Mine was two fold: 1. I watched some people with great talents and potential for success in various fields in the "Outside World" not live up to their potential because they let the rules and regulations constrain them. SAD !
2. I watched some families get blown apart by split beliefs (TBM /APOSTATE), who in normal circumstances would have stayed together. SAD !
Watching my dad and others branded "unworthy" by the church miss their kids weddings.
Watching my friends worry themselves heartsick over inactive children, relatives uninterested in becoming Mormon, their own inability to keep every letter of the Mormon law etc.
Watching grown women behave like children because they followed "God's Plan" and married too young and too uneducated and/or inexperienced. Watching them take "become as a little child" too seriously and act dumb, talk like babies and have learned helplessness. Seeing them utterly dependent on their spouse and their church for their self-esteem and then brag about how they'd be nothing without the church.
"Watching grown women behave like children because they followed "God's Plan" and married too young and too uneducated and/or inexperienced. Watching them take "become as a little child" too seriously and act dumb, talk like babies and have learned helplessness. Seeing them utterly dependent on their spouse and their church for their self-esteem and then brag about how they'd be nothing without the church."
On Christmas or Easter sac meetings that happened to fall on the actual day of Christmas or Easter, the message was always about some RM's mission experience. Like a gave a f***ing fig! You'd think on Christmas or Easter, perhaps Jesus shoud be the focus not someone's mission or some temple being built somewhere. WHOOPEE DON'T. I always made a point of going to a midnight service of some CHRISTIAN church so I could actual hear about Jesus on his birthday..........just an idea. The chapel looks like a conference room. There is no church atmosphere at all. Probably because the LDS church is a business not a church. THAT IS SAD!! A picture of Jesus in the CHAPEL would be nice.
parents justifying cruelty because of church teachings. women staying in horrible situations because they viewed their marriage as eternal. people never feeling like they are good enough. people feeling like they are going to hell marrying outside of church. people staying single, inspite of finding someone they love, but couldn't marry because they weren't members. people feeling invisible because they were single. some never being forgiven by church for mistakes. some thinking they were superior because of their delusion. children living in an inescapable hell. men abusing artificial power. women giving up education to be married, because that was viewed as more important. women having children they didn't want. women not being able to have children, and feeling inferior, watching people make total fools of themselves in the name of religion. people living in unnecessary fear all their lives. abandonment of children who didn't live up to the religion. choosing religion over family. boys delaying or not getting education to go on missions. kids getting married for sex, way too young. people worrying endlessly about who they will or won't be able to spend eternity with. people running themselves ragged for the church. I could go on and on and on.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 12:06AM by anon for this comment.
Mothers not being allowed to participate in their baby's blessing since while they gave birth, they still had the wrong genitals.
People feeling such pressure to get married that they somehow convince someone who isn't that into them to marry them.(this was from reading a Mormon mommy blog)
Women having children they didn't really want, but did so because it was expected of them.
My junior year at BYU, one of my roommates was an adorable blonde from Winslow, AZ. She was sweet and kind and gorgeous and had a figure we all would have killed for. But she spent all the second semester trying to get her boyfriend, who was lukewarm at best, to marry her. When we asked her why she wanted to convince a guy who clearly didn't appreciate her to marry her, she said that she had spent almost a whole year dating this guy and she didn't want to waste that time on nothing. She was 20. Finally, she convinced her dad to buy them a trailer to live in while her future hubby finished college and I guess the promise of free housing finally swung the scales in her favor because they did get married, despite his reluctance. But he sooo didn't deserve her. She should have waited for a guy who realized how very lucky he was to have a woman like her - not someone she had to beg.
Watching a young female relative of DH's give up her dream career to stay home and have babies. She was a convert who married the missionary who converted her. She was bright. She had talent. She had ambition. But once the first child was on the way, she deep-sixed her years of education, her promising career, and soon after her child was born, bore her testimony that being a mother was what she was meant to do, not her dream career. I was still attending sac meeting at the time and I felt so SAD for her. She now has three kids and likely won't stop before having a couple more. Sad. Sometimes, the truth is in her eyes, and it is NOT what she said in that pukey testimony.
Edited for pesky typos.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 12:40AM by Sorcha.
