Posted by:
adamisfree2006
(
)
Date: August 06, 2019 02:29PM
This was one of my earlier posts on RFM when I was on_my_way_out_2. Rereading some of my posts, I realize I was quite angry with Ld$ inc.
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Mormonism - "Killer Of Community Service"
Monday, Jun 26, 2006, at 07:02 AM
Original Author(s): On_my_way_out_2
Topic: SERVICE AND CHARITY -Link To MC Article- ↑
Thinking of my former time in Mormonism (40 years), I realized that me, my wife and our kids did NOTHING for our communities in the form of service. In fact, this selfishness extended to charitable giving as well. I am not promoting or endorsing any charitable organization here, I am just relating my experiences with this topic. I also realize that not everyone had the same attitude as we did as mormons.
Community Service:
As a busy mormon, I attended Sunday services, additional church meetings, YM/YW activities (weeknights and often weekends), did HT, attended the temple regularly (whatever that meant?), prepared lessons etc... When all of that was done, coupled with a demanding professional life, I found little time and/or energy left to help with community service opportunities. I would see needs to volunteer with various school, community and kids sporting events but I would "quietly" avoid volunteering. Why? Because I felt I was doing my part with all of my "church service".
This cog-dis has been apparent more since we left the morg and have had conversations about this topic with my FIL. FIL and MIL are very active TBM temple workers. As we talk to them about community service, my FIL feels that he is providing a "spiritual service" to his community by doing temple work (huh?). Of course I disagree because I think he's simply wasting away his prime retirement energy on useless work but I regress!
Since we have left the church we have attempted to correct the error of our ways. We have encouraged our kids and actively sought ways to serve our fellow community friends. Being in the morg eliminated the need for us as parents to find "community service" projects for either ourselves or our kids. Now we have to find them ourselves and it takes a hell of a lot of work. However, it does get easier as we get more experience finding those opportunities.
This also segways into the next area.
Charitable Giving:
Of course any faithful, practicing TBM is a "full" tithe payer. What this means to a community is that "mormons" don't contribute to anything else. In my case we felt that after a 10% tithe, an additional ~1% fast offering, church magazine subscriptions, various donations of items for the "church humanitarian aid projects" or should we say the "church members humanitarian aid projects", potlucks and youth activities etc. we didn't have anything left in our budget. The result is we would snub any other "charitable" giving as much as possible. Often we would get "forced" to donate something but it was done begrudgingly. I know it was a bad thing and we are attempting to right our wrongs with both our kids and our community. Again our logic was based on the false premise that we were already doing our part. Looking back I regret donating so much to one organization. We are now teaching our kids that it is okay to drop a $1 into the red salvation army container at Christmas time or to send $10-$20 into the schoolfor some charity or even to buy GS cookies sometimes. It is really not big deal, but we made it a big deal as morgbots.
Of course I acknowledge that there are exceptions to the rule. However, my personal experience was one of selfishness towards my community in the form of my time and money. No wonder mormons are looked at as "peculiar", we were!