Early in my discovery of the foundational lies Mormonism is built upon, I remember struggling to wrap my brain around the new concept that the church was not true. This alternative world view was as unbelievable to me as if I had witnessed the Sun rising in the West. I remember many dark and depressing weeks as my mind tried to deny the undeniable and make the adjustment to this new reality…what many of us refer to as the “Matrix Effect”, the act of wakening from a false reality. During this difficult and painful time…I kept fighting my birth to non-belief. I would come to a decision then go back and reexamine my conclusions…I never wanted the Church to NOT be true.
During one of my many attempts at re-examining Mormon truth claims…I read a post (on another board) from Tal Bachman. In his post, Tal made, what for me was a very crystal clear statement ... that sent shivers down my spine. He stated, “The church is NOT what it claims to be…” . Even today I don’t know why this statement affected me as it did, but those 9 simple words were like a catalyst in my mind. It took my fussy blurry world into sharp focus. I had been struggling to accept that the “Church was NOT True”…but by merely viewing the Church as NOT what it claimed to be…everything became perfectly clear. Why this made any difference for me I do not know. I even sent Tal an email asking him to explain what exactly he meant by saying that the church is not what it claims to be…his reply was something like…”ah dude, what exactly don’t you understand? (probably thinking...you dumb ass) The church makes many claims about being the only true church on the face of the earth, on having living prophet that speak directly with God, that they have another witness of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, ect ect ect…they are NOT what they claim to be…get it?
The light bulb in my mind turned on…and the darkness of my recurring conflicts disappeared… I moved from struggling doubter…to skeptical thinker… almost in an instant…yeah I got it.
The church is NOT what it claims to be…became the most powerful of power statements in my journey out of the grips of Mormonism. It truly set my mind free…
Monday, March 24, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Is the"Pearl of Great Price" The Ugly Step-Child of Mormonism?
Every 5-10 years , whatever geriatric-MAN happens to be playing the role of Mormon Prophet at the time, issues a challenge from the pulpit in General Conference to the Mormon faithful, to once again, read the entire Book of Mormon before the end of that given year for the umpteenth time.
Morg-bots then set their collective minds on the task of accomplishing this goal. Families accommodate the mandate by waking their children up earlier in the morning, individuals can be seen reading the book while commuting to work on public transportation, articles in the Ensign and Church News, trumpet the dedication and personal sacrifice of members the world over who once again have suffered through yet another boring ‘READ’ of the Book of Mormon. And those not so faithful ,but still believing Mormon’s, have yet one more thing to feel guilty over when they start but never finish the book.
But…what about the poor ugly red headed step child of Mormonism, "The Pearl of Great Price”. Why is it constantly being left out of the fun? There has NEVER been a challenge issued by Morg Central to read the very book that contains the writings of Abraham…written by his own hand no less… or the Books of Moses…damn Joseph actually received the same exact revelation that Moses did…but Moses screwed up and his revelatory version became tainted and mistranslated by unworthy men. .. Thank GOD, Joseph got his copy directly from GOD…there were no messy rocks in hats or golden plates to get in the way....just Gods mouth directly to Joseph's ears. You’ve got to love pure Revelation. And last, but certainly not least the “History of Joseph Smith” well at least the history HE wanted us to believe. OMG and don't forget all those proclamations on Polygamy and Black men finally receiving the same super human powers as White men...
So WHY is the PoGP ignored and consigned to second class status? Why is it relegated to mere parsing and 'single verse' quotation status? If it truly is a PEARL of such GREAT PRICE why doesn't the Mormon Prophets shout its amazing story from the roof tops as well? Why can't it be the Third Witness for Jesus Christ? Hell one wasn't enough in the first place...why stop at just two? Why aren’t the Mormon faithful challenged to read all of its pages through every 5-10 years….hell it’s small enough that they wouldn’t even need a full year to read it through…they could challenge the Morg-bots to read it through in between conference sessions.
And Hell, think of all the benefits… think of all the extra time families could really spend together…all the extra time individuals could spend on real important things like…making more money to increase tithing revenues…and think of all those poor guilt imbued Mormon’s who will finally have a challenge they can actually complete.
