Ultra Mormon communities always got under my skin as well. The problem seems to be that you disagree with some of the principles being taught while simultaneously dealing with being treated like a child and having your agency taken away.
Sorry, I won't be much help here as the things you are describing are some of the things that lead me out of the church.
No it's okay, because if nothing else, this class has really helped me to have a perspective on
why people leave. I admit that when I was younger I often figured it was that whole "Oh cuz they sinned" thing or because someone hurt them personally, but I can see now, pretty clearly I think, how someone could sour to the actual Church, because this vision of it, the vision this class presents, is utterly rank to me.
Corvo,
we've discussed this at length before and really I don't know how you put up with it. you're far better at separating the culture from the church, try as I might I was never able to really separate them I felt they were part and parcel and excusing one for the other is just making excuses. Yeah, I know, church is perfect but people aren't. I get that. But at the same time, I could accept that excuse if it weren't just so damned toxic. Seriously though, it sounds like that class is toxin concentrated. Honestly if I was in your place I'd probably would've been like
ages ago.
I haven't deuced out yet because my diploma rides on this single class. I cannot graduate without passing this class, and I've spent years of my life and gone thousands of dollars into debt for this diploma, and I can't sacrifice that because of a single, albeit exceptionally awful, class. And it's pure shit that that situation is foisted upon me, but there it is.
I am fortunate that the experiences I've had prior to this have helped illustrate how the Church varies from place to place, I think. If I hadn't been to Brazil and seen that things can vary widely depending on where you are, I don't know how I'd have fared.
What surprises me is that I
haven't snapped in class yet. That I've held my tongue this far. Because holding my tongue and not flipping out are basically the hardest things for me to do in my entire life. And at times this class is almost perfectly wired to piss me off.
Today, for example. Once again I can't tell you what the topic of class was about. Maybe it was about good parenting? Maybe? Not sure. Here are things I noted during class, though:
-The teacher begins class by stressing that the Prophets threaten. Reasons for this remain unknown.
-The teacher then stresses that Anger is totally a Godly emotion. Like the above, there is truth here, but it is colored to suit his point.
-Teacher raises the specter of political correctness amongst a list of societal evils.
-Teacher literally extols the virtues of a benevolent dictator. Compares parenting to being a dictator or a hardassed coach, but also talks about how it sucks that politicians aren't spiritual like the kings in the Book of Mormon whilst completely forgetting that the good Kings in the Book of Mormon intentionally handed their reign over to politicians because dictators suck more often than not.
-Teacher cites statistics saying that there is a higher success rate in arranged marriages than not, whilst downplaying the amount of physical violence also present in these relationships. Plays whimsical clip from The Fiddler on the Roof to supplement point. Rambles about how instead of realizing 25 years down the road that they love each other, couples now wake up 25 years down the road and realize they don't.
And of course, my personal favorite:
To fear God means to actually fear God. Which means that, whatever else, this entire class period was spent psychologically building up to that point and reinforcing a culture of
fear into us. Fear that if you don't do what you're told, your marriage will end in divorce. Fear of divorce. Fear of modernity. Fear of democracy. Fear of the secular. Most intolerable of all, though, is Fear of God.
There's a video that the missionaries often play for investigators, a video of Joseph Smith's story, in which Joseph Smith Senior, whilst conversing with a local preacher, is accused of not being a God-Fearing man. He responds by saying "It seems to me that people spend too much time teaching people to fear God, and not enough time teaching them to love Him." And here I am, in a class room on a campus run by the Church espousing that view point listening to a teacher tell me that I ought to really be afraid of God.
Mind you, this isn't isolated to today's lecture, either. This semester is also the semester that included the marvelous lady who told us about the Holy Spirit notifying her of pregnancy at the moment of conception also asking us if we also had, and I quote, "a testimony of the devil." Now sure, "The Greatest Lie the Devil Ever Told" and all that, but
seriously? A testimony of the devil? Are we just stupid or are we completely forgetting that there is a power inherent in bearing witness, and that the spirit you bear witness of is the spirit that draws near? I'm not bearing testimony of fucking Satan. I'm not holding as an intrinsic part of my soul and identity a living testament to the power and majesty and works of the enemy of all mankind.
That's quite possibly one of the stupidest things I have
ever heard.
On a less doctrinal note, our teacher asked us a few weeks back to write about how we felt about our parents. What he neglected to mention is that he'd be reading what we wrote aloud in class. It isn't the most frustrating thing of all time, but in many ways it is many times more uncomfortable. I'm deeply uncomfortable with having something I privately wrote about my parents read to the class without my consent.
And one last complaint, before I go back to skipping FHE because my God why would I willingly choose to spend my time with those people anymore. A few weeks ago prof. made a HUGE stink about how States' Rights no longer exist because federal judges overturned the bans on marriage in Idaho and Utah. Nevermind that States' Rights has long been code for a certain other kind of discrimination, it galls me that this same teacher has yet to shed even a single tear over the trampling of people's rights in Ferguson.
It does not, however, surprise me. And not -just- because I think a large number of people from this area carry subconscious racist tendencies, and not because I desire to slander my teacher's reputation and accuse him of being anything less than an upstanding member of a culture I happen to detest thoroughly, but because
the notion that Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Movement have contributed to the downfall of American Society is fully embedded in the fabrics of this class. I shit you not. At the beginning of the semester we had to read some talk called "How We Lost the Plot" and that was the gist of how we'd done lost the plot: We got civil rights and then began prizing individuals over families. And I'll warrant that there is something right to the notion that community could stand to be prized more than it currently is by many a person. I'll warrant that maybe they're right about how this whole No-Fault-Divorce thing they rant about in class all the time really does have some negative externalities.
But you have to be shitting me when you ask me to listen to Mormons of all people complain about Civil Rights. And not just because of the race issues of our checkered past, but because Mormons themselves ought to fucking know better. A group of people for whom an extermination order existed ought to fucking know better.
And that concludes the rant until next Wednesday when I'm sure I'll have new and exciting reasons to hate this class.
