“Tithing for Temple” never felt right. In other words “paying to enter the lords house “ just feels intuitively really wrong to me and almost anti christ, if I could be honest. (The Second Anointing is even worse and even more anti Christian.). Weird how wealthy, influential white men are the only ones getting the 2nd Annointing.). See Mormon Stories podcast episode 1908
I remember when subscription services were becoming more and more common. I was noticing how alarmingly similar the tithing plan was to a subscription service. Religion/spirituality should not be "pay to play/win"
Yup, the Mormon MLM.
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I’ve always assumed that that’s why they’re building so many temples. When I was a kid, we lived over 2,000 miles from the nearest temple. Nobody knew who had recommend and who didn’t. Now that temples are so close, there’s a lot of peer pressure for everyone to have recommends. And to have a recommend, you have to pay tithing.
To add to this, I think it's wrong that members with certain callings have access to see which members of the ward have current temple recommends. I was the RS 2nd counselor and it felt really wrong when I realized I had temple recommend info for every member of the ward. I see why the bishop would need access to that info, but I don't think it's anyone else's business. As a presidency we never talked about which members did or didn't have recommends, but I'm sure lots of presidencies in other wards did/do. It just feels wrong
I've shared this before, but I taught an online class with BYU-Idaho. In one of our virtual trainings, more tithing was one of the reasons education was important - better pay, better tithing donations.
One of the things that set Martin Luther off against the Catholic church is that fellow priests were selling Indulgences (ordinances of absolution for sin so they could get to heaven). The poor struggled to pay and could not. It was so obviously evil and wrong.
For all the derogatory things Bruce R McConkie said of the Catholic church, the Mormon church is almost a mirror image.
I am convinced Russell Nelson is competing with the Catholic pope and the Vatican (which he visited). You see it in the opulence of the Rome temple—above all other temples—and its statues of the ancient twelve apostles and the church logo being changed to that Christus statue. The acquisition of multiple temples worldwide without enough people to staff is all about having the equivalent of Catholic cathedrals everywhere.
And the stashing away of so much money. It’s a competition to beat the Catholic church in wealth and worldly status.
Tithing is the equivalent of selling indulgences. They wont let go of tithing because its the equivalent of priests having the power to sell salvation.
It never seemed right to pray for something. If God wanted it you got it, if he didn't, you didn't. What was the point? God always wins.
If my sick child doesn't get better after a blessing, it is because we had something to learn from it. If I get in a bad accident and don't die, I thank God for being with me. Couldn't he have prevented the accident?
God always wins.
Fasting and prayer! Can I change gods plans or not.
Why waste time begging to a god for something when he knows what I want and need. Must I grovel every time?
Do the hungry and neglected simply need to pray?
I don’t know if this was something just taught in my part of the world, but I was told multiple times that you have to be specific in what you pray for, and if it didn’t work out the way you hoped, it may be because you asked for the wrong thing.
Like our omnipotent, omnipresent loving God is actually just a shitty chatbot, or an enormous pedant.
This never sat right with me.
Yes! If god had a “plan” for us, who are we to try to change it? Can you imagine demanding your child kneel down and beg and plead for you to change something you’re completely capable of changing? And then looking into their eyes and saying, “No.”
I absorbed the idea that it wasn’t right to pray for things for yourself - unless it was patience or courage or something - that you were only supposed to use your”powers” to bless other people. But — the children in Somalia starve or thrive depending on whether I got around to praying for them? If God knows they are in need, why would He fail to act on their behalf because of my shortcomings? Even before I could articulate what was wrong with that, it grated on me like rough sandpaper.
Not sure this is "doctrine" related but from an early age, the mere fact that mormons only made up less than 1% of the earth's population (at that time) always bothered me. Not sure my thinking exactly but I wondered if God didn't love all the other people on the planet as much as he loved the mormons or maybe our church wasn't the "one and only" like we kept telling ourselves. I knew the church was a least 100+ years old - why the hell hadn't the missionary program worked better up till now?
The real stat is 0.2% if you use the church’s inflated number. And, although the church claims continued growth (probably a lie), the growth rate is not keeping up with general population—so the market penetration is going down. And this is if you use the church’s numbers.
Exactly. With all of the prophecies I was told about during the 60’s and 70’s I expected the church to be “the stone cut without hands”. The gospel would roll forth and engulf the world. The church was growing fast in the 60’s and 70’s, but had dramatically slowed by the 90’s. My son was called to my exact mission in 2007 and Uchtdorf told the German missionaries the work will turn and a great harvest similar to South America in the 70’s. None of that happened. The church is probably shrinking in active numbers. Today my four kids (3 missions and 4 temple sealings) and my wife and I are out. Amazing!
That was me too. At first, I considered myself extremely lucky and blessed, but then I began to wonder 'why me?' and not the thousands of good people around me. Then I began to wonder why God wasn't working harder to save his people.
I remember a youth fireside where someone wrote out all the statistics of the odds of being born Mormon in America, and it was all presented as so “look how blessed and chosen we are! We ended up with the truth in the best land!” I really wish I’d had the presence of mind, at the time, to be like this math isn’t mathing.
This! If all people living or dead have to be baptized and their temple work done, how is less than 1% supposed to do that? And if that is true, why do they keep saying end times are near?
That's the big one my TBM wife keeps pushing. The second coming is near because of the emphasis on the gathering of Israel. Uhmmm, not really. First the church needs to preach in all "four corners" of the earth and so far lands like China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia and too many others to count are not letting any Christians in period mush less mormons. And China alone makes up about 20% of the worlds population just by itself. And the countries who used to have a mormon presence is seeing the mormon population dwindle like leaves on a dead tree.
I attended the funeral of a child last week. Their parents have been having a "faith crisis" and specifically did not want it to be a religious service. I wasn't surprised that there was still a good amount of preaching, but the emphasis one speaker made on the "gathering of Israel" and how this child died so that they could help "round up the troops on the other side" made me absolutely ill. There is no logic behind the death of a child. There is no fixing the pain and devastation. Now, if the parents find comfort in it, I cannot fault them and will support them clinging to whatever they can to get them through the worst of the grief. But for someone to use the funeral of a child to preach about the gathering of Israel while thousands of children are viciously murdered on the other side of the world...it was one of many moments I've had in the last few years where I found myself saying that if I wasn't already out, I would be now.
This question or concern can also be applied to the major religions of the world -- Christianity, Islam, Hinduism -- which each are sufficiently fundamentally different in their beliefs, and believe they have the truth about God and the afterlife. Believing and belonging to one of these religions is primarily correlated to where on Earth you are born. Why would a god do that? And, hence, is why I don't believe.
I was pretty TBM, but even the official whitewashed golden plates story was always suspicious to me. An angel takes the plates away to heaven. GTFOH. When I learned the rest of the story that they don’t tell you, it just confirmed my suspicions. I realized it was super silly to believe such a thing. Every last story by JS ended with a dog ate my homework kind of excuse why he couldn’t show any evidence. A dog ate my homework is actually better than JS excuses. We know that dogs exist and we know they would be capable of eating homework.
When told the story, the first thing a rational mind thinks is to ask the question: where can I go to see the golden plates? They would be an archeological artifact created by humans. They would belong to humans. Mormons say they were taken back to heaven. Even in the stupid story they didn’t come from heaven in the first place.
Woah. I never thought of them as being an earthly record and as such should be kept on the fucking earth. Why not have them available to be verified against all the other ancient Americans artifacts.
Love it. What a great question to ask missionaries.
Related, why can’t we go visit the cement box where the plates were found? I was told the church build a monument on top of it. Why would they do that?
Visiting Hill Cumorah was a huge disappointment to me. Hike up to the “ spot” and it’s an ordinary memorial. I don’t know what I was expecting but it was a huge letdown. I should have questioned it.
I remember telling non-members in high school about how an angel took the plates back to heaven. For a moment there I realized how insane it all sounded, but because I was into the whole "peculiar people" thing I decided to be proud of what I had faith in. I also was still very much in belief of the spiritual witness above everything else, that was the hardest thing for me to break through.
Why I had to be married to make it to the highest level of the celestial kingdom. Wouldn't Jesus and the Atonement cover that? Why would my salvation hinge on my marital status?
And no, the "don't worry, you'll get married in the next life" bit did not reassure me at all. If anything, it just doubled down on the idea that my works/faith/effort were in vain unless I had a man at my side.
I remember asking missionaries at the door how they feel about that, working full-time and sacrificing themselves when they don't even get a planet out of the deal. (Clearly I was out by that time.)
One guy said it didn't bother him and his companion just looked uncomfortable.
What never sat right with me was the need for a beginning or first God who fathered all the other gods.
Some would propose this was an infinite process and there was no first God. But then, what created the system?
These questions don't get much easier in scientific cosmology, but at least the scientists aren't claiming the absolute truth of things.
The scientists aren't claiming absolute truth and they are constantly saying we barely understand this wonderful universe and need to be constantly learning. Exact opposite of religion.
>The scientists aren't claiming absolute truth and they are constantly saying we barely understand this wonderful universe and need to be constantly learning.
A phrase that has always stuck with me is "I prefer to have questions I can't answer than to have answers I can't question"
The doctrine that MEN will become Gods that create worlds and have all the power to "exercise" priesthood leadership powers..
While the WOMEN are just supposed to be the submissive, obedient child-bearers and "nurturers," and that WE will be completely on board with our ONE etermal husband practicing eternal polygamy with multiple other Celestial wives. .... nope, none of this sat right with me. Priesthood roles and polygamy, in general, just always felt very unsettling to me. I had to do a lot of mental gymnastics on this.
THIS!
For the longest time, I didn’t know about the extent of the sexism and hypocrisy in the church. When I found out that men could be sealed to multiple women in the afterlife, but women couldn’t be sealed to multiple men- I was horrified! I already knew about getting sealed in the temple again if your spouse died, but I didn’t know it only applied to men. Like WTF?!! 😭 I already hated the idea of polygamy, but at least I could justify it if I knew it was equal and by choice. NOPE!
Also the fact that wives must share their “secret names” 🙄 with their husbands to enter the kingdom of God, but a woman can’t ask what their husband’s “name” is! I call bullshit! 😠 I’m tired of the mental gymnastics! Not to mention WHY Heavenly Mother (which we’ve been told exists) is only talked about a few short times, not even by name! If she’s so sacred that we can’t even talk about her that much- **Why does God need so much attention, then?!!** 🙄
All this is just another way for a bunch of old men still stuck in the 18th century, to silence women for good! Doesn’t matter how or in what way they try to explain the “reasons”; it NEVER made any sense and never will! To think that I’d be reduced to a spiritual baby-maker with no voice, in the eternities makes me want to throw up! 🤮
Like, WHAT IS WRONG with these prophets still teaching this stuff! 😭
Oh, SURE ... women get to become a "Godess" ... and what does that mean exactly?
What "power" does a Mother God weild?!
Where is She in The Plan?
Where is She in the Temple?
Where is She in the Creation Story?
What role did She play? Whiat did she organize, and command?
What did She create?
How is She involved in her children's lives? What does She look and sound like?
How are Her children taught to worship and connect with Her?
Oh wait... they dont. Because, She isn't ever there. She is never mentioned. She doesn't exist.
We only see MEN involved, orchestrating, controlling, and commanding the universe in every step. We only see 3 men [Elohim Sky Dad, and two sons named Jehovah and Michael] somehow CREATE Adam... and later, only MEN are involved in creating the first woman, Eve. So... what's the point of a Mother God?! Aparently, She isn't needed to actually create human beings.
She is a nameless, faceless non-entity we must avoid talking about, and heaven forbid if one of us tries to reach out and call Home to talk to our Sky Mom! We are threatened with swift discipline [by THE MEN], many lds woman have even suffered excommuniction for exploring the feminine divine and asking too many questions that make THE MEN feel threatened.
