I know it's traditional today to give thanks. And in a way, I am, but I think a little anger-giving or even a spank-giving might help shake up your family holiday.
Mormon members sometimes ask us ex-mormons:
Mormon members sometimes ask us ex-mormons:
- Why do you keep venting against the church?
- Why are you kicking against the pricks, when it fulfils prophecy!?
- Your anger isn’t helping anyone.
It would be irrational of a person not to be angry at being defrauded. A financial con of six-figures alone would keep anyone upset for years. Add the robbing of my youth, philosophy, culture and emotional security…
It's not hard to predict people will "kick against the prick" or be horribly upset if you know you’re screwing them. If they find out, they’re gonna be pissed! To not be angry would be very abnormal. We are rational in our frustration. Those claiming otherwise lack empathy.
Besides, as David Burns points out, there is a lot of hypocrisy in the charge that ex-mormons can’t leave the LDS church alone--we aren’t the ones with 80,000 missionaries knocking on doors. We don’t hold special family nights just to invite “ex-investigators” to hear our ex-mormon discussions. We don’t throw special congregational activities attuned to our non-ex-mormon potential ex-converts.
Are we really seething and angry all the time? Not at all. We may have lost the “new and everlasting covenant”, but have found that there is something much much better: New and Everlasting Curiosity.
Leaving the LDS church is like becoming a child who is merging into adulthood again. All the fascination of a whole world opens to your exploration, of choosing new directions, of seeking new friends, learning new insights—it’s the candy store that continues to give when you remove the abundant limits placed on you by Mormondom.
Yes, there is some anger at the lies that kept us from experiencing the New and Everlasting Curiosity sooner. While some of you see "anger" in my activities, perhaps you might remember that Jesus is represented in the New Testament as being angry at the temple money changers and other merchants who turned religion into profit making. His anger is viewed as justified by many of my critics. I feel my anger is too. I see the early Mormon leaders lied to get laid with teen girls and other married women (yes, the LDS church finally admitted to this after we have been told for years we were the liars and now proved correct all along). I am angry that the LDS bishops are still required to determine sexual worthiness of minor children.
I find it unnerving that clergy in the LDS church routinely ask the youth to discuss sex, masturbation, pornography or other subjects that would be considered highly off limits for anyone other than parents or licensed professionals, all behind closed doors. Very troubling.
Let me put this into perspective: A non-related adult male more than twice the age of the child being interviewed, asking my thirteen or fifteen year-old child about her/his sexual activities in a closed office is inappropriate on many levels. This is not an acceptable community standard any where I know of, and even state-run schools are required to get permission for group discussions on these same topics. Discussing individually, behind closed doors, these topics with a child or teen is deplorable behavior to me. It seems an outgrowth of long ago practice by LDS leaders to sexualize the youth at early ages (the prophets through Lorenzo Snow/Joseph F Smith all had teen brides when they were in their 40s to 50s). They lied to their members for a time, to the government and to the world about these activities, only recently coming more clean (but still not entirely).
Now they've gone from lying to get laid in that first century to in this century lying to get paid more tithing and profits. They maintain huge financial secrets, and they spend billions on real estate speculations, ventures, malls, ranches, condo complexes, hunting preserves, theme parks and more. We've dug up the records, and we found their encouragement in their "secret" handbooks to avoid taxes in foreign lands.
When Jesus is depicted angrily overturning the tables at the temple, it is righteousness. When I highlight the profit making corporation of the LDS leaders, is it really so wrong of me? I try to live with integrity. I know deep down inside most members even get this, but I know they have unquestioned loyalty to their leaders, and fear even looking down the same rabbit hole I have.
As it turns out, our information on the plural marriages, the history and more has been ahead of church admissions. The financial digging is also ahead of future LDS leader confessions. It does require sacrifice for us "angry" ones to do this. Someone has to. Not because we are angry all the time (sure I have some anger for spending six-figures and thousands and thousands of free hours to that corporation), but because I feel it is a worthwhile effort to help clear the temple so-to-speak.
Jonathan Haidt said, “Prophets challenge the status quo, often earning the hatred of those in power.” The power is in their hand, and they are the status quo we challenge now. There will have to be change in the future and there is a call to repentance out to the money changers and profiteers.
So this Angergiving is thankfully about a promising future of New and Everlasting Curiosity and change in the power structures that hold onto many lives around us.
Let's cleanse the temple! Every ex-mormon a janitor!
Thankful this day for my "new eyes."
ReplyDeleteand that Tris is still alive.
ReplyDeleteDavid T., there are A LOT worse things than growing up in a Mormon home! I grew up in a home in which my parent/s didn't keep an eye on me. I was fourteen and drunk on 151 proof vodka when I lost my virginity. I grew thinking that virginity was something you got, "rid," of. We had so little money that even during the rare times we were at church my mother wouldn't have had money to give to the Baptist church we attended. My mom and eventual stepfather allowed my boyfriend to live in our home, were we'd sneak having sex. My brothers friends often would stay the night as well.
ReplyDeleteEven though we were poor, there were children that were poorer than us. There were kids in our neighborhood that had very little furniture and no bed to lay their head on. In our neighborhood smoking pot, and drinking alcohol was normal. Although a lot of families were loving, there were also some VERY dysfunctional families in which brothers and sisters fought, literally with fist against each other. My mom was having an affair with a married man. His wife every once in a while would park in front of our house late at night, honk her horn and yell for him to come outside. I would lay in my bed terrified. Growing up in a poor school before the federal government started financing the poorer schools we had no materials and fights every day on campus. Getting an education was not important in our family, my mother hated going to school as a child, so she didn't push us in school. Out of five children, one graduated high school. I wasn't that one, I took the GED and passed it. The teachers that are willing to teach to poorer schools for the most part are not quality teachers, so the education that was received was sub-standard.
