This morning, I texted to a visiting friend that I hope she enjoys church with her family. That set me to thinking. Did I ever enjoy church?

I would say that it was not the case for me, having been raised Catholic. Some members love the mass, but I always found it to be both boring and stifling. It was something to be endured. Even as a child, I would mentally tick off the various segments of the mass, each one bringing me closer to the blessed finish line.

I hated the music. I'm not a fan of organ music -- not my thing. I hated the Catholic custom of sitting, standing, and kneeling, over and over again. I don't know how old people endure it. Even as a kid, my knees would cry out for relief.

So for me, church was an obligation. I don't remember seeing my friends there -- I did see them at the mid-week religious instruction class. I hated dressing up. When I came home from church, I would quickly rip off my clothes in favor of my play wear. Thankfully Catholics don't have much of an opinion about how you spend your Sundays once church is finished.

I did enjoy to some degree the special services -- Palm Sunday, Easter, etc. The Catholics can put on a good show for these services. At an Episcopal church I would occasionally attend as an adult, the Feast of St. Francis was always a special treat. And I also sometimes went to a particular Protestant church with exceptionally good preaching (which in my experience, is a very rare thing.) But all in all, I can live without it.

How did you feel about attending church, both as a child and an adult?

No, I always wanted to be somewhere else.

I had to attend no matter what, even if ill. That was Mom's rule.

I recall one time that I did stay home around the age of 14. I made the error of sitting outside on the family picnic table when she returned from the 3 hour Sunday block. This was during the time that my Dad disagreed with the bishop and stopped attending church. It meant Mom attended alone and had 3 hours to stew in anger about being alone at church.

So she marched straight over to where I was sitting at the table, stumbling every other step in her heels. No inquiry about my health- So if you feel well enough to sit outside then you could have gone to sacrament with me.- She then slapped me and called me a spoil brat. I was grounded to my room for the following week.

Well, that'll make you have warm and tender feelings for the church and for her. Well done momster!

Sorry you had to endure that. Kids shouldn't have monsters for parents. I really feel for you.

Agree.

messygoop Wrote:
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That type of anger screams insecurity of frustration. You know it iis wrong and dare not acknowledge it out loud

No, I always wanted to be somewhere else.
>
> I had to attend no matter what, even if ill. That
> was Mom's rule.
>
> I recall one time that I did stay home around the
> age of 14. I made the error of sitting outside on
> the family picnic table when she returned from the
> 3 hour Sunday block. This was during the time that
> my Dad disagreed with the bishop and stopped
> attending church. It meant Mom attended alone and
> had 3 hours to stew in anger about being alone at
> church.
>
> So she marched straight over to where I was
> sitting at the table, stumbling every other step
> in her heels. No inquiry about my health- So if
> you feel well enough to sit outside then you could
> have gone to sacrament with me.- She then slapped
> me and called me a spoil brat. I was grounded to
> my room for the following week.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2022 12:18PM by thedesertrat1.

This morning I disenjoyed sacrament meeting. Boring as hell. I dozed through most of it

Because that’s what Jesus would do to a child.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me so I can slap the shit out of them. Ephedrines: 4:20”

After my mission, I would get a knot in my stomach around 6:00pm on Saturday. It was three hours of me pretending to be someone else.

I always just endured but did enjoy scouting.

I also grew up Catholic. I hated church and never felt anything reminiscent of the spirit.

During my early years as a member (12 - about 21 years old) I enjoyed seeing my friends, and there was definitely a sense of security that came from doing something routinely with the same people every week - all of us thinking we were doing what was right and good.

As far as listening to the speakers/lessons, taking the sacrament and sitting through hours-long meetings, I didn't really enjoy it. I was in a really great ward though, and coming from an unstable home I felt a great deal of comfort being around mostly nice and good people every week, who seemed to care about me.

After my mission everything changed. Women seemed to mistrust me because they assumed I'd be after their husbands because I was single. The Mormon church doesn't know what to do with single adults. If you're a female and not married and having babies you are undesirable. They don't want anything to do with you unless you write a nice tithing check or have a talent they can use.

Given the strictures of mormonism, I'm glad I chose to 'push-the-envelope' as a mormon, versus pushing the envelope as a full-on 'Natural Man.'

I met and mingled with quite a number of genuinely nice people as a mormon, but I also met a lot of really nice people as an exmo, present company included.

Even as a PIMO, I enjoyed my mission and the time I spent at the Y.  And I can't say anything that would imply that I wish I hadn't married so quickly because that might be taken as being okay with my BIC kids not existing, and that's incorrect.

