An epiphany I had tonight when posting to a friend's thread on FB:
I can hardly believe that for the first few days after my husband told me he was leaving the church, that I truly believed it would have been better had he died. I believed that at least our eternal marriage would be intact instead of ripped apart. What kind of a sick religion is it that teaches women and men to think that way? Our spouses are better off dead than apostatizing? He's better dead than here with his sons, loving and raising them? 99.99% of people in this world live and die without being faithful to the LDS church. God (if there were one) would never have that be his plan, to make such an obscure, bizarre, fucked up church be the only way back to him. That demented kind of reasoning is why the church is such a danger. Sadly, the way I used to think is the rule rather than the exception. Else why all of the freaking out when someone leaves?
I totally agree. That was the most hurtful thing my father (former stake presidency counselor, one time BYU instructor, and lifetime CES employee) said to me when I told him I no longer believed..."son, this is worse than if you were dead, because being spiritually dead is eternal and being physically dead is temporary". Irrational cult brainwashing at its worst.
(I left the church 5 or 6 years before our divorce. my leaving and the divorce are only a little related.)
Anyway, when I told her I had discovered the fundamental claims of the church to be false, she said she felt the same loss and sadness that she would have felt if I'd died.
"Loss of virtue is too great a price to pay even for the preservation of one's life — better dead clean, than alive unclean. Many is the faithful Latter-day Saint parent who has sent a son or a daughter on a mission or otherwise out into the world with the direction: "I would rather have you come back in a pine box with your virtue than return alive without it."
Do you think that ass gets the concept of atonement? I get it, I don't even believe it's real.
This is why this cult is not funny to me, they do serious damage to the living, especially the simple and the kind, and they need to go away.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2013 02:42AM by gentlestrength.
I never said those words to sithlord, but we have talked about it since then. From the minute he told me he didn't believe, I began to realize that my soul had been tied down with a million fine strands of indoctrination. One by one, I've snipped them in two and risen from the hell that was the church.
People ask what is the harm in continuing to attend church, even if I don't believe. This s the harm. You are right gentlestrength. It's not funny, it's not a joke, it's serious business, dead serious.
", I began to realize that my soul had been tied down with a million fine strands of indoctrination. One by one, I've snipped them in two and risen from the hell that was the church."
I am glad you posted in reply, I didn't want you to feel your topic had been hijacked.
You had brought how members of the Mormon fraud cult do and will wish death on family, spouses, and children over leaving the faith and facing "outer darkness".
I don't have the numbers, but I am confident there are over a thousand LDS kids (many homosexual) who have killed themselves because they couldn't reconcile their natural, healthy sexuality with Mormn doctrine or their family. Whether they sinned or not is of no concern to me, putting them in a morality that results in their choosing death over life is far more evil than any "sin" of sexuality.
Part of the sin of eternity is that it allows these lunkheads to forego the hard work of dealing with life and mortality, they've got all the time in the world to live, so why get right today. Just obey, get to the Celestial Kingdom, and you are living large and forever. It will all work out in the end.
Twojedis i agree completely. I felt this way years ago when my family left the church and I treated them like shit. I thought i was doing what was right. Turns out I was just being a dick. It's why I will never go back and will fight it.
Interesting how it also falls on the person who wants to leave as well. I thought I would be better off dead then to rock the boat, By being true to myself and what I believed. I had many preconceived ideas about how my coming clean would effect me and how I would be treated and shunned. And then the eternal damnation!!Where did I learn this. I can't remember a specific time or date I was taught what would happen to an apostate. BUt I knew it and I saw it and I was freakin scared. Yes lds people started acting the way I suspected but I was surprised to find my family wasn't as harsh. Disappointed maybe and still a little patronizing at times but still excepting for the most part. I am luckier than most. Fear and guilt were my biggest enemies!!
Packer and Oakes counseling people to ignore the commandment regarding bearing false witness, and instructing people to concoct a 'testimony' is blatantly fraudulent.
To then vilify and demonize someone for not being convinced is compounding and escalating the situation.