I am intelligent and compassionate enough to know that my parents did the best they could with the tools and understanding they had of their life. I rarely talk about my crazy childhood, and although it was harmful in many ways, it also taught me a lot. Now, as a convert to the Mormon church I understand so much more! I cannot feel sympathy for your life growing up Mormon, I know there are many, many children that would LOVE be brought up in a Mormon home. Your anger and rage is totally disgusting and totally misplaced.
It's too bad you had such a life. And it's great Mormonism helped you. But to call David disgusting because he's not working on other issues is a bit hypocritical of you. If you believe he's wasting his time and acting disgusting, then you are wasting your time replying here and not out there doing something better yourself.
DeleteThe bottom line is, a lot of things would have been better for you than Mormonism because you were in a bad place, and that doesn't mean Mormonism is a good thing for most people.
People in the third world need true help, not a religious scam. False hope might be a good bandage, but it is a delusion nonetheless.
The high priest group leader in our ward was recently arrested and imprisoned for the repeated molestation of his 8 year old granddaughter who is now in therapy constantly because she blames herself for grandpa being in prison because she is 8 and had the holy ghost and should have stopped it somehow. Bottom line is your youthful experiences sucked, for which we are all sorry, but being raised lds doesn't solve every ill. In fact, knowing that the man has talked incessantly about satan getting to him and temptation being too strong, and how he started with mainstream porn and sought more and more potent things, I think the 8 year old would have been better off in a non-lds environment. If you are angry with Dave for speaking his truth, but not raging at that grandfather while extending empathy to all those raised in less-than-ideal situations, perhaps your anger is misplaced.
DeleteYour misfortune growing up is tragic. We feel your pain.
DeleteHowever, David is not disgusting. He is not trying to destroy the LDS church's ability to help people. David has never written, "LDS church stop being kind, stop helping the invalid, the weak, the abused!" David does not promote the LDS church to encourage drunkenness. He hasn't told it to drive a wedge between family members.
On the contrary, David wants the LDS church to be more responsible. To use its funds for the poor, not ranches. Use its donations for the destitute, not malls. David encourages the LDS church to stop its institutionalized shunning of "apostate" family members. He calls its leaders to own up to their past distortions and even lies that create conflict for the sincere of heart. He calls on it and members to have integrity, tolerance, and love.
If these are disgusting and David is wrong, you should start your own blog to correct it all.
My youth too was stolen by the Mormon Church, which got me to spend time and suffer anxiety about my really blameless life. Only when I was an adult in my 50's did I discover that Lorenzo Snow when 57 years old married a 16 year old girl. .Also that Joseph Smith was sending men on missions then marrying their wives. There was a reference to his having fathered a child at 83, and who could do that unless he married a woman at least 40 years younger, which he obviously did.
ReplyDeleteGive me back my youth, and I will leave the church alone. As this is impossible, it will be joy to see the whole pack of lies disclosed and the true motivations of the leaders revealed. It might be the only consolation I get for the church's theft of my youth, money and time. Had I known about the true history of the church, I might have had an enjoyable youth, and experienced the fullness of this life, just like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Lorenzo Snow and the rest.
From reading the responses I'm guessing no one got my point. Parents take their children to churches. They raise their children with the morals that the Bible and/or scriptures embrace. Parents raise their children to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and/or God, and/or Buddha etc. People in all religions have creeps that molest children. The prophets marrying young girls is NOT new information. Let me say this again, the prophets in both Biblical times and during the early years of the church married young women and this was not hidden. Just as this church and other churches do not teach about the bad things that the prophets did, the Mormon does not expound or teach about the marriages of the prophets and their ages.
ReplyDeleteIt IS disgusting that David T., cannot seem to get over his angst regarding this church. The person who said their youth was stolen,....it is time to get over yourself. What exactly did the church steal from your youth? Your ability to drink at a young age? Dating and having premarital sex? Going on dates without it being a group date? Having children out of wedlock? What were you robbed of? Committing sins guilt free?
People do horrible things to people and children everyday. While is sickening that this has happened to an 8 year old child, it happens in all churches. And children that are victims of these twisted people always feel that they are fault for the crimes that were committed against them. To single out this church is asinine.
There are children that have grown up in much worse situations and are able to get over it and move on. It is time David T., and the others that have left the church to get over it and move on with their lives.
Anonymous, for someone who went through as much as you claim, you lack a lot of empathy. You seem especially targeted on David for some reason. I think we will call you Tracy Troll.
ReplyDeleteDavid T., just because the church chooses not to address your accusations doesn't mean that what you are writing is true. Everyone has their own view and skew on issues. You David T., are hell bent on justifying your hatred of this church, because you have left it. You are searching and searching for anything and everything you can to down this church.
ReplyDeleteMembers of the church can and would counter your claims, with reasonable answers to your accusations. People, humans are NOT perfect, even prophets, that is why there are scriptures, consequences, etc. that points the way back to Christ. The Mormon church has the most complete picture. In other words, if you were to throw out the people, the culture and you look at just the plan, it adds up it makes sense. If you rely solely on the people, the very human people they will always come up short!
If you don't want to believe in any church, and would prefer to believe you evolved from apes that is fine.
What David T. and the others to you hope to accomplish by downing this church? Do you think it is going to go away? Close? Be brought down by your writings? Keep in mind there are people that have been downing this church for a very long time...and the church is still here and still growing strong!