ronitoswife
Neo Member
Yep, don't care!!
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Mormon/Ex-Mormon Thread of 3 hour blocks and salvation flowcharts
- Thread starter ronito
- Start date
Yep, don't care!!
Laurentius
Member
Hm, interesting. I forgot that was a thing. Probably because I heard so many times in seminary and Sunday school that you were potentially fucked if you chose to get a civil marriage first.
My favorite line was "what, a temple marriage isn't good enough for you?".
I would be aghast and appalled at this, except I took Family Foundations last Semester (which is still Satan's course, btw) and in that class there was a "case study" (REEL PROBLUMZ FROM REEL BYU STUDENTS) in which the class asked you to discourage a young couple who had chosen to be wed civilly first from doing so. Mind you this couple had spent copious time and prayed and felt that the Lord had answered their prayers, telling them to wed civilly first and then in the Temple.
So basically, in its typically tone-deaf way, BYUI wanted me to tell someone that the answer to their prayers was wrong.
And lest I spend all morning raving about that horrible, hate-fueled class, that's all I'm gonna say.
Yeah, so it's MSNBC but still, national press on the Dehlin thing and surprise! It's not good for the church.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/watch/speaking-out-for-equality-396390979751
Meanwhile we have Oaks trying to tell us he needs protection for his beliefs.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/watch/speaking-out-for-equality-396390979751
Meanwhile we have Oaks trying to tell us he needs protection for his beliefs.
Thaedolus
Member
Looks like he's got his verdict and he's going to announce and discuss it with Fabrizio on Radio West at 11MST.
My wife and I will be formally resigning. I guess this last year was the last time I'll ever have the church as a charity on my tax forms.
We weren't really NOMs anymore, hell I was a NOM when I started contributing to this thread. Now I'm just done.
The one thing that really saddens me is just how far removed orthodox mormons are from the reality of the world and how it views them... and how with every action like this and the idiotic political debacles like prop 8 and the recent press conference it just continues to prove the world right.
It went from being a tradition I can understand to a matter of personal conscience that I can no longer formally associate myself with the organization.
Purple Cheeto
Member
I mean no one is shocked by this right? The Church wants to stick to their 1800s belief system in the face of an ever changing world and if you don't like it they don't want you. The one true church has no room for compromise!
Not shocked, just disappointed. I keep holding out hope that they'll figure it out and actually try and act as Christ would have.
It really is telling. I have a friend who is personal friends with Dehlin and is firmly in the NOM camp. And she and another friend were talking about how they wished that the church would put out guidelines about what they could and couldn't talk about. The whole discussion really blew my mind. Here are grown women in 2015 hoping that their church would give them guidance as to what opinions they could voice and where and when. It's one of those moments when the absurdity of it all just slaps you full on in the face.
As to getting our names removed. I don't know really. I'm with Dehlin on this one that Mormonism is as much a culture as anything else and you can't really stop being it when you were raised in it. But at the same time, I can't say I'm terribly comfortable with having them count me as a member when there's so much of what they do that I find abhorrent.
Thaedolus
Member
Holy shit...how do you have a conversation like that and not feel like you belong to a cult? Please tell me what I can and cannot discuss or express in public? Fuck. Off.
As far as name removal is concerned...yeah, I refuse to even sit my butt in a pew for family events now because I don't want to even appear as if I'm supportive of this repressive institution. My name removal was more out of utility because I didn't like getting tracked down every time I moved. And it did seem effective; when we got my wife's name removed the bishop had no idea I was an ExMo or that she was married.
It has one other angle for me. We decided to stop attending completely right when my daughter would have been baptized. She'll be turning 9 soon, and will lack all saving ordinances putting her in a separate category as far as the church is concerned. I'm not going to let my eldest be the only person who is considered a non-member. I know it'll ruffle the feathers of family but if they're concerned about saving ordinances for their granddaughter I want to make it very clear that I am with her.
