Posted by:
michaelanderson
(
)
Date: February 11, 2015 08:05PM
Was dating an LDS Girl in College many years ago and I was in love.
She was beautiful, we had sex without intercourse (institute sex) at least 50 times.
She became serious and sent me off to confess to the Bishop.
During the first meeting with the Bishop, he asked me every question he could think of, and he wasn't very nice about it.
He then convened a meeting with his counselors.
When it was over, I felt sick. Not sick from guilt...
but because
the counselors were absolute assholes. Question after question about my character, a re-questioning about every detail of my relationship with my girlfriend and other girls in the past.
At one point a counselor demanded I look him the eye - and told me that he saw satan in my eyes and in my countenance.
It was a dark, awful 1 1/2 hour of my life that I still think about once in a while (today) 25+ years later.
I was convinced that I was not much higher on the social ladder than a rapist.
There was no love. I didn't really understand what they were doing.
I don't know what they punished me with in the end - disfellowshipment?
But I wasn't allowed to take the sacrament for a while and had to read the miracle of forgiveness and report to the bishop every few weeks.
They assigned me to a new home teaching companion and specifically told me I wasn't to teach the people we visited but just to follow the boy pretending to be perfect around while he home taught.
The boy pretending to be perfect would report back to the bishop on my attitude etc. and about whatever he saw me doing on campus.
The entire episode caused me to stop for once and really think about the church.
Before that, whenever I felt that something wasn't right about the church (temple and a thousand times on my mission) I would just set my concerns aside.
My thinking didn't go too deep. I didn't allow it to.
But the love court hit me like a "two by four".
I thought for a time that "two-by-four" was the Holy Ghost telling me run from it all.
It really screwed me up.
About 4 months after the reporting to the Bishop started, I was sitting in the waiting room waiting for an appointment. He came out to get me...I looked at him, the "Ghost" smacked me in the head again and I gathered the courage to just smile, turn around and walk away.
He followed me to my car - I ignored him.
The home teaching companion called me a dozen times - I ignored him as well.
The Girlfriend asked me when we could go to the Temple - I told her we couldn't and... she ignored me.
I glad she did now and I'm convinced that something gave me courage at 22 - of course it wasn't the "Holy Ghost"
It was just the common sense I was born with digging it's way out from the muck of an LDS upbringing.