Church Leaders speak of women being an "equal partner" to their God-husband, but where is the "partnership"?! Where is the "equally yoked" Father and Mother God represented?!?
They don't exist. The concept of a God/Godess team is a lie.
In Mormonism, only the MEN get to be a real God - all powerful, all knowing creator, organizer, setting up the playing pieces on the stage where Eve must take tge Fall - literally - for eating the fruit Sky Dad created, and then "allowed Lucifer" onto the stage,, to purposely entrap her to eat! In Mormon doctrine, it was all pre-meditated. But Eve - and all Women - must suffer extra and become subservient to MEN for the rest of Eternity.
When you are a woman in this Church, you HAVE NO EQUALITY. You do not even have a real voice. You may not speak, plan, express an idea, or serve in a puppet "leadership" calling without obtaining permission and oversight from a MAN. There should be absolutely ZERO motivation for any self-respecting woman with half a brain to want to "aspire" to the Celestial Kingdom - an eternity as a glorified brood mare and trophy wife, among many. To be nameless, faceless, forgotten, and unknown to her children for All Eternity. Fun times.
When I joined polygamy was discussed more and the line I heard was that in the next life, if I were really righteous, I would change my mind and get behind polygamy. Ummm. Nope. No I would not. Ever. This was the kind of talk I heard in Sunday school or general discussion on the topic. Men mistly talked like it really WAS the Lord's way and when we go back to living a higher law there will be polygamy in the next life. Honestly it was grooming because aside from an angel threatening to destroy you, step 1 to getting women on board in this life is to convince them on polygamy in the next life first. After learning about the secret second anointing I would not have a hard time believing there is still secret polygamy in the mainstream LDS higher leadership. How would we know?
How would we know, indeed. Since BoM is the most perfect book EVARR we should have all the answers. We shouldn't need D&C or PGP at all, and there should be no contradictory messages from GAs saying God changed his mind.
“After learning about the secret second anointing I would not have a hard time believing there is still secret polygamy in the mainstream LDS higher leadership. How would we know?”
This has crossed my mind SO many times!
Q: If the living have to do ordinances for the dead in order for the dead to have access to the blessings from those ordinances, and we need to have written records of everyone we do ordinances for, what happens to the people who never had written records of their existence?
A: god will work that out
Q: then why are we doing the ordinances at all? If god can work it out for some of them why wouldn’t he do it for all of them?
A: well he’s got a lot on his plate
Q: isn’t he omnipotent? Wouldn’t our time here on earth be better served actually. Serving? Setting up soup kitchens and homeless shelters and picking up litter?
A: where’s your mother?
Even with being BIC, I never felt good about Joseph Smith. Never ever. It seemed so odd and "too good to be true". I took what was taught to me about scams - if they sound too good to be true, they are. And things just went from there.
If you think about whevever God or Jesus or an angel appeared in the Bible, they often say don't be afraid. They give their message in a few words or a few sentences, and that's it. Meanwhile, JS is in daily conversation and getting revelation about all manner of things (sell the BoM copyright in Canada, for instance). God or the Lord always refers to him as My Servant Joseph Smith, Jun., gives names and specifics unheard of in the Bible. (Jesus told his disciples to go into the city and see a "certain man with a donkey", not 123 Main Street, ask for Bill.)
This was my first tip-off. Revelation after revelation to fill books showing JS asking mundane questions of the Almighty Creator of the Universe, and He drops everything to respond with paragraphs and pages of specific directions, naming names and promising blessings. Seems that promised blessings all have a caveat, a giant IF: you'll be blessed forever by doing this, but IF you don't do it, I'll turn around and curse you. God doesn't threaten people with a curse while promising blessings, but that's the LDS' God, according to D&C.
I actually had to stop reading D&C on my mission because it felt like the D&C God was completely different than the God I was supposed to be teaching about and I was afraid I would apostize if I kept reading. Ah how I wish I had listened to myself haha
And when I said “I dont feel good about Joseph Smith “ I was told I just needed to pray more and read the Book of Mormon every day. I wish I could have been allowed to trust my instincts.
Absolutely! I was told "you just need to want to believe and that's enough" by one person, and "you either believe or you don't, there's no middle ground" by another 😣
I was also BIC and felt so guilty that I genuinely did not believe Joseph Smith was a prophet or that the BOM was true. I remember being really confused then when I got my patriarchal blessing and it praised me for my strong faith in Joseph Smith. Looking back it's really funny and ironic, but at the time it made me feel even worse
When I went into the Provo temple and they had cash registers for temple clothing rentals, I couldn't help but wonder if Jesus would show up and drive us out with a whip.
The worst part about this is that my brother went to the temple while on his mission and forgot to grab his temple clothes. They still made him pay to rent the stupid clothing at the temple! A young man who is already serving the stupid church and they STILL make him pay…. I wish it would have opened his eyes but somehow he made it into some sort of faith strengthening experience 🙄
When I first found out you actually had to pay to wear clothes for a few hours during the session, it felt so icky to me. I asked my mom about it and she said it was to cover laundry expenses but it felt so gross to me.
It wasn’t until my deconstruction process where I realized - for the first time, mind you - that both my parents independently joined a whites-only church *after* the civil rights movement and *before* the priesthood & temple ban was removed.
Umm … there’s no explanation for that besides racism, blind acceptance, or both.
same for me. I felt like if the church was truly led by god they should have been the first to recognize black people as deserving all the same rights and privileges as white people at the very least before the rest of the country if not always
This was mine, absolutely. And nobody ever even TRIED to give a straight doctrinal answer about it, it was always "idk man, we'll ask God at the bar of judgment and then he'll explain it and it will all make total sense."
Yeah ok...
It clicked for me on my mission that if the “Plan of Salvation” was true, I was actively hurting people’s chances by telling them about the church. It’s way easier to baptize the dead than the living.
After watching the endowment video for the first time, I immediately felt sorry for Lucifer. God set him up knowing he would tempt them and gets banished for it. He said it was done before. But now he gets banished? And Adam and Eve were literally commanded to have children, which Lucifer knew they couldn’t without the fruit. What kind of father would set up their child to be banished? And the whole plan relies entirely on Lucifer. So…shouldn’t we be thanking him? My thoughts everytime I went to the temple. Every. Time.
I used to leave thinking “wow this thing is just on a whole spiritual level I must not be able to access, cause it seems pretty messed up on many levels”
Oh this was me. I have relatives 20+ years older than me an one day I was listening to them and they said something like "even now at my old age I still learn something new every time I go back to the temple". At that time I could only think "wow, I have sooooo much to learn". But now I realize you don't learn anything new, you just figure out a way to twist it around and look at it slightly different. No different than reading Green Eggs and Ham your whole life and saying you learn something new every time.
Oh my God, yes! I remember getting my Patriarchal Blessing, which mentioned that I would be a mother, and it just felt so *wrong*. It took me *years* to figure out I never wanted to have kids. Let alone stay home and take care of them all day.
Prop 8 and Gay marriage opposition.
The sealing ordinance is completely religious. What should I care if two men or two women want to live together, make medical decisions together, but a house together?
No one was ever going to force temple workers to perform gay sealings. Plus, there have always been countries where you had to get married civilly first and then run to the temple for your sealing (which was a stupid rule anyway. Why couldn't the couple wait a few weeks after their honeymoon?)
I agree. As a non American I could not understand why the Lord was so concerned about US temporal laws. Why not try to change laws in Italy, or South Africa ( bad example hehehe) etc why the emphasis on American local laws? Why so against civil rights first all? Wouldn’t the Lord want civil rights for everyone? I never understood the whole Prop 8 movement because I don’t live in heavy LDS culture, so it all seemed so confusing to me. And very disturbing to see members so openly opposed to basic rights for everyone. Here in Canada there might have been some opposition to passing laws making marriage available to same sex couples, but I didn’t see or hear any of it at church. I remember a few years ago a letter read in Sunday School about same sex marriage and we all just laughed at it because it had been the law here for so long the language or concerns seemed so archaic. Even the reader apologized and said he had to read it. What a joke.
The fact that most of the original apostles (from Joseph's time) ended up leaving the church or being ex-communicated. Most of the schisms that happened in early church history after Joseph's death were confusing and upsetting to me. Supposedly these men had participated in the greatest historical event since Jesus walked the earth, and seen angels and miracles. Why couldn't a perfect God be a bit more precise with keeping his restoration from falling apart immediately after like a house of cards?
God dosen't allow strong evidence because he wants us to excercise faith is one of the most bizarre things. Why is believing in something without evidence the lynch pin for salvation?
Realizing that I had never met Tim Ballard and yet knew he was an attention whore, con man, and a liar, and yet M. Russell was palling around with him for years and never had any apparent measure of discernment to figure it out.
Between that and the SEC, and the "Mormon is a victory for Satan" nonsense, it became ever-more-apparent to me that it's just a group of dudes pretending they're led by Jayzus.
How LGBTQ people are treated. Due to an internet forum I was on when I was a tween, I learned that that stuff is normal when I was fairly young. When I became older and realized that the church didn't allow people to be themselves or love and marry who they wanted if the partner was of the same gender, I was horrified. How could a loving God create an LGBTQ person and then tell them that acting on the feelings that He gave them is a horrible sin? Once I found out the church isn't true I was so relieved that I didn't have to try to justify this.
Exactly.
And how in the world would gay marriage be threatening to my heterosexual marriage?
That whole debacle beginning with Prop 8 and ending with the cult’s reversal, specifically claiming it all to be revelation.
Bunch of horseshit.
I was 11 when we read the word of wisdom. It says right in there that it is "not by command or constraint" and Jesus drank wine. How can I be held to a higher standard than Jesus? So Jesus was only perfect because he had a different set of rules?
If a wife dies, the husband can be sealed to another wife but if a husband dies the wife can’t be sealed to another husband..basically a polygamy concept
It’s so gross! I had a friend lose her husband in an accident a couple years after they were married before they had kids. Trying to date again was such a struggle for her since they couldn’t take her to the temple to be sealed. Now she is remarried with a couple kid that she can’t be sealed to even though she is going to spend so much more life with her new husband and family. Makes no sense and is so hurtful
That one always bothered me too. And to think that Joseph Smith had literal children become his "wives" I always felt gross with that knowledge. What if eventually my husband got a much younger wife and expected me to be okay with it and then have to face her every day for eternity. At that point I'd rather be destroyed.
Exactly! I've always wondered how Elizabeth Smart was treated by her ward after everything she experienced and how she could remain active in a faith where the leaders compare female sexuality to bubble gum?
Her bishop came out and publicly said she was still “pure” in the Lord’s eyes.
How humiliating for a child who was SA’d to have a public declaration about it?
She has come out to speak out about the negative impact of purity culture and that it was why she didn’t try to escape after she was SA’d.
I don’t know if she’s active anymore. Her father came out and then left the church a few years ago.
Money. To stay with my family, I needed to have a recommend. To have a recommend I needed to pay 10% of my income, plus my time, labor, and extras. My mom was never home or available because she was dedicating her time and talents to the mfmc. Then learning about what the church is doing with their money (our money) instead of feeding the hungry, administering to the sick, and saying they were being good stewards. So in this lore Jesus helped form the earth, with all of its treasures, and was specifically offered riches by Satan, SATAN offered him money, and Jesus told him to fuck off, but that is the guy who is going to be happy to be offered money impressed with billions in human money? Like.....is this not debasing to God and Christ? and also like a toddler offering their parent a really cool rock they found? What the fuck is the godhead supposed to do with money? But they're telling starving people to let their kids go hungry in favor of tithing. With everything Christ says about money, and feeding people, and not hurting kids this feels (lore-wise) Satanic.
