I got baptised for a boy…sigh.

[Anonymous]

thank you!

as for my MIL problems, we have long since cut off contact with that toxic, crazy, loon. :thumbup: My husband has come to the conclusion that LDS or not, his mother is very very very toxic for him, and all of his relationships.

i know that my original perception of the LDS church would be different if i had had a different experience first getting introduced to it. Maybe if i had come into a larger ward without her in it, I wouldn’t have felt like I needed a scarlet N for Nonmember, not-worthy, what have you.

but then i think about all of my issues with the church as a whole, and I realize that even if joseph smith himself had tried to sell me on mormonism from the get go, I would not be able to reconcile a few major issues. I can get over it being a patriarchal establishment. I can get over blacks not having the priesthood. there are ways to justify it. there are softer lines to walk. but i can not get over the secrecy/lies reguarding prop 8, i can not get over the donation ammounts and that the church hasn’t lost it’s tax exempt status. I can not get over the lack of empathy for gay people and their families, and i can not get over the idea that somehow, i, as imperfect as i am, are better than the other 6 billion people in the world because i am white, american, and LDS. by that i mean that if it is Gods church, why do so few people have access? etc.

something that really boggles me is polygamy. on the surface, the old line of “there just werent enough men, they did it to survive” is okay, until you dig a little deeper. until you realize just how many wives JS and BY and all the others had. That some of them were very very very young, already married, etc.

I am a monogamous person…and I find polygamy very disgusting. It just rubs me the wrong way, in the church or out of it. The idea that we might be practicing that in the eternities sickens me. The fact that nobody, in all their ‘devine inspriation’ can come up with a simple yes or no for that one, really, really bothers me.

i dont believe in “milk before meat”. why? because guess what? the meat went bad while you were milking the cow.

i don’t believe that i should have to stand up in front of an audience of judgmental strangers and “know” something that you just can not prove.

i don’t believe that it is okay that there are no black general authorities. that if “god wanted a black prophet, he would put one on that path”. oh okay. so god controls our destiny, and yet we have agency. which is it? or is it both, when you need it to be, to justify whatever line you are trying to sell?

i dont believe i should be asked to give 10% of my income to the church, when i would have to ask for it back that same week to help pay my bills. and i especially dont believe i should do that if i have no clue what my hard earned money is going to be used for within the church. i refuse to fund another prop 8.

i could go on, but there are just so many things.

[Anonymous]

GreenTangerine wrote:

i could go on, but there are just so many things.

Yup. We know… 🙄 😥

Instead of trying to find some grand theory of everything that uses a simple formula to prove the Church is all-true or all-false, it makes more sense to me to break it up into pieces. Sometimes the Church, the Gospel, our own personal spiritual experiences are really great. Sometimes the Church is just plain wrong in the positions it takes. Or to put it in milder terms, sometimes it doesn’t meet our individual needs in some areas, or promotes ideas that are not good for us individually (like Prop 8 perhaps).

Sometimes the Church is great! (most of the time, for those of us with a generally positive experience)

Sometimes the Church is pointless for us.

Sometimes it is wrong and does harm.

Isn’t that pretty much how everything else in life works? Once I came to grips with that, my expectations changed and I had less internal dissonance — lowered expectations.

[Anonymous]

Brian Johnston wrote:

Sometimes the Church is great! (most of the time, for those of us with a generally positive experience)

Sometimes the Church is pointless for us.

Sometimes it is wrong and does harm.

Isn’t that pretty much how everything else in life works? Once I came to grips with that, my expectations changed and I had less internal dissonance — lowered expectations.

Yes. And the way that I deal with this realization, is I finally had to admit to myself that the LDS church is not the only pathway to heaven. IMO, it’s a good pathway, but there are just way too many flaws and issues with the LDS church, like ALL churches, for it to be God’s Kingdom on Earth and the one and only true church on the face of the earth.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

IMO, it’s a good pathway, but there are just way too many flaws and issues with the LDS church, like ALL churches, for it to be God’s Kingdom on Earth and the one and only true church on the face of the earth.

Luke 17:20-21 (King James Version)

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

[Anonymous]

thanks for your post. i understand what you mean when you feel that the lds community took it hard when your husband became inactive. the thing is that faithful church-going active lds members take their faith very very literally and when one goes astray it just seems they think “how could they turn away like that” ?

what i have learned to do myself is to not take things in the church too literally or else I would go crazy. sometimes i just try to deal with the here and now first instead of dwelling on who I’m going to disappoint in the hereafter.

dealing with “beliefs” can really be a balancing act sometimes. for me i have found life is hard enough in the here and now and worrying about the here-after is secondary.

in spite of my approach to living life, which is not typical of an active latter day saint, i do make a point of being christ-like to others and try not to rock the boat when people upset me.

[Anonymous]

The best way to deal with the polygamy and blacks issues is to accept that they are part of our past, but not part of our present. I won’t airbrush either of these. The latter was plain wrong IMHO, but I think modern society is hypocritical vis a vis polygamy and promiscuity.

With the BoM, yes, there are question marks about its origin, but as someone here said, “if you find a kitten in a box, who cares where it comes from”? In this case, I think the BoM has murky origins, but I find it a superb book of scripture. Okay, so it has some weak points, but it also has points of beauty, and I believe a lot of it is inspired… that’s why I have no problem answering that question in the TR interview. If someone asked me if I believed there was physical evidence for the Nephites, I would say no, but I’d be willing to change my mind if something showed up. The BoM has been surprisingly helpful to me, and it has helped me in ways that I can’t actually explain.

Homosexuals and women – I am neither of these, so I am not directly affected by them (nor am I black). I’m uncomfortable about how homosexuals are viewed by the church, women I believe receive varying degrees of tolerance and equality within the church, depending on a) where they are physically and b) what they are doing. I actually envy the women in my church for being able to wear pretty much anything they want in church, as long as it’s not too revealing, or trousers. Compared to that, us men have a very limited dress code. I have seen evidence that the RS was set up as some kind of female priesthood by JS. I would love it if this was better publicized. I see signs that things are improving for women in the church, but are static in others. I suspect when certain old guarders die off within the next decade, we may see some progress there. I think oddly enough, one of the signs of moving towards equality would be the increasing numbers of young female missionaries.

[Author]

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