The saddest thing to me was the stories you would read about in the Ensign about families that sacrificed all they had to travel to some distant temple and have their families sealed to them. They would show this poor family,talk about how they had to walk 5 miles to church because they had to sell their car because it cost to much to repair and they would NOT touch their temple money.These families would have nothing,yet they still pay their tithing and saved for their temple trip. I remember feeling disgusted at the GA's that they would stoop so low.
Being shunned judged and ridiculed by several females and some males for not serving a mission. Listening to how arrogant and closed minded a return missionary's testimony was every time! having to watch how fake and superficial some member's testimony's were after those people treated me like crap. watching how retarded their wholesome "mormon fun" activities were to them, as I sat back and watched while mocking it or was bored to tears.
Doing everything you were supposed to, in order to find happiness, and then not finding that happiness, because the church could not deliver on such promises.
If I had spent half us much working on my true problems, and ignored all the BS the church told me to do, I would have had a much happier life.
The way mormon fathers were. I would look at them with all their kids and think I never wanted to be like them. I think they had become less of themselves and more of an anonymous face of a father/ husband/ bishop/ whatever. I also thought many of them had been somewhat less masculine. That even scared me some.
What made me sad was the young man, already a father of two or three, with a job AND attending college who talked about how he hoped he could "endure to the end" and that he really hoped that the Lord would soon tell him he'd done enough. He sounded about a fly's eyelash from snapping from the strain. I still think about him and hope he (and his family) are okay. He seemed like a nice enough guy but he was clearly under way too much pressure. It really broke my heart.
since it has been most of my life story. One of the things I hate the very most is seeing the fallout of gay/straight marriages--let alone the horrible messages they send to gays.
I told my mother years ago--when she questioned me about going back to church--and I told her--NO MATTER WHAT ELSE IS FALSE about the church, this one reason alone is the reason I can never go back and never believe.
I spent most of my years in Primary, wore all the hats except pianist, and my saddest times were always when the focus was "Families are Forever" and in the large metropolitan city we lived in, the majority of children came from part-member homes. The sadness and confusion in their eyes because their family WASN'T forever. It was very sad indeed. Especially the song "Love is Spoken Here" breaks my heart everytime. I would dare say most of the children in our primary had no idea what they were singing when it was the verse about "mine is a home where ev'ry hour is blessed by the strength of priesthood power..."
had divorced parents and the father all but abandoned him. He saw him maybe once every other year because his dad just couldn't be bothered coming out to see him once he started his new family in St. George. It made me much more sensitive to the kids who sing "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home..." and other Mormon family songs. Because in some cases, Daddy isn't coming home any time soon.
Two young married TBM men were talking in the foyer of the chapel with genuine relish and glee about how they longed for polygamy to be reinstated.
I saw the expression on the face of one of their wives. She was young but giving birth to a child a year for several years had made her age way, way beyond her years. She always seemed tired, haggard and drawn.
She looked at her husband and her expression was one of hurt and betrayal. I felt so upset by this that I told him I thought he was sick and walked away before I said something else.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 08:04AM by matt.
What prompted me to ask this question was that I had just received news of a missionary who was instrumental in my conversion had literally drunk himself to death ..
We were close whaen he was on his mission. He WAS a good man, relative of TBM royalty, but with 3 failed marriages and the bottle taking over his life ..His was such a sorry tale. I wish I could have done more ,and he could have coped with life better..
Sometimes saddness hits you when you least expect it..
Sitting in YWs one day and having a leader ask, "What do you want to do when you get older?" and have all the girls in the room, though not me, say one way or another, "I want to have children!!!!"
Okay, cool. However, they were speaking from expectancy. I was asked why I didn't say the same thing as the others. I told them I raised my younger brother since his birth--that was enough for me! And I kept that up until they stopped asking. But from then on I was viewed differently. Sad, sad, sad little sheeple.
And now, years later, a good eighty percent of them dropped school to get married and now have one or two children. I know, because they are still on my FB.
My convert daughter dropped out of college to marry a Mormon.She was half way done. Yes, it is truly sad what they tell them. For girls marrying is the MOST important thing. After marriage she had to work to help make ends meet. And then yes, a couple yrs. later she had her first child but what went on in between was horrible.....bankrupcy, many moves, car repossessed. My daughter got caught up in the brainwashing for sure. Hook, line and sinker she thought Mormon life would be perfect. So hope she snaps out of it soon and finishes her education.
