Jeff meanders through his experiences and others' before moving on to discuss a concerning letter he received from someone he won't mention. Are they a leader within the church? Part of the faculty BYU? Just some Mormon out in the world somewhere? Are they in the room with you now, Jeff? Is the anonymous person just a place holder for pseudonymous Jeff speaking in the third person? Only corporate white Mormon Jesus could know.
Category: Doctrinal Teachings
Response to Deseret News opinion piece “Perspective: Don’t believe the headlines. Few people suffer trauma from religion in childhood”
You may have noticed that the Deseret News article references other churches' scandals rather than the plentiful scandals of its own Utah-based church. 'What Mormon church scandals in recent headlines?' you might ask if your only source of news is Zion's own Deseret News. Here are just a few you can find with your own modern-day seer stone called Google that happened within the last two years:
The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 4 Disillusionment at Church. Again.
For a church that preached how important family is, I couldn't believe how often I was being expected to spend time or money away from my family. I was burned out and angry that so much was expected of me, and I didn't ask for any of it. Church responsibilities were demanding more and more from me all the time, and I was nearing my breaking point.
The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 3 Cognitive Dissonance
When I returned from the mission field I had a completely different belief in God than I did when I left. He was not as involved in the church or my daily life nearly as much as I'd been taught to believe. No, He would pop up for the real important things, but otherwise leave us free to exercise our judgement as best we could. That was a major takeaway for me. So it continued to bother me when others at church would tearily blare their testimony about the so-called "God of lost car keys". The God who cares so very much about you that He guided you to your missing car keys so that you wouldn't be late to work. The personal, coddling God, by whose grace it is you scored a touchdown. The vending dispenser God who would shower you with blessings if only you would but ask. The God who solves mundane, unimportant, banal first world problems in such a miraculous way, that one can't help but bare testimony of it at Open Mic Sunday.
The Perfect Storm of Conditions For Apostasy – Part 2 Disillusionment As A Missionary
In the church, and especially in the mission field, there's a lot prosperity gospel being preached if not outright, then subtly. Prosperity gospel is basically the idea that if you're super righteous and work really hard, God will dispense blessings from the Eternal Vending Machine in the sky. You will baptize people, you will become District Leader, you will train a new missionary, you will become Zone Leader, you will transcend all other missionaries to become the coveted Assistant to the President. All that is to say, that if you have a divine calling from God to serve as a leader in the mission, you achieved that title because of your obedience to the mission rules, the commandments, and God is pleased with your service. The unspoken understanding of the opposite is also true: if you're not advancing it's because you're lazy, disobedient, and out of favor with God.
Mormons and Abortion
Mormons believe that Elohim and his Kolobian polygamous wives have been playing celestial hide-the-pickle for eternity with their exalted, resurrected bodies. This is the ultimate goal for all Mormons. To become like Elohim and create their own planets and make infinite ghost children with their own celestial harem, Elohim's wraith offspring need a physical body. I know it doesn't make any sense why a physical body is needed to make a ghost baby, but God's ways are not our ways. Or something.
Half of U.S. Mormons are COVID-19 ‘vaccine hesitant’ or ‘vaccine refusers’
LDS and Biblical prophets have required many difficult tasks of their adherents. This includes cutting off part of their penis; giving 10% of their income to the church until they die; marrying a man who is married to many other women and pretending to be happy about it; migrating across states, countries, and oceans; leaving families to preach the gospel for years on their own dime at at their own risk; murder someone for their genealogy book; not drinking coffee, tea, or alcohol which are quite possibly the most popular drinks in the world; sexually repressing yourself into addictive or violent behavior; giving your spouse to someone else; amongst others. But of all the things prophets have asked of people, getting a vaccine is the most banal and simple thing to comply with.
Tithing Is “Voluntary”
Tithing is voluntary (if you don't mind being locked out of Heaven or being burned up in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ).
Christians: Your God Is a Bully
Christians, you can have your manipulative and capricious god. I’d rather not worship something that sends plagues and then lifts them when enough people grovel and beg that please, for the love of god, stop it. That’s an abusive relationship I don’t need in my life.
BYU Honor Code: The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
How can you remove an entire section of the Honor Code and then claim it still applies?
I Know Cognitive Dissonance Is True 