In 3 years of Seminary, I read and memorized maybe 30 scriptures. I learned about Cain and Able, that man may become like God--as in rule their own planet and all the rest of the problems. It wasn't pretend. It was CES.

The Seminary teachers ruined lives. They were both Bishops and then Stake Pres. They called parents on a regular basis to tell them their child should not be associated with @ and ? And ;

In rural areas, CES teachers have serious POWER.

My 45 year old cousin just married his high school sweetheart who married a RM in the temple after being bullied by the Seminary teacher. She had 5 children with the mean, abusive, dead beat dad. She and my cousin are so happy. The kids should be his. He really waited for her. Unfortunately, he will never be a father. Those grand kids will know he is the best thing in their life.

There is a special place in hell for rural Utah Seminary teachers.

The Mormon scriptures are studied like the alphabet soup of theology. Here and there you recognize a word or two, but most of the bowl is gibberish.

I didn't have that experience with rural seminary teachers in Utah exerting power outside of the classroom. I was personally always paranoid about doing the right thing. I wasted too much time reading EVER SINGLE word so it would count I read the Book of Mormon, Bible or whatever the subject was that year. Wasted so much time, caused so much stress, and it left me out of taking *8* elective classes I could have taken at the high school.

abby Wrote:

> ...so it would count...

This. All because I thought some wizard in the sky was watching me and keeping tabs.

I and everyone in my family studied all the standard works closely, carefully, repeatedly, and with as much focus and intensity we could muster. I was not even aware that there were Mormons that approached the scriptures casually until I read anecdotes on this board.

I am completely flummoxed to know that there are people who, believing they have the revealed words of the designer of the universe, ignore that ultimate wisdom.

Some do, but you'd be amazed at how powerful the "official interpretation" can be in keeping the blinders on.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2014 09:28PM by archytas.

This is something I noticed when I REALLY began to actually READ the scriptures. A good experiment is to look at the footnotes contained in a quad, and follow their trails. But pay close attention to the context of the verses.

Often reading scriptures in Church was ultimately jumping between verses in different places that contained similar words to each other and making misinformed conclusions based on sheer confirmation bias. This type of 'reading' is especially prominent when jumping between BoM and Bible so they can 'prove' that it's really teaching the same thing, but BETTER!™

Those footnotes drove me mad. Endless circles of disconnected irrelevance.

I've known bishops, sp's, RSP, and more who have never read the BoM from cover to cover.

On one hand, I think that's effed up, but gawd, who could blame them?

I've read the book of mormon at least 20 times, the new testament at least 4 times, most the the old testament, d&c & pearl of great price probably 4 times as well.

that said, when I started looking at the problems of the church, I knew right away what contradicted scriptures and whatnot...

I was on my mission when Gordo Hinckster made his challenge for everyone to read the BOM by the end of the year(he made it in like August I think)

I was in a meeting with the stake presidency and the 2nd counselor in the stake gets all teary eyed and tells how he never read the BOM before and he finally took the challenge and finished the whole thing.

He was in his 60s and had been a member his whole life.

terrible. absolutely terrible.

Dont all/most missionaries really study scripture and BoM? I mean, im sure theres some that dont, but they follow the schedule of waking up and studying scripture in the morning before they start their day...

At least thats what my Mormon friend did on his mission and he took it pretty seriously.

Xanth Series, Ogre Ogre, etc.

My husband brought them home to me after the honey moon and kept them on the bedside table near my scriptures. He read them aloud to the children, in preschool, and as they learned to read they read them again and again and again. He read them, the books fell apart (they were paperbacks) everyone wanted the next one int the series or replacement, they covered the house. Piers Anthony.

before my temple marriage I repetiously religiously read mormon scriptures. After my marriage I tried but Piers Anthony's Xanth character's epic journeys and puns became more real to me as characters discussed and laughed as my children grew from preschool through elementary school- than any mormon book could be.

I once read the entire Qur'an, cover to cover, in a day. I've read the biblical gospels in one sitting several times. Same for the Torah. Some biblical books read like poetry. All of these are important works of literature--both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is just painful to read. Even the most ardent TBMs have trouble actually reading the damn thing. Growing up, my mother got on a Book of Mormon kick ever other year or so. We would read a few verses together as a family and discuss them every night at family prayer time. But we never made it past Second Nephi. One year we just began with Alma--and never made it halfway through that book.