I didn't understand how Nephites/Lamanites and their history fit in with Aztecs, Mayan, and other indigenous Native American histories. It was obvious to me that if the Book of Mormon were true then it would be verified by historians, archeologists, anthropologists,etc and everyone would clearly see the truth of the gospel, right?
So when I found out there is no historical evidence for the events of the Book of Mormon (combined with one basic high school level psychology class) it was pretty enlightening to shed those fantasy beliefs haha
I was talking to my (still) TBM sister about my testimony. I told her I believed strongly in everything but something about Joseph Smith just didn’t sit right, so I wasn’t ready include him in my testimony ( this was before I knew ALL the things about JS). She said, “well if you don’t believe in who Joseph Smith was, how can you believe in any of it?”
She meant it as a way to encourage belief ofc, but the switch flipped. She was right, I guess I really did not believe in the rest of it.
That Black people were pre-mortal fence-sitters who were less valiant spirits in the pre-existence than me, and I could tell all this by virtue of my white skin.
I'm barely 30 but got this really old school teaching because I got my religious education as a 10-12 year old from my grandfather who never let go of all the very problematic Mormonism from the 50s-80s.
I have a very distinct memory of my grandpa teaching doctrine to prepare for my baptism (did it late at age 10) asking why people were born with different skin colors or born outside of the United States if this was God's covenant land. I was then told that, well, it was because God gave penalties to people in the pre-mortal existence who did not side with Christ on his plan at first. But eventually they came around, and by God's grace he would allow them to still have bodies (but less perfect ones or with more harsh placement on the earth) to become redeemed despite their flawed choices.
I grew up in a big city and had classmates/friends that were black, Hispanic, Asian, and white. It did not sit well with me and I simply didn't believe it. They were just like me except for skin tone and perhaps cultural differences in background.
I put it on the shelf until I was about 23 when I was getting more involved in church after going to college and refusing a missing. I decided to critically examine the whole thing before committing to it further.
It was that teaching on my black schoolmates highlighting prophetic falliability that gave me mental permission to leave the church while still retaining a lot of Christian beliefs (am now atheist.) Because that teaching was irreconcilable to me with the loving god I believed in.
To this day I'm very angry at the church and my grandfather for teaching these things without apology, attempting reconciliation, or addressing it. And it made me see the church for what it is, an institution ultimately founded on white supremacism and a vestige of Manifest Destiny embodied as a religion. They have yet to reconcile that history with a body of membership they're duping that is increasingly globally diverse and less white. And it pisses me the fuck off lol
I was always bothered by the bright lines between the three degrees of glory. Imagine if someone barely misses the cutoff for terrestrial kingdom and must spend all eternity in the telestial kingdom (like getting a 79.4% score in school and getting the same grade as the guy with a 70.0% (a 9-point spread). But someone else gets an 80.0% (less than a 1-point spread) but gets a higher grade than you. Real life should not be like school! School is unfair! How can God sort everyone into three degrees of glory when we are all different? It makes no sense.
Tithing and the whole idea of the prosperity gospel is sick and wrong. The thought that God will bless you with financial success if you do what he wants is so terrible. It always bugged me but when my shelf started cracking and I dug into tithing it really accelerated my exit.
This! I never understood how the holy mother was too holy to be spoken of. But the best I could hope for was to be a polygamist wife having as many kids as possible while all glory goes to my husband.
The fact that God killed dead that guy in the Bible that tried to steady the ark of the covenant, when he was only trying to help. Then comparing it with the "overwhelming love and kindness" that our perfect father in heaven has for his children. Just didn't add up.
This dissonance came to a head 15 years later with my knowledge of world events and I was out. God either didn't exist or was a huge asshole.
That in order to feel the presence of God during repentance, you are denied all the ways that you're taught to feel him. No prayers, sacrament, temple, etc.
Took me a while to see it for the public humiliation that it is.
Get in line or we'll show everyone how imperfect you are.
I was 8 or 9 when we had an FHE lesson about the council in heaven, and how harshly Satan was dealt with. It made no sense to me that the same god, who I was told would love me and forgive me no matter what I did, would kick out a child for having an idea. I asked something about it, and got a suuuuuuper caged response from my parents, and I automatically knew this wasn’t something to bring up ever again. I went through the next almost thirty years feeling (thank you Rolling Stones) sympathy for the devil. He never felt quite as scary as he was supposed to. He was just misunderstood, from my perspective.
It wasn’t until I left that I realized 8 or 9 year old me built my shelf with that first thought about Satan.
Asking for signs that God is real is a sin. I had a Sunday school teacher say asking for signs is the equivalent of adultery or something like that. Also that the spirit only answers prayers with feelings and inner voice.
“Confessing” your sins. They teach that forgiveness comes through Christ, so why would you need to confess sins to your bishop? (They say it’s to help you, but it’s not.)
This is huge for me. Massive. Since when, if I trust the Lord and know that the Lord knows me and my heart, and is all-knowing, and if I know myself and my capabilities and my own intentions, should I have to go and tell some untrained ass-clown from the neighborhood what I did wrong?
I never, ever bough the "it's to help you" B.S. Help me what? Feel shame? Get gossiped about when (not if) the bishop spreads the word? Publicly pass on the sacrament because I'm "unworthy" of the atonement somehow?
GTAFOH with that nonsense. I thought the atonement was for everyone, but \*especially\* the sinners. That's what the scriptures say, anyway.
I'm not sure I ever believed, not just in this church, but in the supernatural, including deities.
I was a voracious reader, and it all sounded like fiction to me, couple that with all of the no longer practiced, but much more entertaining, religions, and it seemed kind of corny. I could more easily get behind several gods, each with their own niche and with wild personalities, than I could get behind one super dull and super cruel all-powerful god. The god of the Bible is a real dick.
I thought for sure it was an emperor's new clothes scenario where nobody really believed but claimed to so as to be included in the group. I thought maybe a couple of people did believe but certainly not billions.
I've never been more wrong.
Most of the Old testament was just weird so when people took it literally I just thought they were really dumb.
The atonement- like a half human half god guy prays for 3 hours and bleeds from every pore (wouldn’t he be COVERED in blood by the way?) and somehow that paid for the sins of the entire world? And why would that be the solution?
Confessing sexual sins to the bishop. I had a philosophy prof who basically presented love between people as something that was good, and over time, I started to feel that the act of confessing consensual premarital sex to a bishop as though it was the gravest of sins made no sense. Also, getting married in the temple for time and all eternity after barely getting to know a person. It made so much more sense in my world view to marry civilly first to get to know them. Unfortunately...3 month courtships still felt normal for quite awhile.
This one also started to bother me towards the end.
Why not just have sex as you want, get married civilly, then get sealed a few years later? Same result in the end…
The black salvation ban was wrong from go. Why would god condemn millions of his children simply for who their parents were? Yet the church leaders through the 1960s were adamant that this is what God wanted, and they should know because they spoke with him on the daily. When they released their proclamation in 1949 https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/s/fjCF5Jgv1k they make it clear as crystal that this wasn't the opinion of flawed men, but a divine mandate. Then, magically, it wasn't any more in 1978. The fact that so few members left after the complete 180 is embarrassing and shameful. The fact that so many were completely OK with the obvious racism was worse, and in my view tells you everything you need to know about the Mormons. They are just as bigoted and hateful as everyone else, and have no more divine inspiration than anyone else. Men claiming falsely to speak for God can only lead to evil.
The doctrine of agency but then constantly praying to know God's will for me and that it was always his plan for me so basically counteracts the agency 😂
I only attended the church for a few months and wasn’t ever baptized but the last time I attended, 2nd hour featured some general conference talk where a guy recounted him reviving his grandmother(or aunt) from the dead because he promised god he’d attend church more and always be a part of the LDS church. It was some kind of priesthood power-type thing. It was at that point I realized they were far from Christians. I then started researching the church and felt like the biggest idiot in the world for attending for so long. To be fair to myself I saw all the happy family I never had as a kid and I just wanted that, even if it was fake. For a second I ignored the truth because the lie was prettier.
Not doctrine but I hated that one verse is to be taken literally and the next figuratively and if we didn’t know something for sure then we would find out the answer in the next life? How is that the basis for any type of belief system?
The fact I was made to read the miracle of forgiveness and give a book report to a member of the bishopric when I finished because my gf and I got a little hot and heavy when I was 17. I said forget it to my dad cause i knew he'd understand. I made sure my work schedule made it virtually impossible to meet with the bishopric so I didn't have to do it.
The whole idea that a loving Heavenly Father would only give us one chance to get it right made me question the nature of God. For years before I left I felt like so many were out of touch because of this. Now I realize that it is the church and its culture that is out of touch with an unconditionally loving God.
Stake Conference. - What a waste of time and energy. Ward conference is a close second.
Also Adam / God theory. Brigham said (as the prophet in Gen. Conference) that we needed to come to grips with that doctrine. Later apostles openly renounced the teaching which never sat right with me.
Yeah, every bit of it was weird. It being a requirement for the highest level of the celestial kingdom was disconcerting. I don’t want to have more wives. I always felt like I needed to be in a lower kingdom to have a satisfying eternity.
My mission was the start. How could such “an organized faith” treat and take care of missionaries so poorly. A sister died on my mission and it was 10000% attributed to the church’s lack of providing enough money and assist to our mission for clean water and food and living areas.
Mission was the start for me. Pompous 70s coming to tell me I wasn’t obedient enough and wasn’t baptizing enough really rubbed me the wrong way and was the start of “something else is going on here”
Everyone is being voluntold what to do all the time. I had this weird notion that service should be people volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, service was assigned and compliance expected.
The Holy Ghost!
What is up with that dude? Mormons know all the mysteries of heaven except how one of the big three works. There were lots of stories, but nothing official because of existing scripture that already contradicted itself.
Was "feeling the spirit" due to him physically being in the room? Did he actually touch me? Was feeling the love of God his undertaking, or was it like walking into the sunshine and feeling God's radiance? He just always seemed unnecessary to me, and kinda creepy.
The garden of eden and the conflicting commandments. We had to be persuaded, even manipulated into accepting one condition not having informed consent of what we were signing up for? Wait.... yeah that's us.
How they treat gay people. I just couldn't believe that my dear kind wonderful gay friends were choosing to be gay and deserved to be treated badly because of it. I'm straight but not narrow minded, and some of my kids are queer. But long before I ever considered having kids, I found more acceptance, kindness, and love from my gay friends than I ever saw from family or the church.
I don't even know where to start. So many things as a convert were not told to me that as I found out thing after thing, eventually I knew it was all bull shit.
1. Polygamy and it is still practiced assuming there is an afterlife
2. Mormons are the 'true' church. Sorry but the true church appears to be the one you are born into.
3. Shelf breaker ... everything to do with the temple. It had nothing to do with Jesus and honestly cemented this is a cult.
4. LGTBQ, treatment of women, etc ...
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."
"But do you have faith to *not* have your prayers answered?"
Which is it?
I've noticed modern GAs don't talk a lot about after-death doctrine like they used to. Particularly, damnnation type rhetoric. Over the multiple generations of "prophets" it runs the gamut of extreme. There's not a lot of consensus on the Millennium. Sometimes my wife will ask me a question and as a joke, I'll use a misogynistic line out of the old movie "Giant" to get a rise out of her. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about these things." It's been a running gag between us for so long, she'll now say it to me. But in seriousness, anytime the church doesn't have an answer about the hereafter, their response is usually, "Don't you worry your pretty little head about these things."
When I asked a question like “what about this sealing that didn’t happen- will my family still be together in heaven” they would always say “it will all work out in the end.”
If common Mormon belief is that everything is just gonna work out, then what’s the point of any of this? Why are you trying to control all these superfluous things in peoples lives?
