I came to church today with Satan Claus, Darkfem, and sithlord. First time back since leaving the church. The Gospel Doctrine lesson is priceless. It's about redeeming the dead. Darkfem, a nevermo is getting her money's worth, especially since she never paid a dime! It's quite interesting listening with apostate ears. Such sad people, discussing the ins and outs of who will be in which kingdom. The disdain in their voices for those who reject the gospel makes me sick.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2013 07:01PM by twojedis.

You're not in "your" ward, right?
I wonder how many of the disdainers secretly wish they could reject the gospel themselves with out any repercussion and fear.

We are in SLC, having come from Oregon for Conference Weekend. 20% activity in this ward. 2nd ward, Liberty Stake.

Stir the pot while you're there.

Sithlord is asking lots of uncomfortable questions. I'll have him report later.

Awesome!

Cool! Can't wait for the update.

Yes, all of us wore pants except Satan Claus, who wore a flowered skirt. Just kidding, he was the only one who looked Mormon. Sithlord wore jeans.

There's nothing more entertaining than logical questions in gospel doctrine class.

Only 20% activity??

Yep! That's what one of the ward service missionaries said.

DAMN, no wonder they're beating down the doors of even this infidel!

Well, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I was mostly bored and trying to spice up the church meetings. I thought I might as well be instructional in the process and not let on that I used to be a member and therefore be seen as an apostate.

So in Gospel Doctrine, the guy was droning on about temple work and this and that, mostly getting no response from the class and pausing long enough on several occasions to make things a bit sleepy. They said something about baptisms for the dead so I finally decided to make things interesting. I raised my hand, briefly introduced myself as a newbie and curious, and asked what they meant by baptizing dead people. Awkward silence for about 10 seconds and then someone started to answer that it’s a proxy thing, blah, blah, blah. I asked what it was then, exactly that they did in ‘temples’, was that similar to what the Masons do? By now, anyone that was slouched or slumbering was now wide awake and paying attention. Clearly things got interesting for them as well. (Hmmm a potential convert in our midst maybe). Standard answers poured out on what is done in the temple (sealings, baptisms for the dead, ….) until someone decided to mention washing and annointings. “Washing …. like with bathtubs” I asked? No no I was assured, just symbolic washings like in the bible. Someone else make the mistake of mentioning endowments so I went with that one too. “What exactly is an endowment”, I asked? Promise to God, blah, blah….. I was told, and someone said sacred not secret. So I probed a little to see who else would slip up a bit and no one was biting so I finally just commented, “Oh wait, is this where you guys have all the ‘secret handshakes’ and stuff? No comments but I caught a few nodding heads, but overall silence and someone in charge moved the lesson along. When we walked into Gospel Doctrine, we had one or two hi’s, but when we left, nearly everyone came up and introduced themselves, instant celebrity status. I think they were mostly grateful that we were able to spice things up for once and give them a lot to talk about the following week.

That was so much fun I wanted to stick around for Priesthood session. This was a lesson about Lorenzo Snow. The very first paragraph mentioned the martyr of Joe Smith but absolutely no details. They were about to move past that paragraph and I decided to probe a little on that. Raised my hand politely and asked “Ummm, I’m just curious but what exactly happened to J.S? Why did they kill him? “. Older guy giving the lesson answered “Oh, yes, well, back then… a lot of the people mis-understood Mormons and thought it was a cult and satanic worshipers (hmmmm, I restrained myself on that one). A mob gathered to kill him for that reason. “Really”, I replied, “Well, I heard that he was practicing polygamy, polyandry, and marrying teenage girls with 33 wives and one of his fellow leaders found out about it and was going to expose him with a newspaper article when J.S. had the printing press destroyed, even though he was telling the truth. And because of that, they hauled him off to Carthage where the mob rushed the building after guns were smuggled into the prison where upon J.S. killed two people before being killed himself”. Immediate reactions from many of the H.P’s, one of them said, no no, there were no guns there, another corrected him, yes, yes there were guns. Someone else said, well that’s debatable how many people he killed, it was most likely only one. Someone else said, I hope it was the guy who killed Hyrum, he was an incredible man…. I just relished the moment mostly thinking about what to ask next. Somehow the lesson got back on track and they started talking about taking the gospel to the world. I mentioned somewhere in there that in Israel where we lived for nearly 3 years, I was told that Mormons are not allowed to preach to the Jews, why was that? A few off the wall comments but someone finally got it right so I asked why would God care so much about having a building in Jerusalem more than bringing the good news to all the Jews when that would bring in the 2nd coming. Most of the answers were along the lines of waiting for the right timing, that we have similar issues in other countries as well, blah blah blah. Okay, so now the lesson is nearly over and I have to get one more dig in, so I politely raised my hand and got ignored for about a minute or so, and finally got to ask how long it would be till the second coming? How many mormons are in the world? 15 million they said, and I said out of 7.5billion?, so that was what roughly 0.2% of the population of the earth, didn’t seem like they were making much progress converting people to Mormonism. Yes, yes, its going to take a lot of work someone said. Some guys tried to drag me off after the meeting to talk about Carthage and give me more details, but I was done with my PTSD for the day and just walked away from him.

