It’s obsessed with control. I mean there’s not a big sugar daddy pimp running the church living Joel Olsteen style. Not even Warren Jeffs style. LDS Inc. Is a weird phenomena. It’s all about protecting the power of the organization and not a specific individual. It really does have a Borg mentality. It’s all about controlling the separate parts that compose the whole. In a way, the church runs like the military. Being a free thinking individual is looked down upon. It’s about serving the machine.
The church is similar to Solomon’s temple. There’s an outer court that’s open to everybody. This would be your weekly Sacrament meeting. Then there is the inner court and that’s for temple recommend holders. Then there are varying inner degrees with the second anointing being the elite inside group.
So yeah. You can drink coffee and fudge on the tithing and warm a pew. You just will be a second class citizen pestered by the church leaders to do better. It’s all about what court or room you are allowed into.
Except in my understanding there were no worthiness interviews for Israelites to enter Solomon's temple. From the Christian viewpoint a look at Romans 3:23-27 might be un order for them.
I'd love to see a "Prophet Joel" come along and rape and pillage Trump stlye. The carnage of lost employment etc., would be bad, but still just for Rfm-ian revenge would be good and sweet!
I have some lab tests that are a mess and I know why. I just went to the doctor Monday. She told me what she wants me to do. Myself, I think she is part of the problem. I've resisted changing doctors. I think it is time.
BUT I've had enough bosses in my life. And the LDS Church is #1. I got so weary of the worthiness interviews, etc. Especially the bishop I had from age 12 to about 20. I didn't even know what masturbation meant and I wasn't going to ask.
But one thing that is so disgusting to me is I have 2 disabled brothers. One still goes to church. He is 57. My aunt and uncle are always bugging him about going to the temple. He has to start coming over here to watch movies every day now and then, and then the truth comes out. He goes in to get a TR and then he starts obsessing about whether he is worthy or not and it always comes back to masturbation and other little things, but this is the one that really bothers him. And I tell him it is between God and him since he still believes. I tell him it is nobody's business and that he does not have to go to the temple.
I CANNOT imagine him having to change his temple clothes. He had a stroke when he was born and his left leg and left arm don't really work very well at all. My dad made him lift weights when he was young, so he has some use, but that is torture for him. It really pisses me off that they do this him.
Luckily, he does have some friends he grew up with who aren't disabled who watch out for him at church. And they are good people. They watch out for him outside of church, too. They have to have so much patience for him. He has better friends than I ever have.
So worthiness still gets to me because I still deal with it. Or my daughter will come up with a question about it since I took her out of church at age 8 and she went back at 20. She'll decide she's never going to make it as she just isn't good enough.
The damage the church causes is so extensive in each person's life.
And the elephant in the room is, ta dah . . . Jesus!
This worthiness thing is true, but a side step. An attempt to drop broad hints to the brethren and bishops everywhere, displaying this as a small problem when it is proof of a stiff-necked church whose "lips draw near to God but their hearts are far from Him."
The best way to talk to Russ's "newly Jesus'ed up church" members is to quote their Bible Jesus back at them if you want to get to the nitty gritty.
Jesus performed the Sermon on the Mount so everyone could hear all-- straight from the Son of God. No middleman. Anyone could come. Why? Because what he was offering was for everybody. You can't help/save people if you won't even let them in!
And Gordon M. left off the most important because what he is really talking about is not worthiness, but judgement to the extreme-- which is represented by the Second Anointing wherein men declare themselves to be anointed to the highest level of heaven and, now, can, like God, do anything they want.
My older brother is an arrogant judgmental piece of crap who has the S.A. and if Jesus had been real would have considered him a lost cause along with Oaks, Bednar, et al -- as long as I, myself, am judging, haha.
"Judge not" is a stupid thing to say. Judge correctly and with love would work better. Judging keeps us alive in more ways than one.
This article is sort of like saying, "Swimming would be so much more enjoyable if it weren't so wet."
Worthiness and worthiness interviews are fundamental to Mormonism. It's a basic tenet of the church and a powerful, successful psychological tool that the church uses to keep its membership in line. Most members don't even see that worthiness interviews and being considered worthy have little to do with being a good person. Worthiness is more about loyalty to the organization. The day that the church quits focusing on worthiness will be the day that the church will look completely unrecognizable to anyone who spent any time in it.
If it is so successful, why are so many people leaving the organization? Why do outsiders think Mormons terrified of coffee and sleeveless blouses and normal underwear weird?
I don't know, I think the wealth that the church has been able to accumulate through tithing is one piece of evidence that the church's focus on worthiness has been pretty successful. It's successful to the extent that the control that the church seeks by requiring worthiness may not be readily apparent to the average bic member. Those who leave the church ultimately see the emphasis on worthiness for what it is. But for many exmos, I'd say it's something that wasn't always obvious and requires some deconstruction.
I agree that the "sell by" date on worthiness could be here, but more for younger Mormons who haven't experienced decades of indoctrination.
Most everything in Mormonism is so highly superficial; leaders gloss over things & peoples real situations & challenges bc empathy isn’t in the handbook.
The numbers involved + leaders’ limited time & resources prevent most real connections or genuine caring.
Contradictions abound across the span of mankinds existence with their stories and fables. If the rule of "worthiness" was so important to not going to hell or being cast out, ya think a God would have made it a priority from the beginning.
I mean really, a God who can create the universe, put galaxies into order, create worlds without end, build and populate our planet in a mere 6,000 years (per the creationist). And then kinda forgot to deliver a crucial message from day one with good old Adam. Perhaps, pass it down through the generations like, the Ten Commandments, and make sure ole Moses reinforces it to Israel, the chosen people. But no, it is presented just before the supposed end of times, and somehow everybody before gets a free pass and those at the end get jerked by a "worthiness" interview.
I ate that stuff up as a kid, which is expected, cause what do kids know. But if your a walking thinking adult looking at Rusty with big eyes full of moisture as you listen to his stone in the hat explanation, and weep at every new Temple announced.
b. ChurchCo sets these things up as though they came down in a shaft of light directly from the Dynamic Duo, so they don't have an Exit Strategy other than moving onto the next debackle as though the previous one never existed.
Down the Memory Hole but TBMs chortle 'Ongoing Revelation'
this strategy, believe it of not, works very well for ChurchCo.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2022 10:47PM by GNPE.