There is this guy I talk to every so often and he told me about this recent event with his wife and people she met:

My wife says she met this family who was selling bicycles. They god to talking and she wondered why they were selling children's bikes when they had several children? These grand-parent aged looking man and woman said they were selling the bikes so they could feed the children. The father of the kids was in jail for assault to their mom and the children. The mom was in jail for defending herself and some other legal thing. My wife asked if they had enough food, and they said not much, but they make sure the kids eat first and if there is anything left over they eat. That sounded sad and I empathized with their situation so I told her I was fine with helping them out in any way that she wanted to. She calls a few folks in the ward and tries to arrange some food to be dropped off or collected. SHe raids our pantry looking for stuff, and pulls out the obscure stuff some of which was expired. It sits in a grocery bag for a few days and I don't see any movement on it. I ask her about that family a few days later and ask if anyone has dropped anything off. She says no, but we still have that grocery bag of stuff to drop off. I'm a little upset with her because she virtue signals about how much she wants to help with all the 'buts' that keep anything happening. So, I grab my keys, and got to the grocery store an buy 10 bags of food, and think about how I might be able to help these people out and I know nothing about them. When I'm done, I call my wife and ask where to drop the food. SHe sends me an address and asks me to inquire about a bike that they were selling. I show up, introduce myself and briefly tell how I know about them and politely tell them I have some food for them. They are grateful and accept the gift. When I get home my wife tells me that I am so Christ-like. She has no idea how bad of a disciple of Christ she is. It takes someone who does not even believe in her god to do her god's bidding to be decent to other people. No telling what my wife's deal was, but it was interesting to see how much she wants to find people to help and do some service for others, when it really just took getting out there and doing it."


This made ma laugh and cry a little. It seems like the exmos are doing the work of helping others where the believer in this situation only wanted to pay homage to the god through virue signalling. Typical...

Mormonism replaces real flowers with plastic ones and they don't notice.

haha... that's awesome.

I think what is funny about that is that his wife was telling him he was being Christ-like as a way to help him feel a spirit or two, and help him recognize some spirits. That guy is an RM and gets the whole spoke and mirror spirit game. She thought she was being clever about telling him how he fits into the Lard's church structure.

So many ways to look at that, but your plastic flowers analogy about sums it up.

    I believe that mormons feel that if they genuinely thought about it, were sincere in those thoughts, it counts the same as actually helping, when the grades are posted.

    Because they are children of a living ghawd, who knows their every thought, the sincerity of their desire to want to help counts as much as doing the work of helping! ... but obviously, without the drudgery of doing anything.  It doesn't get any better than being mormon, the religion of feelings.

" I believe that mormons feel that if they genuinely thought about it, were sincere in those thoughts, it counts the same as actually helping, when the grades are posted."

Why wouldn't it?

After all, if you have "bad thoughts" they condemn you so why wouldn't "good thoughts" give you marks in the plus column?

Religion really doesn't make much sense at all.