I don't think I ever really read more than a few verses of the Book of Mormon at a time until I was in my mid-20s. I was still TBM-ish, not realizing I was playing mental gymnastics about things, when I decided to read the Book of Mormon as a novel and plow through it in a week. It managed to get through it but thought, "That's it?"

So I flipped back to page one and read it again, and again. It was just soooo bad!!! It was an obvious work of mid-19th Century plagiarism. The stories were corny and lacked depth. It also seemed to predict a lot of things...but only in retrospect (e.g., Columbus).

My Book of Mormon binge set off my bullshit meter. My faith spiraled down from there. I don't know how anyone can truly read and study the Book of Mormon and still believe the church is true.

The sister missionaries in my ward did, and they swore that they got so much hope and encouragement from it. I couldn't see how. I tried to read it, I really did.

I tried to read the bom again and again(as an exmo)but always stopped at Labans death. Why was Laban's murder ordered by God so the Brass Plates would be available to Mormon to use as a resource for an abridgement of history on Gold plates by prophets who didn't need physical copies to translate, then left in the ground for another prophet, who looked at a rock(s)while translating and not the plates, to translate everything but the portion from the Brass Plates that he accurately copied from the King James Version on his desk for convenience sake?


I prefer to use beer to make my head spin. At least it stops when I'm sober.

I was a very avid reader growing up. I loved to read!

But I never read the so called scriptures. I only read what I had to for seminary and church.

Occasionally, some church leaders guilted me into thinking I was a bad person for not having even read them once from cover to cover.

I'd give it a shot for a while but I don't think I ever got past 2nd Nephi.

Why should I read a bad fairy tale when I could be reading something worthwhile.

What I wonder is if converts really read the entire thing.

Isn't that what they're told to do before they pray to have their hormons tell them that it's the "truest 15-million" cult on earth?

I've been an avid reader all my life as well. I managed to force myself to read the BoM twice when I was 15 & 17. It was torture, but I was desperate to get the slam dunk confirmation = the burning bosom. I still remember trying hard to find it interesting. I didnt want God to think I wasn't taking it seriously. I played so many mental games with myself, trying to gain a testimony of its truthfulness, only to have the devastating results of reading it (the sound of crickets)ultimately add significant weight to my shelf.

One of my most persistent thoughts, being an avid reader, was if God wanted to reach his children effectively by using a book, why couldn't he make it beautiful, poetic, exciting, interesting, moving. The thought that God communicated things of such maximum importance to humans in such a surprisingly tedious medium was a large contributor as well to all the other cog dis I'd already begun feeling.

Is that mormons are supposed to read the scriptures...but mormon lore is full of the evils and pitfalls of misinterpreting the scriptures...you need to check with the church on interpretation anyway even if you read. Since the church doesn't exactly follow the scriptures, reading them is sometimes confusing.

OT - X2
NT - X4
BOM - X4 (once in spanish)
D&C - X1
PoGP - X1

And I left.



My ex-TBM DW. Has read none of the mormon scriptural canon. None.

And she's still rabidly in.



Go figure.

I had an unbroken 6 years, 8 months, 14 days record of reading the BOM every single day. The first day I missed in that time was because I fell asleep with my scriptures in-hand as I laid down in bed to read them. I had it burned in my brain that the BOM was the one gawd cared most about, so I would read the BOM as I was reading other scriptures.

My tally at the time I quit believing:

OT - 1
NT - 6
BOM - 26
D&C - 4
POGP - 3


Makes me mad at how much time I wasted earnestly studying ancient fairytale's and 19th century bullshit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/27/2014 03:49PM by redbullet750.

I find that there is a correlation between reading the scriptures and leaving. A person is more solid in Mormonism if they read just a smidge of scripture, not enough to start thinking into it, but very few who stay in are well read, or else they start to develop radical beliefs wrt Mormonism.

