For anyone not familiar with the book,"The Not Even Once Club" by Wendy Watson Nelson, here is a little paragraph from some promotional material to enlighten:
"... tells the story of a little boy who wants to join a club of which the other kids in his Mormon ward are members. The club provides many “benefits” (like candy and games), but the only way to become part of the fun is to pledge that he will never “break the Word of Wisdom, lie, cheat, steal, do drugs, bully, dress immodestly, or break the law of chastity. Not. Even. Once.” As long as the children keep their promises, they get to be part of the club and receive “jars of pretzels and popcorn and candy” from their Primary teacher. But any instance of a child breaking his or her covenant results in expulsion from the club (and a loss of all of its benefits).
Is it just me or does that pretty much sum up the entire essence of the Mormon Church right down to the ugly core they attempt to hide?
Reading the book even once is too many. My heart breaks for every child forced to listen to that vile indoctrination---read to them by duped loving parents who believe they are doing the right thing. Well nowadays, that would be the "Holy Thing". (The Mormons switching from righteous to holy when they really mean "Obey Us or Else!" Holy Hahahahahah )
But hey! Aren't the jars of pretzels, popcorn, and candy you will get in the Celestial Kingdom all worth it?
I really don't understand what they're thinking. How can they not see that it's not character building, but bribery and social bullying they've resorted to peddling. Who in their right mind would want their children exposed to this?
but, in reality, they don't really practice it. If you have sex out of marriage, you are soiled for life. Can't regain your virginity now can you?
We spent our lives trying to live everything exactly. We didn't give ourselves room for being human. I was especially hard on myself. Then you go to them with something like gay and all bets are off. You can do all kinds of things sexual with your gay boyfriend in order to "save him." That really did a number on my head as I've talked about so VERY many times. They taught me also how to find men to use and abuse me from a young age. The bishops of course. They teach you horrible things about how to live your life.
My TBM sister is not a fan of Wendy. My mom cracked me up. She used to be a hospital nurse and she knew what doctors were like. She goes, I see that Dr. Nelson found a trophy wife. She then goes his eye sight must be going because she’s not much of a trophy.
The thing that is really sickening is that we all know several LDS leaders who didn't follow this path. I went to High School with two very senior General Authorities and I know they both had sex with girls I knew before they went on missions. I lived in a ward where the the stake high councilman was repeatedly hitting on the pretty young wives of ward, telling them that their inactive husbands had invalidated their temple oaths, and that he could provide the "priesthood" they needed.
Oh hell. I know so many bishops and other leaders who were having sex in high school and college. Willy the Whip is busy in the church. Make no mistake.
The church is like politics. I did not have sex with that woman. Sugar coated bullshit.
Heartless Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think the deepest hurt from this book are those > who were abused now get told over and over how > worthless they are.
The exact opposite of what's in the NT: Jesus died and took upon him the sinns of world, or something like that...
Luke: "Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
"Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."
Many times in the NT Jesus basically says "If you screw up, ask for forgiveness and you're good to go, but just don't be an a-hole."
The mormon thinking behind abominations like this, I think explains why I was never fully accepted by TSCC and never got married. I was a convert and a single mother. The ironic thing is I didn’t see the prejudice at the time because I was so devoted to the Book of Mormon (I read it several times in just a few years) as well as other scriptures and I genuinely believed I’d been “forgiven”. I look back now and can see from a whole collection of things said in talks and the behaviour of a vast majority of leaders and members that indicated they saw me differently to how I saw myself. It was pretty messed up and frustrating.
I hear about this book, and it’s additional evidence that mormons don’t understand Christianity at all. Not that I’m a huge fan of that either but at least the central message is a good one - the only part that the mormon religion throws out.
The fundamental problem is that mormon doctrine is based on works to such an extent that there is virtually no room for grace. Even so, some leaders stretch that as far as possible. “The miracle of forgiveness” by Kimball also springs to mind. Poisonous evil.
It was so refreshing to finally go out into the “world” and be treated as an equal and no one is surprised or bats an eyelid when they hear I raised a child alone - except in some cases I’ll get some admiration (and, notably, not as much pity).
I like to think that as a TBM a book like this would have set off alarm bells for me; particularly if I’d been reading it to my child. There were quite a few uncomfortable things over the years. Some things are easier to shelve than others.