Of course, unless the PoGP REALLY is something the Mormon hierarchy is embarrassed about and doesn’t want its membership to read in one straight sitting? Gee…someone may actually ask some hard questions about what those facsimiles really are.
Best to keep that Ugly Step Child locked up in the morg basement where it belongs I guess….
Morg-bots then set their collective minds on the task of accomplishing this goal. Families accommodate the mandate by waking their children up earlier in the morning, individuals can be seen reading the book while commuting to work on public transportation, articles in the Ensign and Church News, trumpet the dedication and personal sacrifice of members the world over who once again have suffered through yet another boring ‘READ’ of the Book of Mormon. And those not so faithful ,but still believing Mormon’s, have yet one more thing to feel guilty over when they start but never finish the book.
But…what about the poor ugly red headed step child of Mormonism, "The Pearl of Great Price”. Why is it constantly being left out of the fun? There has NEVER been a challenge issued by Morg Central to read the very book that contains the writings of Abraham…written by his own hand no less… or the Books of Moses…damn Joseph actually received the same exact revelation that Moses did…but Moses screwed up and his revelatory version became tainted and mistranslated by unworthy men. .. Thank GOD, Joseph got his copy directly from GOD…there were no messy rocks in hats or golden plates to get in the way....just Gods mouth directly to Joseph's ears. You’ve got to love pure Revelation. And last, but certainly not least the “History of Joseph Smith” well at least the history HE wanted us to believe. OMG and don't forget all those proclamations on Polygamy and Black men finally receiving the same super human powers as White men...
So WHY is the PoGP ignored and consigned to second class status? Why is it relegated to mere parsing and 'single verse' quotation status? If it truly is a PEARL of such GREAT PRICE why doesn't the Mormon Prophets shout its amazing story from the roof tops as well? Why can't it be the Third Witness for Jesus Christ? Hell one wasn't enough in the first place...why stop at just two? Why aren’t the Mormon faithful challenged to read all of its pages through every 5-10 years….hell it’s small enough that they wouldn’t even need a full year to read it through…they could challenge the Morg-bots to read it through in between conference sessions.
And Hell, think of all the benefits… think of all the extra time families could really spend together…all the extra time individuals could spend on real important things like…making more money to increase tithing revenues…and think of all those poor guilt imbued Mormon’s who will finally have a challenge they can actually complete.
Of course, unless the PoGP REALLY is something the Mormon hierarchy is embarrassed about and doesn’t want its membership to read in one straight sitting? Gee…someone may actually ask some hard questions about what those facsimiles really are.
Best to keep that Ugly Step Child locked up in the morg basement where it belongs I guess….
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Mormon Shell Game
Once while traveling through Italy, I encountered a group of men gambling their money away at a sidewalk shell game. The ‘dealer’ would place a pea under one of three walnut shells on a board…then quickly shuffle the shells around the board. The other men placed bets on which shell they believed the pea had ended up under. As I watched, I observed the shell with the pea move around the board. As the shell came to a rest I would instinctively pick the correct shell game after game. I was amazed at how easily “I” was able to choose the correct shell while the other men kept losing their money. Somehow...the movement of the pea seemed so obvious, but the otherr men kept losing their money, game after game. After watching 7-8 games and having been able to consistantly guess the correct location of the pea, I decided that I could make some easy money.
I felt I had an edge over the dealer and other gamblers… surly I could NOT lose… I had discovered a way to out smart the dealer. I convinced myself that I had some previously unknown talent to locate concealed peas hidden under walnut shells. Wow what an opportunity had fallen into my lap. My ethnocentric American mind told me I had an advantage over these stupid Italians and their money.
As I reached for my wallet and withdrew a few large bills…one of the men who had been consistently losing his own money… gleefully welcomed me and my money to the board…but something was wrong… maybe it was the collective look in each of their eyes…a misplaced glance or a knowingly collective “We’ve caught another sucker” look on all of their faces…but I knew in an instant…that I had stumbled onto a well crafted “con” and that these men were looking to shear a sheep.
In a moment of clearity I quickly grabbed my money and ran away from the shell game as fast as I could…with them yelling some choice Italian words at me… but I had dodged a bullet.
