother in law.
Many straight people believe that bisexuals NEED both a man and woman to be fulfilled.
While that can be true for some, it is not true for all.
My mother in law had incorrectly assumed that just because her son’s wife is bisexual; that meant they were going to open their marriage and start sleeping around all of a sudden.
What an insane thing to insert yourself into; to tell someone how they can and cannot live in regards to their sexuality.
If people choose to do so, that is between those involved and no one else has a say in it.
And if they choose to remain with a closed marriage, the same exists – which is how it was with us.
–
Love is love.
We as humans were created to love.
As was nature.
In different formats, styles and fonts.
Why are we trying to RESTRICT love??
And because a person lives differently than the way a church dictates; they are prevented from partaking in the ordinances needed for them to get into heaven? To be with their loved ones forever?
We can just hear our readers telling us “but it’s to reproduce children and bring spirits into the mortal realm! That’s why only straight love is deemed appropriate and within marriage!”
To that we say –
That is QUITE the justification for hate and homophobia.
Many straight couples cannot conceive children.
Many straight couples foster or adopt.
Many straight individuals don’t even find a person to marry in their lifetime and never get the chance to even try having children.
And if your response to that is, “they will have the chance in the afterlife! God promises they’ll all have a chance!”
Our response is –
You’re telling LGBTQ+ individuals to forgo a life of love their entire life…
To never be able to marry a person they love and create a family with that person; not in the way straight people can without facing religious or spiritual punishment such as a repentance process.
To be told to get divorced from the love of your life and not be with them anymore in order to be baptized.
To live a life of celibacy; to never know what it feels like to be loved so intimately by a person we are so deeply attracted to and in love with because of their gender…
Or to live a life of falseness; being touched by a person you are not inherently attracted to, just to fulfilled the church’s laws.
To never marry because marrying the opposite gender would be unfair to that gender, but also unfair to themself because they are not truly attracted to them in that way.
To wait until DEATH to have the same blessings that their straight counterparts get to enjoy while in life? Still alive? Still living?
Do we not understand the gravity or severity of how harsh and hurtful this rhetoric is to members of the lgbtq+ community?
And trying to state that it’s about chastity, and that “well straight people who have sex outside of marriage also have to repent!”
Is NOT the same.
Straight people who have sex outside of marriage can repent, get married, grow their family and be sealed in the temple without loss of participation privileges in the church.
Members of the lgbtq+ community who have sex outside of marriage in a homosexual way have to repent; but that is where it stops.
They cannot marry the person.
They cannot be sealed to them.
They cannot have that family lifestyle with them.
Not without losing participation privileges in the church.
To NEVER have to wonder if choosing love in the way you were born to love will result in your damnation. In being cut off from God, from all of your loved ones.
How horrific it is to believe that homosexuality is nothing but mortal “lust,” and that the love they feel is a human frailty.
Try telling that to the countless lgbtq+ families who have been together for 10+ years and adopted countless children; who have created entire families and lived together, just the way you do!
Does that just sound like “lust” to you?
Once, my mother told me straight up that “The church is not homophobic.”
My jaw DROPPED to the ground.
What it must be like to be SO deeply embedded into a religion, that you don’t even recognize or realize the hurt and the unfairness that is right in front of you.
To be a part of a church that…
– has prevented baptism for gay individuals.
– once considered “homosexual actions” to be “apostasy.”
– where gays STILL cannot be married by the bishop, or sealed in the temple.
– LITERALLY claims that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God.”
To speak from a place of so much privilege, that you don’t even realize that you’re asking homosexual individuals to forgo the blessings of a marriage and family YOU so deeply enjoy?
To tell the gays that they’ll “get the chance in heaven” to have what you have? That they’ll just have to struggle with it their entire mortal lives?
While gays are sobbing, completely broken down, exiled from the temple, and committing suicide because of how they were born to love?
And yet a church member can sit there and watch ALL of that; and still claim that “The church is NOT homophobic.”
I don’t think a statement has ever been more hurtful and cruel to me in my entire life.
And I think about it often.
My sister once said to us, after agreeing that the church is NOT homophobic, that “they contribute to many lgbtq+ organizations!”
To us, this is like stating “here, we will make sure you are fed and fill with scraps from the table! That you don’t go hungry! Oh, but no…you can’t actually SIT up here at the table with us and enjoy the feast first-hand.”
To claim to love lgbtq+ brothers and sisters while at the same time, not permit them the same privileges of straight people, is contradictory and hypocritical.
–
If you’re sitting here, thinking,
“The church doesn’t believe being gay is a sin; just if you act on it and break the law of chastity just like with straight people!”