Also, I'm not very good at a quiet middle ground.
That's true whether you resign or not. I sent my letter in and I am still, in my mind, ethnically Mormon.
I'm interested in hearing more from active traditional mormons about their thoughts. Obviously exmos are like "See? Told you." I've only heard one comment from an active mormon and that was "Look at the letter they didn't excommunicate him for 'asking questions'" and there was one active mormon I know that posted a quote about not trusting your reasoning. But otherwise it's completely quiet out there.
Wife and I were raised in Utah county. Your avatar seems quite appropriate for the question btw.
Just visited Mormon family in Spanish Fork, UT. Fuck. Never going back.
I did see an interesting discussion from Active mormons worried about the call out to saying that Dehlin's views on the Book of Mormon and Abraham being fiction. There are a lot of NOMs out there that view the BoM and BoA as inspired fiction but fiction nonetheless which is something that Dehlin really pushed (which makes sense that's the only explanation you can get to for someone that's looking for an explanation). Some were in a panic that their views would get them excommunicated.
As an active Mormon, this makes me incredibly paranoid. I had a bishop and multiple church authorities befriend me on facebook after a conflict with a now married member to monitor my posts so this decision means a lot. This reinforces my belief that I'm being monitored which is unsettling.
Personally, I see the church's side but at the same time this makes it really difficult to be a member moving forward. If this tradition of excommunicating members that share a different perspective on things continues then this church is in trouble moving forward. I emailed my bishop seeking clarification on this. It's not at the point where I'd quit because it invalidates four+ years of membership. However, it sucks that it had to happen. Couldn't they have disciplined him with something else other than excommunication?
I don't want to leave but if this is the start of a purity test of some sorts then we've got a problem. If I can't express disdain at church policy moving forward or support a counter position or political candidate then there are problems.
ronitoswife
Neo Member
I wish more realized this. We decided to go the civil route first since Ronito needed a special sealing clearance because of his prior marriage. Since we didn't know how long that would take we decided to do a civil marriage first. Even my bishop at the time said to go ahead and do it. But good lord you'd think the world was ending the way most of my family and many friends were acting. We even had people pull Ronito aside AT OUR WEDDING to tell him that I deserved better. It was so hurtful. It's not surprising to me at all by their reactions but a little compassion would have been nice.
I'm not surprised by this at all but I am disappointed. The church leaders have pretty much shown that to question anything will not be tolerated. Leaving many members wondering where their place is in the church. It's not even about doubting your doubts anymore. Apparently having any doubts and expressing them vocally means you are too unfaithful and are not worthy of God's blessings. This whole event is going to continue the negative effect this line of thinking has had on so many members of the church. I understand why some are starting to say they wish the church would set out guidelines for what they can express and what they can't. But at the same time I don't understand how that is even an acceptable idea to them. It's really sad actually.
This seems to be the TBM view after I was trying to figure out where the line now was.
It's pretty clear that Dyed in the wool Mormons are uncomfortable making the tent large enough to accommodate anything but literal belief in all the church's truth claims.
Yup, as those of you on my facebook will see I just said,
It's not "Doubt your doubts" it's "Don't have doubts and if you do, don't TALK about them." It's not "Stay in the boat" it's "Sit your ass down"
And the active mormon reactions have started coming in . A whole heap of character assassination with a side of victim blaming. Sad, this could have been a chance for the church to have a meaningful introspection about doubt and the way forward because the doubt problem for the church is only going to get worse and not better. Instead it's character assassination and "I wish they would tell us what we could talk about."
It's not "Doubt your doubts" it's "Don't have doubts and if you do, don't TALK about them." It's not "Stay in the boat" it's "Sit your ass down"
And the active mormon reactions have started coming in . A whole heap of character assassination with a side of victim blaming. Sad, this could have been a chance for the church to have a meaningful introspection about doubt and the way forward because the doubt problem for the church is only going to get worse and not better. Instead it's character assassination and "I wish they would tell us what we could talk about."
