Yes
No
I don't know

I think I did. I treated some when I was a child as my inferiors because while I was like them (read poor in money not spirit) in the circumstance of having about the same amount of money and time spent upon me as they did, I was a descendent of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and a member of The First Presidency from the 60s.

The absurdity and ridiculousness of those times haunts me. Especially when my children bring up their pedigree from me. I hate it. They don't have anything to do with my family and they only recently discovered the extent of said pedigree. Mormonism is such a curse. It taints and tarnishes those I love. It is like a inherited disease of the mind.

I know there are other things out there like it in catching people up into behaviors they would otherwise not engage in but wow. Life is too rich a thing to mire it in a cesspool of 19th Century stains and 20th Century corporate pains.

I shook down little old widows for fast offerings.

I remember helping the extremely old lady who rented her basement to my abuser to fill in her fast offering check and I basically signed it for her.

I remember thinking about what the man below us was doing with me while I was helping this almost blind aged woman sign a check aka doing my consecrated duty I was unworthy of doing because of what I was doing below her.

I was a deacon.

I got to feign interest in people's families so I could ask to see a family photo album and check out the hair texture of the grandparents, so we wouldn't accidentally baptize someone who had African ancestry. I don't know if that was official mission policy. It might have been. It was most certainly at least unofficial policy. It was northern Brazil, pre-1978

If that doesn't qualify as ill-advised, I don't know what it would take.

Dear God, BoJ.

Not your fault. When you grow up indoctrinated in this stuff it takes a special kind of person and a lot of effort to shake it off.

A friend who "studied" with Mormon missionaries for a long time asks me how anyone can believe this stuff. I try to explain what it's like (as I imagine it) to be inculcated since birth and the great difficulty of extracting oneself from such all-encompassing belief systems. Especially in Utah, I imagine, where Mormonism is so predominant. And when everyone in your entire family, for generations, is steeped in it. She still can't comprehend how/why it can be so difficult to not only withdraw from such all-consuming beliefs and practices but to deal with all the family connections as well. Particularly tough, I imagine, to examine all one's beliefs and experiences and see them in a new light and then forge a way forward from there.

It's quite the tall order. There's a reason for discussion boards like RfM. Outsiders don't easily understand the journey. Even most converts aren't likely on the same wavelength as BICs because many had upbringings and life experiences away from Mormonism to start with, so something to compare it to and go back to and obviously we don't have to "deprogram" from the over-abundance of years of inculcation that BICs are subject to. Some negative experiences and memories have impacted me at times but other than that I quite easily and happily adjusted back to non-mo life after the day of my exuberant departure.

I feel for you BICs and the difficulties associated with the circumstances of your birth and upbringing and the inevitable baggage that is difficult to discard and "get over".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2021 03:16PM by Nightingale.

I woke up the morning of my last day in the mission field and when I went to bed that night, I had enrolled, in person, at the Y. Then I was released by my SP...

Three months later, when the girl I was dating told her parents, as we were sitting in the family kitchen, that having been dating for two months, we were getting married, I maybe should have said something, cuz I had not yet considered marriage.

But I think that the thought of getting into her pants made rational thinking impossible.

Being a student at the Y leads to being caught up in Mormonism like few other things.

I don't understand what you got caught up in? In sounds like you weren't caught up but just passively going along with some ill-advised marriage proposal? And it was her pants not Mormonism.

I link mormonism and sexless dating. Without mormonism we might have figured out we weren't really suited for each other. And I wouldn't have agreed to remain virginal until the wedding night. It was that goal that blinded me/goaded me.

Ever so many men, under a certain age, make lousy husbands.

Of course, these ruminations are the product of a spoiled brat, so ...

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't understand what you got caught up in?


I hope it wasn't the zipper of her pants. (Been there, done that and ouch!)

Yes, I married too soon, not really know what I was in for. Of course all the TBMs were confirming my actions by the spirit they felt, but I knew I was taking a huge gamble.

I remember praying fevently to know if I should marry her and all I got was....whatever you do, you'll learn from the experience....so I did it and boy did I learn! 15 years of hell later I diviorced her and have been happy ever since.

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember praying fevently to know if I should
> marry her and all I got was....whatever you do,
> you'll learn from the experience....so I did it

At least you got an answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuP1kMRyKOY

It was the answer I gave myself becaue I knew I wasn't getting an answer that it was all good while praying.

No need to answer but I am curious if there is something I haven't heard?

now currently boyfriend for 16 years this week. I also sent them to my very dear nonmember friends. Those were the only 2 I sent missionaries to--and I did it because I was so afraid for them. I can remember sitting in R.S. years later and they were talking about nonmembers who were good people also being in the millennium--is that the word???

AND I wrote a letter to my inactive, "wild" brother when I was in my early 20s. Young and stupid.

My boyfriend was living with his parents for a short time in Mesa after he left Utah. The missionaries showed up when my boyfriend wasn't home and his dad wouldn't let them come back. His dad came from mormons and his grandfather was named John Hughes Taylor. He left Utah and went back to Pennsylvania, left the mormons, but some of his descendents were mormons and ARE mormons like the family who owns Heaps pizza in Provo. His dad wouldn't let them put his obit in the newspaper as he didn't want his relatives to do his temple work. So I got to meet the man who turned the missionaries away. I told him that "I converted."

YES! But I NEVER got caught up in it.

I attended MCS (Mormon 'Church' "Services") as a child, BEFORE baptism, as a youth, and briefly as a dult.

What a disservice!
I didn't deserve that.

Becoming Mormon, EVEN AT AGE 8, is Not great, and in fact is Ill-Advised.

Yes. And having this little kid think he could be baptized very very I'll-advised.

https://cafemom.com/news/grandparents-take-boy-church-behind-parents-back

That's AWFUL!

