In the 1970s before the McTemple building boom, those of us in the “mission field” lived far away from a temple. A normal family would be lucky to go once a year. Nobody cared if you had a temple recommend if you wanted to baptize your child or bless your baby. If you were a priesthood holder who attended Sunday meetings most of the time you were good to go. So you blessed your own kid (probably in a colored shirt) and you were accepted as a good member in the ward.

Now woe unto you if you don’t have a temple recommend. Your second class citizenship excludes you if you are too poor to pay a full tithe. You are a failure as a father unworthy to be the head of your Mormon family. At which point you might just begin to question if there is something wrong with the Mormon Church instead of you. And now you are only a few taps away on a keyboard to get all the evidence you need to know they are the problem.

I think the Mormons are setting themselves up for failure if the emphasis becomes the temple. There is no mercy there.

The emphasis has been the temple for decades now. That ship has sailed. The goal has been to lock in participation and contributions. It has been a net success so far, though I think you are right that it has cost them some members.

Even if they are a net benefit to the organization now, that is no guarantee that will remain the case as the culture changes around LDS Inc. I'd like to think they are already past their peak, but that is not obvious yet, at least not to me. Perhaps in 20 years it will be obvious.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> The emphasis has been the temple for decades now.
> That ship has sailed. The goal has been to lock in
> participation and contributions. It has been a net
> success so far, though I think you are right that
> it has cost them some members.
>
> Even if they are a net benefit to the organization
> now, that is no guarantee that will remain the
> case as the culture changes around LDS Inc. I'd
> like to think they are already past their peak,
> but that is not obvious yet, at least not to me.
> Perhaps in 20 years it will be obvious.


In a few years the church will have over 200 temples. The north island in New Zealand will even have two temples. Crazy. It will become obvious when people in the church get tired of temples and stop going to them because there are so many they become noting special.

I would not be surprised if in the future the normal Ward activities and meetings are de-emphasised and the only requirement to get a Temple recommend, will be to be a good Ward member and PAY your tithe.

This would solve a lot of problems for them.


Cheers

Outin76

+1
The temple becomes an amusement park house of horrors, where the admission is 10% of your income.

I think that's where they want to take it. The church wants to get away from having meeting houses. It's cheaper to build a temple and have that the focus and pressure people to attend and have church more home centered. They very well could cut church down to just sacrament meeting. They have made it easier for the youth to attend the temple by giving youth recommends.

Temple recommends generate tithing. Temples generate a return on investment. Meeting houses don't and the church has plenty of under used meeting houses they want to get rid of.

How much does a full tithe cost if you are poor ?
What is your "increase" ?

I n current mormonism. Increase is every dime you earn, every dime in aid, every dime from a gift. Pay ten percent even if it means you can't pay rent, food or medicine. Even if ut means children are cold, hungry or sick. Pay tithing.

They have to focus on the temple, because you have to pay to keep your temple recommend. It’s all about the money.

^^^^^^
This

The Temple is just a way to talk about tithing without sounding greedy.

anonculus Wrote:
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> ^^^^^^
> This
>
> The Temple is just a way to talk about tithing
> without sounding greedy.


Yes!
One thing about Mormons—-they sure have a good Marketing Dept !

I can't get a temple recomend because I will not pay extortion which is exactly what they are doing.

If you don't give me 10% of your income you can't go to the temple

If you don't go to the temple I will take your family away from you in the hereafter.

Therefore if you don't give me 10% of your money I will hurt you.

This, my friends, is extortion in it's purest form!

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
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> If you don't give me 10% of your income you can't
> go to the temple


And then they throw in fear for good measure. "If you don't pay tithing, then you are robbing God. Do you really want to rob God?"

Greyfort Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> thedesertrat1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > If you don't give me 10% of your income you
> can't
> > go to the temple
>
>
> And then they throw in fear for good measure. "If
> you don't pay tithing, then you are robbing God.
> Do you really want to rob God?"

