We often hear TBM's say you can only have true joy or happiness through membership in the church. Since an often quoted LDS scripture 2 Nephi 2:25 says, “man are that they might have joy” implies that the Mormon god wants at least His people to have joy, you would think that his organization/church might be a source for that joy. I was thinking today it only brought/brings me boredome, misery, and pressure to conform (I am past the guilt induction). So here are some questions for LDS members to test this statement.

Do you enjoy the any of the following - all these things that are part of being a member of “the church”?:
• Sacrament meeting
• Priesthood meeting
• Relief Society
• Sunday School
• Fast and Testimony meeting
• Starving for a day a month
• Listening to the crazies bear their testimonies (that might be considered at least slightly entertaining)
• Being assigned to clean the church knowing that you pay enough tithing yourself to hire a janitor AND pay the entire ward budget
• Cleaning the church toilets
• Being interrogated about your sexual habits
• Allowing you kids to be interrogated about their sexual activities
• Being asked by an insurance agent about the kind of underwear you wear
• Being told what kind of underwear you must wear and when (always)
• Annually being shaken down by the bishop for money
• Paying a significant portion of your income to an organization which does not give an accounting of what it is being used for (that would serve you better by saving it)
• Working on the welfare farm/cannery for free and than finding out that the church sells what you produced to earn income
• Being told what to do practically every evening of the week
• Totally losing one day out of seven – sometimes more if you are “leadership”
• Ward Council (need I say more)
• Dressing like a Pillsbury Dough Boy
• Getting touched near your naked private parts by a strange
• Being coerced into promising things any normal person would not
• Taking oath of secrecy with penalties of death for revealing them
• Pantomiming throat slitting and disemboweling
• Wasting your time and gas driving your son around to collect “fast offerings” knowing that people can just hand it or mail it in.
• Getting up at 5:30 AM to take you kid to seminary and then have to drive back during rush hour
• Watching your 13 year old daughter having lessons/activities about the qualities of their future husband and what kinds of wedding dresses are “appropriate”.
• Being told what you can and cannot use for lesson materials while teaching lessons
• Being told to teach things you are not in 100% agreement with
• Taking your week of summer vacation to babysit a bunch of boys at Scout Camp
• Repeating the same prayers five or more times a day
• Being told when and how much to pray
• Family scripture study
• Reading scriptures everyday by yourself
• Reading church magazines
• Being “challenged” (ie. Expected) to read the BOM by a certain deadline

I understand that some devout Mormons might actually enjoy some of these, but I suspect most would say these are just things they "have to do" if they are really honest. Another telling question to ask after this is “Now tell me things you actually enjoy.” Although I might be able to remember individual events that were enjoyable, I can’t think of a single routine thing about being in the church that I really enjoyed. Not one.

Feel free to add or edit these. Looking for routine things almost everyone can relate to. I might pass this on to TBM's for fun.
FC

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever felt joy when I was an active member. It always just felt like obligation.

A mission - two years of one's life, with all its rules and restraints. It could be its own subject/subset.

Riding your bike 3 miles in the rain to Seminary at 5:30 in the frickin' morning!

Being expected to "share your talents" in Sacrament Meeting, while at the same time being told that what you chose to perform is inappropriate.

Being expected to serve a mission, while having to pay for it yourself and unable to choose where you would like to serve.

I've got more but I'm pissing myself off. Carry on.

The joy is being released from you mission and getting re-worlded.

That is the exact word I used to describe my feelings from the first moment I walked into my new church. The joy I felt there made me realize how joyless the Mormon church really is.

I heard that from the pulpit today. I snorted out loud and surprised my wife. BS detector is no longer on "stun".

There is joy in living a religion you really believe in, but in my case, I found the greater joy in resigning my membership from the LDS Church and living my life on my terms: authentically, owning my own power. That is the kind of freedom that brings authentic joy.

Being judged all the time.
Never being good enough.
Always feeling guilty.
Always being an example.
Never knew who I really was.
Having to always obey some one even has an adult.
My opinion was never counted.

