Over the years I've voluntarily confessed sexual sins three times, being earnestly TBM and always wanting to be clean. My experience with all three of those bishops was such that I felt respected, understood, and forgiven. The last time I did that I was 26 years old, and by then mature and comfortable enough to have a frank discussion with my Bishop.

The things I confessed to him were common things that most people seem to do these days, but I felt dirty and I wanted to feel clean again.

We had a down to earth conversation and it basically amounted to being forgiven of course, but more interestingly it was a study of natural human behaviors and freely shedding any feelings of guilt to come clean and be open & honest. Even under the oppressiveness of the church we felt comfortable to be real and human and honest as we talked.

As we talked he said that in the past he has had to confess similar things to his leaders as well, and he even told me that there was a YW leader in the stake who repented and came back to full fellowship after being a stripper at a nightclub. He acknowledged that sexual deviances are human nature and in the grand scheme of things are small, inconsequential sins.

So that's from the perspective of having gone to my bishops voluntarily.

People should NOT however be probed for information they're not willing to volunteer. That's not confession. That's sort of emotional rape.

Now my understanding of sexual "sin" has matured. There is no sin. It's just about learning what works and what doesn't work for self & partner(s).

And now I understand that there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO CONFESS SEXUAL SINS TO ANYONE unless one feels the need to, and it doesn't have to be a bishop. It can be a best friend or whoever. Or the sky. Or no one at all.

I'll agree with you and one-up you. I don't believe that confession of any sins to an ecclesiastical leader is necessary. Now, if you are seeking spiritual guidance on how to overcome your sins or needing to unburden yourself and gain some spiritual insight, then by all means feel free. However, I do not believe it is required in order to be forgiven. In Christianity Jesus is the mediator between the sinner and God, not a bishop or anyone else.

How nice though to have a bishop say that sexual sin is a minor sin in the scheme of things. I have always hated the "sin next to murder" shtick that the church peddles. It's nonsensical.

Right, it was nice from then on to deprogram myself from thinking that sexual sin was second to murder. Aaaaagh

Don't let Elder Bednar hear you saying these things. His conference talk made sexual acts sound like the most base of all possible things. That man sure is uptight about sex. I'd hate to be his wife.

I agree that LDS, Inc. has no business messing in your sex life. The things they should really be teaching about sex is that it is totally natural to desire and engage in sex. But it is possible to contract sexually transmitted diseases if one is not educated about sex. It is also possible to become emotionally scarred by engaging in sex inappropriately and too young. It should be taught how to protect oneself from abusive sex partners. In other words, don't go to church to get educated about sex. Go to a parent, teacher or counselor if they are trustworthy and knowledgable. But don't go to a religion salesman.

sounds like a pick-up line ..... "hey baby, come and feel dirty with me"

I actually like talking dirty sex confessions with friends. I often pretend I am Bishop Jackwagon sportin a 3wood in my ugly cheap suit.

When it comes right down to it, confessing to the priest (bishop) is a catholic thing..... and MORmONS despise the (HOPELESSLY APOSTATE MOTHER WHORE) catholic church and catholic ways. ....... or at least they used to! any one remember THOSE good old days of MORmONISM????

I can remember being taught that ONLY Jesus can forgive sins. MORmONISM was going to be very clear about this!!!!! That speaking to the bishop in NO WAY granted actual forgiveness of sins, ONLY Jesus could do that. Confession to the bishop merely served notice to the bishop that inappropriate things had been done. The only forgiveness that the bishop as representative of the church could give was a temporal. A, as in the case when the church had suffered loss or damage to their property, a person could pay for the damage and be forgiven by the church, BUT that was completely independent of whether or not Jesus had forgiven the person, as the person might still be harboring ill feelings in their heart that Jesus could detect, that would make forgiveness from God impossible, even though things were settled up financially. B. The bishop could decide when the local congregation could properly tolerate the association of the offending sinner, BUT ONCE AGAIN THIS WAS INDEPENDENT OF WHETHER OR WHEN JESUS was going to forgive the person.


and getting all technical about it, a person could slip up sexually just once. it helped if they married the person they FUCKED UP with, if they worked really hard and did EVERYTHING right for the rest of their lives Then MAYBE Jesus would finally forgive them..... someday -so extremely far into the future, and finally let them into heaven..... where they would be second class citizens even if they were in heaven. And they damn sure would be second class citizens/ Members for the rest of their mortal days. An offending couple intent of being forgiven better spend every second staying busy trying to prove themselves until the forgiveness is finally extended, and not ever waste one second speculating on if they had finally done enough BECAUSE BY GOD JESUS would make that determination completely independent of what they thought!


A person who had sexual sin / Fucked up would certainly never make it very high in church leader shi-t, they would certainly never be a mighty GA with that kind of taint. And a person who Fucked up a second time /Twice might as well just face the fact that they were going to Hell with no chance of redemption!!!


So WHEN did this confessing things to the bishop become so in vogue for MORmONS. It seems to me that it came in right about the time I hit puberty and with the advent of SWK's book TMOF.
Since then there was a HUGE change in MORmONISM, things went all catholic style, MORmONS soon started bragging about dumping off a load of sins to the bishop for forgiveness.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2013 12:47AM by lucky.

"A person who had sexual sin / Fucked up would certainly never make it very high in church leader shi-t,"

Welllll....there was a man in California who had an affair in the 1980's, was forgiven and came back to full fellowship, and was called as bishop in Utah in the 1990's.

I have a very difficult problem with confessing any sort of 'sexual sin'. I DON'T feel sorry! I AM NOT sorry and see it all as normal stuff anyway. Pretty tame really! But being an ex-mo that explains it all heh heh!! Not only are we apostates, we don't have ANY conscience!

I agree. You're not forced to talk about those things in interviews. When the Bishop asked "Do you follow the Law of Chastity?" I always lied and said "Yes". So he never questioned me any further.

It's inappropriate that he asks the question in the first place, but I was never forced to tell the truth. I think many Bishops don't want to talk about these things either (especially to teenagers), they just do it because they feel they have to.

It's sad the way the church is run, I bet most of the membership feel these interviews are bad too, but the church isn't run in such a way as to allow the membership to voice their disagreement with something. You can't disagree, or else everybody else in the ward will think you're sinning, etc. So everybody just keeps quiet about it I guess.

The Christian concepts of sin, righteousness, the devil, being guilty and being a sinner, the atonement, and needing an intermediary to make things right, are the core of the scam. Making various sexual behaviors sinful (and getting people to buy into the idea) has been one of the pillars that has sustained religions for a couple thousand years. God creates humans, makes them sexual, then tells them it is sinful to even think in sexual terms, and that humans' sexual nature is against the creator. On top of that, Catholics sanctify celibacy, the most unnatural of states, holding it up as the ultimate. It's telling a strawberry to be ashamed that it is red, juicy, sweet and a pleasure to eat and look at. It's a way for churches to have power, make money and keep a reliable brain parasite within every patron, a take-home, 24 hour reminder that "I'm a f-up, and on my own, I can't avoid ruin, and so I need my religion. It is perversion. The true immorality.