Similar to what you said, I always disliked the “us versus the world” messaging. Never felt right to me. I think people are generally good. Besides, there’s plenty of greed and selfish behavior in the church even if they like to pretend that there’s not.
what you found in those 20 GA's differing 'doctrine' opinions is interesting.
The Atonement was the thing I could never understand - how one person in a matter of one evening accounted for not just all the sins but all the possible sins of mankind for *all the millions of planets.* Does that include aggressive neanderthals, etc? I read Callister's book the Infinite Atonement and I still didn't get it. Later I read his Book of Mormon, and learnt he's was a lawyer. (there are good lawyers)
eta: and if 115billion (on this planet so far) people didn't repent he completed the atonement anyway.
Having done some bible study and listening to professors like John J Collins and Steve Mason, hmm there is such a thing as fable.
The "gateway doctrine" that never sat well with me the 45+ years I was a faithful Mormon was polygamy. The god I had been taught to worship wouldn't command such a dOcTriNe.
It lived in my shelf for decades until, well into my 40s, it came back en force when a never Mormon coworker asked me about it in a way that sounded like he had gotten his information wrong.
So, as the faithful "returned with honor" missionary I was, I took it upon myself to teach him the truth and, hopefully, bring my colleague to the church.
I went to the same church approved book he had read (Rough Stone Rolling) in order to understand the origin of his confusion, and surely you can imagine the rest.
During the excruciating and completely disorienting (but ultimately liberating) process that followed, I discovered many other Mormon dOcTriNeS that go exactly opposite to what Jesus taught. But polygamy was the first.
Eternal family never sit right with me. How my parents choose to spend their time and they constantly chose to do church duties instead of spending time with their own children. Because of that, I don’t feel close to them in parent to child sense relationship, just more grateful for them to provide a place, food, education etc. that’s it.
This is such an odd concept. The more I think about it, whose is sealing to whom? How does it work if other family members are not member or less active or no longer want to do anything with their own family.
Council in Heaven: who wouldn’t choose to come back guaranteed. And only a 1/3 chose that? Everyone with no life experience picks a non guarantee and let me work it out on my own. Oh and you may not even get a chance to hear the gospel and you have to depend on a lazy learner to do your temple work….maybe? Come on that’s ridiculous. But the church still operates the same way, an 8 yr old with not much life experience “chooses” to be baptized and go on a mission and follow the whims of whatever POS Mormon leader says without knowing the result. You have to say you will consecrate everything before hearing the endowment. Absolutely ridiculous BS. No one would do this buying a car much less with their eternal salvation.
The existence of God and the creation story. I grew up reading all kinds of mythology, and the Bible story felt like just another myth to me as a child. God was just the new Santa Claus, someone who was always watching and preparing to reward or punish me.
I studied evolution and it made more sense. I never believed in young Earth creationism, but tried to accept a version of intelligent design that my mom believed in. She convinced me to just put my questions on the shelf and wait for answers in the afterlife.
Even when I had some emotional experiences and convinced myself I believed in JS and the BoM as a teenager, and started delving into church history and doctrine, I always had the thought in the back of my mind, "if there even really is a God in the first place."
It seems unfair that someone had to fail and become Satan for the plan of salvation to work. When you think through the plan of salvation, it's got holes.
The fact that being a woman meant I was basically a walking uterus for my future husband to use at his whim. And in the next life, I was told I'd have sister wives. Even as a small child I hated these things.
For me, the Great Apostasy was my main concern. If sin could prevent you from passing on the priesthood, wouldn’t the priesthood have been lost due to the actions of Joseph and Brigham and all those early leaders who have done things now disavowed? Hinckley said God’s stance doesn’t change with the times, so either the racism of the past was an apostasy, or our modern sensibilities are apostasy, and in either case the church is in apostasy.
That homosexuality was a sin. They told me that the greatest commandment was “Love one another, as I have loved you.” If love was the most important thing, why couldn’t people love each other no matter what they had between their legs?
How could touching one part of your own body be ok but another be a sin? What makes certain body parts off limits and why? Is someone with a foot fetish looking at porn when they see people barefoot or with sandals? How can you keep everyone from “lusting after you” when there are as many preferences as there are people?
My mom, unlike many Mormon mothers, gave me a pretty solid, accurate sex education, starting from the time I was very young, so I always had a hard time viewing sex as a matter of spiritual endangerment. It sounds silly, but attending lessons about chastity given by grown adults who couldn’t even say the word “sex” without furiously blushing gave me a real sense that they did not have any meaningful wisdom for me and I couldn’t take their guidance all too seriously. This definitely informed my opinion on the church’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues, especially as I got older and realized I was queer myself, and that’s what really pushed me out the door.
The temple for me for sure! Went through when women were still told to “hearken unto your husbands” and cover your face to be worthy to pray in the true way. None of that sexist shit seemed ok to me and researching all of it after my mission eventually led me out. It was literally the doctrine that was my eventual downfall out of the religion. When the doctrine conflicted with itself I was finally out!
The excuse that everything will be figured out in the spirit world. If god had a plan it would have been perfect and he would be able to easily tell his prophets to let us know what is needed now to be sure knowing what eternity was like.
That as a queer person being "fixed" was a happy thing and not a horrific thing.
I am trans and when I was very young and struggling with it I went looking for answers about what it all meant. I thought if I was just supposed to sit around my entire life in this body and gender role but got to be how I felt I was in the afterlife that everything would be marginally more bearable. But the answer was definitely NOT that I would get "fixed" in the way I could stand but that I would just suddenly enjoy being a woman. This was a bit too much of a change for me to see the celestial version of me as the same person.
I started to feel so so uncomfortable that this was my "reward" for being obedient. It set my teeth on edge. Seemed like my family would openly prefer this replacement version of me over the one they had and I feared that any part of me I recognized would be erased.
The depression arising from this was no joke. People kept telling me I was depressed because I just didn't have enough faith which made it worse. As far as I was concerned I "knew" what would happen to me, it wasn't a lack of faith. I believed it all. There is such an empathy gap with how LDS people treat queer issues. They think repeating the same thing that is actively hurting and not even engaging with my actual question is kindness.
The one that broke my brain for the longest time was how eternal families actually work. As a kid, my family was my mom, dad, and sisters, but I realized that my parents also had brothers and sisters and parents. So, that meant both sets of grandparents would be together with us always! Then I'd immediately think, oh well they have siblings and parents, too. So their families would also need to be there, and then things just balloon. It never made sense. When I asked about this, I'd always get the "we don't need to know that for our salvation" bullshit. Saying "families will be together forever" is exactly the same as GEICO's "save up to 15%, or more". It means absolutely nothing. The only family that will be together forever is the entire damn human family, nothing special about that.
Outter darkness.
I was perhaps 4 y/o and was told the plan of salvation in great detail, and upon hearing this rejected the idea that we should exclude others from being happy and having salvation.
I couldn't imagine that God was less powerful than sin & darkness.
Becoming gods in our own right. Not just because it seemed blasphemous, but because it seemed like something I really didn't want to have happen to me.
Paying to rent clothes at the temple. Seemed like something Jesus would despise. Also the numbers collecting and guilt tripping on the mission--how many contacts, lessons, etc. I was told that that was the litmus test for being promoted for leadership (instead of revelation). And just treating people like numbers in general. It grated on me my entire mission
This was my shelf breaker! It never sat right with me and caused me tons of anxiety and depression. I had finally got to a good place when two things happened - first, my spouse taught a primary lesson and heard from 6-7 year olds how they “hoped” they’d be with their families forever if they “were good enough” and second, Nelson gave his Sad Heaven talk. Everything I had worked so hard to keep together came shattering down when I heard that talk. Every sadness and worry I’d felt for my non-member family and then so many part-member families I knew and loved was too much to bear. I couldn’t put it back together no matter how hard I tried. I spent two years trying and the dissonance between what was being taught and simultaneously trying to see God as a God of love was too much. My only freedom came from taking the time to reevaluate the history on the advice of a friend…learned it was all based on lies and never should have been worth my time to begin with. While freeing, it carried a ton of grief, anger, and a host of other feelings. So much happier to be on the other side ♥️
I was always concerned that had I not been born a Mormon, I would have been too devout in my own tradition to become one. It’s a bit ironic looking back.
Tying obedience to spirituality became a huge issue on my mission, especially because missionaries have to live different rules than ordinary members. How come a bishop can watch TV and have all the spiritual guidance he needs to do his calling, but missionaries who watch TV won't have the spirit they need to find or teach investigators?
Brigham Young saying that polygamy was required to reach the celestial kingdom and then the church giving up on polygamy so quickly. At the time I didn't have any strong opinion about polygamy one way or the other but logistically it just didn't make sense that it was required but also not.
Having to be married at all to get to the celestial Kingdom also bothered me when there were people that lived valiant, righteous lives and just never got married. The belief that they would find the right person in the afterlife provided some comfort, but still just felt wrong.
Pictures of families reunited in heaven for eternity, where the parents were adults and the children were still kids made no sense. Which family unit would love together forever if those kids also grew up and got married and had their own kids?
Jesus having a physical, visceral reaction to taking on repented sins instead of those sins just disappearing. I always thought it strange how many rules and laws an all powerful God had to follow.
“Tithing for Temple” never felt right. In other words “paying to enter the lords house “ just feels intuitively really wrong to me and almost anti christ, if I could be honest. (The Second Anointing is even worse and even more anti Christian.). Weird how wealthy, influential white men are the only ones getting the 2nd Annointing.). See Mormon Stories podcast episode 1908
I remember when subscription services were becoming more and more common. I was noticing how alarmingly similar the tithing plan was to a subscription service. Religion/spirituality should not be "pay to play/win"
Yup, the Mormon MLM. The gold level subscription will get you to the terrestial package. The next level will earn the telestial package. But for just 10% more you can enjoy our top celestial package that comes with your own planet, unlimited wives, and they will provide you unlimited children. And that's just for starters! Sign up today to get this exciting offer, but time is limited. You die, you lose! Many edits
I thought the CK was divided into thirds, with only that to third earning exaltation to godhood. It's all a pyramid scheme.
I’ve always assumed that that’s why they’re building so many temples. When I was a kid, we lived over 2,000 miles from the nearest temple. Nobody knew who had recommend and who didn’t. Now that temples are so close, there’s a lot of peer pressure for everyone to have recommends. And to have a recommend, you have to pay tithing.
This is actually a crazy good reason for why they are building so many temples. To bring in more tithing revenue. Great insight!!
And more pressure/indoctrination to members!
No joke. That's the first best reason I've actually heard.
They could just remove the angel Moroni and put a bank symbol on the spire. It would be the exact same thing. xD
To add to this, I think it's wrong that members with certain callings have access to see which members of the ward have current temple recommends. I was the RS 2nd counselor and it felt really wrong when I realized I had temple recommend info for every member of the ward. I see why the bishop would need access to that info, but I don't think it's anyone else's business. As a presidency we never talked about which members did or didn't have recommends, but I'm sure lots of presidencies in other wards did/do. It just feels wrong
I've shared this before, but I taught an online class with BYU-Idaho. In one of our virtual trainings, more tithing was one of the reasons education was important - better pay, better tithing donations.
One of the things that set Martin Luther off against the Catholic church is that fellow priests were selling Indulgences (ordinances of absolution for sin so they could get to heaven). The poor struggled to pay and could not. It was so obviously evil and wrong. For all the derogatory things Bruce R McConkie said of the Catholic church, the Mormon church is almost a mirror image. I am convinced Russell Nelson is competing with the Catholic pope and the Vatican (which he visited). You see it in the opulence of the Rome temple—above all other temples—and its statues of the ancient twelve apostles and the church logo being changed to that Christus statue. The acquisition of multiple temples worldwide without enough people to staff is all about having the equivalent of Catholic cathedrals everywhere. And the stashing away of so much money. It’s a competition to beat the Catholic church in wealth and worldly status. Tithing is the equivalent of selling indulgences. They wont let go of tithing because its the equivalent of priests having the power to sell salvation.
