Later it hit me that the Source of virtually EVERYTHING not harmful and destructive about the Mormon Church comes from where?
. . . drum roll . . .
The Members Themselves!
Everything good and decent in Mormon culture is a direct result of the common decency and natural compassion of the human beings with the unfortunate plight of being Mormons.
Not even The Brethren are powerful enough to stamp out all humanity and civility from within the ranks of their Mind Control Cult.
Another way to express this . . .
It's a Mind Control Cult, not a Heart Control Cult.
More and more members are finding the incessant Heart Abuse dished out by The Brethren to be intolerable. The Salt Lake Suits are hell bent on anesthetizing all decency and compassion from the souls of their membership. They hate WWJD. Can't stand that. Gotta kill that.
My heart goes out to the millions of decent, loving, TBM hearts out there, under constant assault and attack by the Spiritual Dwarfs who own and control this Blight on the Planet.
I gotta admit that DW has an awesome bishop. Standing 7 feet tall, he may also be the tallest. But in the end, as an engineer, he's no more qualified to give counsel to people than any of us.
"Good" people would be "good" with or without religion (or mormonism).
But "bad" people all too often find support for their viewpoints in religions, and are sometimes even celebrated for their fundamentalist/"pious" stance.
I might add that, all too often, "good" people unintentionally cross the line to "bad" as soon as they try to police others into adhering to their version of "good." This is not limited to religion, but religion really encourages it.
When you are in LDS, INC. it is the social/family culture, until you leave. Once a ex-mo, it is the TBM social/family culture that is the source of everything harmful and negative.
That generosity thing that TBM's talk about does not exist. If you are not walking their line you get zip, and there are not conditions attached to true generosity. It's more like a bribe than generosity.
I should clarify that many/most otherwise decent TBM hearts are unfortunately corrupted by the Mind Control Masters.
The depth and degree of Heart Corruption varies by individual. I have been amazed on rare occasions to read exmo tales of a TBM friend who did not turn off their friendship when their newly exmo friend left the Chuch. This anomaly is so rare that it gets my attention when I hear about it.
Maybe I should recraft my earlier statement like this:
The sole source of the positive and worthwhile aspects of Mormonism is what remains intact within the hearts of the members after The Brethren have stamped out all the WWJD they can.
(For newbies, WWJD is What Would Jesus Do?)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2016 01:25PM by beyondashadow.
When I first told my wife why I would never join TSCC and that I thought The Q was purposely withholding the truth from its members, she countered with how could I say such things about our friends in the ward. She naturally assigned the same inclinations and deeds of the rank-and-file upon the GA and The Q.
I told her exactly what you have written here: The rank-and-file hold sole claim to what is best in the church, and that it is burned out of those who have climbed their way to the ranks of the GA and eventually The Q.
In effect, the members and the leadership (GA and above) represent two entirely different organizations that exist for entirely different reasons. The pity is that the latter has convinced the former that they are one in the same.
It wasn't the members for me. It was the doctrine and the crushing requirements; visiting teacher, other church callings, temple attendance, 3 hours of church, volunteer to clean the church (never did but had the guilt), weekly activities, wearing garments, paying tithing....
I also did not have an active TBM priesthood holder in the household. If you or both of you don't have a temple recommend, both don't go to the celestial kingdom. No matter how much you do.
I had so much anxiety, guilt, and depression each week, I often didn't think about the members.