Joseph Smith set up a theocracy. The church is still a theocracy. Follow the prophet or else. I think most of us didn’t like that. I didn’t like the extreme pressure to follow leaders I didn’t know just because they held rank in the church.

I’m all for going to hear a sermon or hear a choir sing or to attend a Sunday School class. I’m all for church activities. I don’t mind paying a donation to foot some of the costs if I’m participating. But I don’t want to be told to follow anyone or be given orders to follow. Bag that.

I was happily married for 20 years, so I have no problem with theocracy. My problem with the church was all of its big whopping lies that it passes off as divine truth. Their claims are so provably false that it insults what little intelligence I have. If I want to be stupid, I don’t need their help.

The reality is most institutions are full of lies. They like to call it public relations. Honesty is pretty rare in the world.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> Honesty
> is pretty rare in the world.

It is rare because we are a world of humans.

Very few Mormons realize that their prophet is their king. If they did he wouldn't have the following he has and his kingdom would be heritable which didn't work out for Joseph or Brigham.

Not those wishing to worship.

I want freedom, peace, and happiness, not dogma, rules, chains, and hateful rhetoric.

A CONTROLLING 'church' IS NOT a loving, or living, church.

Where is freedom & happiness?

NOT anywhere in mormonism.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> But I don’t want to be told
> to follow anyone or be given orders to follow.

Come on, it's not so b-a-a-a-d.

Well done!!

I was about to move on and then something clicked in my brain and I got it!

Another successful day, manning the barricades of my aging brain.

I pray, yes pray!, that your combining the word "theocracy" with "left" and "right" in that manner was intentional.

For most of my Mormon life I thought a theocracy was a good thing, because they said it was from God. But then I saw how those theocrats were a bunch of egomaniacs, bozos, hypocrites and liars. There was even a criminal.

It is a formula. A endless switching between two CORE type of modes.

FAITH in object vs faith in OBJECT

Theocracy is built around a focus on FAITH. How you believe is of importance. You must do it a certain WAY. When things do not go YOUR way it is because YOU focus to much on the FAITH around object and not the faith in the OBJECT. There is a message, do not focus on your FAITH about the faith in the OBJECT. But be more focused on the OBJECT, we can help you with the faith-part, listen to US carefully about faith, there is a FAITH that is tested by time and the EXPERTS..

Endless shifting. Always a 100% fail and a sheperd showing the right WAY to the way to the OBJECT.

Watched some prosperity gospels from the 80s on youtube and by a coincidence I watched some reruns of programmes from 2019 on a christian tv-channel this past week and there was a man preaching with the same speech in tounge-phrases as I heard on the old youtube-clips. Googled the preacher and read that he had been a student at the same word of faith-school that was shown at the youtube-clips.

There is a circular message in word of faith context I have been analyzing. Condenseed: Do not follow the thinking of the world but you MUST learn this first, you MUST learn this first, you must learn THIS first, you must learn THIS first, you must learn this FIRST, you must learn this FIRST, YOU must learn this first, YOU must learn this first.. What are YOU doing? WHAT are you doing? Endless..

Typo, condensed.

I see the title of this post every day when I have my morning coffee and couldn't compute how I felt. I couldn't identify though I thought the premise sounded good.

Today I realized that though your posit is most likely true for many, and makes sense, it is not true for me.

I was always hungry for more. I was looking between the slats of my cage at the outside world. I didn't leave Mormonism so much as I ventured toward something else. I didn't leave to sin or to escape. I left to embrace.

What I left behind was forgettable as it paled in comparison to what was ahead. I didn't leave. I floated out.

I suffered the first real crack in my shelf (a shelf that,at the time,I didn't even realize I had) as a teenager in a school civics class. The teacher was giving lengthy descriptions of forms of government and the class was to identify which form of government it was. When he proceeded to describe what sounded like the Mormon Law of Consecration/United Order I was quite confused... why would he be talking about Mormon religion? (Mormon education was drummed into me far more than US History or Civics.) The form of government that the teacher was describing actually turned out to be Communism. I was stunned! They are identical. I was finally able to see Mormonism objectively. The whole charade of the Council of 50, secretly crowning JS as the King of the World, and then his candidacy for US President literally broke my shelf.

I recently took my sister to task for her scare tactic FB posts claiming that if a certain "candidate" were to be elected than the US would spiral into Socialism or even worse... Communism. I pointed out to her that the Law of Consecration/Theocratic Communism is central to Mormon Doctrine and thus God's perfect form of government. She deleted my posts and blocked me.

HaHa...I sure got a chuckle out if that!

I didn't like being under control freaks that are dangerous as hell basically. They enslave and submit you while telling you that you have free agency when you clearly do not. You have invisible threats against you to fall in line.

They are all talk. They don't even live their talk. Total narcissist hypocrites.

Yes, they also say they are pragmatic. But everything goes through the same template and ”glasses”. If you get into a process, through the use of the template, and end up in trouble, because of the template, they will tell you to solve the problem with the same template. No problem solved.

100% fail, and they will say to you, time after time, what are YOU doing?

You cannot meta-communicate because that will imply that YOU do not believe in the template.

you would probably call me a closet apostate
I don't believe but I do not percieve it to be in my best interest to bailout yet