In this whole thing I think there are two words that don't apply.

Pious and Calculating.

Ignorant and Frauds seem to apply though.

I'm not sure what difference it makes. The outcome is the same.

I'm sure that when they attend their meetings in the temple, they look around and realize Jesus isn't there.

Beyond that, the human mind seems to have an amazing ability to convince its self of what it already wants to believe.

I'm sure that Russell doesn't question why Jesus sounds like Wendy in his dreams.

Rich old white men living in Utah, taking our money while we do the vacuuming and scrubbing, and doing whatever they want with it while telling us we need to do more, more, more...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2019 03:48PM by mel.

Arrogant and Self-serving are the words.

This!

The system selects for ignorant pious frauds. Only the most ignorant, most pious frauds get to be in the Q15. By definition, they are not qualified for the job. But then they don’t have to be.

In my case, they've shown a callous disregard - disrespect for the values, principles, & concepts of the Core of Christ-like living which they only pretend to support.

Details gladly by PM, but I know this is 'old news' & all far too common to get much notice.

However, from what I've observed, I'm quite sure that the majority of them KNOW that the church is not what they encourage the ordinary members to believe it is.

Some of them are foolish men who have willfully put blinders on so as to not see the obvious fraudulence of it all.

Many of them appear to be quite cynically manipulative--happy to encourage the members to think that the Apostles are communing with @realJesus in the temple on a regular basis--even though the Apostle guys know that they are not communing with @realJesus and have no more contact than anyone else with that supposed deity figure.

They know that to ordinary members words and terms like "revelation" and "inspiration" and "special witness" have magical meanings and indicate access to special knowledge and divine communication that ordinary members do not have. They knowingly encourage such perceptions while also being fully aware that the actual decision-making process of the leadership is no more remarkable than that engaged in by the leaders of any organization.

When you read the account of how Spencer W. Kimball got his "revelation" on expanding the priesthood franchise to include males of African descent, you realize that he's simply describing the same decision-making process that any manager would go through. No angels. No holy ghost. Just thinking real hard about how to do something that you know you have to do anyway due to the pressures of outside forces and events beyond your control. Nothing more special than the decision making of a regional Burger King manager.

They know that they don't have any special "discernment" (but SHHSSSSS! Don't let the commoners know!). The Hoffman affair made that clear as a bell.

They know that they encourage ordinary members to believe in a General Authority mystique whereby the GAs are assumed to have spiritual gifts that set them apart and far above the ordinary folk...and they do this while they know that their own track record and the record of their predecessors clearly show that they have no such special gifts.

They know that they trace their power and "authority" back to a predecessor who literally did not know God from Adam. And they pretend that it's no big deal that their predecessor as top prophet guy and apostle taught the ordinary people for decades that the God they were to worship and pray to was some guy who, as it turns out funnily enough, was not really the God. Oops! No biggie!

So they are all frauds. Some of them turn off the parts of the brain that tell them they are frauds so that they can pretend to be sincere with plausible deniability. Many of them are cynically, knowingly behaving as frauds. I think Hinckley was one who didn't really believe in the core claims of the Church. I think Nelson also doesn't believe in many of the core claims, but may genuinely believe in Jesus, with the result that he thinks of himself as a pious fraud, piously leading the benighted Members to a truer Jesus-centered belief, while striving mightily to get rid of much of the fraudulent "Mormon" baggage along the way.

Wally:

the decision to give Africans (males, that is) the PH...
easily the Most Important change in policy/doctrine in the last 100 years!!

tough call for ChurchCo because the most recent previous comments were that it was more of a "policy" than a commandment... So:

If they said it was a Revelation, then the previous doctrines were negated, down to BY who said it would never happen...

So, they pulled a rabbit out of their hat & said:

O Look! It's a RABBIT!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2019 01:35PM by GNPE.

when the "policy" change was first announced. Was it a revelation? Was it a policy change? Was it an administrative adjustment? Was it a brain fart? There was a lot of vague mumbling about what they wanted to call it.

But that did not last long. They have definitely been calling it a "revelation" for quite some time. I think the fudge-and-peanut butter period was just transitional to keep people from doing too much comparing and contrasting when it was still a hot topic. The subtext was: "Just be relieved that you don't have to wear this stinky albatross carcass of overt racism around your neck in public anymore. You now have permission to bury it in your backyard or behind the drywall."

But now that the fudgeroidal transition period is far in the past, they've settled into calling it a revelation without hesitation.

"The revelation came to Church President Spencer W. Kimball and was affirmed to other Church leaders in the Salt Lake Temple on June 1, 1978. The revelation removed all restrictions with regard to race that once applied to the priesthood."

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/2?lang=eng

At the same time they continue to rewrite the past in classic Orwellian fashion by referring to the historical priesthood ban/discrimination as nothing more than a "historical practice". The twist is that they are saying that a "revelation" was needed to put the long-standing practice to bed. But the long-standing practice was apparently not based on revelation.

"Early in its history, Church leaders stopped conferring the priesthood on black males of African descent. Church records offer no clear insights into the origins of this practice."

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/2?lang=eng

The modern Mormon attitude toward Brigham Young is like super-concentrated cognitive dissonance that can be taken in one powerful dose: "Brigham Young was a very great prophet of God and that's why we must ignore most everything he said and preached in his capacity as a great prophet."

Sociopaths can't see any problem with the way they act. They think it's normal. They think everybody is like them.

It's a good gig for the men who know how to play the game to get to the Q15. It takes a certain amount of cunning and calculation to be able to do that.

So more calculating than ignorant I think. And arrogant over humble for most. As for pious fraud, they've managed to fool a great many. If that includes themselves it's because they're wearing blinders.

So Hamula wasn’t sufficiently sociopathic.

Regardless of piety two "virtues" are usually present in them.

Unquestioning AND inwardly calculating. Game of thrones with pious masks.