I was more pointing out their "extortion"

You nailed it desertrat. I think the prime example of such extortion is having to get your tithing up to date long enough to qualify to see your own son/daughter get married. That’s why you can’t go civil wedding first without stigma attached( Oh, I wonder what sin they committed, as if we don’t already know). If they allowed civil first and temple immediately afterward then mom and dad couldn’t be extorted into paying up. They’d just go to the big shindig civil wedding and let the kids do their spiritual duties in private without them. There would be no leverage to get them to pay. Using a families’ love for one another as a tactic to extort money is despicable. It literally happens all the time.

Ananias and Sapphira robbed God and lied about it, so God killed them. You wouldn’t want that to happen to you.

Mormon God wears a pinky ring.

Spot on!

is "surplus property" and 10% of annual interest. Even if you take ChurchCo scriptures seriously, there is no basis there for requiring 10% of gross income.

Wage income is neither surplus nor interest. It is exchanging your labor for an equivalent value in cash. There is no net "increase." For every dollar of wage income EARNED, you have lost a dollar's worth of time and opportunity (i.e. opportunity to do other things with your time, intelligence, physical body, etc.).

Mormons who pay 10% of gross wage income as tithing are forkin' idiots. Pardon my French.

The problems start as soon as they ask the a--hole leaders to interpret the meaning of "tithing" for them instead of using their own brains to figure it out. Of course if you ask the leaders how much money they want you to give to them, they'll always figure out how to get as much out of you as possible. They'll literally take the gold fillings out of your mouth if you're stupid enough to let them.

Ya I agree, temples suck! Mormondom cares more about dead people than living ones,

And then there is that super heavenly mall right across the street from temple square, they spent more on the mall downtown than on humanitarian aid for the last 30 years combined (by their own admission).

But when the new administration said the focuss for the future was going to be on temples (because it's so dang important! dangit!), it made me really sad. It's not what the world needs to hear, it's like if we got a new Pope and he said the focus for the church is going to be the further contemplation and worship of the Emaculate Virgin Mary. Because they havent' been doing it enough!

absolutely irrelevant to us non virgin believers!

Follow the money. Who is making big bucks out of all this building? Even if current temples are standing empty, they build more.

My retired mother pays her tithe from her social security and school district pension. It really hurts me to see how much the TSCC takes from her.
What a bunch of pompous pricks, happliy taking money from social security. There really needs to be a law.

I googled that and got this page
https://askgramps.org/pay-tithing-social-security/
TBMs think that social security should be tithed. I wish my the rest of my family can break free.

TBM's are forced to pay tithing on inheritance, even though the parents (or whoever they are inheriting from) already paid tithing on all that money. We tried to reason with my oldest brother, who badly needed his inheritance money, and he ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars to that cult. It did win him lots of fake-friends and prestige in his new ward, though.

When my brother died, he left a large chunk of his remaining inheritance to BYU.

He died feeling guilty and inferior, that he and his wife had not gone on a senior mission. His wife died, before they had that "opportunity."

The Mormon cult hangs on like a bulldog, and doesn't let go, until death. Oh, wait, even after death....

Golden Tablets that were buried in the earth for storage for 100s of years .......now stored in heaven !!!!

The Book of MORmON !!

A prophet who has to marry/ have sex with every female around by Jesus's dictate


MORmON leaders tell of inhabitants of the moon ......and the sun!!!!

on and on !!!!


MORmONISM by any other name is still MENTAL ILLNESS



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i4HC3rZiDo

I remember living in the mission field in the 70's. I was a young, single convert. Chapel Mormonism was the big thing and the temple wasn't even talked about that much. You were supposed to get married in the temple or get sealed there later--didn't matter much which, as long as you got sealed eventually. People did their genealogy and then mailed in the names and dates of their people, so those who lived near the temple could stand proxy for their ordinances. Other than these two things, we focused on doing callings well and trying to give good talks.