Guy who is doing the /r/latterdaysaint ama on Monday posted this on facebook.
http://mormonmidrashim.blogspot.com/2015/02/three-meditations-on-one-excommunication.html
(Sam Brown didn't write this but I'm making a probably incorrect assumption that his sharing the article indicates assent)
It makes the argument that John Dehlin was incentivized to continue to disbelieve or undergo pain because it brought him donations. It sets up John as being a professional victim, which may have merit if he didn't take huge paycuts to embark on the work he wanted to undertake. What John revealed through his excommunication is that there is no safe space within Mormonism to doubt or ask questions. There is only orthodoxy and the rhetoric that reframes orthodoxy in increasingly obtuse structures and can only be maintained as you continue to fundamentally redefine words like: truth, translate, and revelation.
I'll be honest. I thought he was better than that. I thought he was a deep enough thinker to see that the knife cuts both ways. We see the incentives the Church presents: eternal family, exaltation, social structure, easy answers, seeing the weddings of your friends and family. It makes the argument that John felt the incentives to disbelieve (money) were stronger than his incentives to believe (exaltation/eternal bliss), and that even if he came to a greater knowledge of truth after his faith journey he would still choose money. It's another ad hominem attack that missed the entire picture of what just transpired with John Dehlin. The orthodoxy can have it.
Then what are the incentives the church has to not allow doubt to be expressed publicly or to prevent safe spaces to be created where it is okay to doubt or question the upper leadership of the church? Orthodox Mormons have accepted the narrative that openly expressing doubt might make others doubt so critics and open doubters must be silenced.
I deleted my supportive post on the lds ama announcement, and while I'll refrain from wading in, fundamentally his argument in his first book offers an alternate justification for the actions of Joseph Smith as originator of the church. His second book is a purely devotional work that makes the argument that connecting the dots of every individual of the entirety of our human family is the fundamental goal of the church and a goal that deeply resonates with him (human inclusion).
Feeling a bit betrayed right now, but I should have never relied on or looked to someone else for ideas on how to navigate very personal aspects of my own life (the religion of me and my family). You'd think a descendant of Hugh B Brown that argues or discusses with his own family that Harold B Lee was probably taken from the earth early because of his actions preventing full fellowship of black members during his time as prophet would get it and still offer a strain of mormonism that I can understand. With this action... I'll be frank, I no longer understand how anyone who has done the work, read the history and approached Mormonism impartially could remain.
Thaedolus
Member
I love the accusations of "priestcraft" without any sense of irony when people outside of the GAs make money on church-related activities...as if anyone would buy an apostle's book if he didn't have his status in the church, or as if my extremely wealthy uncle serving as mission president wasn't having all his expenses paid for 3 years, including a mansion to live in, extravagant retreats and having his family flown out to visit overseas free of charge while missionaries pay out of pocket to slave away.
I really need to stop thinking about Mormonism because it just continually makes me sick to my stomach to think about the blind hypocrisy.
I really need to stop thinking about Mormonism because it just continually makes me sick to my stomach to think about the blind hypocrisy.
Laurentius
Member
On a completely different note...
I played through The Last of Us for the first time recently (just beat it last night). I had no idea (TLoU spoilers, I guess)
I played through The Last of Us for the first time recently (just beat it last night). I had no idea (TLoU spoilers, I guess)
that the last level takes place in Salt Lake City. Pretty interesting, I don't think I've ever played a game that had a scenario in Utah. Felt slightly surreal to me. Was fairly interesting to be killing zombies with the SLC Temple on the horizon!
Laurentius
Member
Yeah, definitely didn't match the actual city too well, but I figure that was probably the case for all the other cities in the game as well. They didn't really do the temple justice either, but it was at least cool to see it.
