Mormons are encouraged to lie, starting when they are very young. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to be the only youth in your ward excluded from a temple trip because you were honest in your “worthiness” interview. Lying is seen as a virtue (gain a testimony by bearing it—in other words, lie). Say that you “know” things based not on objective evidence or verifiable fact, but based on a warm feeling. The way to succeed, and fit in, in Mormonism is to be dishonest. It starts young and never stops.

I was just thinking about a situation from my mission (40+ years ago) that shows that you can be honest in Mormonism only at your own peril.

I served my mission in Thailand. The guy who was MP for most of my mission didn’t speak Thai, and he made it clear from day one that he had no intention to even try to learn the language. Since he felt the need to judge the missionaries’ ability to speak Thai, his one and only way of gauging language ability (and overall quality of the missionary) was to ask how many of the missionary discussions could be recited, word perfect, without review. One of many problems with putting so much emphasis on discussion memorization was the fact that very few investigators ever made it past the first discussion. During my two years, I only taught all of the discussions to one couple (and even they didn’t get baptized). All of the missionaries quickly learned if they wanted to be District Leaders, or Zone Leader, or be praised by the MP, to give their parents something to brag about, they needed to lie about their discussion ability.

I had a companion who was very smart, very sincere, very dedicated, and (unfortunately for him) very honest. Despite being very smart (his post-mission education and career successes are proof) he struggled with learning the language, but he put more effort into his language study than anyone else I knew on my mission. When he was asked about his discussion ability by the MP, he (honestly) replied that he could give the first discussion pretty close to word perfect, and that he could teach the second discussion if he had a chance for a quick review. The MP was furious with him, and seriously scolded him. That was very damaging to my companion’s self-esteem. My companion continued to study hard, but also continued to be honest, for the rest of his mission. The MP was never able to see past this one issue. The poor elder wasn’t even made a senior companion until late in his mission, and I’m sure he was never even considered for any leadership position. I was so upset with the situation that I made an appointment with the MP to defend my companion. I said “President, Elder xxx is always studying the language, every spare minute. When we’re on a bus or a train, he’s always reading a pamphlet or scriptures.” The MP cut me off and said (very dismissively) “that’s not the discussions!”

Being honest not only doesn’t pay in TSCC, it will work against you.

My family was too "what you see is what you get."

Most are out now.

I had a similar experience. While I was in Japan, we had to send in a weekly report. It included a short letter to the MP and our statistics - how many hours we spent knocking on doors, how many meeting we had, and what percentage of each of the seven discussions we had committed to memory.

At first I tried hard to commit them to memory. I had the first few completely done and the last several partially memorized. Trouble was, we just weren't teaching anyone. Every week or two we'd teach the first lesson, but that was it. And after a year or so, i decided to was stupid to be memorizing stuff that we'd never teach.

After a couple of months I started reporting that I had first 100%, second 50%, third maybe 30%, and the last four 0%. I just didn't care anymore. I was probably clinically depressed.

MP was Japanese and a pretty good guy and never seemed to be upset with me. He was a little concerned with me, so at one of our conferences, he set me up an interview with the Big Higster himself, Gordon B, who was visiting the country. MP thought that it would help with my moral. After a short introduction, he got down to business telling me that I wasn't depressed or sick, I was just being lazy and was wasting the money my parents were sending me. I've never hated anyone as much I did him from that time on. This was probably the first the first straw - and it was a big one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2019 11:55AM by fossilman.

That's so sad. You were thousands of miles from home, trying hard to do a near impossible task, struggling with a very real condition (depression) and then have a "prophet, seer, and revelator" tell you you're lazy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2019 12:10PM by CrispingPin.

deeply uninspired and uninspiring the General Authorities, MPs and other "great spiritual leaders" really are.

Seen up close, it turned out they were exactly like many of the worst examples of vain, corrupt, arrogant, bumbling, equivocating, self-serving, dissembling and unprincipled hacks that are on display among politicians, corporate managers and the like everywhere.

I could accept the notion that they are human and prone to making mistakes now and then. But I wasn't prepared to accept the reality that they were not even living up to the examples of good leadership set by numerous leaders I had come across in organizations existing outside of the Church.

A couple of examples from my mission:

We had an MP from SLC, and after a while, it became very clear that he was consistently promoting missionaries who were from prominent, well-connected, wealthy families in SLC. Like other foreign language missions, we also were expected to learn the language, memorize discussions in the language, report teaching stats and so on. We were constantly being judged by our performance in these areas and not infrequently chastised whenever we fell short of completely unrealistic expectations. But when it came time for the MP to choose his top "leaders" and APs from among the missionaries, we who weren't from elite SLC families could only stand back in amazement as a handful of sons of the Mormon aristocracy proved to be exempt from the expectations that were applied to the rest of us, and instead were consistently rewarded with power and authority over missionaries who outperformed them in every objectively measurable way. One particularly notorious guy was totally incompetent in the language, failed to get beyond memorization of the first two discussions (and many of us who had seen how incompetent he was at the language doubted whether he had even legitimately passed the test on those), but was nonetheless steadily advanced up the authority chain and ended up serving nearly half his mission as an AP, bossing everyone around from the mission home. Everyone knew it was because of who his family was and because the MP wanted to score points with the family. (Actually, those of us from outside of Utah/SLC didn't really know, but those who were from the SLC area clued us in.)