“The church does contribute to a lot of lgbtq+ organizations to show their love for those in the church who are lgbtq+!”
“The church is NOT homophobic!”
“It’s about sexual purity, not being gay!”
Then tell me.
• Today, can a gay couple who slept together repent, and then get married in the way straight couples can?
• Today, can gay couples be sealed for all time and eternity in the temples?
• Today, can a gay couple who is married attend the temple and participate in ordinances the way a straight married couple can?
I hate to break it to you:
But the Mormon church?
It IS homophobic.
And it’ll only stop being homophobic if lgbtq+ members are given the same rights as straight members.
All the same access to all the same blessings.
The church isn’t homophobic?
Okay, then I will repeat this yet AGAIN.
Can a gay couple who slept together outside of marriage repent, and then get married and sealed in the temple the way a straight couple who slept together outside of marriage can?
No.
No, they can’t.
Why?
Homophobia.
Disguised by “godly direction.”
And to date claim that the church is NOT homophobic??
Well damn.
The church REALLY has it’s brainwashing claws sunk into you;
DEEP.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
because they want everyone to be able to experience love, safety and equality; to allow everyone to have a seat at the table.
Whispers about the odd timing of the old Prophet Russell M. Nelson telling the church to take a social media fast at the same time that media news broke that his daughter was involved in child sexual abuse accusations.
Whispers about being abused behind closed doors in the bishops office.
Whispers of reporting sexual abuse to the bishop by an adult member that went unreported while the adult kept their “full faith and fellowship” in the Church.
The stories are nearly endless; you can do that research on your own.
We have also heard MANY an active member of the church say that the stories aren’t true; that they’re made up as anti-church propaganda because people are angry with the church.
We will remain vague, however we can say that we both work in a field of work that is specifically focused on child abuse and prevention.
From our personal experience, we can say that the way the church organizes itself does not help to protect child abuse.
The bishops of the church who DO report abuse; bless them, go through the church’s legal attorneys to make the report.
Half the time, when we recieve a report of child abuse that comes across the desk, it comes from a legal church representative, generally an attorney, who reports the incident on behalf of the bishop.
When we request to talk with the bishop who reported the incident to the church’s legal counsel, about 95% of the time, we are told “no.”
It is difficult to navigate all circumstances of abuse if we are unable to obtain an accurate picture from the first reporter; the one who was personally told and informed about the abuse from the victim themself.
We understand that the Church is attempting to protect it’s Church leaders…
But protecting Church leaders when it comes to the abuse of children…
Well, let’s just say that it seems that the priority of the church is NOT to protect the children…
Why is the church placing all of these protective measures against themselves, rather than place protective measures for the kids?
“But we do have protective measures in place for the kids!! The church has rolled out more and more programs to protect kids and trainings to work with children!”
Have you ever stopped to think about WHY that may be?
That it might not be in the interest of protecting the children…
But protecting the church?
And the latest news breaking about Arizona doesn’t help their case either –
Why is the church so focused on children and teens and their sexuality?
Telling young girls they become pornography based on how they dress fosters an environment for sexual abuse.
Shaming children and teens for being lgbtq+ fosters an environment for sexual abuse.
Asking children and teens behind closed doors during bishop’s interviews about their sexual intimacy and “chastity” fosters an environment for sexual abuse.
The rhetoric of abusers being forgiven seems to be a cop-out ploy for abusers.
“Yes, I sexually abused my child but I can still be forgiven and go to heaven!”
“Yes, I did horrific things to my daughter that she will carry with her for her entire life; but good thing forgiveness is real and we can just forget about it and move on!”
Despite how “rigorously” an abuser goes through a “repentance process;”
The trauma of the victim will ALWAYS exist.
And although therapy and other resources may be able to ASSIST a victim in recovery;
What was done to the victim CANNOT be undone to them; regardless of what the religion may preach about “sins being made white and spotless” before god.
We believe that God, should He exist in this framework;
That not even HE could forgive such a horrific and gruesome crime.
–
If you’re sitting here, thinking,
“We have safeguards in place now for people who work with children in the church.”
“Well, people need a safe space to openly express and confess their sins – even the most egregious ones.”
“People are making up or exaggerating these stories to make the church look bad.”
Tell me.
Why is your first impression upon reading this,
To DEFEND the church against child sexual abuse claims?
Why is your first instinct
To make excuses for the church?
Explain things on the side of the church
AND NOT THE CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS.
Maybe think about that for a moment.
Tell me.
• Today, did the courts not rule that clergy, including the LDS church, is not mandated to report child sexual abuse that was revealed in a confession?
• Today, are bishops exempt from being mandated reporters of child abuse?
