This memory from my mission came to me today. While I was in the field, Joseph Wirthlin wrote an article in the ensign on the Book of Mormon and being a successful missionary. During a zone leader meeting, the mission president used this quote below in his lesson..

"..Indeed, I believe a missionary's effectiveness and success is directly related to his or her own conversion to, testimony of, and love of the Book of Mormon."

"The Book of Mormon: The Heart of Missionary Proselyting," Ensign, Sept. 2002, 13

He then explained that we should substitute the words "Book of Mormon" with "Atonement". From that point on I started to see all the missionaries in my zone differently. Any elder or companionship that wasn't getting good results, or were struggling, not getting along, etc., I would assume the reason was that they didn't believe in Jesus enough. Their faith was weak.

This logic is often used among TBMs whenever desired results don't happen. In my own family, I've seen this happen very recently. My little sister had back surgery a year ago and is still dealing with constant pain, for which she relies heavily, but carefully, on different painkillers. Since the surgery she has not been able to attend all 3 hours of church, and can barely make it through sacrament meeting because of the pain. My older sister, while trying to console her after a hard week of back pain said "well don't you think that if you sacrificed and tried to make it through all three hours of church, that the lord would bless you and make your back heal?"... This made her absolutely furious. This essentially put all the blame on my little sister who is suffering for "not having enough faith" to be healed.

I feel horrible that I may have made the same types of comments to missionaries in an effort to encourage them, instead of recognizing the real reasons for why they may have been struggling to get results.. Like the fact that it's just plain hard to convince people of the crazy restoration story. The irony is that now, my TBM family are mostly making this judgement on me. I didn't have enough faith. The "adversary" got a hold of my heart. It's like he's voldemort and people are too afraid to say his name.. SATAN!! RUSAFEE!! Well, I've got news for you folks.. I'm pretty sure he was just made up by a bunch of old guys wanting to scare people into submission.. Sometimes life is just plain hard. We just need to deal with it instead of shaming people for not believing hard enough for god to make it all better..

Same stuff goes down in my family and ward. It's the message that Joe perfected in the Book of Mormon....the righteous/wickedness cycle. I always thought it made sense when I was a TBM. Teaches us self-hate, criticalness of others, and perfectionistic expectations of everyone. Miserable way to go through life.

Now I know it is just made up ways of always blaming the believer and keeping them in submission to the controlling abusive psychology of the believers.

I too am sorry that I ever participated in it out of a desire to find some meaning and spirituality in life. Wish I could get all those years back.