Thought I should check in and talk about Church in China. It's actually really nice, in a way. I've been once in Beijing and now I attend the Nanjing branch (how many people can say they've attended Church in Nanjing and Goiania?) and it feels really nice compared to Rexburg.
There's something about Frontier wards that I really love. Everybody has that Missionary spirit going on, and the ward unity is born from "we need to stick together because there are maybe 20 of us" and not from "you will stick together because there are 20 thousand of us." It feels like a rag-tag band held together by something much more real than the systems and laws binding people together in Rexburg.
What's especially neat about Church in China is that we can't proselyte or even talk to Chinese nationals who are members. So everyone has a Missionary spirit in them, but in the most unusual of circumstances the Church reminds us frequently that the only and best way to do missionary work in China is to abstain from doing Missionary Work.
It's kicked off a lot of thinking in me about the whole obeying the law of the land thing, led me to investigate more about the Church under the Nazi regime and well, sort of lit a renewed fire in me. For the first time in goodness knows how long I'm thinking about stuff, feeling stuff, and actively going out to learn stuff.
It's surprising how stimulating challenge can be. I don't even know if the people in Nanjing realize how utterly fascinating it is to be here, and maybe in a few months I'll be like them and have forgotten to the point of seeing it all as mundane.
On an additional note, we're having YSA conference in Shanghai later this month. Shanghai! Way, way more interesting to me than just going to downtown Tacoma.
There's something about Frontier wards that I really love. Everybody has that Missionary spirit going on, and the ward unity is born from "we need to stick together because there are maybe 20 of us" and not from "you will stick together because there are 20 thousand of us." It feels like a rag-tag band held together by something much more real than the systems and laws binding people together in Rexburg.
What's especially neat about Church in China is that we can't proselyte or even talk to Chinese nationals who are members. So everyone has a Missionary spirit in them, but in the most unusual of circumstances the Church reminds us frequently that the only and best way to do missionary work in China is to abstain from doing Missionary Work.
It's kicked off a lot of thinking in me about the whole obeying the law of the land thing, led me to investigate more about the Church under the Nazi regime and well, sort of lit a renewed fire in me. For the first time in goodness knows how long I'm thinking about stuff, feeling stuff, and actively going out to learn stuff.
It's surprising how stimulating challenge can be. I don't even know if the people in Nanjing realize how utterly fascinating it is to be here, and maybe in a few months I'll be like them and have forgotten to the point of seeing it all as mundane.
On an additional note, we're having YSA conference in Shanghai later this month. Shanghai! Way, way more interesting to me than just going to downtown Tacoma.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
Non-Mormon here so forgive me for intruding.
I've read the entirety of this thread over the last week and it is absolutely fascinating. Seeing some of you go through an entire personal journey, intertwined with learning a lot about Mormons and the LDS church and the internal battles you all face is an eye opener.
I also applaud how you've managed to stay so civil over some very contentious issues and how supportive you've been to each other.
Corvo and Ronito in particular are pretty astounding twin personalities. Mirror young/old images of the same chap.
I've read the entirety of this thread over the last week and it is absolutely fascinating. Seeing some of you go through an entire personal journey, intertwined with learning a lot about Mormons and the LDS church and the internal battles you all face is an eye opener.
I also applaud how you've managed to stay so civil over some very contentious issues and how supportive you've been to each other.
Corvo and Ronito in particular are pretty astounding twin personalities. Mirror young/old images of the same chap.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
Well there are a few reasons.
First of all I'm quite curious about religious in-groups on the internets, especially (forgive me for saying this, but it's true) the more culty ones. I'm a Brit, so Mormons are a thing I'm likely to never run into. We've never even had Mormon missionaries here up in the north east, we've had Jehovas Witnesses but never Mormons so I'm unlikely to ever get to chat to one.
I remember being a kid, and being dragged to catholic mass, and having my grandmother expecting me to be a priest and having absolutely no interest at all, sitting in confessional making shit up to try and pass the time while a priest pressed me for more information. I guess at least I was naive enough to not understand what he was drilling for...