• Today, does the church still teach that anyone can be forgiven of their sins – including child sex abusers?
• Today, do bishops who report abuse still have to go through the church’s legal counsel, instead of reporting things first-hand to the proper authorities?
• Today, do bishops interviews still include asking children as young as 12 about their sexual purity? About the law of chastity?
• Today, do people justify their bishop’s not reporting sexual abuse that is disclosed, in the name of privacy, confession, and godly repentance?
If you are in ANY way finding yourself on the side of defending the church for contributing to the hiding of child sexual abuse…
Maybe you should take a LONG, DEEP,
And I mean DEEP!!!
Self-reflection
And look in the fucking mirror.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
because they don’t want to be a part of any organization that, intentionally or not, fosters an environment of sexual abuse against children?
Then men, you can no longer participate in blessing the sacrament as you are not worthy to hold the power of god (the priesthood), and have to sit through the humiliation ritual of people wondering why you are not participating.
Is a niece, nephew, or child of yours being blessed in church?
Women and other members, are you considered “unworthy?” You might be asked by your bishop to stop taking the sacrament and be publicly humiliated at sacrament when it comes to you, and you have to decline in front of everyone.
(This one in particular was a very personal experience for us).
“It’s about worthiness! If we sin and don’t repent, we can’t go in either!”
“Anyone can go in the temple! They just have to follow the church’s guidelines; it’s open to all!”
“A lot of places have restrictions on who can and can’t go into places; like a no shirt no service policy! Just like a lot of other places!”
Then tell me.
• Today, are you okay with going inside a temple wedding ceremony while your gay loved ones are excluded and publicly humiliated for loving differently as they have to wait outside, on the sidewalk?
• Today, does the church still teach that not keeping your covenants will result in a breakage of your promised blessings? Such as broken promised sealing blessings with your loved ones?
• Today, does the church still sing “families CAN be together forever,” instead of “families WILL be together forever?” With the promise of being with your loved ones after death hinging on requirements and rule-following?
• Today, are men still excluded from participating in ordinances such as baby blessings, blessing and passing the sacrament, laying on of hands, and more if they “sin,” and have to sit there in humiliation while the public wonders why they are not participating?
• Today, does the church still state that you have to repent, and try to be “worthy” to enter the temple?
• Today, can you see conflict between those who have left the church and those who are still active members? The strain it places on families due to the doctrines the church teaches?
You may want to believe that the church UNITES families.
However,
They don’t.
They exclude.
Quietly.
But they exclude.
“You can be together with your family forever…IF you join the church and obey every commandment we have for you.”
“You can go in the temple…IF you get baptized, renounce “homosexual behavior,” and adhere to the way we think you should live your life.”
“You can participate with the congregation…IF you go through the public humiliation ritual of not partaking in the sacrament and repent, first.”
“You can get a temple recommend and go to the temple with your friends and family…IF you can pass our entrance interview!”
Do you not see how exclusive that is? To SO many people??
The church CLAIMS it is “all-inclusive.”
And many members eat it up,
Because they WANT to believe that they are all-inclusive.
No one likes believing they exclude and shame others, right?
But the reality…
…is vastly the opposite.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
because they won’t believe that people should be excluded for believing and living differently than themselves.
Right off the bat, We know active members of the church do not actively believe they have to pay their way into heaven; as in, they will not go out and preach “Yes we believe you have to pay to enter heaven.”
And we can’t speak for everyone, but;
We mean after all, we certainly didn’t believe it!
Tithing was always explained to us in such a way that we never considered the fact that we were having to pay mortal money to enter a godly heaven.
Growing up, we were taught that money was a mortal thing; a human thing. And that God knew our human system of money was going to be a real thing for us, that He knew we needed money to do things on this mortal earth.
So, in order to show our devotion to God, we were to give 10% of our mortal money to Him, as evidence of our faith to put off mortal things for godly ones and contribute to “building up the kingdom of God.”
Put off the natural man, and contribute to His kingdom!
Tithing is all done under the guise of “demonstrating your obedience to God.” A “Chance to prove yourself to God.”
To show how obedient you are.
How faithful you are.
To put all financial trust in God…in his church.
“Pay the church and show God you trust Him with your and your family’s financial well-being. As a result, if you need help, THE CHURCH will save you; will give you food from their food pantry, the bishops storehouse. Just pay us, and TRUST THE CHURCH.”
Tithing encourages members to rely on the church wholly.
To trust the church; give them control over your and your family’s well-being.
Give them your money.
And then trust them to feed your family.
It comes across as a very toxic relationship; does it not?
A “You love me? Prove it, and maybe I’ll help you when you’re hungry” type of engagement between mortals and a Godly being.
