For those of you who don't know me, I participated on occasion several years ago, and now find myself lurking again for whatever reason. By way of background, my wife, kids and I have been out of Mormonism for more than 15 years. The rest of my extended family is for the most part still very Mormon.

One thing I'm beginning to grapple with now that I'm in middle age is what impact apocalyptic, end-of-world fears had on me as a child and into adulthood. There are typically two attitudes towards the end of the world in Mormonism: 1) oh shit, that sounds awful and I'm scared about it, and 2) bring it on so all these sinners around me get burned up. I fell into mindset #1. Reflecting back, I was afraid of the future, afraid of losing my mom (my parents had already divorced), afraid of nuclear war, etc. On top of my fears and insecurities, I lived in the south, where many of the locals had literal expectations of the rapture, etc. In other words, I was swimming bigtime in an apocalyptic world.

What impact do you all feel such teachings had on your sense of security, well being, and now, your adult psyche? Is anyone familiar with any academic research on this topic?

Humanity has some serious problems, and concerns about them are bound to arise whenever the news comes on.

TBMs and their type seem to deal with this reality in a couple of ways.

They can decide to consider both sides honestly, which is a hard thing to do. It requires serious thought, maybe even realizing you are wrong about many things, and compromising.

OR they can toss up their hands and say "I don't know, things are so messed up, humans will never find solutions, Jeebus needs to come down and fix it by burning to a crisp and damning to hell everyone who dares to disagree with (my opinion of the doctrines of) Him!!!"

Most of the people I love in this life fall into the second category. It's such a conversation stopper.

I find most people use this type of thinking to walk around with the attitude of how they're going to be saved while everyone else goes to hell, and it will be vewy, vewy soon!

To be honest, even though I have left the church (but still believe in God/Christ)-- I have always struggled with apocalyptic fears. Even before, when I was inactive from the church for 15 years.

All my life, I've had issues with depression and anxiety attacks. So people telling me about war, 9/11, the recent earth quakes, asteroid possibilities, 2012, and all that crap... I was told NEVER to live in a big city, or anywhere near one, because if a war ever broke out those would be the firs places to be hit!! lol. Even thought that's actually true, still, it held me back a lot. I have decided that I just don't want to listen to it anymore.

I would love to live in a big city, but I'm still afraid to for the above reason, lol.

These fears have already robbed me of several dreams. And taken away 90% of my desire to try hard in life and succeed.

Honestly, there were a lot of things I considered doing, but never did it simply because I was afraid of war, or the apocalypse. Things like:

-- Making a career of my love for art, sculpting, makeup, etc.-- like becoming a graphic makeup artist for movies, making monsters and such. Always loved that idea.

-- Becoming a great video editor. I LOVE to edit videos and add special effects. I would have really loved to study it in college, make it to Hollywood, and gotten a job working in film, helping to design commercials, movie trailers, or edit movies for the big screen, etc.

-- Graphic computer designs, I'm a total computer nerd, and I love designing things on the computer. I would have loved to study how to create computer animation, maybe use it to make cartoons, or special effects in movies.

Gosh there is just so much I would have loved to do, but never got the chance because these fears held me back (and even continue to!). People who teach apocalyptic crap are just horrible, and they REALLY need to stop!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2010 12:25AM by melissa3839.

There is the anger of God which people can argue back and forth, but the stupidity and Greed of Man can cause our own destruction. We are not so secure on this planet that we cannot in fact destroy ourselves. We are not indestructible!

There is a book by Michael Baigent called "Racing Toward Armageddon - The Three Great Religions And The Plot To End The World"

Thanks for the suggestion, Master C, I'll check it out!

Humans have the capacity to destroy everything with nukes in a giant instantaneous flash, or more slowly through environemntal neglect. Either way, it just feeds into the religiously-inspired apocalyptic thinking already out there.