You're right, twojedis. It's totally crazy thinking--that it would be better to be dead than be an unbeliever. The indoctrination can be deep and is continually nourished by the church leaders. The church has a platform where, for three hours every Sunday, the messages they chose to preach are determined to be inspired and followed. When one is indoctrinated over a lifetime, it's easy to think that the church only teaches people to live good, fulfilling, serving-others, family-oriented lives, until one begins to study history and learns of the disconnect between the church's teachings and the church's actions--not to mention all the crazy talk from the general authorities.
Early in my church membership, I heard a someone relate a story about a guy asked to give a healing blessing. The guy receiving the blessing had some sort of terminal illness like cancer or something similar. The guy to give the blessing claimed to have had personal revelation that if he blessed the guy to be healed that he would recover. But when he placed his hands on the sick man's head to actually give the blessing, he received another revelation that if the man recovered from his illness, he would eventually leave the church before he died, and if he died from this illness, he would die a faithful member.
The obvious question someone asked was what did the guy decide to do? The answer was that he gave a blessing for peace and comfort and not to be healed.
In retrospect, this was probably a FPR probably put together by a GA for some talk or fireside.
I think this has actually caused some Cog-Dis for my TBM wife. She seems to be having a hard time understanding how I can be damned because I don't believe in the church and yet I am a good husband and father.
I'm lucky, that within days I realized that this was flawed reasoning. Some are not so lucky. Some marriages dissolve over this, with the "worthy" spouse seeking a new eternal companion. It's frightening how every other amazing character trait that someone has is overshadowed by the lack of faith the apostate has in the church. I also realized quickly that divorce was a stupid idea. Sithlord is a great dad and if we were divorced, then I would lose all control over anything he might say or do when the kids were with him. Plus, I love him. It sickens me that I could have wished him dead for even a moment because of the church. That's some mighty strong mind control.
I wonder if my parents will feel this way about me :'-( DH is just worried that our family will be cursed. Crazy thing is DH is the rational one usually! Cursed by Adam-God... Um yeah.
Studying how the Smith family was into the occult, complete with curses and magic, showed me where the whole notion of cursings in the church came from.
It's an old 1800's kind of thinking. It's occult thinking. It goes along with ghosts, and gold digging, and spirits cursing you and taking things away from you. When you read up on how deep the Smith family was into all that it's easy to realize that it's all derived from their mind set. They believed in some very crazy stuff. Joseph passed it on to mormonism.
You've been cursed until now. Will bad things happen to you? Yes, they will. They happen to everyone. We've had good and bad in the nine months since we left. Look around you. Good and bad happens to everyone, regardless of religion. It just does. Read about the "Just World Fallacy". You don't get what's coming to you. The world doesn't operate that way, but the conditioning and mind control of the church runs deep.
By the way, you are my kind of chick. Decisive, and headstrong. Once I learned where the garments came from, that was it. Pitched them in the trash. Boom! It felt a little scary, but I never looked back. Each new thing was another awakening. First cup of coffee, first curse word (yes, I was THAT Mormon who didn't even think curse words), first drink, first nightclub....
You know what? Satan is fictional. It's nice to know that.
Thanks it's nice to hear that. I have felt so weak for so long but I have this feisty spirit that has been dormant for too long! BTW we are Star Wars geeks too :-) my kids know the movie lines and characters for most of the movies. My four year old is obsessed with AT-ATs right now and this very night he told me his one year old sister (who was being a stinker) was a "nerf herder"!
As I've been out of the church, my confidence has grown, I've become bold about my beliefs, and a raging feminist. I no longer take any crap from anyone, and I feel so free! Your kids sound adorable. Nerf herder! Bahahahahaha!
I just hope that I can get confident enough to stand up to my parents and MIL about my choices when the sh** hits the fan! I think I will also be a very strong feminist after all of this too because for the past 8 years it's been really hard to swallow that even though I was stronger in the church than DH I still wasn't "worthy" to have the priesthood because I'm a woman.As for the kiddos they're pretty adorable and all four are stubborn as hell!