Many other religious organizations utilize tithing.
And some active members may say that paying tithing is like paying for anything else on this planet; rent, bills, etc. it’s merely another minuscule cost required of mortality.
So yes, although tithing is not something we necessarily like or agree with, it is common as with many other financial things.
However, our biggest gripe about tithing specifically within the LDS church?
The fact that they make tithing a COMMANDMENT, and a requirement…
To make it into heaven.
Let me explain.
In the way that LDS theology is set up, there are “three heavens or degrees.”
But of course, everyone wants to obtain the highest degree of heaven, no?
And to obtain that highest degree of heaven, you need the ordinances done in the temple.
To get into the temple, you need a temple recommend.
And to get a temple recommend, you need to obey all the commandments and pass a temple recommend interview.
Being a full-tithe payer is one of such commandments in order to obtain your temple recommend.
“Many churches pay tithing! It’s no different than other religions!”
“Tithing really is a mortal concept! It’s an act of sacrifice to God to show we trust and have faith in Him! It’s a way to show God our love for Him!”
“It’s just money! It’s only 10%. 10% is not a lot for God to ask of us! God will provide!”
“We don’t pay to enter heaven; it’s a commandment just like all the other ones for a temple recommend! Just like the law of chastity or the word of wisdom!”
Then tell me.
• Today, can you obtain a temple recommend to receive your “saving ordinances” to enter the celestial kingdom without paying your tithing? Without lying about always paying your tithing?
• Today, how much money does the church earn from its members, if every single member of the church is required to “only pay” 10% of their income every month?”
• Today, do the scriptures still condemn money-hungry tax collectors, while the church also preaches to its members to pay its tithing as a commandment?
• Today, are “blessings” promised to the church’s members, if they pay their tithes?”
To tell members of one’s church that paying money to them is a commandment…
Something members need to do to “show their obedience” to God…
A requirement to obtain temple entrance and therefore celestial kingdom entrance…
Does that not sound suspicious?
Does that not sound financially manipulative?
Financially abusive?
So that the church can be worth billions?
While its members financially struggle to make ends meet but still pay their petty cash for entrance into its temple?
Entrance into the highest degree of heaven?
While the higher ups of the church receive financial compensation?
And regular clergy remains completely unpaid?
Disguising the financial abuse of its member’s as a “godly commandment?”…
Just something to think about.
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
because they don’t believe that you should have to pay money to a religion in order to be considered “worthy” enough to enter into God’s temple to obtain the things you need to enter the highest glory of heaven.
There are MANY reasons why we left the church. LOTS. And many of them you have probably already heard, and the majority are reasons that are very common with others who have left.
Members who are still actively engaged in the church tend to be fascinated by people who have left; they can’t fathom why someone would leave…
Unless they were mislead
They didn’t understand the gospel fully
They just wanted to drink coffee
They blamed the hurt they experienced on the church but God doesn’t hurt them
Etc.
Hundreds of reasons they make up for themselves, to help them understand why someone would leave the religion.
So here; to start –
In no particular order – here is one of our reasons for leaving the church.
There have been official reports of the Mormon church misusing their finances. The Mormon church is worth a LOT of Money – like a LOT. The church falls into the “billionaire” category.
Can we even FATHOM how much money that is??
And of course with white collar crimes and wealth, it seems as though the church was no exception when they were caught with “Disclosure Failings and Misstated Filings.”
“It was a mistake! The church didn’t do all of that on purpose!”
“Well, people are human! That doesn’t mean the church itself approved of all of that financial mishandling!”
“The church believes in obeying and honoring the law, not breaking it!”
Then tell me.
• Why did the United States government have to step in and confront the church about its misfiling of church finances?
• If it was a “mistake,” isn’t that kind of a big one?
• The people who manage the church finances work for…guess who? The CHURCH. Who do you think their bosses are? The people they report to are?
• Isn’t the church filed under “billionaire” status? Just like other celebrities and more who are also “billionaire status” and have been found out to do illegal things with their money?
Why are we defending a billionaire organization?
Why are we immediately jumping to the defense of the church regarding the charges the United States government found them GUILTY of?
Why are we defending an organization that requires its members to pay them 10% of their money to enter heaven? (See blog post “Paying money to enter heaven).
Why?
Because members don’t want to believe that the church they’re paying their money too…
Is not exempt from financial corruption.
But sure; keep paying your tithing.
Trust them to do what they say they will with your money.
Don’t want to shatter those rose-colored glasses (faith) now, would you?
–
Imagine shaming someone for leaving the church –
because they believe that their Church should obey the law and not cause financial crimes.
Like my wife, I was born and raised in the Mormon church.