Years later, I was astonished at how much the temple and keeping that recommend up was taking precedence over everything else. No recommend? You were automatically an unworthy, no matter how well you kept the rules and did your calling. You had to keep going back again and again, because if you didn't remember the handshakes and passwords, the angels would not let you pass by them to Heaven.

I felt like it wasn't the same church anymore.

you realize that the hype is entirely overdone, and the temple experience is boring, dreary, and even a bit creepy.

There is no great spiritual awakening or enrichment, or anything else that would make you want to go back.

Once you've seen it, you can't "un-see" it. That knowledge is stuck in your memory. Of course, unless you are very brave, you can't just come out and say, "Nah, don't bother. The temple thing is a big waste of time." You keep your mouth shut.

I cannot believe that so many people are really, truly THAT enraptured with the temple experience. It just isn't worth the trouble.

I myself think that there exists a certain percentage of Mormons who enjoy being in the club of the elite temple-card holders with the 10% given gladly for the benefits (friendships and community which form bonds for employment benefits, prestige and standing in community, etc.). It is their Country Club.

Now, how often these members attend the temple is entirely another matter. Their admittance card is in their pockets when it is needed for temple marriages, sealings, etc. I don't think for a minute these are the members who attend monthly, or heaven forbid, weekly. They attend when it is necessary for appearance and to foster their standing in the community.

I certainly remember there being a certain boasting that so and so was present for my son or daughter's wedding or that "can you believe that Elder So-and-so performed the wedding ceremony and it was unbelievably spiritual and so special".

Ugh.....these memories are giving me a migraine, and my throat and bowels are aching.

They have to BEAT the temple out of you (by beating it INTO you).
That happened to me in primary. They "tested" me and I knew it was wrong.

M@t

Everything hits diminishing returns. That includes temples. When the temple is this grande building that you have to travel a long distance to go to, then it's something rare and special.

When the temple is smaller and not so grand and there is one close by it's no longer special. It even can become an annoyance when you are constantly nagged to attend sessions, perform or participate in ordinances, clean it, and constantly submit names to have the temple work done for.

In my younger years I was a waiter at a five star restaurant. I was around expensive food all the time and back behind the scenes in the kitchen we could eat some of it. You soon get tired of eating that expensive food that most people rarely get to eat. It wasn't uncommon to send someone out for burgers or order pizza because the cooking and waiting staff was sick of eating fine lobsters, crab, fish, and the best cuts of meat.

The temple is the same way. It's great to go out for a fine meal in the best restaurants now and then. Eating that way for every meal get's old. It loses it's appeal. You hit diminishing returns.

The church is going to oversaturate it's membership with temples and after a while the membership aren't going to see the temple as anything special or all that spiritual. It probably will cause people to lose interest and go looking for a hamburger or a pizza in a place where they don't have to dress up and follow so many rules.

I think it has another function besides being a way to get money.

The believers who are to be labeled as the "insiders" need to have a higher ritual exclusive for the "Gold Star" loyalty members. This is the next layer up to reward the customer. It's a prestige and fulfillment thing among the group.


Silver Star members get the routine services: answers, rules to follow, social support.


Gold Star members get special access to the VIP room (mysteries) and extra rituals with special outfits.


It keeps them interested because a lot people like to get to the next level, be it a video game or religion.

dagny Wrote:
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> It keeps them interested because a lot people like to get to the next level, be it a video game or religion.


They take it about as seriously [as a video game]
Though is was created as imaginarily and made up.

A family I know try to attend the temple on their anniversary each year. What a waste of time. Boring and nothing surprising.

Can you say "Indulgences" brothers and sisters?

Does the Catholic Church still sell indulgences?
You cannot buy one — the Catholic church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day. It has no currency in the bad place.Feb 9, 2009


Mormon indulgences (i.e. tithing) is classified as a charitable contribution even though it is extortion for a temple recommend. Didn't McConkie call the Catholic Church the anti-Christ?