How many times I've heard that!
Only real happiness comes from living the chruch rules and making church specific sacrifices. Everything else is a false joy, a counterfeit happiness, and Lucifers best tools of the trade. People walk around thinking that they are happy, but they have no idea how miserable they are because they are not living the mormon lifestyle.

That used to bug me because I've seen a lot of very happy people who were way more content that I was. They were in crowds cheering and they were on the beach, and they were crying with tears of joy at the track meet.

But us, we were fighting over why we had to have family home evening every monday, dragging ourselves out of bed on Sunday to sit in church all day, and praying that the snow would close church or that Conference would hurry up and get here, and grateful that we were so much happier than our decrepit neighbors who were laughing and chasing each other around in their yard. We even believed that we were sorry for them not having what we had.

Pardon me while I go point at myself in the mirror and snicker.

Ever hear that one? Of course we just thought we were unhappy when actually we were in the throes of pure joy, right? Mindboggling.

then how come people are not doubling & tripling up on Sac meeting & Sunday School on sunday. IF LDS meetings were 1 /10 as great as MORmONS claim they could sell tickets to the stupid things, & ask more than the super bowl or the world series.
Stupid MORmONS !

And great sorrow. I don't think a lot of churches can say they ruined people's lives by making them marry who will get them into the CK instead of marrying their love of their love.

I know what I feel, I know what makes me happy, don't presume to tell me you know more about my feelings than I do.

I accompanied DH to Sacrament meeting Sunday and I was struck by how little joy I saw. Most people looked bored, fed-up and obligated, although a few looked proud of themselves for their ability to "do right" and "endure to the end". No one looked at all "edified" much less like they were being brought joy.

I think the problem is that Mormons for the most part don't know what joy is. Just duty and obligation and forcing down doubts. Peace, loving and accepting others, confidence in yourself, your decisions, your view of reality...things that really bring joy isn't available through the practice of Mormonism, IMO.

My experience was the same. Lots of bored people at church. TSCC sucks the life out of people.

when the 3 hour block finally ended, but what really happened was it took awhile to recover from it, feeling so dragged out--driving home, changing clothes, and finally shaking it off. THEN relaxing like I should have been on a Sunday morning since I awoke.

And that's how it is now! Wild horses could not drag me back!

I used to feel a sense of relief at the end of Sunday when it was all over. That was a sense of joy I guess.

The happiest the church has ever made me feel was when I was released from my last church calling. It was a sense of real joy to know they had no more claim on my time.

The only other time I felt that much joy was when I was done with my mission.

First off, the church was a new thing in our family. So we went to church, and after the three hours we were tired and cranky when we got home. It wasn't making sense to me that we would feel so mad at each other when we walked in the door. We'd get home and start snapping at each other after having been so full of the spirit just an hour before.

For a while I couldn't figure it out and even dedicated our home so that we could chase away any lingering evil from our less than appropriate former lifestyle. And of course, being the selfcentered jerk that I sometimes can be, I even blamed the family for the atmosphere at home.

I never did recognize that the reason we were so unhappy when we walked through that door was because we were so tired and worn out from teaching and attending hours of classes and meetings. It wasn't the home that was making us unhappy, it was the demands of the church. Yet that was impossible because the church was the only true source of happiness, and so our own (or other peoples) shortcomings must be to blame.

We fought more as active LDS members than we did before or since.

Curiously, these days when we get home from our new (abominations before me) church we are not stressed out. We look forward to going, we rarely ever argue before or after, and it does not take an hourlong bike ride to decompress afterward like it did in the only true source of joy.

Ergo, all the prozac! pa dum dum!

Ron

^ LOL

Teamups/splits with missionaries - (slit my wrists)
Family Home Evening - arghhhhhhhh!!!

If that mantra doesn't suck the joy out of living, nothing will.

Did you mention home and visiting teaching and doing your genealogy work?

I spent 30 years in the LDS Church, wondering why I wasn't feeling that joy, and when it was supposed to kick in. Then I finally came the realization that it was actually the source of my unhappiness, and not my joy. I found the happiness once I left.