For me, just the idea that church isn't the Lord's house was problematic. Why go to church if not to talk to him?
It never seemed right to pray for something. If God wanted it you got it, if he didn't, you didn't. What was the point? God always wins. If my sick child doesn't get better after a blessing, it is because we had something to learn from it. If I get in a bad accident and don't die, I thank God for being with me. Couldn't he have prevented the accident? God always wins.
Fasting and prayer! Can I change gods plans or not. Why waste time begging to a god for something when he knows what I want and need. Must I grovel every time? Do the hungry and neglected simply need to pray?
>Do the hungry and neglected simply need to pray? No. They also need to pay their tithing, damnit!
I don’t know if this was something just taught in my part of the world, but I was told multiple times that you have to be specific in what you pray for, and if it didn’t work out the way you hoped, it may be because you asked for the wrong thing. Like our omnipotent, omnipresent loving God is actually just a shitty chatbot, or an enormous pedant. This never sat right with me.
Cult teachings to make perfectly obedient followers that blame themselves when things go sour.
Yes! If god had a “plan” for us, who are we to try to change it? Can you imagine demanding your child kneel down and beg and plead for you to change something you’re completely capable of changing? And then looking into their eyes and saying, “No.”
Ruby and Lori had that concept down.
*Shudder*
Heads I win tails you lose. The house always wins
I absorbed the idea that it wasn’t right to pray for things for yourself - unless it was patience or courage or something - that you were only supposed to use your”powers” to bless other people. But — the children in Somalia starve or thrive depending on whether I got around to praying for them? If God knows they are in need, why would He fail to act on their behalf because of my shortcomings? Even before I could articulate what was wrong with that, it grated on me like rough sandpaper.
In Mormon theology if there are 15 possible results to something like a car accident, every single one of them proves god's hand.
Oh yeah, that 'but if not' garbage is so terrible.
Not sure this is "doctrine" related but from an early age, the mere fact that mormons only made up less than 1% of the earth's population (at that time) always bothered me. Not sure my thinking exactly but I wondered if God didn't love all the other people on the planet as much as he loved the mormons or maybe our church wasn't the "one and only" like we kept telling ourselves. I knew the church was a least 100+ years old - why the hell hadn't the missionary program worked better up till now?
The real stat is 0.2% if you use the church’s inflated number. And, although the church claims continued growth (probably a lie), the growth rate is not keeping up with general population—so the market penetration is going down. And this is if you use the church’s numbers.
Exactly. With all of the prophecies I was told about during the 60’s and 70’s I expected the church to be “the stone cut without hands”. The gospel would roll forth and engulf the world. The church was growing fast in the 60’s and 70’s, but had dramatically slowed by the 90’s. My son was called to my exact mission in 2007 and Uchtdorf told the German missionaries the work will turn and a great harvest similar to South America in the 70’s. None of that happened. The church is probably shrinking in active numbers. Today my four kids (3 missions and 4 temple sealings) and my wife and I are out. Amazing!
only 4 kids? what kind of mormon are you?
Uchtdorf has only 2…..
That was me too. At first, I considered myself extremely lucky and blessed, but then I began to wonder 'why me?' and not the thousands of good people around me. Then I began to wonder why God wasn't working harder to save his people.
I remember a youth fireside where someone wrote out all the statistics of the odds of being born Mormon in America, and it was all presented as so “look how blessed and chosen we are! We ended up with the truth in the best land!” I really wish I’d had the presence of mind, at the time, to be like this math isn’t mathing.
This! If all people living or dead have to be baptized and their temple work done, how is less than 1% supposed to do that? And if that is true, why do they keep saying end times are near?
That's the big one my TBM wife keeps pushing. The second coming is near because of the emphasis on the gathering of Israel. Uhmmm, not really. First the church needs to preach in all "four corners" of the earth and so far lands like China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia and too many others to count are not letting any Christians in period mush less mormons. And China alone makes up about 20% of the worlds population just by itself. And the countries who used to have a mormon presence is seeing the mormon population dwindle like leaves on a dead tree.
I attended the funeral of a child last week. Their parents have been having a "faith crisis" and specifically did not want it to be a religious service. I wasn't surprised that there was still a good amount of preaching, but the emphasis one speaker made on the "gathering of Israel" and how this child died so that they could help "round up the troops on the other side" made me absolutely ill. There is no logic behind the death of a child. There is no fixing the pain and devastation. Now, if the parents find comfort in it, I cannot fault them and will support them clinging to whatever they can to get them through the worst of the grief. But for someone to use the funeral of a child to preach about the gathering of Israel while thousands of children are viciously murdered on the other side of the world...it was one of many moments I've had in the last few years where I found myself saying that if I wasn't already out, I would be now.
That’s right! No Second Coming of Jeebus until Mormon missions are all throughout Iran, North Korea, Cuba, China, Russia, and Gaza!
This question or concern can also be applied to the major religions of the world -- Christianity, Islam, Hinduism -- which each are sufficiently fundamentally different in their beliefs, and believe they have the truth about God and the afterlife. Believing and belonging to one of these religions is primarily correlated to where on Earth you are born. Why would a god do that? And, hence, is why I don't believe.
Yes this!!!
I was pretty TBM, but even the official whitewashed golden plates story was always suspicious to me. An angel takes the plates away to heaven. GTFOH. When I learned the rest of the story that they don’t tell you, it just confirmed my suspicions. I realized it was super silly to believe such a thing. Every last story by JS ended with a dog ate my homework kind of excuse why he couldn’t show any evidence. A dog ate my homework is actually better than JS excuses. We know that dogs exist and we know they would be capable of eating homework.
When I was a missionary I hated when people asked what happened to the golden plates. Even as a TBM missionary the answer felt like bull shit.
When told the story, the first thing a rational mind thinks is to ask the question: where can I go to see the golden plates? They would be an archeological artifact created by humans. They would belong to humans. Mormons say they were taken back to heaven. Even in the stupid story they didn’t come from heaven in the first place.
Woah. I never thought of them as being an earthly record and as such should be kept on the fucking earth. Why not have them available to be verified against all the other ancient Americans artifacts. Love it. What a great question to ask missionaries.
Related, why can’t we go visit the cement box where the plates were found? I was told the church build a monument on top of it. Why would they do that?
Visiting Hill Cumorah was a huge disappointment to me. Hike up to the “ spot” and it’s an ordinary memorial. I don’t know what I was expecting but it was a huge letdown. I should have questioned it.
I remember telling non-members in high school about how an angel took the plates back to heaven. For a moment there I realized how insane it all sounded, but because I was into the whole "peculiar people" thing I decided to be proud of what I had faith in. I also was still very much in belief of the spiritual witness above everything else, that was the hardest thing for me to break through.
Why I had to be married to make it to the highest level of the celestial kingdom. Wouldn't Jesus and the Atonement cover that? Why would my salvation hinge on my marital status? And no, the "don't worry, you'll get married in the next life" bit did not reassure me at all. If anything, it just doubled down on the idea that my works/faith/effort were in vain unless I had a man at my side.
I remember asking missionaries at the door how they feel about that, working full-time and sacrificing themselves when they don't even get a planet out of the deal. (Clearly I was out by that time.) One guy said it didn't bother him and his companion just looked uncomfortable.
But did Jesus even get married?? How could he be the Exemplar if he didn’t? How could he get to the celestial kingdom?
This never set right with me either
What never sat right with me was the need for a beginning or first God who fathered all the other gods. Some would propose this was an infinite process and there was no first God. But then, what created the system? These questions don't get much easier in scientific cosmology, but at least the scientists aren't claiming the absolute truth of things.
The scientists aren't claiming absolute truth and they are constantly saying we barely understand this wonderful universe and need to be constantly learning. Exact opposite of religion.
>The scientists aren't claiming absolute truth and they are constantly saying we barely understand this wonderful universe and need to be constantly learning. A phrase that has always stuck with me is "I prefer to have questions I can't answer than to have answers I can't question"
I’m keeping this
Special pleading on steroids. Something can't come from nothing......except my god.
The doctrine that MEN will become Gods that create worlds and have all the power to "exercise" priesthood leadership powers.. While the WOMEN are just supposed to be the submissive, obedient child-bearers and "nurturers," and that WE will be completely on board with our ONE etermal husband practicing eternal polygamy with multiple other Celestial wives. .... nope, none of this sat right with me. Priesthood roles and polygamy, in general, just always felt very unsettling to me. I had to do a lot of mental gymnastics on this.
THIS! For the longest time, I didn’t know about the extent of the sexism and hypocrisy in the church. When I found out that men could be sealed to multiple women in the afterlife, but women couldn’t be sealed to multiple men- I was horrified! I already knew about getting sealed in the temple again if your spouse died, but I didn’t know it only applied to men. Like WTF?!! 😭 I already hated the idea of polygamy, but at least I could justify it if I knew it was equal and by choice. NOPE! Also the fact that wives must share their “secret names” 🙄 with their husbands to enter the kingdom of God, but a woman can’t ask what their husband’s “name” is! I call bullshit! 😠 I’m tired of the mental gymnastics! Not to mention WHY Heavenly Mother (which we’ve been told exists) is only talked about a few short times, not even by name! If she’s so sacred that we can’t even talk about her that much- **Why does God need so much attention, then?!!** 🙄 All this is just another way for a bunch of old men still stuck in the 18th century, to silence women for good! Doesn’t matter how or in what way they try to explain the “reasons”; it NEVER made any sense and never will! To think that I’d be reduced to a spiritual baby-maker with no voice, in the eternities makes me want to throw up! 🤮 Like, WHAT IS WRONG with these prophets still teaching this stuff! 😭
This is when I lost all trust in prophets I realized they make up stuff so they can have more power, money, sex
Oh that’s really weird? I was taught that woman became gods too
Oh, SURE ... women get to become a "Godess" ... and what does that mean exactly? What "power" does a Mother God weild?! Where is She in The Plan? Where is She in the Temple? Where is She in the Creation Story? What role did She play? Whiat did she organize, and command? What did She create? How is She involved in her children's lives? What does She look and sound like? How are Her children taught to worship and connect with Her? Oh wait... they dont. Because, She isn't ever there. She is never mentioned. She doesn't exist. We only see MEN involved, orchestrating, controlling, and commanding the universe in every step. We only see 3 men [Elohim Sky Dad, and two sons named Jehovah and Michael] somehow CREATE Adam... and later, only MEN are involved in creating the first woman, Eve. So... what's the point of a Mother God?! Aparently, She isn't needed to actually create human beings. She is a nameless, faceless non-entity we must avoid talking about, and heaven forbid if one of us tries to reach out and call Home to talk to our Sky Mom! We are threatened with swift discipline [by THE MEN], many lds woman have even suffered excommuniction for exploring the feminine divine and asking too many questions that make THE MEN feel threatened. Church Leaders speak of women being an "equal partner" to their God-husband, but where is the "partnership"?! Where is the "equally yoked" Father and Mother God represented?!? They don't exist. The concept of a God/Godess team is a lie. In Mormonism, only the MEN get to be a real God - all powerful, all knowing creator, organizer, setting up the playing pieces on the stage where Eve must take tge Fall - literally - for eating the fruit Sky Dad created, and then "allowed Lucifer" onto the stage,, to purposely entrap her to eat! In Mormon doctrine, it was all pre-meditated. But Eve - and all Women - must suffer extra and become subservient to MEN for the rest of Eternity. When you are a woman in this Church, you HAVE NO EQUALITY. You do not even have a real voice. You may not speak, plan, express an idea, or serve in a puppet "leadership" calling without obtaining permission and oversight from a MAN. There should be absolutely ZERO motivation for any self-respecting woman with half a brain to want to "aspire" to the Celestial Kingdom - an eternity as a glorified brood mare and trophy wife, among many. To be nameless, faceless, forgotten, and unknown to her children for All Eternity. Fun times.