I was the middle child of five kids, and like many kids who grow up in the church, I learned pretty early on what I was supposed to do.
I was supposed to be obedient.
I was supposed to listen to my parents.
I was supposed to go to church.
I was supposed to read my scriptures.
I was supposed to pray.
I was supposed to serve.
I was supposed to become a missionary.
I was supposed to get married.
I was supposed to provide for my family.
I was supposed to be a good Mormon man.
And for most of my life, I did exactly what I was supposed to do.
When I moved out and went to college, I still went to church every Sunday.
But college also gave me my first real taste of life outside of the very small world I had grown up in.
I partied.
I met people who believed completely different things.
I went to other churches.
I experienced things that weren’t necessarily compatible with what I had been taught growing up.
And yet, no matter where I went or what I experienced, nothing felt quite like the Mormon church.
So I stayed.
I told myself that if I had looked around and still felt that the church was where I belonged, then that must mean something.
Eventually, I decided to serve a mission.
I left for a two-year mission in Chile.
And that’s where things started to get complicated.
I began having doubts.
Not huge, earth-shattering doubts at first.
Just little questions.
Little moments where something didn’t quite make sense.
But I had been taught what to do with doubt.
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”
So that’s what I did.
Whenever something bothered me, I pushed it down.
Whenever I had a question, I looked for an answer that would make the church right.
Whenever something didn’t sit well with me, I convinced myself that I simply wasn’t understanding it correctly.
I remember struggling particularly with teaching about Joseph Smith.
I just couldn’t bring myself to fully buy into some of it.
In fact, I struggled with it so much that I saved that lesson for last.
I figured if I could just get through everything else first, maybe by the time I got there I’d have figured it out.
I never really did.
But I kept going.
Because that’s what you did.
You pushed through.
You had faith.
You doubted your doubts.
You finished your mission.
And then COVID happened.
I came home from Chile during the pandemic on planes the church had purchased to evacuate missionaries.
Everything about coming home felt strange.
I hadn’t finished my mission the way I expected to.
I didn’t get the normal ending.
And when I got home, I didn’t receive any real end-of-mission counsel from my mission president.
I felt abandoned.
I felt lost.
I had spent two years with an incredibly structured purpose, and suddenly that purpose was gone.
I was home, during a global pandemic, and I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next.
Then I was offered a job as a wildland firefighter for the summer.
And I absolutely loved it.
For the first time, I found something that felt completely different from church, school, or anything else I had been told I was supposed to do.
I loved the work.
I loved the people.
I loved being outside.
I loved the feeling of doing something difficult and knowing that I was capable of it.
But summer eventually ended, and I went back to school that fall.
And because I had been taught my entire life that one of the things I was supposed to do was get married and start a family, I started looking for a wife.
Not because I couldn’t slow down.
Not because I was incapable of being alone.
But because I genuinely believed that this was the next step.
This was what I was supposed to do.
I created a dating profile because all of my firefighter coworkers had dating apps.
I figured, why not?
On the very first day I was back in my college town, I opened the app.
And I saw her.
My wife.
I decided to message her.
We ended up talking on FaceTime for three hours that day.
Three hours.
And by the end of that conversation, we had already planned an in-person date for the following day.
We dated for three months, living about 45 minutes apart.
Three months later, we were engaged.
Five months after that, we were married.
And we were sealed in the temple.
We were young.
We were in love.
And we were absolutely convinced that we were doing what we were supposed to be doing.
My wife left everything she had and moved up to my college town because I was closer to finishing school.
And almost immediately, the next expectation kicked in.
We were married.
So, naturally, we were supposed to have children.
But before that happened, I stressed myself out with the idea that I needed to provide for her.
I had been taught what a man was supposed to be.
A man was supposed to provide.
A man was supposed to protect.
A man was supposed to take care of his family.
A man was supposed to make sure his wife and children had everything they needed.
So I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to become that person.
I stressed myself out to the point that, just one week after our wedding, I left my brand-new wife behind to go do wildland firefighting for the summer.
Not because I didn’t want to be with her.
Quite the opposite.
I loved her.
But in my mind, working was how I was going to take care of her.
It was the only way I could think of to “provide” for my new family.
Once I came back to school that fall, we were finally living together full-time.
And that’s when we decided to try for a baby.
Because that’s what married people were supposed to do.
Because we had been taught to “multiply and replenish the earth.”
Because I was supposed to become a father.
Because this was the next step.
And it stressed me the fuck out.
I was already trying to finish school.
I was already trying to work.
I was already trying to provide for my wife.
And now I was trying to figure out how to become a father too.
Eventually, I learned that I was potentially infertile, and we stopped trying.
