Everytime I said "I KNOW the church is true," I was telling a lie. I hoped more than believed it was true, but was told that only declaring that I KNEW it was true was acceptable when bearing my testimony. I was an obedient morgbot and obeyed.
Although I was TBM I never felt comfortable declaring that I knew the church was true. I could never say it with conviction. It felt like a fib but I justified it because I was doing what I was commanded to do.
Instructing members, from the time they're small children, to say they know the church is true when bearing their testimony, is basically teaching them to lie.
On our visa application for our mission to Brazil we had to put down we were students and the purpose of our stay in Brazil was to "study the language and culture of Brazil"
Not for this Wrote: -------------------------------------------------------
> On our visa application for our mission to Brazil
Wow church-sponsored and approved lying! Wow!
I lied, I didn't know the church was true. I just wanted to belong to a group and go along, at least for a while. So glad it was not for too much longer of my life.
Both as a missionary and a ward clerk. Some things bothered me a lot and others didn't. For example, I thought it was nobody's business to know whether I felt sexually aroused. So I never confessed to any personal stuff. I thought it was perfectly normal and the church was in the wrong for even asking about it.
However, I was not comfortable in cooking the church's records. It bothered me to no end that I sat across from a bishop (my first draft of a ward membership report had to be penciled in) and took a heavy duty eraser and wiped out the actual-honest reporting numbers. Then we spent the next 90 minutes arguing why my Salt Lake computer database numbers were wrong.
Like so many others, I eventually fudged the numbers and gave into the demands of the bishop. I still had serious misgivings about screwing the numbers about the Lord's church. I even had a close call at the temple (well it scared me at the time).
It was my first time to the temple after putting whatever the bishop wanted on the report. The whole report was bogus from adding 50 ghosts to sacrament attendance to a bunch of priesthood holders that shouldn't be counted. Anyway I always hated the endowment process and something weird happened during that visit. They had just made the announcement that if anybody had unkind or unpleasant thoughts then he/she should let it be known (I think this was the part before the true order of prayer). Well there's a very long pause. I'm talking about a 15-20 minute pause. There was some serious talking among the temple workers. Even the group of people from the front returned to their original seats.
I started to wonder if I was the hold up. Was discernment really possible? Finally, an older man stood up and made his announcement. "I can no longer wait. I must excuse myself." He left the endowment room and the session continued. I never discovered why the session was paused.
I felt better leaving the church than feeling compelled to lie over and over.
I sincerely do not think I lied. Lying requires intent to deceive, and I cannot remember intentionally misleading anyone.
On the other hand, I unintentionally dissembled all the damn time. I was a pretty savvy missionary but there were some things--polyandry, JS's sex with little girls and married women, the rock in the hat, etc--about which I frequently and fervently misspoke. When I learned the truth about those things, I was appalled not only about the substance but also that the church would have taught me to teach falsehoods.
That was a 'uge blow to my faith in Mormonism. I could not conceive of God's representatives knowingly using members and missionaries to propagate lies. THAT, I believe, is a form of evil.
Well, for my sins to that date. I have no excuse for the sins thereafter.
And yes, I think "useful idiots" is a good description of how missionaries are used in the Mormon church although Lenin would take umbrage at that usage!
If [and since] I'm (my own) Lord, yes! That is if I ever lied. If I lied, if was only for myself.
I would never lie for the LDS 'church' that thinks - and calls itself - and acts like it is Lord (over the members, at least).
In other words I never brought anyone to Mormonism. Never said anything good about it (nothing good to say). Never liked attending, or "practicing" Mormonism, ESPECIALLY before INVESTIGATING it.