Regardless as a non-religious person who is fascinated by the myths and histories and rituals and norms and divisions within religious traditions I tip my hat to you all for being very decent folk dealing with an existential change in the culture you're bound to, believers or not.
I'm also really interested in the historicity of religion and how religious folk come to terms with discovering cast-iron evidence and skepticism for the first time. Mormonism is very interesting for that, given that it's a new religion but has been around for long enough to have it's own multiple branches of heresy and revisionism.
So by reading the whole thread I've got a pretty unique insight into the various journeys you guys go on, the mental gymnastics that are required to stick to it when you begin to doubt, how that all kind of falls away. It's also been pretty cool learning about some of the more wacky stuff, but also the mundane. The missions talk for example, that's really interesting as it seems to be a pretty high pressured thing and make or break for a lot of you.
Marriage and relationships is probably the biggest takeaway for me. The pressure you guys are under at such a young age to sign up for eternity, it's all so very medieval. Yet a lot of you find partners for life and love them deeply, others find their soul mates through mutual understanding of how horrible you perceive your situations to be.
I compare Corvo and Ronito because it would seem, from their back and forths, that Ronito went through much the same, in different ways. Corvo is a really interesting guy, he's quite clearly a very reasonable and modern person who is conscious of the inherent sexism, homophobia and racism of many church doctrines and always takes a step back to try and reconcile it with more secular and modern viewpoints. The Corvo at the first few pages of the thread is definitely a different guy to the one who cannot sit through the family values lessons at BUI. He's just growing up like a normal dude even though he's been stuck in this weird, static, introverted town. I also like that the ex-mo's are all giving him space to think it through rather than jumping in with 'see we all felt like that and guess what it's nonsense you'll realise soon enough'. I bet he's going to love China.
My favourite thing I discovered? The stuff about the guy who forged the Anton transcripts. I'm a writer, and that stuff is fiction gold.
Sorry, I realise this is all very voyeuristic but I'll likely never have this kind of insight again. Thank you.
First of all I'm quite curious about religious in-groups on the internets, especially (forgive me for saying this, but it's true) the more culty ones. I'm a Brit, so Mormons are a thing I'm likely to never run into. We've never even had Mormon missionaries here up in the north east, we've had Jehovas Witnesses but never Mormons so I'm unlikely to ever get to chat to one.
I remember being a kid, and being dragged to catholic mass, and having my grandmother expecting me to be a priest and having absolutely no interest at all, sitting in confessional making shit up to try and pass the time while a priest pressed me for more information. I guess at least I was naive enough to not understand what he was drilling for...
Regardless as a non-religious person who is fascinated by the myths and histories and rituals and norms and divisions within religious traditions I tip my hat to you all for being very decent folk dealing with an existential change in the culture you're bound to, believers or not.
I'm also really interested in the historicity of religion and how religious folk come to terms with discovering cast-iron evidence and skepticism for the first time. Mormonism is very interesting for that, given that it's a new religion but has been around for long enough to have it's own multiple branches of heresy and revisionism.
So by reading the whole thread I've got a pretty unique insight into the various journeys you guys go on, the mental gymnastics that are required to stick to it when you begin to doubt, how that all kind of falls away. It's also been pretty cool learning about some of the more wacky stuff, but also the mundane. The missions talk for example, that's really interesting as it seems to be a pretty high pressured thing and make or break for a lot of you.
Marriage and relationships is probably the biggest takeaway for me. The pressure you guys are under at such a young age to sign up for eternity, it's all so very medieval. Yet a lot of you find partners for life and love them deeply, others find their soul mates through mutual understanding of how horrible you perceive your situations to be.