At the time, that information was complicated.
But looking back, stopping that process gave me one less expectation to carry before I was ready to question where those expectations had even come from.
But the pressure to provide was still there.
I had been taught what a man was supposed to be.
A man was supposed to provide.
A man was supposed to protect.
A man was supposed to take care of his family.
A man was supposed to make sure his wife and children had everything they needed.
So I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to become that person.
I stressed myself out to the point that, just one week after our wedding, I left my brand-new wife behind to go do wildland firefighting for the summer.
Not because I didn’t want to be with her.
Quite the opposite.
I loved her.
But in my mind, working was how I was going to take care of her.
It was the only way I could think of to “provide” for my new family.
Once I came back to school that fall, we were finally living together full-time.
But I didn’t slow down.
I worked more than full-time while finishing school.
I was trying to provide.
I was trying to take care of everything.
I was trying to be the husband I had been taught I was supposed to be.
And I was doing it all on my own.
Eventually, I finished school.
I got a job with the state.
And then I joined the Army Reserves.
All within a matter of a few months.
Looking back, I was constantly moving from one thing I was “supposed” to do to the next.
Graduate.
Get a career.
Provide.
Join the military.
Be a good husband.
Be a good Mormon.
Be a good man.
Then I went to basic training.
And for the first time in my life, I experienced what it felt like to have almost no control over anything.
Where I went.
When I woke up.
When I ate.
When I slept.
What I did.
Where I stood.
What I wore.
Almost every aspect of my life was dictated by someone else.
And when I couldn’t control anything else, I turned to the one thing I felt like I could control.
My religion.
I started reading the Book of Mormon every single day.
My religion became essentially my entire personality.
I became extremely devout.
But at the time, I didn’t understand why.
I thought it was faith.
I thought I was becoming closer to God.
I thought I was doing what I needed to do.
But underneath all of that was fear.
I was terrified that something would happen to my wife while I was gone.
I was going to be away for seven months.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t be there.
I couldn’t control what happened to her.
So I convinced myself that if I was devout enough, if I prayed enough, if I read my scriptures enough, if I followed the commandments closely enough, then nothing bad would happen to her.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but my faith had become a bargain.
If I did everything right, God would keep her safe.
If I wasn’t devout enough, something terrible might happen.
And when nothing bad happened while I was gone, I interpreted that as proof.
Proof that my faith had worked.
Proof that God had protected her.
Proof that I had done the right thing.
But when I got home from training and was finally back with my wife, we started talking.
Really talking.
We started discussing the doctrines of the church in more detail.
And eventually I realized something that completely changed the way I understood my own faith.
My devoutness wasn’t the reason nothing bad happened to my wife.
My prayers didn’t protect her.
My scripture study didn’t protect her.
My obedience didn’t protect her.
I had been using religion as a way to cope with the obsessive and unwanted thoughts that something terrible would happen to her while I was gone.
My entire faith had been driven by fear.
Not actual belief.
And once I realized that, I couldn’t unsee it.
At the time, I was also serving as a Young Men’s leader.
And I genuinely loved being with the boys.
I loved working with them.
I loved talking to them.
I loved helping them.
But I noticed something about myself.
I started avoiding gospel topics.
Instead of teaching them doctrine, I found myself talking about how to be a good person.
How to help other people.
How to treat people with kindness.
How to be someone others could depend on.
I was still technically teaching them within the framework of the church, but I was quietly moving further and further away from the actual doctrine.
Eventually, my wife and I decided to take a step away from the Mormon church.
And stepping away gave me something I hadn’t really had before.
Distance.
Distance from the constant messaging.
Distance from the expectations.
Distance from the guilt.
Distance from the idea that there was only one correct way to think, live, believe, and exist.
And for the first time, I could actually think.
I could take the skills I had learned in college.
I could take the skills I had learned in the Army.
I could look at information critically.
I could question things.
I could examine both sides.
And I could finally allow myself to consider the possibility that the church wasn’t true.
And eventually, I realized something incredibly simple.
I just didn’t believe it.
And I don’t think I ever did.
And the more I learned, the more I realized that it wasn’t just that I didn’t believe the church.
I hated the foundation of the doctrine.
I hated what it taught.
I hated what it had taught me about what it meant to be a man.
I hated what it had taught me about what my wife was supposed to be.
And I hated what it had done to young women.
But I also realized it wasn’t just young women.
It had damaged young men too.
It had taught us that our worth was tied to obedience.
That being a good man meant being a provider.
That doubt was something to overcome rather than something to explore.
That fear could be mistaken for faith.
That questioning could be mistaken for weakness.
That there was a prescribed version of who we were supposed to become.
