For me, when I was Mormon, the hardest thing for me to defend was the blatant racism, which is still very much alive and well, written in black and white in MORmON "Word of (racist) God".
My oldest child asked me at an early age if I believed the whole "Curse of Cain" thing. I told him I didn't and never did. He said, "Yeah, but it's written in the scriptures. You do believe in the scriptures, right?" I had to admit he was right. It's right there. Black skin = Cursed, loathesome, evil, dirty, undesireable, etc. White Skin = Pure, virginal, wholesome, righteous, most delightsome
No getting around it. Every time I opened my scriptures, they fell open to a racist scripture. I couldn't deny it any longer. The last straw for me was having my Sunday School instructor wonder aloud why the whole world didn't just accept the Book of Mormon as the Word of God?
I really wanted to raise my hand and say,"Uh, because it's racist!" But I didn't. The guy racist asshole sitting in front of me, who was a High Councilman, raised his hand and said, "I wonder when the promise of the Book of Mormon will be fulfilled and the Lamanites will be turned white and delightsome." I didn't have the heart to speak up and inform him that the leaders of the church decided back in the 80's that was too racist so they changed it to "Pure" instead of "White". I was just so shocked I looked around the room to see if anybody else was shocked and nobody looked back at me. How the hell did I end up in a room where nobody else noticed the blatant racism that was being spewed right in front of us in the 21st Century. I staggered out of there to go collect my youngest little 2yo daughter from Primary and found her singing "Book of MOromon Stories" and every time she put her two fingers up over the back of her head to pantomime "Lamanite" I wanted to yank her out of there and never go back. And I did. Don't tell me MORmONism isn't racist. It's the most racist religion on the planet. No other religion has scriptures that are as racist as Mormon scriptures.
I never really felt like I had to defend it though, because my beliefs were personal to me then like they are now.
One time I left a message on a Save Mormons from Mormonism campaign in my college town to defend what I believed was the fruit of the tree Eve had eaten.
To me it has always been a no brainer. It wasn't a real apple. It was sexual relations. Once she and Adam figured out how their anatomy worked, not before, is when they became ashamed of their nakedness and covered themselves up with fig leaves.
If not for that serpent taunting Eve in the garden of Eden, she'd have been none the wiser.
The Save Mormons place took the bible literally, so therefore Eve ate an apple.
Metaphorically, the apple means sex. Literal Christians don't look for metaphors lol. Some Mormons don't either.
It's much more common in Judaism to use metaphors for teaching, which ultimately the story of Adam and Eve itself was a metaphorical teaching like many other biblical stories were/are, written by Jews.
Joseph Smith himself. The first vision. I would spend a lot of time studying Joseph Smith's story, and praying about it so I can believe what I was actually defending. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, "It sounds crazy."
And a big one - why there were not any minorities in the Q15. I did not know how to defend or dance around that one. I could not pull a "Because God.." type of explanation.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2017 04:37PM by severedpuppetstrings.
I think there were two defining moments that altered my thinking, though I really didn't recognize them at the time.
The first happened when I was 15. I was spending the summer with my much older sister and her family in OK. There, I met a nurse who lived near us. She was the first African-American person I had ever met or spoken to. She was so nice and I enjoyed spending time with her and her young son. I asked my sister "how come we don't let black people in our church?" She ducked the question. It changed my perception of that doctrine immediately.
The second thing happened when I was a young married in the early 70's with a toddler and a baby on the way. We were living in St. Louis while DH was attending medical school. The E.R.A. was in full swing of states ratifying. We spent more than one relief society period making anti-E.R.A. signs and then we were going to be bussed over to the IL statehouse to march AGAINST this amendment. I kept saying to myself, "what is wrong with women having equal rights?" Of course, I could never voice this to those women or even to my own husband. But, when it came right down to it, I got out of going on that trip. I just could not do it. After that, I could not defend the idea of women being second class. Sadly, nearly 50 years later,that hasn't changed all that much.
Racism was the worst, closely followed by polygamy.
I served a mission in Asia in the late 70s. When I returned, I often said that I was glad that I was called to a place where I never had to explain the church's position on blacks, and I was only asked about polygamy once.
I was always uncomfortable trying to explain dead dunking. Nevermos think it's laughable at the least and an afront to good taste and a sacrilege at worse.
For me, it was the racism and spiritual polygamy as men can be "sealed" to at least a second wife after a secular(civil) divorce. Obviously, the racism still exists, but it's not quite as open as it was before 1978.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2017 07:22PM by adoylelb.
Probably the racism. I just figured it was in the past, but my DW believed in the curse of Cain. I told her it must be true because Michael Jackson's skin was getting lighter all the time. My goodness, if looks could kill.