I compare Corvo and Ronito because it would seem, from their back and forths, that Ronito went through much the same, in different ways. Corvo is a really interesting guy, he's quite clearly a very reasonable and modern person who is conscious of the inherent sexism, homophobia and racism of many church doctrines and always takes a step back to try and reconcile it with more secular and modern viewpoints. The Corvo at the first few pages of the thread is definitely a different guy to the one who cannot sit through the family values lessons at BUI. He's just growing up like a normal dude even though he's been stuck in this weird, static, introverted town. I also like that the ex-mo's are all giving him space to think it through rather than jumping in with 'see we all felt like that and guess what it's nonsense you'll realise soon enough'. I bet he's going to love China.
My favourite thing I discovered? The stuff about the guy who forged the Anton transcripts. I'm a writer, and that stuff is fiction gold.
Sorry, I realise this is all very voyeuristic but I'll likely never have this kind of insight again. Thank you.
No we can talk to other foreign Mormons. We cannot associate with other Chinese Mormons. How Church HQ coordinates I don't know. Presumably the Chinese government must allow Church HQ to speak with them on some limited basis. But Foreign Passport holders and Chinese Nationals are not permitted to attend the same meetings or even discuss the locations and times of such meetings.
Essentially the idea is to ensure that we remain separate to keep us from organizing in any threatening way, I presume. We were informed that Chinese govt. reps actually frequently visit the meetings to ensure we also do not make any inflammatory statements and that we enforce the passport rules.
It isn't as gigantic an intrusion as it sounds, since Church carried on exactly as always, but it is noteworthy. One key difference is that every Sunday they have to read the same First Presidency message from the pulpit reminding us we're forbidden from any form of proselyting.
Given how defensive I was early on, I'm very, very sorry you had to see me like that.
I'm 26 and unwed. So on the one hand I'm an old fart. On the other hand, because you're married you are automatically older than me, even if you were like, 19.
Thanks, I like to think so, too. I don't like to think of where I was and where I am in terms of better or worse, but I do think I've changed. And I agree that one major strength of this thread is that people don't pressure each other here. I've spent some long nights just talking to people from this thread to try and work through it, and the one thing I've valued above all else is exactly that.
I lived through that whole Mark Hoffman thing. From when he was meeting with the church leaders and it was all over the news that they'd found the Anton transcripts and the church leaders were very excited about it. To when the forgeries were unveiled. That was a big deal. A whole slew of people were like "Hey wait! The church leaders were all over the news talking about how they had prayed about this and they were real documents. Now suddenly they're forgeries?" But those people got shut up real quick. Then a few later suddenly the murders went down. That was crazy. I remember being like "Do they mean the same guy? It can't be the same guy" and it was. I think there was a made for TV movie of it somewhere but seriously it could be a Hollywood movie
Thaedolus
Member
It's a perspective I welcome and am very curious about...as a former insider and now outsider, I've got a relatively rare perspective, but I really haven't been able to sit down with someone who knows little about Mormonism to discuss it with them, even though that constitutes like 99.9% of the world. I mostly only ever talk about it to other ExMormons or Mormons. I was raised in an LDS household and spent the last decade in Utah, so I'm just now meeting a lot of people who have very little exposure to Mormons now that I live out of Utah again.
I remember thinking growing up that Mormons were widely respected and viewed in high regard around the world, but now I'm really starting to understand how small, culty, and weird most of the world views them. I've tried making that point to an LDS cousin of mine, but he insists on that old naive view that I had growing up...oh well. Honestly, my Mormonism is something I want to put totally behind me and forget about, but it's really impossible when your whole family seems absorbed by it.
Billy_Pilgrim
Member
Well I think it's probably wise that I don't expand upon my thoughts too much, given that I'm something of a guest here and you're all nice folks.
Safe observations:
-It's very American. Which is of course understandable. We tend to see a lot of American religious groups as being somewhat detached from reality, it's not just Mormonism. That's not an anti-American stance either, it's just very alien to us. In Britain church is just something that old people do as a social exercise.