NEVER trust mormons.
They'll SNEAK every time.

Mormonism is ILL-ADVISED.
ASSOCIATION with LDS is equally dangerous.

It'll bring you DOWN every time.

It IS NOT UPlifting.

They baptize dead people. They don't think anyone is immuned from their "work."

Yes. I got caught up in the blessings from tithing. They never materialized. I stopped paying.

Once I was so Mormon I proposed to a MORmON girl because I thought God told me she was supposed to become my wife.
Apparently she didn't get the memo.
She said, "No"

Mother Nature lied.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mother Nature lied.

I think it was my little head that lied.
After my mission I wanted to get laid so bad I had horns growing out of my head and the only way to do that as a faithful MORmON was to get married.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think it was my little head that lied.

Like I said.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> schrodingerscat Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I think it was my little head that lied.
>
> Like I said.

It's a great brainwashing ritual, take young men right before they turn drinking age, and make them go on missions and deprive them of the one thing they really want at the sexual prime, is to get laid! It's a primal objective, the last of the four f's.
And as an RM you're a hot commodity. The first Young Adult Mormon dance you go to you meet the prettiest girl with the most friends and you're some awkward kid who just got home off a mission, then like a fairy tale, wedding complete with friends and family and a magical castle (temple) and people in white, just like a castle in heaven.
And it's all an illusion.
You come back and have a Molly Mormon wedding on a basketball court with carpet. Ugh.
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.
But love is love.
Which is an illusion.
Everything is an illusion.
What seemed so perfectly clear to me back then, in the temple, everything made sense to me. I felt like I had it all figured out.
Now I am full of doubt.
But no fear.
I don't fear god or death.
I am at peace with the situation at hand.
I am happy that as stupid and violent as America seems right now, at least our justice system is holding.
And the guard rails of democracy held.
I'm confident our country will move towards reconciliation
And rebuilding what's good about our country
And changing what's bad.
After justice has her day.

Hell hath no fury like a Mormon reborn a Mormon no more.

Only when I was alone or with somebody

Who????
Perfect little me?
how could you even think so??

So you are still going to church?

Well, I told the truth.

NEVER tell the truth in Mormonism, or in any other perilous situation in which authority figures USE IT AGAINST YOU.

The truth hurts me more than it hurts you, if you know what I mean.

Honesty, in Mormonism, ruins you. It has ruined TSCC (because of its dishonesty).

HOWEVER, it Saved Me from a 'missing' call.

AND probably even seeing a young mormon girl as potential mate status.

It also kept me searching for the truth... and discovering mormonism is a faux painting, and that it usually gets in the way of direct revelation and revelry!

I told the truth at 14 and so stopped LDS "progression" as a Teacher. I'm still a "teacher". More like a reacher: I reach for the truth... and usually get it.

Mormonism taught me to be honest. generally by being dishonest.

Mormonism shows, by its TALK and INaction, that it is a double-speaker, double-crosser, and a 'CROSSunDRESSer'.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2021 12:46PM by moremany.

Darn! I got real strict and inflexible about rule keeping. I was a covert and did not learn to distinguish social conventions in Mormonism (dress, diet, etc.), and the actual commandments (which I later learned no one could agree on anyway).

I won't list them here but I so wish I had not joined the church at age 20, sophomore in college, with a lovely new wife, who did not want any part of Mormonism.

Short answer to the question: Yes, definitely, dang it.

My condolences. What attracted you? Their strictness?

I'll leave you the responsibility of letting me know if the below story fits the 'ill-advised' catagory, told below:

My husband and I were first married outside the church, so we believed we had to re-do the marriage in the temple.

A man sat on a wood chair in the special all-mirrored room (to illustrate "forever"), and told us to KNELL DOWN IN FRONT OF HIM, so he could put his hands on our head, so we could REALLY be married--i.e., in the temple.

How timely this post is, because I was just revisiting this event in my mind, and got upset and angry all over again about this DUMB, humiliating requirement. He could have stood up to do this quick procedure, but it was more 'humbling' for us to to be required to kneel before him.....in the mind of the temple workers.

(As my adult son would say, grrrrrrr.)

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was a descendent of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and a
> member of The First Presidency from the 60s.

Yikes, EB. Luck(?) of the genetic draw.


> The absurdity and ridiculousness of those times
> haunts me.

> Mormonism is such a curse. It taints and tarnishes
> those I love. It is like a inherited disease of
> the mind.

I'm sorry for the lifelong pain of such an accident of birth. Some win the lottery in this regard - (many) others not so much.


> Life is too rich a thing to mire it in a cesspool of 19th Century stains and 20th Century corporate pains.

Yes, indeed. So too bad that so many don't come to see this.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, indeed. So too bad that so many don't come to
> see this.

The pathetic thing is how much paternity plays a role in my family and probably in many families.

It took my adult children until adulthood to get sucked into the sucky pedigree thing.

The extreme sadness I feel at their happiness with my pedigree leaves me even more depressed in their absence from us now that they are all back in college.

Sucking eggs bullshit. Who cares who your great grandfathers were? Pitiful that people do. My mother's side was rough and tumble people with prostitution, drugs, alcoholism, and murder. Match made in heaven.

At least Hugh was one of the good ones by the standard of the day. You can be proud of having an ancestor with a heart.

I wonder what he would have done in Internet times. He obviously supported "the brethren."

http://www.blacklds.org/1969-first-presidency-statement

He had a heart but not the resolve to resign over banning people for their appearance.

I wish he had gone further and been an ancestor I could have been proud of. I don't have one I can think of.

I went out on one Fast Sunday Widows Shakedown and then refused the next month.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2021 06:52PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.