Seeing things like that going on all the time, I came to an unpleasant conclusion: "Yeah, so no real inspiration or divinely directed work going on here. Just the same kind of business, politics and social climbing that goes on in all man-made organizations."

We also got a visit from Gordy B. Hinckley. In a Q&A session after he delivered a talk, someone asked him about the rediscovery of the papyri used by Joseph Smith as the "source" of the Book of Abraham had revealed that they were standard funerary texts that were not even remotely connected to the life or time period of Abraham...and I was then treated to witnessing first hand the spectacle of an apostle and next Top Prophet Guy stammering, stuttering, dissembling and awkwardly attempting to spin the fact that the papyri were proven to have no content even closely resembling the crap that JS put in the Book of Abraham. I think Gordy polished up his act considerably after that. But at the time, I think he was genuinely surprised that a missionary would ask him a question like that and he was unprepared to give a smooth answer. The way he responded convinced me that he knew that Joseph Smith's "translation" of the papyri was bogus.

Wally Prince Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The way he responded convinced me that he
> knew that Joseph Smith's "translation" of the
> papyri was bogus.


"Our whole strength rests on the validity of that vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud."
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/10/the-marvelous-foundation-of-our-faith?lang=eng

Yeah, it's just ridiculous now that I look back. I was in London, England for my mission. My MP was the brother of one of the Apostles (older brother mind you). One time I was informed that I would be getting a new companion at a Zone Conference. Sort of a all of a sudden thing. I was a district leader. During the Zone Conference meeting, the new companion, got up during the last portion of the meeting, the meeting ended 15 minutes later, and then I went looking for this bloke whom I had never met before, nor did I know anything about him.

After the meeting, I was told that the MP wanted to speak to me. That lil fraction of a man, lit into me like a pit bull on a steak. I mean, you would have thought I had clubbed a baby seal to death. He was furious. "Your new companion got up, and you did not go with him...I don't ever want to see that happen again." I said, "But..but..I don't know him, I figured he was in the bathroom...we're all here in the building..you know him, I don't, his old comp is here..this is a strange conversation President." That made him even more furious, and he threatened to bust me down to a junior companion. "Don't you ever back talk me Elder..do you know who I am..who I know..I can have you sent home..." He was literally foaming at the mouth, spit coming out, yelling as loud as he could. Wendall Ashton was his name. Piece of **** he was.

So yeah, MP's are asshats. Agree with you - to survive in the cult, you must be a liar like Joseph Myth.

These ladder-climbers, well-connected, ambitious guys who rise up in the ranks of authority in the church are seething cauldrons of vanity, egomania and arrogance. The veneer of "humility" that they put on in public is often so thin and brittle that you can virtually see it cracking and disintegrating at every turn. They equate their positions with prestige, glory and greatness...things that they have always craved and sought after...and any little thing that makes them feel like the "little people" under them are not sufficiently trembling, groveling and genuflecting in their presence can set them off on a horrific temper tantrum.

Deep down inside, I think they kind of know that they're just stuffed suits in a phony religious organization and that many people see them more as Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts) type characters than as Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) type characters. That really pisses them off.

Petty dictators feeding their egos and trying to pretend that it was God who appointed them to positions of authority over others, when in fact it was one of their relatives or friends who put them there.

Wow! Incredible stories and experiences here.

Explains a lot of the lying I experienced myself!

So glad everyone here survived.....

It was honesty that led me out of TSCC.

These are great stories.

Seems like I always was in trouble because I really didn't have a clue about lying for the lord. I remember a terrible week as a missionary in November. I was sick with the flu. I felt dizzy and stumbled around the apartment. I was out of commission for 3 days before my health improved. Then the illness hit my companion and knocked him out. I called the DL and told him that we were going to have a very unproductive week. The DL had a good head on his shoulders and a heart. He offered to bike the 10 mile round trip just to see us and cheer us up. At the end of the week, we had to report a triple goose egg. I knew that my lunatic ZL would be furious. The ZL didn't bother to call us on the phone. Instead, the DL called us to inform us that the "Mad Bomber" (ZL) was on his way, wasting a 50 mile round trip in the mission car.

My comp and I had no idea how angry this "pinnacle of righteousness" was. We were not well prepared for his rage. He didn't even wait 10 seconds after knocking on the apartment door before he started kicking the door and screaming our names.