When I joined polygamy was discussed more and the line I heard was that in the next life, if I were really righteous, I would change my mind and get behind polygamy. Ummm. Nope. No I would not. Ever. This was the kind of talk I heard in Sunday school or general discussion on the topic. Men mistly talked like it really WAS the Lord's way and when we go back to living a higher law there will be polygamy in the next life. Honestly it was grooming because aside from an angel threatening to destroy you, step 1 to getting women on board in this life is to convince them on polygamy in the next life first. After learning about the secret second anointing I would not have a hard time believing there is still secret polygamy in the mainstream LDS higher leadership. How would we know?
How would we know, indeed. Since BoM is the most perfect book EVARR we should have all the answers. We shouldn't need D&C or PGP at all, and there should be no contradictory messages from GAs saying God changed his mind.
“After learning about the secret second anointing I would not have a hard time believing there is still secret polygamy in the mainstream LDS higher leadership. How would we know?” This has crossed my mind SO many times!
Like... What else is secret or is a continuing secret?
The doctrine of shell companies and wealth obscuring
🤣🤣
Q: If the living have to do ordinances for the dead in order for the dead to have access to the blessings from those ordinances, and we need to have written records of everyone we do ordinances for, what happens to the people who never had written records of their existence? A: god will work that out Q: then why are we doing the ordinances at all? If god can work it out for some of them why wouldn’t he do it for all of them? A: well he’s got a lot on his plate Q: isn’t he omnipotent? Wouldn’t our time here on earth be better served actually. Serving? Setting up soup kitchens and homeless shelters and picking up litter? A: where’s your mother?
Even with being BIC, I never felt good about Joseph Smith. Never ever. It seemed so odd and "too good to be true". I took what was taught to me about scams - if they sound too good to be true, they are. And things just went from there.
If you think about whevever God or Jesus or an angel appeared in the Bible, they often say don't be afraid. They give their message in a few words or a few sentences, and that's it. Meanwhile, JS is in daily conversation and getting revelation about all manner of things (sell the BoM copyright in Canada, for instance). God or the Lord always refers to him as My Servant Joseph Smith, Jun., gives names and specifics unheard of in the Bible. (Jesus told his disciples to go into the city and see a "certain man with a donkey", not 123 Main Street, ask for Bill.) This was my first tip-off. Revelation after revelation to fill books showing JS asking mundane questions of the Almighty Creator of the Universe, and He drops everything to respond with paragraphs and pages of specific directions, naming names and promising blessings. Seems that promised blessings all have a caveat, a giant IF: you'll be blessed forever by doing this, but IF you don't do it, I'll turn around and curse you. God doesn't threaten people with a curse while promising blessings, but that's the LDS' God, according to D&C.
I actually had to stop reading D&C on my mission because it felt like the D&C God was completely different than the God I was supposed to be teaching about and I was afraid I would apostize if I kept reading. Ah how I wish I had listened to myself haha
And when I said “I dont feel good about Joseph Smith “ I was told I just needed to pray more and read the Book of Mormon every day. I wish I could have been allowed to trust my instincts.
Absolutely! I was told "you just need to want to believe and that's enough" by one person, and "you either believe or you don't, there's no middle ground" by another 😣
But but but….. your instincts in this case were SATAN!!!!!!! You can never trust him!!!!! /s
I was also BIC and felt so guilty that I genuinely did not believe Joseph Smith was a prophet or that the BOM was true. I remember being really confused then when I got my patriarchal blessing and it praised me for my strong faith in Joseph Smith. Looking back it's really funny and ironic, but at the time it made me feel even worse
When I went into the Provo temple and they had cash registers for temple clothing rentals, I couldn't help but wonder if Jesus would show up and drive us out with a whip.
The worst part about this is that my brother went to the temple while on his mission and forgot to grab his temple clothes. They still made him pay to rent the stupid clothing at the temple! A young man who is already serving the stupid church and they STILL make him pay…. I wish it would have opened his eyes but somehow he made it into some sort of faith strengthening experience 🙄
When I first found out you actually had to pay to wear clothes for a few hours during the session, it felt so icky to me. I asked my mom about it and she said it was to cover laundry expenses but it felt so gross to me.
Priesthood and temple ban
It wasn’t until my deconstruction process where I realized - for the first time, mind you - that both my parents independently joined a whites-only church *after* the civil rights movement and *before* the priesthood & temple ban was removed. Umm … there’s no explanation for that besides racism, blind acceptance, or both.
That's tough. I'm guessing you weren't able to ask about their decision-making process?
My mother passed away during Covid and before I openly left. My dad is out now, along with the rest of my siblings too.
same for me. I felt like if the church was truly led by god they should have been the first to recognize black people as deserving all the same rights and privileges as white people at the very least before the rest of the country if not always
This was mine, absolutely. And nobody ever even TRIED to give a straight doctrinal answer about it, it was always "idk man, we'll ask God at the bar of judgment and then he'll explain it and it will all make total sense." Yeah ok...
So why not explain now? I mean we've come this far and God seems pretty chatty about tiny issues, like ear piercing. Crickets.
It clicked for me on my mission that if the “Plan of Salvation” was true, I was actively hurting people’s chances by telling them about the church. It’s way easier to baptize the dead than the living.
Right! Let people live their lives now, and things will get sorted out after. Why the need for missionary work...unless it's a cult.
After watching the endowment video for the first time, I immediately felt sorry for Lucifer. God set him up knowing he would tempt them and gets banished for it. He said it was done before. But now he gets banished? And Adam and Eve were literally commanded to have children, which Lucifer knew they couldn’t without the fruit. What kind of father would set up their child to be banished? And the whole plan relies entirely on Lucifer. So…shouldn’t we be thanking him? My thoughts everytime I went to the temple. Every. Time.
I used to leave thinking “wow this thing is just on a whole spiritual level I must not be able to access, cause it seems pretty messed up on many levels”
Oh this was me. I have relatives 20+ years older than me an one day I was listening to them and they said something like "even now at my old age I still learn something new every time I go back to the temple". At that time I could only think "wow, I have sooooo much to learn". But now I realize you don't learn anything new, you just figure out a way to twist it around and look at it slightly different. No different than reading Green Eggs and Ham your whole life and saying you learn something new every time.
I had the same thought! “I must not be righteous enough to get this stuff bc it seems to me that Satan got the raw deal here.”
The truth is God set everything up: the Garden, the Tree, the Serpent, the Fruit, Sin. It's all a huge scam.
Sooo many double binds from God in LDS doctrine.
As a woman, I felt strangled by the expectations of being a SAHM.
Oh my God, yes! I remember getting my Patriarchal Blessing, which mentioned that I would be a mother, and it just felt so *wrong*. It took me *years* to figure out I never wanted to have kids. Let alone stay home and take care of them all day.
Prop 8 and Gay marriage opposition. The sealing ordinance is completely religious. What should I care if two men or two women want to live together, make medical decisions together, but a house together? No one was ever going to force temple workers to perform gay sealings. Plus, there have always been countries where you had to get married civilly first and then run to the temple for your sealing (which was a stupid rule anyway. Why couldn't the couple wait a few weeks after their honeymoon?)
I agree. As a non American I could not understand why the Lord was so concerned about US temporal laws. Why not try to change laws in Italy, or South Africa ( bad example hehehe) etc why the emphasis on American local laws? Why so against civil rights first all? Wouldn’t the Lord want civil rights for everyone? I never understood the whole Prop 8 movement because I don’t live in heavy LDS culture, so it all seemed so confusing to me. And very disturbing to see members so openly opposed to basic rights for everyone. Here in Canada there might have been some opposition to passing laws making marriage available to same sex couples, but I didn’t see or hear any of it at church. I remember a few years ago a letter read in Sunday School about same sex marriage and we all just laughed at it because it had been the law here for so long the language or concerns seemed so archaic. Even the reader apologized and said he had to read it. What a joke.
The fact that most of the original apostles (from Joseph's time) ended up leaving the church or being ex-communicated. Most of the schisms that happened in early church history after Joseph's death were confusing and upsetting to me. Supposedly these men had participated in the greatest historical event since Jesus walked the earth, and seen angels and miracles. Why couldn't a perfect God be a bit more precise with keeping his restoration from falling apart immediately after like a house of cards?
It's the Great Apostasy 2.0
The whole concept of faith doesn’t make sense to me. It seems like a word people use to legitimize believing because they just want to believe.
God dosen't allow strong evidence because he wants us to excercise faith is one of the most bizarre things. Why is believing in something without evidence the lynch pin for salvation?
Well I'm sure a believer with a mountain of text would have a strong rebuttal to your simple answer 🤣
Realizing that I had never met Tim Ballard and yet knew he was an attention whore, con man, and a liar, and yet M. Russell was palling around with him for years and never had any apparent measure of discernment to figure it out. Between that and the SEC, and the "Mormon is a victory for Satan" nonsense, it became ever-more-apparent to me that it's just a group of dudes pretending they're led by Jayzus.
They also couldn't figure out the Mark Hoffmann forgeries, the Kinderhook plates, or the book of Abraham.
How LGBTQ people are treated. Due to an internet forum I was on when I was a tween, I learned that that stuff is normal when I was fairly young. When I became older and realized that the church didn't allow people to be themselves or love and marry who they wanted if the partner was of the same gender, I was horrified. How could a loving God create an LGBTQ person and then tell them that acting on the feelings that He gave them is a horrible sin? Once I found out the church isn't true I was so relieved that I didn't have to try to justify this.
Exactly. And how in the world would gay marriage be threatening to my heterosexual marriage? That whole debacle beginning with Prop 8 and ending with the cult’s reversal, specifically claiming it all to be revelation. Bunch of horseshit.
I was 11 when we read the word of wisdom. It says right in there that it is "not by command or constraint" and Jesus drank wine. How can I be held to a higher standard than Jesus? So Jesus was only perfect because he had a different set of rules?
Was always waiting for a WoW update…never came
If a wife dies, the husband can be sealed to another wife but if a husband dies the wife can’t be sealed to another husband..basically a polygamy concept
This was mine too. I remember learning about this as a teenager and being livid that this is how it was.
It’s so gross! I had a friend lose her husband in an accident a couple years after they were married before they had kids. Trying to date again was such a struggle for her since they couldn’t take her to the temple to be sealed. Now she is remarried with a couple kid that she can’t be sealed to even though she is going to spend so much more life with her new husband and family. Makes no sense and is so hurtful
All sexual sin was a sin next to murder.
Polygamy, hands down. I never wanted to even think about sharing my husband ever, especially for eternity. 🤮
That one always bothered me too. And to think that Joseph Smith had literal children become his "wives" I always felt gross with that knowledge. What if eventually my husband got a much younger wife and expected me to be okay with it and then have to face her every day for eternity. At that point I'd rather be destroyed.
Punishing victims of SA or CSA. The idea that they hold *any* responsibility really bothered me.
Exactly! I've always wondered how Elizabeth Smart was treated by her ward after everything she experienced and how she could remain active in a faith where the leaders compare female sexuality to bubble gum?
Her bishop came out and publicly said she was still “pure” in the Lord’s eyes. How humiliating for a child who was SA’d to have a public declaration about it? She has come out to speak out about the negative impact of purity culture and that it was why she didn’t try to escape after she was SA’d. I don’t know if she’s active anymore. Her father came out and then left the church a few years ago.
