So today I told my father that I don't believe in the church and then he said we needed to have a chat later on that day. When he had the chat with me he pretty much said exactly what I expected him to say. He bore his testimony, read some scriptures to me, and whenever I said anything he would twist it around and change the subject and then he pulled the line "there is no happiness outside of tscc" to which I replied I wouldn't know because I have never had a life outside of tscc. I then told I read the book of Mormon and prayed about it and didn't receive an answer. After I said that he basically told me I must be sinning or I wasn't really "sincere" and that my experience wasn't valid because he supposedly received an answer when he did.

What's your guys opinion on the line "there is no happiness outside of tscc"

The people who say that obviously haven't looked at a single thing outside a church building or their house.

Not one thing.

I used to believe and teach that exact thing when I was a member. Since leaving the church, I've found that not only is there happiness outside of tscc, it's a happiness you've never experienced before. I think the phrase is used to scare and control the members into staying.

I will say, like so many others on this board, leaving the church is not an easy road but well worth the bumpy journey. I've told my TBM mom about my happiness and successes after leaving the church and her response was: "Satan has control over you. He wants you to think you're happy so you won't go back to church. He doesn't want you to make it to heaven."

Uh, okaaay. I choose happiness over the weekly guilt-trippy brainwashing session!

+1

When I was first leaving the church and I came here, folks said the same thing as you. I didn't believe them. However, after experiencing it myself, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, there are some downers... But those are mostly caused by judging members - and I don't let that bother me. Overall I'm much happier and far less stressed.

(Editing - put in wrong place)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2014 11:49AM by exodus.

Exactly, they throw it out all the time and then you give an example of being happy without it and they claim that it is the "devil" leading you astray

If there's a devil to lead people astray, how do Mormons know the devil hasn't led them astray? Oh, because of their testimonies. But how do they know their testimonies don't come from the devil? Because of the scriptures. But how do they know the scriptures don't come from the devil? Because of their testimonies.

good one. A vicious cycle.

As a convert I was happy before joining.

I was miserable during my 10 year stay.

I am happy after leaving. Life is great.

I was blessed before joining.

I was blessed while in.

I've been blessed daily while out.

The only time in my life I was unhappy, uncomfortable in my own skin, walking on pins and needles, under endless judgment, afraid to be me, to say how I feel. To eat, drink, watch, listen too what I want. To be ME. The only time I have ever had an anxiety attack. The only time I felt caged and controlled......Was in TSCC!!



Now that I'm back out, all that has gone away. Life is great, calm and peace has once again graced my life.

Out of tscc = Heaven.
In tscc = Hell.

There's no happiness WITHIN TSCC. High suicide, antidepressant, and porn rates as evidence.

I can think of two ways to go about it. Either:

- Tell him that you're going to stop going to church anyway for a while just to see what it's like and if it's true that there's no happiness. Tell him if you find no happiness then you'll return to church.

- Tell him that you've never really believed, so technically you've never really been IN the church, yet you've still been happy.

I heard that all my young life and when it came time to go on my mission it was the theme of my farewell speech. I cringe to think of it now. Nineteen. So naive. So sure as a Mormon that "I had it all." So sure I would bring the light to the rest of the world who were in the dark.

W The first thing I noticed when I left my Mormon cocoon and got out into the world on my mission is that everybody seemed as plenty happy or even more happy than me. No wonder they weren't interested in my "divine" message.


What a difference a day makes.

7 billion people in the world and about 3 or 4 million active LDS, a lot lower if you consider only people with Temple recommends.

Most of those 7 billion say they're happy but still, only the LDS version of happiness is valid. Non-mormons only "say" they're happy, but they really aren't. On the other side, LDS people are truly happy because their kind of happiness is more happy.

Bingo... Good line to use.

And Mormons NEVER say they're happy when they're not.

LOL

Surely not what I have experienced and seen in my friends that have jumped the sinking non sense!

Intellectual laziness, with a significant lack of curiosity.

Someone posted a GA talk here a while back (although I may be mistaken) with a metaphor about living in a cellar (the LDS church), where they are safe from the tornado (the sin and temptation of the outside world). Or course, they never realized the irony of their own metaphor, that *staying* in a cellar deprives you of the sunshine when there is no tornado, even though the church tells there *is*....

My opinion is very much what you said to your father. How could anyone know that who has never lived outside of the Church?

I'm much happier outside of the Church and this fact really confuses my still-Mormon friends who have been taught all their lives that if they left, they'd be miserable.

They expect me to say that when the Gift of the Holy Ghost left me, that I felt a huge part of me leave. They expected me to feel empty and to miss that companionship.

But I say, "Nope. I just feel like me. In fact, I feel like a more genuine me because I'm not putting on phony airs, trying to be on my best behaviour because I'm a Mormon."

It really confuses them, especially when I still get the same sorts of insight I received when I was Mormon and they thought it came from the Holy Ghost.

Nope. I guess that any little bits of wisdom we pick up along the way just comes from experience.

A genuine life may likely have more pain and suffering.

Mormons won't absorb loss and death in a way that is credible. They dismiss it to the will of god and postpone the pain to when they have to reconcile reality with a Mormon heaven narrative that they use to address painful, normal life experiences.

Mormons are mostly an unhappy bunch if you ask me. There a boat loads of people who are in miserable marriages. Their motto is endure to the end. They give the church money they don't have, tell leaders things that are none of their business, do callings they despise, waste their life away doing busy work they don't want to do. They're stuck and can't escape. They've been told there's no way out, and if there is, they'll deeply regret it.