The Mormon Church is also delft at playing the game of ’Peas and Shells’. Each generation of Mormon faithful are taught doctrines that are in direct conflict with those taught to the older/ previous generation. The church is delft in the duplicity of its multiple doctrines… it is not unusual to find three generations of a single family each having their own conflicting beliefs on such basic doctrines as the Flood, Adam and Eve, Creation, Origin of the Amerindians, the process for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham etc, just to name a few. But is this any wonder…with the Mormon Church continuously moving the dogma ‘pea’ with every doctrinally conflicting scientific discovery made?
My mother’s generation believed and were taught that all American Indians were descendants of Lehi that these descendants occupied the entire Northern and Southern American Continents, that the earth is 6,000 years old with NO death prior to Adam’s fall and that there was a universal flood that covered the entire earth with water to its highest mountain.
My son believes and has been taught in church that Lehi merely contributed to a vast DNA pool and was only one of many original much diluted forefathers of the Amerindians, that Lehi left no DNA evidence due to this population dilution, That the Nephite and Lamanite Nations occupied a relatively small, yet to be discovered, geographic area somewhere in Central America, that there are 2 Hill Cumorah’s , that the flood was not universal but limited in scope to a small region in the near east and should NOT be taken as a literal event, that the earth has a multi-billion year age and that death has been a part of earth for billions of years. He has also had one very different doctrinal innoculationary dogma pounded into his head… “Prophets are men…and sometimes speak as such”.
Both my mother and son are active believing Mormons with completely conflicting beliefs…they are the result of the success of the Mormon Shell Game… Oh, if they could both wake up and discover that they are pawns in the Mormon Shell Game… a very crafty con game run by a very cunning cult. Run... please run...
I felt I had an edge over the dealer and other gamblers… surly I could NOT lose… I had discovered a way to out smart the dealer. I convinced myself that I had some previously unknown talent to locate concealed peas hidden under walnut shells. Wow what an opportunity had fallen into my lap. My ethnocentric American mind told me I had an advantage over these stupid Italians and their money.
As I reached for my wallet and withdrew a few large bills…one of the men who had been consistently losing his own money… gleefully welcomed me and my money to the board…but something was wrong… maybe it was the collective look in each of their eyes…a misplaced glance or a knowingly collective “We’ve caught another sucker” look on all of their faces…but I knew in an instant…that I had stumbled onto a well crafted “con” and that these men were looking to shear a sheep.
In a moment of clearity I quickly grabbed my money and ran away from the shell game as fast as I could…with them yelling some choice Italian words at me… but I had dodged a bullet.
The Mormon Church is also delft at playing the game of ’Peas and Shells’. Each generation of Mormon faithful are taught doctrines that are in direct conflict with those taught to the older/ previous generation. The church is delft in the duplicity of its multiple doctrines… it is not unusual to find three generations of a single family each having their own conflicting beliefs on such basic doctrines as the Flood, Adam and Eve, Creation, Origin of the Amerindians, the process for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham etc, just to name a few. But is this any wonder…with the Mormon Church continuously moving the dogma ‘pea’ with every doctrinally conflicting scientific discovery made?
My mother’s generation believed and were taught that all American Indians were descendants of Lehi that these descendants occupied the entire Northern and Southern American Continents, that the earth is 6,000 years old with NO death prior to Adam’s fall and that there was a universal flood that covered the entire earth with water to its highest mountain.
My son believes and has been taught in church that Lehi merely contributed to a vast DNA pool and was only one of many original much diluted forefathers of the Amerindians, that Lehi left no DNA evidence due to this population dilution, That the Nephite and Lamanite Nations occupied a relatively small, yet to be discovered, geographic area somewhere in Central America, that there are 2 Hill Cumorah’s , that the flood was not universal but limited in scope to a small region in the near east and should NOT be taken as a literal event, that the earth has a multi-billion year age and that death has been a part of earth for billions of years. He has also had one very different doctrinal innoculationary dogma pounded into his head… “Prophets are men…and sometimes speak as such”.
Both my mother and son are active believing Mormons with completely conflicting beliefs…they are the result of the success of the Mormon Shell Game… Oh, if they could both wake up and discover that they are pawns in the Mormon Shell Game… a very crafty con game run by a very cunning cult. Run... please run...
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