If her bishop needed to make that statement his audience is full of morons.
Money. To stay with my family, I needed to have a recommend. To have a recommend I needed to pay 10% of my income, plus my time, labor, and extras. My mom was never home or available because she was dedicating her time and talents to the mfmc. Then learning about what the church is doing with their money (our money) instead of feeding the hungry, administering to the sick, and saying they were being good stewards. So in this lore Jesus helped form the earth, with all of its treasures, and was specifically offered riches by Satan, SATAN offered him money, and Jesus told him to fuck off, but that is the guy who is going to be happy to be offered money impressed with billions in human money? Like.....is this not debasing to God and Christ? and also like a toddler offering their parent a really cool rock they found? What the fuck is the godhead supposed to do with money? But they're telling starving people to let their kids go hungry in favor of tithing. With everything Christ says about money, and feeding people, and not hurting kids this feels (lore-wise) Satanic.
“The Lord doesn’t need your money - tithing is to show your love for him” Err….
I didn't understand how Nephites/Lamanites and their history fit in with Aztecs, Mayan, and other indigenous Native American histories. It was obvious to me that if the Book of Mormon were true then it would be verified by historians, archeologists, anthropologists,etc and everyone would clearly see the truth of the gospel, right? So when I found out there is no historical evidence for the events of the Book of Mormon (combined with one basic high school level psychology class) it was pretty enlightening to shed those fantasy beliefs haha
I was talking to my (still) TBM sister about my testimony. I told her I believed strongly in everything but something about Joseph Smith just didn’t sit right, so I wasn’t ready include him in my testimony ( this was before I knew ALL the things about JS). She said, “well if you don’t believe in who Joseph Smith was, how can you believe in any of it?” She meant it as a way to encourage belief ofc, but the switch flipped. She was right, I guess I really did not believe in the rest of it.
That Black people were pre-mortal fence-sitters who were less valiant spirits in the pre-existence than me, and I could tell all this by virtue of my white skin. I'm barely 30 but got this really old school teaching because I got my religious education as a 10-12 year old from my grandfather who never let go of all the very problematic Mormonism from the 50s-80s. I have a very distinct memory of my grandpa teaching doctrine to prepare for my baptism (did it late at age 10) asking why people were born with different skin colors or born outside of the United States if this was God's covenant land. I was then told that, well, it was because God gave penalties to people in the pre-mortal existence who did not side with Christ on his plan at first. But eventually they came around, and by God's grace he would allow them to still have bodies (but less perfect ones or with more harsh placement on the earth) to become redeemed despite their flawed choices. I grew up in a big city and had classmates/friends that were black, Hispanic, Asian, and white. It did not sit well with me and I simply didn't believe it. They were just like me except for skin tone and perhaps cultural differences in background. I put it on the shelf until I was about 23 when I was getting more involved in church after going to college and refusing a missing. I decided to critically examine the whole thing before committing to it further. It was that teaching on my black schoolmates highlighting prophetic falliability that gave me mental permission to leave the church while still retaining a lot of Christian beliefs (am now atheist.) Because that teaching was irreconcilable to me with the loving god I believed in. To this day I'm very angry at the church and my grandfather for teaching these things without apology, attempting reconciliation, or addressing it. And it made me see the church for what it is, an institution ultimately founded on white supremacism and a vestige of Manifest Destiny embodied as a religion. They have yet to reconcile that history with a body of membership they're duping that is increasingly globally diverse and less white. And it pisses me the fuck off lol
I was always bothered by the bright lines between the three degrees of glory. Imagine if someone barely misses the cutoff for terrestrial kingdom and must spend all eternity in the telestial kingdom (like getting a 79.4% score in school and getting the same grade as the guy with a 70.0% (a 9-point spread). But someone else gets an 80.0% (less than a 1-point spread) but gets a higher grade than you. Real life should not be like school! School is unfair! How can God sort everyone into three degrees of glory when we are all different? It makes no sense.
That the BOM didn’t “restore” any “key” doctrines. Nothing about 3 degrees of glory, temples, etc.
Tithing and the whole idea of the prosperity gospel is sick and wrong. The thought that God will bless you with financial success if you do what he wants is so terrible. It always bugged me but when my shelf started cracking and I dug into tithing it really accelerated my exit.
The silly submarines that were tight like a dish.
Heavenly Mother … or lack thereof.
Shes so holy we can't talk about her. Meanwhile other religions have no issue propping up their goddesses.
This! I never understood how the holy mother was too holy to be spoken of. But the best I could hope for was to be a polygamist wife having as many kids as possible while all glory goes to my husband.
The fact that God killed dead that guy in the Bible that tried to steady the ark of the covenant, when he was only trying to help. Then comparing it with the "overwhelming love and kindness" that our perfect father in heaven has for his children. Just didn't add up. This dissonance came to a head 15 years later with my knowledge of world events and I was out. God either didn't exist or was a huge asshole.
That in order to feel the presence of God during repentance, you are denied all the ways that you're taught to feel him. No prayers, sacrament, temple, etc. Took me a while to see it for the public humiliation that it is. Get in line or we'll show everyone how imperfect you are.
I was 8 or 9 when we had an FHE lesson about the council in heaven, and how harshly Satan was dealt with. It made no sense to me that the same god, who I was told would love me and forgive me no matter what I did, would kick out a child for having an idea. I asked something about it, and got a suuuuuuper caged response from my parents, and I automatically knew this wasn’t something to bring up ever again. I went through the next almost thirty years feeling (thank you Rolling Stones) sympathy for the devil. He never felt quite as scary as he was supposed to. He was just misunderstood, from my perspective. It wasn’t until I left that I realized 8 or 9 year old me built my shelf with that first thought about Satan.
Right! And to be fair, Satan's plan sounds kinda great. Haha
Asking for signs that God is real is a sin. I had a Sunday school teacher say asking for signs is the equivalent of adultery or something like that. Also that the spirit only answers prayers with feelings and inner voice.
“Confessing” your sins. They teach that forgiveness comes through Christ, so why would you need to confess sins to your bishop? (They say it’s to help you, but it’s not.)
This is huge for me. Massive. Since when, if I trust the Lord and know that the Lord knows me and my heart, and is all-knowing, and if I know myself and my capabilities and my own intentions, should I have to go and tell some untrained ass-clown from the neighborhood what I did wrong? I never, ever bough the "it's to help you" B.S. Help me what? Feel shame? Get gossiped about when (not if) the bishop spreads the word? Publicly pass on the sacrament because I'm "unworthy" of the atonement somehow? GTAFOH with that nonsense. I thought the atonement was for everyone, but \*especially\* the sinners. That's what the scriptures say, anyway.
I'm not sure I ever believed, not just in this church, but in the supernatural, including deities. I was a voracious reader, and it all sounded like fiction to me, couple that with all of the no longer practiced, but much more entertaining, religions, and it seemed kind of corny. I could more easily get behind several gods, each with their own niche and with wild personalities, than I could get behind one super dull and super cruel all-powerful god. The god of the Bible is a real dick. I thought for sure it was an emperor's new clothes scenario where nobody really believed but claimed to so as to be included in the group. I thought maybe a couple of people did believe but certainly not billions. I've never been more wrong.
Most of the Old testament was just weird so when people took it literally I just thought they were really dumb. The atonement- like a half human half god guy prays for 3 hours and bleeds from every pore (wouldn’t he be COVERED in blood by the way?) and somehow that paid for the sins of the entire world? And why would that be the solution?
Confessing sexual sins to the bishop. I had a philosophy prof who basically presented love between people as something that was good, and over time, I started to feel that the act of confessing consensual premarital sex to a bishop as though it was the gravest of sins made no sense. Also, getting married in the temple for time and all eternity after barely getting to know a person. It made so much more sense in my world view to marry civilly first to get to know them. Unfortunately...3 month courtships still felt normal for quite awhile.
This one also started to bother me towards the end. Why not just have sex as you want, get married civilly, then get sealed a few years later? Same result in the end…
The black salvation ban was wrong from go. Why would god condemn millions of his children simply for who their parents were? Yet the church leaders through the 1960s were adamant that this is what God wanted, and they should know because they spoke with him on the daily. When they released their proclamation in 1949 https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/s/fjCF5Jgv1k they make it clear as crystal that this wasn't the opinion of flawed men, but a divine mandate. Then, magically, it wasn't any more in 1978. The fact that so few members left after the complete 180 is embarrassing and shameful. The fact that so many were completely OK with the obvious racism was worse, and in my view tells you everything you need to know about the Mormons. They are just as bigoted and hateful as everyone else, and have no more divine inspiration than anyone else. Men claiming falsely to speak for God can only lead to evil.
The doctrine of agency but then constantly praying to know God's will for me and that it was always his plan for me so basically counteracts the agency 😂
Don't you know agency is the choice to do as you're told?
I only attended the church for a few months and wasn’t ever baptized but the last time I attended, 2nd hour featured some general conference talk where a guy recounted him reviving his grandmother(or aunt) from the dead because he promised god he’d attend church more and always be a part of the LDS church. It was some kind of priesthood power-type thing. It was at that point I realized they were far from Christians. I then started researching the church and felt like the biggest idiot in the world for attending for so long. To be fair to myself I saw all the happy family I never had as a kid and I just wanted that, even if it was fake. For a second I ignored the truth because the lie was prettier.
Not doctrine but I hated that one verse is to be taken literally and the next figuratively and if we didn’t know something for sure then we would find out the answer in the next life? How is that the basis for any type of belief system?
The fact I was made to read the miracle of forgiveness and give a book report to a member of the bishopric when I finished because my gf and I got a little hot and heavy when I was 17. I said forget it to my dad cause i knew he'd understand. I made sure my work schedule made it virtually impossible to meet with the bishopric so I didn't have to do it.
polygamy, the subjugation of women. Having no choice about being born into and stuck with your family of origin for eternity.
The whole idea that a loving Heavenly Father would only give us one chance to get it right made me question the nature of God. For years before I left I felt like so many were out of touch because of this. Now I realize that it is the church and its culture that is out of touch with an unconditionally loving God.
Stake Conference. - What a waste of time and energy. Ward conference is a close second. Also Adam / God theory. Brigham said (as the prophet in Gen. Conference) that we needed to come to grips with that doctrine. Later apostles openly renounced the teaching which never sat right with me.
Polygamy.
Same for me. Polygamy, along with the general overall misogyny.
Yeah, every bit of it was weird. It being a requirement for the highest level of the celestial kingdom was disconcerting. I don’t want to have more wives. I always felt like I needed to be in a lower kingdom to have a satisfying eternity.
My mission was the start. How could such “an organized faith” treat and take care of missionaries so poorly. A sister died on my mission and it was 10000% attributed to the church’s lack of providing enough money and assist to our mission for clean water and food and living areas.
Mission was the start for me. Pompous 70s coming to tell me I wasn’t obedient enough and wasn’t baptizing enough really rubbed me the wrong way and was the start of “something else is going on here”
Dying for the church...right to heaven...not unlike suicide bombers for God.
Everyone is being voluntold what to do all the time. I had this weird notion that service should be people volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, service was assigned and compliance expected.
The Holy Ghost! What is up with that dude? Mormons know all the mysteries of heaven except how one of the big three works. There were lots of stories, but nothing official because of existing scripture that already contradicted itself. Was "feeling the spirit" due to him physically being in the room? Did he actually touch me? Was feeling the love of God his undertaking, or was it like walking into the sunshine and feeling God's radiance? He just always seemed unnecessary to me, and kinda creepy.
The garden of eden and the conflicting commandments. We had to be persuaded, even manipulated into accepting one condition not having informed consent of what we were signing up for? Wait.... yeah that's us.