Sound like happiness?

If I'd stayed in the church my life would me markedly different than it is. I wouldn't have married the love of my life, a Catholic, I wouldn't have the family I'm blessed with and I wouldn't have a love for fine beer, ale and single malt scotch. And THAT would make me happy????????????
What a cruel fucking joke!!

Ron Burr

I have never heard that line from any other religion, ever.

Just another nail in the coffin of cult-designation for Mormonism.



KW

While I was leaving, a song lyric that resonated with me was from a Cheryl Crow song,

"If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?"

I can't say I'm happy all the time now, but I'm a lot happier than I was. And my thoughts and feelings are my own. I now longer have people trying to tell me that I'm somehow doing it wrong if I don't have the same emotions they do. I get to trust and believe my own feelings, and pursue the things that *I* think will make me happy, not what someone else tells me is supposed to make me happy but doesn't.

And like the song said, most of the people telling me what I was supposed to be doing to be happy, didn't seem all that happy.

It is an empty platitude. There is absolutely no truth to it. Anyone who says that is a bald-faced liar. Leave the church, enjoy your life and leave your dad to figure out his cognitive dissonance. Life is just way too short to stay in a life sucking religion. Good luck on your new journey.

No one is guaranteed happiness, but we are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness in any lawful way that makes sense to us. Our founding fathers rightfully figured that each of us could best determine what makes us happy, and they thus put the pursuit of happiness into the Declaration of Independence. Having visited Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home, and Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, my feeling is that despite whatever hardships their lives held, they were essentially very happy people. They had hobbies and a myriad of interests. They pursued whatever they wished to wholeheartedly. They lived their lives to the fullest. And they did this despite not being Mormon.

It is an impossible conjecture (faulty in it's construction) that there is no happiness outside of Mormonism, or any other qualifier.

There is an old saying that we are about as happy as we make our minds up to be.

I know this much: my life outside Mormonism with my World View is much different as it reduces any stress around living according to someone else's standards and rules.

I was as happy as I was going to be while living Mormonism.

I have found a whole new world filled with a new kind of happiness after I left the LDS Church and changed my World View as I took my power back and began living life on my own terms.

It's a more expansive kind of happiness, more joy, more of a fulfilled life, (difficult to put in words.)
It was never possible in the LDS Church except in the instance of common human experiences such as giving birth.

A big of advice. Now that you had the chat, leave the subject alone. Don't respond if he brings it up, and don't initiate any conversation on Mormonism in anyway.

Keep your private life private. He is not schooled in how to respect personal boundaries. You do not have to be a victim of his lack of manners.

Now get on with your life on your own terms, creating your own personalized World View and be happy doing it. Make it fun!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2014 06:05PM by SusieQ#1.

When you think about it, that's such an odd statement.

First of all, do they REALLY think that nobody in the world has ever been happy without the LDS church? How was the word "happy" even invented before the Mormon church was created, if the emotion behind the word didn't actually exist?

The Mormon church has only existed for about 200 years, and yet people have been smiling and enjoying their lives and loving their families for thousands of years.

An exclusive right to happiness is such an arrogant claim. And when anyone refutes it, and claims that they ARE happy outside the church, Mormons tend to brush if off, because it's supposedly not REAL happiness. How the heck would they know how someone else feels? Why do they think they get to define other people's experiences?

When they make those claims, it kind of makes me wonder if these people are actually unhappy themselves. Because apparently their experience is so limited that they think the church is their only chance at happiness.

Jesus was a Mormon and He was happy, up until the end, then maybe not so much, but He's happy now in Mormon heaven!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=07J4hbNDiAU

troubledmormon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I then told I read the book of Mormon and
> prayed about it and didn't receive an answer.
> After I said that he basically told me I must be
> sinning or I wasn't really "sincere" and that my
> experience wasn't valid because he supposedly
> received an answer when he did.

Notice how YOUR OWN FATHER attacks your character just because
you don't believe some absurd, insane story. I would point out
to him that he is using the Church AGAINST his own family.

This is a prime example of ABUSE by a parent to a child brought
on by Mormonism.


“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more
to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a
sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous
quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.”
--George Bernard Shaw, "Androcles and the Lion."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2014 06:49PM by baura.

MANY times, and not gotten an answer. I was one of them, and I never met any other Mormon that admitted that they didn't get an answer. It made me doubt myself, my worthiness (even though I was a very strict Mormon) and my spirituality. But it ended up being for the best, because it led me to ask questions. I found out that the book is bogus.

After I leaving the church, I found out that I wasn't the only one who didn't get answers.

The question I have, is how people actually get an "answer", telling them that this ridiculous, anachronistic fantasy book is actually true? Did they somehow manufacture the feeling, or are they just playing along to fit in? Is it a case of the Emperor's new clothes?

Happiness exists everywhere, all the time, [in some cases despite TSCC], when it is tapped into. Many Mormons believe this is not possible but if they haven't tried it out themselves, how do they know?

Happiness comes naturally from doing good to others and pursuing your dreams and sometimes just in passing or when you're having a good day or you get a promotion or you get married or have children (or pay your tithing or go to the temple) or something. Nobody owns it and it is a personal thing. You can't put your finger on it. It wiggles and is slippery.

He may simply be trying to tell himself- as many do- that he is happy and therefore you aren't. Mormons are so screwed up sometimes it's no wonder they can't have normal relationships and associations.

"Don't Worry, Be Happy" _Bobby M.

M@t