Overall, it was good fun. I hope we got people there thinking. I tried to not offend anyone but to ask questions that would get people to see their world from a different outside perspective. I know we were at least that successful.

Good show, sithlord. I imagine you were the only educator in the building that day.

I am impressed. How did you get all those questions out without laughing? I would have lost it.

+1 your post was my favorite post today made me laugh good times

Just a correction sithlord on your math...with 7.5 billion worldwide people (don't know if this number is accurate or not), and even using 15 million mormons (we know that this one is not accurate) but will use it for the sake of arguement, then that makes the % of the world population that is mormon two tenths of one percent - not 2% - or 0.002%.

Sorry: 100%; 10%; 1%; 0.2%=.002 or 2/1000

Yeah... I still go with my wife as I haven't been able to convince her it's a fraud just yet. I bite my tongue alot... I'm jealous.

Sometimes I'm tempted to actually read the lessons and prepare good questions just to liven things up.

WOW Sithlord. You got some guts. Wish I could have been there for that.

Maybe you planted some seeds. Sure some were thinking.... Guns!? they had guns? I never heard that. 33 wives!? 14 year old girls!? what! I need to look into that.....

Just may open some eyes..

That's not spreading a few seeds, that's planting a whole forest!

Next week the bishop will get up and give a long talk about wolves in sheeps clothing. Oh wait, you were in your jeans right? Where oh where was all the discernment?

You rock!! That was awesome.

This is great! I could never have maintained my cool like that.

A+++++

I wish I were there for that!

My nevermo report from Sunday at Mormon Church with twojedis, sithlord, and Satan Claus. I was trying to pay attention to how the details fit together, to see what kind of story the church experience tells about Mormonism. I have so many thoughts and I'll share some soon. But in the end I kept coming back to the same question: why do religious people need to spend (at least) three solid hours a week affirming their testimony to one another? Because that's what seemed to be going on in every session. Over and over. Faith is a deeply personal thing. But the Mormon religion, at least as I experienced it today, seems to ask that its members continually blur the distinction between personal and social in their expressions of faith. I was struck, for example, at just how much personal information speakers would share about themselves in order to illustrate faith-promoting points about the gospel, conference, etc. I wonder about how this constant blurring of the social and the personal functions in the larger operations of the religion. I suppose it kind of mirrors the ostensibly personal relationship with Jesus and the Church's Prophets that members are encouraged to feel? If anybody has any thoughts I'd love to hear them. And thanks so much to Satan C, twojedis, and sithlord for being my apostate shepherds today. These are wonderful peeps! And so much fun!!!

As a super duper introvert I was told it was horribly wrong of me not to want to share so much. Lower those boundaries!

In the young women's individual class time, we had a convert teaching about 5 of us, and I was about 16 years old. The convert was really into the lesson, which was about Jesus for once. Part of the lesson plan said to ask each girl to speak about what Jesus' sacrifice means to them.

Now I had only born my testimonkey once. Ever. Immediately after baptism and that was it. And it was just as generic and formulaic as what results from using the testimony glove these days.

So it was my turn, and I tried to say something like it was really personal to me, between me and Jesus, and I didn't really want to share.
So the rest of the lesson was a long speech about how wrong it is to think you can have anything personal with Jesus and how I need to let it out in order to help everyone else. While I'm sitting there trying not to cry...

In hindsight maybe this was odd from a convert, I get the impression other religions encourage a personal relationship with Christ, but I was a budding atheist then and a fully realized one now. I simply didn't want to be forced to bear my testimonkey which was what the lesson really amounted to.

How much of it was me being an introvert and how much was it me picking up on how wrong it is to make a bunch of us share something so personal? Hard to say.
But I think you're picking up on something fundamental to mormonism, they do not as a group respect boundaries. It really shows in reactivation attempts.

There's nothing like someone asking probing questions and watching the tap dance begin. Reminds me of a particularly problematic session where the investigator and the shark jumping GD teacher somehow ended up debating whether we've been visited by aliens. As a mishie, I wanted to die. Today I'd find it quite funny. Nice effort Sith.

Don't you like HOLIER THAN THOU speech? Sickening isn't it? DON'T GO.

A++++ Thanks for making me laugh .Needed it !Bravo !!!

Amazing all of you!!Next week ye'll have to visit another ward with more questions lol.
Freak them out one ward at a time.

Next year tell me the plan! I would have enjoyed it with you. Maybe we could have one person take a super-TBM line in the discussion.

A bunch of ex Mormons attending some ward where they are unknown and asking lots of uncomfortable questions would be amazing!!

This is doable and there might even be an app for it. ;)

If you are ever in Texas my ex ward people seemed almost asleep during Sunday school could use some interesting questions.

With, this reminds me of Chasing Amy: "What's a Nubian?"