But given that I became a PIMO in June of 1965, we're not really talking about the same church, are we?

elderolddog Wrote:
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> But given that I became a PIMO in June of 1965,
> we're not really talking about the same church,
> are we?

Ain't that the truth.

There was a handy aphorism used by mormons back when I was still a Mormon, versus the mormon I am now (if you assume the church was true because aphorisms are based on truths), "Mormons in are the world but not of the world."

I get the impression that current mormon leadership and hardcore members simply want to believe, "Mormons ARE the world!"


When you follow along with r/exmormon (on Reddit), you continually see mentions made by teens, young adults, young adult couples and their kids, and 40-year-olds to ∞-year-olds, announcing that they've left the church.

I can't imagine, at least regarding families, that the missionaries in the USA are replacing them.  I think I'm safe saying 300 families leave the church annually and that they are not being replaced in terms of volume...quality, too.

And the teens who talk about, "As soon as I'm 18, I'm outta here!" are legion.

Sure, there's going to be a mormon church with a (barely) visible presence, other than the moridor, but I feel the spirit when I say that it's shrinking.

Just look at all the baby boomers and FF 20 years.

I loved the church and loved going. I joined at age 12, although had read about since I was 9. I thought it was a magical wonderland. I really did. I was an only child and lonely in many ways. They love-bombed me and I felt part of something. I believed everything they said. Put my whole heart into it. I loved the youth program, summer camps, seminary. Went on a mission. Married in the temple. Carried out all my callings the best I could.

They got me hook, line and sinker.

Only took me 30 years to figure it out.

. . . because - just reflect now on your own experience, observations, impressions.
Does the typical Mormon really know what is truly felt about anything?
Right smile, right attire, right grooming, right politeness, right Stepford Mormon - but seems there's just nothing inside there.
Genuinely good, decent, yet somehow Romney-esque.
It's like being unaware of what truly is felt; the actual experience.

Looking back seems at the time didn't know whether it was enjoyable or not. It was supposed to be enjoyable. No idea otherwise. But do have kind of a high pain-threshold (early love who happened to be a psychologist remarked once that seemed kinda disconnected from any internal experience -- at the time this puzzled, shrugged it off as her having read too many books)

Think what may happen is when we get handed a set of beliefs:
To preserve that belief intact one has to become willfully blind to all the contradictory counter-evidence "out there;" but that willful blindness extends unavoidably also to the internal experience. Blindness is blindness. One becomes blind/numb to life actually experienced. This is the recipe for forming a "fake self;" one correlating to the Stepford ideal, yet completely divorced from the actual lived experience of the real human being. One becomes a bit of a robot. Unable to observe what is going on within.

This is how one ends up being hypocritical, yet truly unaware of the hypocrisy.

I never enjoyed church, it was all about image, and keep mom happy. Some of the youth events were great, and I really liked those. But the meetings were boring. Our Chapel had cry rooms above the overflow. You could sneek up there and your parents and bishop could not see you in the corner of one of the rooms. As a priest it was so incredibly boring. We did not return to sit with our families so we would sneek and eat the leftover sacrament bread on Fast Sundays because we were so hungry and bored.

Then those 2 to 3 hour Sacrament meetings, if there was ever a definition of Hell, that would be it. The minute the day was over, we took off the Sunday clothes and then lounged around the house, mom refused to let us go outside and do anything.

Then when I went on my mission thinking something would change. My gosh, it was boring as well. One companion and I would throw frisbees or play catch just to break the intense boredom. Daily door to door, attending Zone conferences, and trying to meet those unrealistic numbers.

My adult years were rinse and repeat. Until I slammed on the breaks and put an end to the rinse cycle.

I grew up Presbyterian. My mom was a church organist, and she didn't always play at the church I was forced to attend with my father, who sang in the choir. My three older sisters were out of the house, so I spent my youth sitting next to a lady whose husband was also in the choir. I loved the lady I sat next to every week, but I hated going to church then... found it very boring and wouldn't even sing the hymns. I also got bullied a lot by my peers.

Years later, I worked as the cook at a Presbyterian church camp. It was, and still is, one of the best jobs I ever had, not because of religion, but because it was just a lot of fun. I made some great friends who are still friends today. For two summers, I got to live in a very beautiful part of Virginia, albeit sleeping in a platform tent. Being the cook was fun for me. My former boss, who was then (but is no longer) a Presbyterian pastor, even officiated at my wedding.