I was privy to a TBM family scene where the family was reading a section of the BoM each evening. Four children were in attendance, with one sibling absent on a LD$ cult mission.

The session went something like this. The father, of course, was leading the family. James, where is your BoM? You were asked to get it and be ready. Okay, let's begin. Turn to chapter such and such and verse so and so. Are we all there? Now, who can remind us what was happening?

Wait. Wait some more. Well, okay then, Mom can you do this for us? Mom gives her answer which is a little long. The two teenagers at this point are enjoying private jokes between them, laughing and smiling. The patriarch gives them a stern look which they ignore. He then asks one of them to read from verse such and such to verse so and so. The teen has to look quickly at his sibling's book where he is rescued by her finger pointing to the correct verse.

Thank you, says the patriarch. Then the youngest is asked to read. This sibling, although quite young, unlike the teen is not lost and begins to read with enthusiasm, stumbling on some words, but not caring in the least. Meanwhile, one teen really hits the funny bone of the other teen and the laughing becomes louder. Father, VERY sternly, says that perhaps they need to share with all the family just what is so funny.

And thus the evening progresses.

All I could think of was that this reminded me of mutual classes I attended....with me being the one who was laughing and joking with my friend while the teacher was giving yet another chastity lesson.

lol, my parents did that with us. almost exactly describes our family scripture study, years on end.

I tried to read it when I was 14 but didn't get very far because it was difficult to read and understand -- it was just dumb, boring and made up.

My TBM family didn't read it either, nor did any of my TBM friends. We all just went through the motions.

My grandfather was a branch president in Halfway Oregon. He didn't ever own a BoM as far as I know. There was nothing in their house that hinted they were mormon. Oh, except for garments hanging in the bathroom. ugh.

I'm not sure my grandfather knew how to read. I never saw him read anything. They didn't have books in their house.

I love reading, but I slogged through the BoM like a drunken man in a swamp. It's the worst book I've ever read. I have the 1830 copy, and it's laid out like a bad adventure novel--no verses. It's full of poor grammar and impossible situations. Invented names litter the text like word confetti. I can understand the reluctance of the members to read this tedious hoax.

"tedious hoax"

Probably the best two-word description of the BOM I've seen.

If I am allowed three words:

"livre de merde"

Of course if you went to seminary, you know that you were assigned to read the standard works from cover to cover. I tried, I tried so hard, but I could never get past the first few chapters.

Unfortunately, because it was an assignment by the seminary teacher, my parents expected me to do it. I didn't know what to do. I was so afraid that it would get back to my parents that I didn't do my reading assignments. It was hard enough trying to do everything else the church wanted me to do, along with school work and band and piano lessons. I had a job at a restaurant too, so I had NO time.

I just could not get through any of it. So, when we were to turn in our reading schedules, I wrote on mine that I had read the standard works completely.

I honestly thought that every other kid in seminary was doing the scheduled reading, and I felt like such a loser that I couldn't do it.

Soooo at seminary graduation, they were giving out awards, and I got an award for reading the whole standard works. OMG. Only me and one other kid had "read" them all. I couldn't tell them that I really hadn't! I would be in SO much trouble for making the family look bad, if I confessed. So, I sucked it up and tried to accept the award gracefully.

I never told anyone about that. The guilt trip we were put on as kids was pretty difficult to live with for a lot of years. I have let myself off the hook now, and I'm really relieved that the church isn't true, and I didn't waste my time "actually" reading the scriptures.

I know at least three mo's who genuinely read, trying to glean truth from them. When I was TBM, I did too. My tally:

OT - 1
NT - 6, mebbe 7
BOM - 10 or so (once in German)
D&C - 4
POGP - uncountable times, far away my fav and it was relatively short. It's my shame to my funeral pyre that I was so suckered by what is now the most identifiable fabrication horny joe made.

I must be a CHUMP!

As an adult convert, I read my scriptures every day. Every. Day. Morning and night. For 17 years.

I did it because I thought I needed to catch up with those of you who started reading the BofM in primary, then seminary, institute, BYU religion classes etc.

Little did I know y'all were a bunch of *slackers* though! Sheesh. I guess I must have single-handedly brainwashed my own self. Sigh . . . .

;o)