-On a similar note it seems like a form of wish fulfillment for an American christian history. I can go down the bottom of my street and touch Roman christian building remnants. The actual history is very real to me.
-Within Britain at least, Mormonism is seen as outwardly nice but inwardly very sinister and is very much an oddity. Someone converting would be seen as utterly baffling and the first reaction would be 'what's wrong with them?', but we left evangelical Christianity behind long ago.
-Mormon or ex-Mormon it seems as though there's a goldfish bowl element to everything. I don't want to drop the C word again, but...Ya'know.
-Missionaries are a nuisance, a firm and polite 'no thank you' is all you can really expect from most. We'd conflate Mormons and Jehovas witnesses as they're the only door knockers you're ever likely to get. Some people are hostile towards missionaries as they're seen to prey on mentally weak or vulnerable people. That may seem extreme to you, but it is what it is.
-Because of evangelism in general in america, and 'church' as a business, there will be open hostility towards mormons I suppose, but you're not in any competition or a threat to anyone here so you're unlikely to get it as you may do in some bible belt areas.
-The only people you could convince not to drink here are reformed alcoholics, and abstinence of alcohol is another 'american' thing that we will never understand.
-Brits are very hung up on sex, but even for us the obsession the mormon church has with it takes things waaaaay too far.
Bear in mind that the above is a broad and vague summation of a general attitude towards mormonism, from my experience and not necessarily my thoughts. As I've said I'm not religious but I'm also no fedora wearing branded atheist. I just love learning about this stuff and trying to wrap my head around what it must be like to believe it, for want of better words, in spite of reality.
I'm not trying to offend anyone, just thought I'd respond to the above chap.
Interestingly since reading this thread and posting I've learned that my best friend's drummer had a mormon girl as his first girlfriend. The attitude towards pre-marital sex, apparently, does not extend this side of the atlantic...
It's like having a very strong affinity for a particular brand. This brand however is the one true brand. Not only is Nikon > Canon, Sony > Microsoft, Android > Apple and Ferrari > McLaren but it is the ONE TRUE BRAND. It is the primary source of truth. Mormonism is everything and has all the answers(except when you actually look instead of just finding comfort that mormonism has all the answers). This means that you get joy out of the failure of other brands and the superiority of your own. When you're that invested it feels great when something reinforces the brand (your product gets a good review, your team wins the race) and feels bad when someone states something that doesn't make the brand look like it's the best.
Not only that but everyone else is influenced by Satan.
This is honestly the best comparison I can find on what it's like to truly truly believe.
Brianemone
Member
I think that for most exmormons this is the case.
On another note, I realised I need to start approaching the reason I was in Italy for two years in a different way, it just leads down the path of explaining why we're not mormon any more.
Thaedolus
Member
This is a pretty apt comparison. Ever been a die hard Super Nintendo household and then you realized you really liked playing Sonic the Hedgehog at your buddy's house? Confusion!
One thing I realized recently that I don't do anymore is wonder if people are in my group or not. I just went on a cruise with my wife and met a lot of new and interesting people...not once did I wonder to myself if they were LDS or not, or have some other trait that made them "in my group." We'd simply share a table, strike up a conversation, and have ourselves a good time. I remember thinking, when I was Mormon, how nice it is to meet another Mormon because you immediately have something in common with them. I never realized how easy it is to just meet and accept new people, different or not, until recent years.
It does get tiring. It's a bit uncouth, but I tend to just say "the LDS church is bullshit."
Brianemone
Member
We've made a lot of friends since leaving, I feel like before we never had time, and the people we saw at church we didn't really want to spend more time with. We can have different opinions about politics/religion/wine/purpose of life but at the end of the day we spend time with good people who we care about.
I think I need to be more direct as well. That or start making up stories about my two years as a goat herder on the slopes of Etna
Similar threads
- Poll
- Locked
- Poll