Loving kindness and all beings and sentient life and all the good feelings towards life. I think that my relationship towards all other Mormons in my life including my own former Mormonism is important and in fact more important than a feeling of contentment with the situations I experience and experienced in my life of Mormonism and with Mormons.

Feeling is understanding. Knowing is thinking you understand. This is the difference in Mormons. They understand life as a Mormon yet they know Mormonism is true. And sometimes their feelings of benevolence are really masked hostility. The theme of passive aggression comes up all the time here.

Stripping away the hostility somewhat took some of my benevolence towards people. How many times did I do my home teaching with the idea that I was doing something good but with hostility towards people in my heart? How much service did I do with that undercurrent?

Without Mormonism I've seen this demon with a halo and angel's wings inside myself. Was this a demon for you?

I offer them dice.

Dog plays dice?

Dog plays lice.

save for a pair of elders who intruded my personal business by grabbing shopping bags and began making insidious comments about coffee that I had purchased for my non-member father-in-law.

"Oooh. Somebody is not abiding the word of wisdom."

I neither asked for their help nor did I want them to touch my grocery bags. (Which is why I don't want anyone (including family) around when I arrive to my castle after shopping.

It's nobody's business, but mine as to what I buy.

What are you planning on eating today?

I'm still trying to figure out if Nature is benevolent or hostile towards life.

And no, EOD, it is not dice you offer them but vice. Everyone knows that.

You can reach old dogs with lude tricks.

You can leach an old dog with new ticks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2020 01:59AM by Lot's Wife.

No two Mormons are alike. Although, the higher up the chain you go, the more they are alike--anything unique, interesting, or genuine pretty much stripped away.

Mormons or not, I take everybody on a one by one basis. Turn em over and shake em and see what falls out.

I like that. The further up you go the older, more male, and homogenous. Their top dog is almost 100 and making Mormonism itself more and more corporate and controlled.

It's a case-by-case thing for me, depending on how individuals act. I like some but not others. But I'm neutral about most of them because I never cross paths with them — virtually or in reality.

They come in all varieties but there is a specific point for all believing Mormons. I believe it is the doubt your doubts Mormons and the doubt your leaders Mormons. The ones willing to question their leaders and their rules and let their humanity shine through their Mormonism are the ones I am most able to coexist with.

I sure am

My family and branch friends? I treat them the same as before. They're just people. They don't know any better.

Any church authority, such as Stake Pres. Branch Pres. Or higher? I treat with wary disdain and veiled distance. I operate under the assumption that any one of them might have had his second anointing. In which case, even if he knew the truth of this occult corporate machine, he would lie to protect it. Best case scenario? He doesn't and he didn't and he's operating out of oblivious devotion. I don't want to be harassed in the name of loving me because he assumes I don't know any better. So, for either scenario, I would treat them like a wild tiger. Eye contact but not too much as to threaten him; smiles without warmth; short, respectful yes and no answers; leave as quickly as possible; break a bottle on the bar and brandish it, if I am cornered.

Idiots on the internet? I treat them like punching bags and chew toys. In church, I was always taught, the spirit of contention is of the Devil. That's why you don't Bible bash. So, if any of the still devout are willing to take me on with all of my bitterness and the full brunt of my madness and misdirected traumatized rage, in attempting to argue with me, then so be it.

Love your take. I've had to brandish a broken bottle a time or two in almost 20 years.

I save my hostility for the church itself. Too many nice Mormons are family members, so there's no need to be hostile to them, except for those who are super conservative, and I don't have time for that. The only Mormons I am hostile towards are the leaders.

Hostile

I don't judge em, they all got enough of that already goings on among themselves he he he..

I treat them like anyone else, but I am sometimes puzzled by their behavior towards people who are not Mormon. They are either scared of us or proselytizing to us.

What's the benefit of being hostile?

To me, 'leave well enough alone'.

Besides, last Christmas a couple bought me some cookies from our well-know local goodies bakery. They had never seen me before, nor I, them. They had just inquired around as to who lived alone and never went to church, and I was recommended to them.

I am benevolent towards the member but hostile to the religion itself.

Hate the religion not the religious (unless they are an ass perhaps then it's fair game)