And I had spent most of my life trying desperately to become that person.
Now I’m trying to figure out who I actually am.
And honestly?
That’s a constant battle.
I’m still learning which parts of me are actually me and which parts were built by years of indoctrination.
I’m learning what I actually believe.
What I actually value.
How I actually want to live.
What kind of husband I want to be.
What kind of man I want to be.
What kind of person I want to be.
Not what the church told me those things were supposed to look like.
But what they actually mean to me.
That process has been difficult enough that I’ve gone to therapy to help me work through it and understand myself.
And I don’t have all the answers.
I’m still figuring it out.
But there is one thing I know with absolute certainty.
I will never go back to the Mormon church.
And I don’t think I will ever go back to religion in general.
For me, the damage caused by the church has been exponential.
The indoctrination.
The guilt.
The shame.
The fear.
The expectations.
The stunted personal growth.
The years spent trying to become someone I was told I was supposed to be instead of figuring out who I actually was.
I don’t regret everything.
I don’t regret meeting my wife.
I don’t regret the people I met.
I don’t regret the experiences that shaped me.
And I don’t regret learning how to question things.
Because ironically, leaving the church may have been the first time I truly allowed myself to think for myself.
For most of my life, I thought being a good person meant doing what I was supposed to do.
Now I’m learning that being a good person might simply mean figuring out who you are, deciding what you believe, treating people well, and having the courage to live honestly—even when nobody else gets to tell you what that is supposed to look like.
My husband and I were both born and raised in the LDS church. And we did EVERYTHING.
For myself, I was the eldest daughter of the family, with four younger siblings. I was an accidental baby; a pregnancy that encouraged my parents to stay together.
In fact, I was around a year old when my parents had me sealed to them in the Mormon temple…
A fact which I always disliked – the idea that my coming into existence before a legal document of marriage being signed was considered a “sin.”
So, to be dramatic, I suppose you could say I had issues with the religion since my birth!
As many an eldest daughter, I felt it to be my duty to be “the example.” To do everything right, to never mess up. To “Lead by Example.”
I was born in 1999. The rhetoric I grew up with is very different then than it is nowadays in the church. It was more along the lines of “don’t be a lukewarm Christian,” “don’t be a fence sitter,” “The rules are black and white with no room for grey.”
I was ALL IN in the church.
I got baptized at 8 years old.
I went to church every Sunday and stayed the whole three hours.
I was in leadership positions all throughout my time in Beehives, Mia Maids, and Laurels.
I spent hours outside of church on Sundays and during the weeks attending countless leadership meetings and planning plenty of youth activities.
I got my patriarchal blessing.
I attended weekly youth activities and rarely missed one.
I went to every temple trip, youth study trip, etc.
I participated in early morning scripture study with my family before seminary and school; every morning.
I participated in our weekly family home evenings.
I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting even though I absolutely despised the attention, being up there in front of everyone like that.
I attended EFY and girls camp; and bore my testimony at every single testimony meeting because I felt guilty to God if I didn’t.
I waited until 16 to date; and didn’t steady date until after my mission.
I covered my shoulders, wore longer shorts and skirts, layered my clothes – with the mindset that I was preparing myself to wear garments one day.
I was excited to become a YCL, youth camp leader as a teen at 18 and plan activities, help the girls, etc.
I attended and graduated seminary in high school – rarely missed a day. I studied that doctrine and memorized scriptures like no other.
When I graduated high school, I DESPERATELY prayed about serving a mission.
I never got a “yes or no” answer. My intuition and mind thought to myself, “It’s your decision,” and “If you look back on your life, will you be happy you served?”
Of course, as a teenager at 18 who was still very actively engaged in the church, I chose to go.
I got my endowment in the Mormon temple, and had lots of family and friends attend with me – I remember bawling my eyes out when the ceremony was over.
I gave up 1.5 years of my life fresh out of high school laboring in the New York, New York City mission where I spent countless hours studying, teaching, and baptizing strangers in the church.
I was DEDICATED to my studies, and got into some insanely deep and intricate topics regarding religion.
I taught myself how to respond to criticism against the church – How to argue on the PRO side of the religion.
And I was GOOD at it, too.
I argued and debated with hundreds of people while on my mission in regards to the topic of religion.
And every time, I always left feeling as though I had won a victory.
Looking back; they weren’t victories.
It was the people I debated with, seeing that I was so close-minded to what they had to say, that they stopped trying to debate me. And because of that, I felt as though there was nothing they could say that would contradict the church, and therefore, reiterated internally to me that of course, “The Church is true.”
I could find any scripture I was thinking of in seconds, knowing exactly where to look.