My 3rd cousin, whom I’ve never met, died last month from a brain tumor. He was 17. From a triple TBM family, it was held in the Spanish Fork, Ut area. Well, my triple TBM cousin called me giving me a detailed account of the funeral service. Apparently this young man was addicted to candy and hated flowers, so there were absolutely no flowers at the funeral service, only dishes of candy everywhere. Along with that, apparently the father of the boy was at a loss for words as to what to share about the life of his son so he brought the boy’s diary and read from it. (Weird) Anywho, my cousin was telling me about the boy’s diary and the entries were almost exclusively about how he needed to repent for all the bad things he had done each day. My cousin was so proud of him for his repentant ways! Talk about heaping the guilt onto a young mind!!!
What a bunch of crap! Talk about a cult piece of crap corporation, brainwashing these young minds!!!
journals, but there isn't much to be gained by them because I was always asking myself what I was doing wrong that I wasn't being blessed. LIKE MARRIAGE.
I don't want my kids to read those, especially my TBM daughter, and have her think that was all my life was about.
I'd kill someone for reading my journals at my funeral. But then my kids have been instructed to bury me. THAT'S IT. I want nothing else. Unless I decide they can cremate me and spread my ashes over my dogs' graves.
I have several journals after joining the church which are FILLED with self admonition, guilt and complete obsession over finding my “eternal companion”. Mormon doctrine really does a number on you.
A friend of mine who is a school counselor told me that the children who will *only* respond to tangible rewards, (i.e. pretzels, popcorn, and candy) are the ones you need to worry about. It doesn't help a child to give out a constant stream of treats and rewards. You want to develop an inner compass.
You can't train a dog that way either. I agree with so many comments in this thread I can't even start to reply to each one. This book is disgusting and pure child abuse.
I think Mormons train the young on the intangible candy rewards as a "gateway drug" to getting them hooked on the intangible rewards----ie: your reward in heaven after you die.
When it comes right down to it the Mormons church is "selling the Brooklyn Bridge".
It’s just like that old scare tactic—-the only irredeemable sin is to offend the Holy Ghost. Nobody even knows what that means. Small children are probably unaware of what Wendrip is even talking about. And what manipulations are Mormon crazy parents adding on to it ?
Talk about instilling fear of being banished or cast out and excluded. Poor little kids.
I was in a quandary when faced with marrying a convert whose immediate family were not members or did not have a TR. The church had a single path to follow. It was a temple marriage with no deviations.
I wanted a civil marriage and the bishop of the ward understood my dilemma of not wanting to exclude or ostracize my future in-laws. He advised me to pray (like that would solve anything- Ha!) and meet with the stake president.
So foolishly I did meet with him knowing that he would defend the church handbook policy- now it's called the covenant path. So he babbled for some 20 minutes about the importance of temples, ordinances, sacredness.
And then he leaned across the desk and began to whisper in an almost inaudible voice. If you choose to marry outside of the temple (he knew both of us had been cleared for a TR) and decide to wait it out, then I'm warning you now. I may not find you worthy in a year or 5 more years to return for a sealing. He made it clear that he would block any effort to get sealed. He was indeed the gatekeeper of the cult.
And I felt intimidated by his threat and chose the ridiculous unremarkable and forgettable temple wedding. A total disappointment that the church sells to the youth.
Hurts to exclude relatives from a wedding, but, since it was a Mormon temple wedding---perhaps you did them a kindness, HAHA. Too bad you couldn't at least have gotten a selfie with Lucifer to send them.
And the SP. What an arrogant power-hungry little P.O.S.
I’ve heard this is still an upsetting issue in the mormon church. If they cared about what really matters, i.e.people’s FEELINGS, they’d have addressed it by now.
In the UK, the mormon church lost this battle before it begun because by law the legal marriage cannot take place in the temple. I don’t know why. Even so, the person I came closest to marrying dumped me primarily because I was a convert and “wouldn’t understand the importance of eternal marriage and families”. I was taken aback big time; it sounded so arrogant, especially because, as a convert, I took “the gospel” so seriously. At the time it was laughable, outside of feeling generally heartbroken.
Unrelated to that, I lost my testimony not long after. But partly related to the beginnings of my “faith crisis” was when my father died a few months later - the bigger issue being, that as a convert members of the church could not understand my grief: “I didn’t know you had a father!” were words that were actually said, in real life.
These two experiences had the long term effect of an internal WTF and SMH.
The fact that I was TBM in every way from my heart, and knew (and lived) my scriptures inside-out had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Luckily it was eye-opening even more than it was offensive.
This shows you just how deep and just how crazy this ‘special club’ mentality goes and how little good-hearted christianity has to do with any of it.