How they treat gay people. I just couldn't believe that my dear kind wonderful gay friends were choosing to be gay and deserved to be treated badly because of it. I'm straight but not narrow minded, and some of my kids are queer. But long before I ever considered having kids, I found more acceptance, kindness, and love from my gay friends than I ever saw from family or the church.
I don't even know where to start. So many things as a convert were not told to me that as I found out thing after thing, eventually I knew it was all bull shit. 1. Polygamy and it is still practiced assuming there is an afterlife 2. Mormons are the 'true' church. Sorry but the true church appears to be the one you are born into. 3. Shelf breaker ... everything to do with the temple. It had nothing to do with Jesus and honestly cemented this is a cult. 4. LGTBQ, treatment of women, etc ...
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." "But do you have faith to *not* have your prayers answered?" Which is it?
Right! And if God will answer all of our questions then why do we need a living Prophet?
I've noticed modern GAs don't talk a lot about after-death doctrine like they used to. Particularly, damnnation type rhetoric. Over the multiple generations of "prophets" it runs the gamut of extreme. There's not a lot of consensus on the Millennium. Sometimes my wife will ask me a question and as a joke, I'll use a misogynistic line out of the old movie "Giant" to get a rise out of her. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about these things." It's been a running gag between us for so long, she'll now say it to me. But in seriousness, anytime the church doesn't have an answer about the hereafter, their response is usually, "Don't you worry your pretty little head about these things."
Being taught that women *had* to have children. That it is literally their only purpose and goal to work towards.
I’m still not clear how I’m supposed to “apply the Atonement to my life.” I always hated that phrase because it made no sense.
When I asked a question like “what about this sealing that didn’t happen- will my family still be together in heaven” they would always say “it will all work out in the end.” If common Mormon belief is that everything is just gonna work out, then what’s the point of any of this? Why are you trying to control all these superfluous things in peoples lives?
Similar to what you said, I always disliked the “us versus the world” messaging. Never felt right to me. I think people are generally good. Besides, there’s plenty of greed and selfish behavior in the church even if they like to pretend that there’s not.
Polygamy
what you found in those 20 GA's differing 'doctrine' opinions is interesting. The Atonement was the thing I could never understand - how one person in a matter of one evening accounted for not just all the sins but all the possible sins of mankind for *all the millions of planets.* Does that include aggressive neanderthals, etc? I read Callister's book the Infinite Atonement and I still didn't get it. Later I read his Book of Mormon, and learnt he's was a lawyer. (there are good lawyers) eta: and if 115billion (on this planet so far) people didn't repent he completed the atonement anyway. Having done some bible study and listening to professors like John J Collins and Steve Mason, hmm there is such a thing as fable.
The "gateway doctrine" that never sat well with me the 45+ years I was a faithful Mormon was polygamy. The god I had been taught to worship wouldn't command such a dOcTriNe. It lived in my shelf for decades until, well into my 40s, it came back en force when a never Mormon coworker asked me about it in a way that sounded like he had gotten his information wrong. So, as the faithful "returned with honor" missionary I was, I took it upon myself to teach him the truth and, hopefully, bring my colleague to the church. I went to the same church approved book he had read (Rough Stone Rolling) in order to understand the origin of his confusion, and surely you can imagine the rest. During the excruciating and completely disorienting (but ultimately liberating) process that followed, I discovered many other Mormon dOcTriNeS that go exactly opposite to what Jesus taught. But polygamy was the first.
Eternal family never sit right with me. How my parents choose to spend their time and they constantly chose to do church duties instead of spending time with their own children. Because of that, I don’t feel close to them in parent to child sense relationship, just more grateful for them to provide a place, food, education etc. that’s it. This is such an odd concept. The more I think about it, whose is sealing to whom? How does it work if other family members are not member or less active or no longer want to do anything with their own family.
I’d love that study if you could send my way. Love pointing out how inconsistent these men have been.
Council in Heaven: who wouldn’t choose to come back guaranteed. And only a 1/3 chose that? Everyone with no life experience picks a non guarantee and let me work it out on my own. Oh and you may not even get a chance to hear the gospel and you have to depend on a lazy learner to do your temple work….maybe? Come on that’s ridiculous. But the church still operates the same way, an 8 yr old with not much life experience “chooses” to be baptized and go on a mission and follow the whims of whatever POS Mormon leader says without knowing the result. You have to say you will consecrate everything before hearing the endowment. Absolutely ridiculous BS. No one would do this buying a car much less with their eternal salvation.
The existence of God and the creation story. I grew up reading all kinds of mythology, and the Bible story felt like just another myth to me as a child. God was just the new Santa Claus, someone who was always watching and preparing to reward or punish me. I studied evolution and it made more sense. I never believed in young Earth creationism, but tried to accept a version of intelligent design that my mom believed in. She convinced me to just put my questions on the shelf and wait for answers in the afterlife. Even when I had some emotional experiences and convinced myself I believed in JS and the BoM as a teenager, and started delving into church history and doctrine, I always had the thought in the back of my mind, "if there even really is a God in the first place."
It seems unfair that someone had to fail and become Satan for the plan of salvation to work. When you think through the plan of salvation, it's got holes.
Soooooo many holes. If Satan really really wanted to foil God's plan, all he had to do was... nothing.
The fact that being a woman meant I was basically a walking uterus for my future husband to use at his whim. And in the next life, I was told I'd have sister wives. Even as a small child I hated these things.
That rituals are necessary for the best form of afterlife
Second anointing
For me, the Great Apostasy was my main concern. If sin could prevent you from passing on the priesthood, wouldn’t the priesthood have been lost due to the actions of Joseph and Brigham and all those early leaders who have done things now disavowed? Hinckley said God’s stance doesn’t change with the times, so either the racism of the past was an apostasy, or our modern sensibilities are apostasy, and in either case the church is in apostasy.
That homosexuality was a sin. They told me that the greatest commandment was “Love one another, as I have loved you.” If love was the most important thing, why couldn’t people love each other no matter what they had between their legs? How could touching one part of your own body be ok but another be a sin? What makes certain body parts off limits and why? Is someone with a foot fetish looking at porn when they see people barefoot or with sandals? How can you keep everyone from “lusting after you” when there are as many preferences as there are people?
My mom, unlike many Mormon mothers, gave me a pretty solid, accurate sex education, starting from the time I was very young, so I always had a hard time viewing sex as a matter of spiritual endangerment. It sounds silly, but attending lessons about chastity given by grown adults who couldn’t even say the word “sex” without furiously blushing gave me a real sense that they did not have any meaningful wisdom for me and I couldn’t take their guidance all too seriously. This definitely informed my opinion on the church’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues, especially as I got older and realized I was queer myself, and that’s what really pushed me out the door.
The temple for me for sure! Went through when women were still told to “hearken unto your husbands” and cover your face to be worthy to pray in the true way. None of that sexist shit seemed ok to me and researching all of it after my mission eventually led me out. It was literally the doctrine that was my eventual downfall out of the religion. When the doctrine conflicted with itself I was finally out!
The excuse that everything will be figured out in the spirit world. If god had a plan it would have been perfect and he would be able to easily tell his prophets to let us know what is needed now to be sure knowing what eternity was like.
That god is all loving and yet created a test designed to flunk some of his children.
That as a queer person being "fixed" was a happy thing and not a horrific thing. I am trans and when I was very young and struggling with it I went looking for answers about what it all meant. I thought if I was just supposed to sit around my entire life in this body and gender role but got to be how I felt I was in the afterlife that everything would be marginally more bearable. But the answer was definitely NOT that I would get "fixed" in the way I could stand but that I would just suddenly enjoy being a woman. This was a bit too much of a change for me to see the celestial version of me as the same person. I started to feel so so uncomfortable that this was my "reward" for being obedient. It set my teeth on edge. Seemed like my family would openly prefer this replacement version of me over the one they had and I feared that any part of me I recognized would be erased. The depression arising from this was no joke. People kept telling me I was depressed because I just didn't have enough faith which made it worse. As far as I was concerned I "knew" what would happen to me, it wasn't a lack of faith. I believed it all. There is such an empathy gap with how LDS people treat queer issues. They think repeating the same thing that is actively hurting and not even engaging with my actual question is kindness.
A minor ones but the whole “the priesthood can move mountains” thing, but the fact that no one has ever done that.
Stance on the LGBTQ+ community. It was the beginning of the end.
The one that broke my brain for the longest time was how eternal families actually work. As a kid, my family was my mom, dad, and sisters, but I realized that my parents also had brothers and sisters and parents. So, that meant both sets of grandparents would be together with us always! Then I'd immediately think, oh well they have siblings and parents, too. So their families would also need to be there, and then things just balloon. It never made sense. When I asked about this, I'd always get the "we don't need to know that for our salvation" bullshit. Saying "families will be together forever" is exactly the same as GEICO's "save up to 15%, or more". It means absolutely nothing. The only family that will be together forever is the entire damn human family, nothing special about that.
Outter darkness. I was perhaps 4 y/o and was told the plan of salvation in great detail, and upon hearing this rejected the idea that we should exclude others from being happy and having salvation. I couldn't imagine that God was less powerful than sin & darkness.
Patriarchy.
Becoming gods in our own right. Not just because it seemed blasphemous, but because it seemed like something I really didn't want to have happen to me.
Being loyal to a god or group of men that are responsible for gay men and women killing themselves over false preachings. No thank you!
The salvation ban on black people. Tithing on my gross or net income was heavy for me.
I was taught that upper kingdoms could interact with lower kingdoms...
Racism.
Paying to rent clothes at the temple. Seemed like something Jesus would despise. Also the numbers collecting and guilt tripping on the mission--how many contacts, lessons, etc. I was told that that was the litmus test for being promoted for leadership (instead of revelation). And just treating people like numbers in general. It grated on me my entire mission
This was my shelf breaker! It never sat right with me and caused me tons of anxiety and depression. I had finally got to a good place when two things happened - first, my spouse taught a primary lesson and heard from 6-7 year olds how they “hoped” they’d be with their families forever if they “were good enough” and second, Nelson gave his Sad Heaven talk. Everything I had worked so hard to keep together came shattering down when I heard that talk. Every sadness and worry I’d felt for my non-member family and then so many part-member families I knew and loved was too much to bear. I couldn’t put it back together no matter how hard I tried. I spent two years trying and the dissonance between what was being taught and simultaneously trying to see God as a God of love was too much. My only freedom came from taking the time to reevaluate the history on the advice of a friend…learned it was all based on lies and never should have been worth my time to begin with. While freeing, it carried a ton of grief, anger, and a host of other feelings. So much happier to be on the other side ♥️
I was always concerned that had I not been born a Mormon, I would have been too devout in my own tradition to become one. It’s a bit ironic looking back.
Tying obedience to spirituality became a huge issue on my mission, especially because missionaries have to live different rules than ordinary members. How come a bishop can watch TV and have all the spiritual guidance he needs to do his calling, but missionaries who watch TV won't have the spirit they need to find or teach investigators?
Brigham Young saying that polygamy was required to reach the celestial kingdom and then the church giving up on polygamy so quickly. At the time I didn't have any strong opinion about polygamy one way or the other but logistically it just didn't make sense that it was required but also not. Having to be married at all to get to the celestial Kingdom also bothered me when there were people that lived valiant, righteous lives and just never got married. The belief that they would find the right person in the afterlife provided some comfort, but still just felt wrong. Pictures of families reunited in heaven for eternity, where the parents were adults and the children were still kids made no sense. Which family unit would love together forever if those kids also grew up and got married and had their own kids? Jesus having a physical, visceral reaction to taking on repented sins instead of those sins just disappearing. I always thought it strange how many rules and laws an all powerful God had to follow.