I couldn't believe when I heard this girl I used to like when we were single, said to me several years later, "I don't think my marriage is going real well, because we didn't get married in the temple." What!!!? Wake up sister! Your marriage is failing, because your lack of proper communication and connecting on a mental, emotional level! She struggled with bi-polar as well, which really didn't help her situation anymore. She only learned to blame the church for her inconveniances, instead of dealing with her own personal issues.
I was visiting a ward Sm many years ago before I mrried. A teenage girl was giving a talk about chastity I was perplexed as to why she was so emotional about this subject and it bothered me. It wasn't until I was driving away that I relized that the talk she gave was most likley part of her punishmnet for having sex. I was such an idiot I was probably the only adult in the SM that didn't realize what was going on bout her talk. I never knew this person but the memory has stuck with me. I cannot imagine the ridicule and shame she felt. What a hearless thing for a church to do to someone.
I also felt sad for the people who engaged in name calling and denigrated our religious beliefs. When I was much younger, I attributed it to a lack of manners.
I saw this more in Mormons, denigrating the beliefs of other religions than I saw in my non-LDS friends. Most of them liked Mormons, but thought some of the restrictions against them were funny - like no drinking coffee. Growing up though, there were a couple of my friends' parents who seemed a bit cautious of me at first because I was LDS but once they knew I wasn't out to convert their kids, they relaxed.
Mormons, on the other hand, made fun of Catholics (for worshiping the Virgin Mary - or so they thought - and a "dead" God, whatever that meant), Assembly of God members for being so excited all the time about their religion, Muslims and mainstream Christians (for the way they prayed mostly).
Also the idea that at least some Catholics have that Jesus is STILL dying for everyone's sins. (I think it's supposed to be one of those "outside of time" things but I'm not sure.)
forestpal Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Gosh, Susie Q, I never experienced that. > > I was a BIC, and all my life, no one ever > ridiculed me for being a Mormon--not once! > Mormons only imagine they are being "persecuted."
I think it depends on where you lived. Didn't happen in UT but it did happen in CA. In fact, my application for a volunteer job suddenly "got lost" because, as I found out later, the director hated Mormons and made a point of making snide comments in meetings.
PS: I presumed you were being facetious! :-) (corrected spelling)
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2012 01:54PM by SusieQ#1.
The lack of real empathy, the lack of use of its great influence and power over so many people to use to contribute in real ways for the improvement of humanity, the gap between love and the totality of what it stands for and leads to, the misleading and denial of faith and beliefs and trust, the lack of taking responsibility for its influence when it's bad effects we see, the silence and denial about child (and sometimes spouse) molestation within the family, the constant need for sacrificing people's interests - even quite large groups of people like the victims of child abuse, the blacks, the homosexuals, and the ex-mo's, the large gap between the teaching of free agency and for instance their often voiced conviction of 'deep within they still believes', generally hypocrisy and inconstancies and feelings of inadequacies that is numbing and therefore stumps real growth and progress and change, the tediousness of psalm-singing etc. - it's really built up around defending faith, strengthening the power of men over women, securing some people (some of those been on mission, those married, those having temple reccommends, etc.) as authoritarian figures over others - without any real results (as a system) even after some 180 years... If any improvements in leadership style ever occurs (or other changes seemingly for the better) it's always because of influence of the world outside of mormonism- it's never ahead of the world in anything real good in improvement or change... no contributor of truth, soundness, useful insights, etc. and also, as for it's truthfulness (in the New Testament's view of what it leads to) - no real miracles. ever!
I've only known one Mormon and for me the saddest observation was just seeing how he could not just simply be himself; follow his dreams, love who he wanted to, spend time LIVING... nope.
Two years ago, some dumb@$$ jerk from the local mission presidency was reaming my ward for not having a convert baptism in over a year. I happen to glance towards the back and I saw my RS president crying! I was totally shocked! O_o
>>>I think it depends on where you lived. Didn't happen in UT but it did happen in CA. In fact, my application for a volunteer job suddenly "got lost" because, as I found out later, the director hated Mormons and made a point of making snide comments in meetings.<<<
I was in a job interview many years ago, it had been set up by a "brother" who thought he could get me a job with the company. He was in the interview with me and the "owner". The owner became quite rude and asked me if I wore "band aides on my tits like the rest of the Mormons." It didn't phase me much, but the fellow who set up the interview for me was sitting next to me staring at the floor. He appeared absolutely helpless. And he had to work everyday for this horse's behind. Not only had he been taught to be subservant to "The Church" authority, he had let others in his life treat him like poo.