I knew the gospel and the church like the BACK OF MY HAND.
What was wrong, what was right.
But oh, how wrong I was.
Coming back from my mission, my mission president heavily emphasized a new mission; get married and multiply and replenish the earth.
So when I came home, that was my mission.
I bawled when I was released from my “calling” as a missionary, and when I gave my homecoming talk over video in 2020.
I applied to college in Utah, which I viewed as the hub of Mormonism with the mindset of “I don’t really know what I want to be or what my plan is, but college will help me find a husband.”
I chose a major in which would allow me, once married, to be as involved with my future children’s lives as possible; elementary education. Not a career field I was sure I actually wanted; but one that would support me as a wife and mother – the “highest calling,” as I was raised to believe.
I would work with kids, and have the summers off to stay home with my own.
It would be the perfect job when my future kids were school-aged, where I could work while they were also at school but then be home with them after to take care of them as was my duty.
I set myself up to attend college institute courses weekly, and institute events also weekly – Seminary for college. I was determined to graduate from institute and signed up for multiple classes.
I went to church every Sunday in college, attended all the gatherings and “family home evenings.”
I signed up for online dating, as per my peers in college.
I met my husband online.
We talked virtually for three hours, and set up an in-person date for the next day; which just so happened to be the day before I started my freshman year of college. A week later, we officially became “boyfriend and girlfriend.” We were engaged three months into our relationship; and married 5 months after that.
The next thing I knew, I transferred my college credits to the university my husband was attending and moved 45 minutes away to be with him.
We got sealed in the temple, considered ourselves lucky to be able to do so with Covid closing buildings left and right. We didn’t even bother to do a civil ceremony, as in our minds, “the sealing was the most important thing.”
I feel robbed of that now; robbed of the chance to have my princess moment of walking down the aisle, etc. because I had believed that the church and the sealing was above all things mortal.
I was, and still am, absolutely in love with my husband. In fact, that’s one thing the church gave me that I will forever be grateful for; the love of my life!
But at the same time, we were living in a 400-square foot studio apartment while both going to college, trying desperately to make ends meet, AND for some reason decided having a baby at that time would be a priority, after all, the church proclaimed that it is a commandment to “multiply and replenish the earth.”
We found ourselves facing infertility; something I am VERY grateful for today; but back then it was something that felt so devastating, it was like we were failing God.
I had good friends who also did the same as us; sealed in the temple – that left the church.
I was devastated. Completely heartbroken; and we judged them harshly.
However, this ignited lively debates between my husband and I about the church; we both loved a good debate, and in this case, it was us versus the doctrines of the church.
It was exciting and thrilling to analyze the gospel.
To research, study, seek answers.
We researched and studied on the pro-side of the church; considered ourselves “out there” since we researched materials that weren’t specifically church-assigned.
However if there was anything college taught us, it was how to research – and how to look at ALL sources and sides; not just one.
I became a young women’s leader; I taught the young women the gospel. Attended girls camp with them. Sought out the less active girls.
The girls challenged me with questions that I had to research, study, analyze.
I worked with them to stay in the church; to keep their faith. To believe.
One Sunday, I was assigned to teach a lesson to these young women about the priesthood – about women’s roles in the priesthood…
There is a common rhetoric that seems to plague people who leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also commonly known as the Mormon Church.
“They can leave the church but they can’t leave it alone.”
When we left the church, “we” referring to my husband and myself, we tried for a long time to do the opposite; to keep quiet. To leave the church, and leave it alone. To leave it behind us and move forward.
But then we realized; it was eating us alive. And we couldn’t do that.
My husband and I both grew up in the Mormon church; born into it, actually.
We put a LOT of time, effort, and SO much love into our time in the church.
A rhetoric that has always bothered us both is that people who leave the church “just didn’t understand everything fully,” “they were just lazy and didn’t want to listen to all the rules,” “they just wanted to have fun and chose sin” or “they weren’t super dedicated members of the church anyways.”
It’s a rhetoric that bothers my husband and myself a great deal more than “they can leave the church but they can’t leave it alone;” and therefore, here we are.
We can’t just “leave it alone.”
Not when I, the wife, have had to undergo Brain Spotting trauma therapy and had to revert back to regular talk therapy because of how intense and overwhelming all of the emotions from the church were.
Not when my husband was plagued with feeling like the entire burden of life and caring for our family was on his shoulders alone to handle as the “man of the house.”
Not when our marriage was actually suffering from the patriarchal beliefs we both had to work really hard towards breaking together.
Not when we gave so much love to this church for 24 years of our lives just to turn around and realize that it was like a massive discovery close to finding out that Santa Clause wasn’t real as a child.