It was at that camp that I actually learned about the religion I was raised in. Seriously. I came to appreciate it more, and for awhile, I even went to church occasionally. But then I met and married my exmo husband, and he doesn't like church, so I don't go anymore. For me, church is more of a social thing, anyway.

I will say that I am very grateful that I was raised in a mostly sane denomination where education is embraced, and no one asks weird questions about anyone's sexual habits. I now realize there were a lot of really good people in the church I grew up attending, and I learned a lot about the music because my parents were so into it.

Also, as an adult, I found the sermons a lot more interesting. As a kid, though, I definitely endured church!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2022 01:39AM by knotheadusc.

I hated the church part of it. I enjoyed the activity part of it and chasing the girls in it. I was a Jack Mormon so I had fun. I didn't have the shock a TBM would have when they discover they have been intentionally lied to.

Yeah, I loved it sometimes. The music for sure.

But I hated the fake discussions in Sunday School etc. Everything was "fact checked" by the First Presidency. If you said anything out of line, you would be heading out the door.

"Even as a kid, my knees would cry out for relief."

That's the point. Mortification of the flesh. To remind you that life is suffering. Buddhists think the same. You have to rise in your levels of consciousness to attain nirvana.

Nowadays people have other ways of letting everyone know they're a kind of "sinner", and letting other people know they're "virtuous". They apologize for what they look like and who they are, for things they can't help. They have to make peace offerings to prove they're not evil.

I was an am fascinated by it. Going was participation in group think and catharsis.

The best way I can explain it is with an analogy to the short story The Lottery. It was scary, boring, parochial, bonding, fun, stupid, funny, calming, frustrating, stressful, anything to be invited, included, made welcome until I won when I lost what little testimony I had and got bashed in the head.

I enjoyed the temple. Church was something to endure so I could keep a temple recommend. I often wished I could just show up to take the sacrament and leave.

I usually found some reason not to be in Sunday school, and I would need to go to the bathroom a lot once we got to EQ.

I kinda didn't mind it much, until I had meetings before AND after church that basically put me at 7:00am - 2:30pm every Sunday and three hours every Wed night and slowly realizing what a waste it was. Took a few years but eventually got out.

I endured it...until I got my driver's license, then I skipped out.

I enjoyed Church.

I enjoyed Church because I was a convert.

I enjoyed Church because I was learning. I hadn't heard everything infinite times before.

I enjoyed Church because ward services and lessons heavily integrate participation. Members get to do stuff. I read so much about how many people in this forum treated Church as an imposition? I would find a traditional church where the congregation is no more involved than an audience at the theatre watching the priest/pastor/minister do everything. Why would they need me here?

I enjoyed Church because I was a high achiever and the Church is oriented to high achievers. Read about Tiger Moms. They would have loved to adopt me. It is even more extreme in the mission field where tithing causes the Church to be almost devoid of a middle class.

I enjoyed Church because I never adopted the Church as my identity. Unless you're prepared to live independently from the Church, they exploit that dependency.

I learned from the Grandmother that as a volunteer I would serve on my terms only. Grandma did a significant amount of volunteer work, much more than a Relief Society President. She was the Citizen of the Year for the Province of British Columbia.

Grandma always said let everybody know that you could leave at any time.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2022 12:22PM by idleswell.

I only enjoyed Sunday School when I was a little girl and my Dad took me to the Anglican Church. I didn't enjoy the main service. I always started crying and my Dad would take me home. But I did enjoy Sunday School. Then he stopped trying to take me.

I didn't go to church again until I was a teenager. I never enjoyed it after that. I only went because I was supposed to. I felt good that I'd gone there because I did what I was supposed to do.

But no, I thought church was very boring and I spent my time watching the clock.

for men, methinks a lot of this is how far up the Mormon Ladder they've climbed or see for their future;

also, a family can put pressure (especially on men/husbands/brothers/sons to conform.

if a man has a TBM wife, climbing the ladder would easily be thought to bring happiness (which may lead to more better sex?)

I never really enjoyed church. I went through the motions and tried to be as good as I could. Only reason was my dad passed when I was young and they hung the reward of seeing him in heaven in front of me like a carrot in front of a mule. Not that it's their fault, most of the leaders were trying to do the right thing.

Never really enjoyed the activities. I'm not too social even at 29, so dances at 14and the weird group dates at 16 were a nightmare. I enjoyed camping though and stuck with the scouts. But by the time I was 22 I was bored enough with it and realized I never believed and was just going through the motions.