"Goop and Banner, Open this door right now!" I was dressed in p-day attire, but Banner was still in his PJ's resting in bed. Mad Bomber shoulder-butted me and went straight for Banner.

"Get out of bed. You're not sick, just lazy." He actually tried to pull Banner out of bed by his shirt collar. Banner kept a straight face as Mad Bomber began to shake him. I lost my temper and decided to end the battering.

I walked up behind Elder Mad Bomber and clobbered him as if I was playing football. He flew end over end and hurt himself on the corner of the bed. Mad Bomber got up and continued his rant.

"Why do you enjoy hurting me? You do stuff to make me look bad. You know that I can't report zeros to the MP."

By this time I was yelling back at Elder Mad Bomber to leave. I already had experienced several altercations with him. One involved a deck of playing cards "Skip-Bo". I forgot to mention that the ZL was training a greenie-new missionary of the proper ways of being an effective missionary. He just watched the Mad Bomber and stayed cleared of his tantrums. The ZL finally left our apartment. He made all types of threats; mostly about beating us up.

The very next zone conference was a bad day. We were the first to be called in to be interviewed by the MP. (In case you don't know~ it was usually a bad sign to be the first missionary to be called in. Like being at the top of his $h!t list). The MP told us that he hated liars.

He continued, "I just looked at your official stats for the week of the 8th. You had some great discussions and even have a baptismal commitment!"

Banner and I both stared at each other, shocked beyond belief. My asshat MP continued, "But you're both very sick. I really wish that I could send you home. I find it despicable to feign an illness to lure a faithful servant of God into your apartment in order to attack him during a PH blessing." He continued for about 45 minutes of reminding us that we just might be the miserable ones sent to outer darkness. We were then volunteered to wash away our sins by washing his Crown-Victoria instead of eating lunch.

The MP refused to listen to our side of the punishment and we were shamed in front of the zone as disobedient servants.

Honestly I don't have time to read every detail of what you people write. That's because, in the Spirit of why Utah is called the Beehive State, our wondrous beloved Church keeps us super busy like worker bees doing all sorts of things so we don't get distracted by temptations like sin, thinking, etc.

But I saw the word "honest" and feel I need to chime in. The most important thing that a True Church has going for it is that its True - i.e. its people and leaders are so remarkably super honest and transparent about their finances, statistics, doctrines, and other history :)


Now I should warn the newbies here that some of the old timers are tempted to think that what I write is satire and that I'm just trying to point out how its a silly and dangerous cult & especially show how absurd the so-called apologists are when they dishonestly try to defend a so-called true Church. Ignore the naysayers and just look at the facts. You can be sure, assuming of course that every Ward/Stake meeting is a place where everyone feels super comfortable asking any questions as this Church is so marvelously honest/transparent, that what I write is not satire when you think to yourself "gosh this Church is so super honest and transparent and since we all know that true = honesty/transparency then it could be the true Church". Thank Heavens that no leader in the true Church would ever think about ever being anything but super honest and transparent about everything :) Otherwise people might doubt whether the Church is actually true as the beloved Correlation program has groomed me to believe it is.

Honest TB[long] Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank Heavens
> that no leader in the true Church would ever think
> about ever being anything but super honest and
> transparent about everything :)

Honestly, do you believe LDS Leadership EVEN if they were warned Jesus was coming by their prophet wouldn't take a dump in their pants if they saw this happening?

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2010-11-50-chapter-46-the-second-coming?lang=eng

This is the litmus test for "Lying for The Lord." If he actually comes down from Heaven and you have no idea if he is going to endorse your particular gaffes.


I "honestly" think that LDS Leadership would be truly paralyzed and the church would fall apart if they actually studied their own scriptures to find out how they can do as they think Jesus would want them to. This is why "correlation" is so very important. It created not only groupthink but group blame deflection if they actually BELIEVE Jesus is coming...

An honest missionary, we'll call him John, served 3 months in Peru. During an interview, he admitted to masturbation while in the shower. He was counseled, given a Priesthood blessing, told to fast and to pray away the grevious sin.

Weeks passed and he was sent home early.

This is not a rare occurance. It happens to many Elders who are honest during their private interviews.

Some Mission Presidents allow wiggle room, realizing the great lifelong harm that may occur if mishandled.

Others have become like hitmen for Christ, and tow the line without any compassion, patience or concern for all concerned.

Did Joseph Smith masturbate? Did Brigham Young masturbate? Of course they did, based upon historic social behaviors that are well documented.

The Currch of Jesus Christ of Latter-dagy Saints has become a perversely dysfunctional institution that prides itself in its veneer of purity.

I stopped leaping through her hoops when I turned 30.

I urge all youth reading this to exit the fakeness, the chronyistic and prideful gangs that dress so well and gossip while in service to their unforgiving God.

And yes, this is the same God who designed sexuality and anatomy that would ensure populations in every life form He created.

To break free of hypocritical controls noble.

.