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Thanks, DBMormon. I hope I’ll feel free in the future to say what I know and don’t know. Cultural pressure to formulate our testimonies a certain way is huge, and I have recently awakened to ways in which I’ve been dishonest with myself. The ends – all the good things that can and sometimes do flow from Knowing The Church Is True – seemed to justify the means. . . until they didn’t. If I am honest, I say re. Joseph Smith: I didn’t know him, I can’t know him, and the Spirit does not override and lead me to trust him. If I had been honest, I wouldn’t have told my students (in that sort of bland and blase way that people talk about polygamy in the early church) that I didn’t understand it, but we know that the Lord must have had a purpose in commanding it. I know some people have reached that conclusion, but for those of us who didn’t. . . But, thankfully, in my here-and-now present, there are a lot of good things to do and I’m doing them much more cheerfully since all this anguish began. Go figure.
Ann wrote:Cultural pressure to formulate our testimonies a certain way is huge, and I have recently awakened to ways in which I’ve been dishonest with myself. The ends – all the good things that can and sometimes do flow from Knowing The Church Is True – seemed to justify the means. . . until they didn’t.
Thanks Ann. I agree completely. For years (since I was 14) I’ve shared my testimony experience roughly as follows:
I prayed to know if the BoM was true and if Joesph Smith was a prophet and felt the peaceful assurance th”at I already knew it was true.”
The problem with this is it isn’t entirely accurate (read: out right lie). I did indeed pray for the truth. I studied hard and prayed fervently but the truth is I NEVER felt differently! But for whatever reason my 14 year old brain felt like it needed an “answer” as taught in ss and as JS received. So I convinced myself that I had received on. And this lie I have lived with for 15 years. The TBM would say that it is my state of apostasy that has caused me to forget the true experience, but it’s just not true. Oh how I wish I could have just been told it’s okay to just say that you believe something is true (not actually know it) and let that be good enough. But then, I suppose it would have been much harder in the mission to promise investigators that they would receive answers about the truthfulness of the BoM if I myself never received one.
Oh and as for wierd stuff… I was once asked how much mormons were paid to have children. It was a serious question posed by a friend who really believed this.
I’ve also heard that the purpose of early morning seminary is so young Mormons can file down their horns before school.
👿 In the mission we used to teach that tea contained a substance used to make rat poison (which I really believed until later researching it when I got home. I still feel a bit guilty for lying to a whole lot of people about that…)
Weird Stuff that I heard…. 1) mormons can have their calling and electoin made sure through a special temple ceremony
2) Brigham young quit giving the priesthood to africans for no reason
3) joseph smith had lots of wives…many in secret
4) Women used to be able to give blessings
5) Mormons will eventually build there own spirit children and populate their own planets
Or what about how we baptize dead bodies?! Sunday at church, yes, two days ago…I heard that “abuse and rape victims have to suffer as much pain as the abuser or rapists in order to fulfill the requirements of repentance.” jwald’s 20+ year bishop father was in attendence…damn near had a coronary. I just patted him on the shoulder and told him “welcome to my world” as I ushered my bawling teenage daughter out of the room.
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Holy. Crap.Just out of curiosity, how old was the person who said that?
You are welcome to move to my ward any time.
65-70ish. The old guard. Same woman who told me interracial marriage was an abomination.
Perhaps the church needs to quit worrying so much about blue shirted heretics and put a little more focus on the apostasy and false doctrines taught by some of its faithful TBMs.
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Old-Timer wrote:You are welcome to move to my ward any time.
Thanks
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My word, you go to a seriously worrying ward. I’m just glad I’m not in it. Thank heavens for small mercies! If you want to hear something horrible, there is a guy in the church whose wife is in a wheelchair. They’re both pretty much TBM as you’d say over there… born in, children temple married etc.
Anyway, some idiot went and said to him that his wife wasn’t healed because she didn’t have enough faith, and wasn’t virtuous enough etc etc. He actually mentioned this in a class he was taking, and how much it hurt him. He had to complain about the person in question, and he later apologized. Horrible…
CWALD – hopefully the Bishop or another leader took her aside and straightened her out kindly…. I would have. That was awful.
I think that kind of thing is spiritual leaven and does not originate with the Good One. That’s me trying to be diplomatic. At this point, I’m going to out myself as a victim of physical and emotional abuse as a child. (Not sexual, AFAIK, and I hope not.) I won’t go into detail but I’ll say the following: a) it wasn’t my parents, it was school teachers in what you call elementary school, b) I still bear some of the physical traces of it, and c) yes, it does affect me psychologically. I was a hyperactive child, but I don’t think I needed some of the injuries that I sustained. It still affects my speech, very slightly, for example.
My take on repentance is that I must pay for the bad things that I’ve done myself knowingly, but not the bad things other people have done to me, let alone the sins of my ancestors… My job is to try and forgive those who were cruel and abusive to me. I don’t know if I have succeeded in that yet. I’ve forgotten who some of them are, since it happened so long ago.
Thanks, Sam, for that personal insight. Everyone, I just wrote a separate post about the comment by the lady in cwald’s branch and Sam’s comment about his own situation. Let’s not derail this post and turn it into a discussion of those comments. If you want to continue that conversation, and I think if should be continued, let’s do it in the other thread.
cwald wrote:65-70ish. The old guard.
Same woman who told me interracial marriage was an abomination.
Perhaps the church needs to quit worrying so much about blue shirted heretics and put a little more focus on the apostasy and false doctrines taught by some of its faithful TBMs.
a-freakin’-MEN.I believe that the church has lost all moral legitimacy by allowing the continuation of hatred and patently bigoted rhetoric whilst pushing out the meek, wounded of spirit, and needy.
Fwiw, wayfarer, I am comfortable with that wording relative to local leaders and congregations and with some individual upper-level leaders but not relative to the top leaders, especially under Pres. Monson’s leadership. Yes, there are groups who still are being pushed out unnecessarily, but I believe strongly that the “meek, wounded of spirit and needy” are not being pushed out at that level.
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