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Religiony rant type thing
Monday, April 14th, 2003 09:26 amI've been looking into mormonism more since I requested my name be removed from the records and the more I read the more I'm convinced that I made the right descion. The pat couplea days I've been reading an online book that I've found really interesting. It's about two people's journey out of mormonism.
They talk a lot about the testimony of little children. How they what they have whispered in their ears by parents or have be taught by rote. And it's true. I used to think I had a testimony. I would stand up in front of the congregation in my pretty sunday dress with everyone "aaahing" and proceed to garbel out a variation on "I would like to bear my tesimony. I know the church is troo, I beweve that Joseph Smith was a pwoffit and that Ezra Taft Benson is a pwoffit. ISayTheseThingsInNameOfJesusChristAmen." And I believed it because it was what I had learnt.
Things only started to change for me after my father died, leaving the family without a priesthood holder (a vital thing in the Mormon church where the patriarch is everything) and our family largely isolated. Suspicons probably started a bit before that, the seed being sown when I was 7 or so and an incident happened that scarred me psycologiaclly, but the real cracks didn't appear till after daddy died and we were largely abandoned.
I started to learn other things and doubt what I'd been taught. I developed a streak of feminisnm that told me the inherent sexism in the church was wrong. Eventually by the time I was 16 I knew for certain that the church was not true. It took me another 3 years before I was ready for name removal. The issues I had with this largely revolved around my father.
During the period I was inactive no less than 3 people came and told my family that they'd had visitations from my father requesting that we be brought back into the fold. One was a friend from church but not one we had a lot of contact with. The second was a friend of my father's who had been out of contact for 20 years. The third was a complete stranger. The family feeling was that if it was my father's will then he would visit us himself and tell us. Which is why a certain paragraph in that book stood out.
"A few months later, my grandfather died. Shortly after his passing, I received an anonymous call from a man in California, claiming to be carrying a message to me from my grandfather from beyond the grave. He said my grandfather had appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to tell me he wanted me back in the church. I figured if my grandfather had regained enough of his senses in the afterlife to communicate with someone in California he didn't even know, he sure as hell could have contacted me himself."
WHat can I say? It struck a chord with me.
I've come to the conclusion over the past two weeks that the descion I made was absoluetly the right one. Here endeth my off stream of conciousness rant.
Which reminds me, I'm still waiting for the letter from the bishop...
They talk a lot about the testimony of little children. How they what they have whispered in their ears by parents or have be taught by rote. And it's true. I used to think I had a testimony. I would stand up in front of the congregation in my pretty sunday dress with everyone "aaahing" and proceed to garbel out a variation on "I would like to bear my tesimony. I know the church is troo, I beweve that Joseph Smith was a pwoffit and that Ezra Taft Benson is a pwoffit. ISayTheseThingsInNameOfJesusChristAmen." And I believed it because it was what I had learnt.
Things only started to change for me after my father died, leaving the family without a priesthood holder (a vital thing in the Mormon church where the patriarch is everything) and our family largely isolated. Suspicons probably started a bit before that, the seed being sown when I was 7 or so and an incident happened that scarred me psycologiaclly, but the real cracks didn't appear till after daddy died and we were largely abandoned.
I started to learn other things and doubt what I'd been taught. I developed a streak of feminisnm that told me the inherent sexism in the church was wrong. Eventually by the time I was 16 I knew for certain that the church was not true. It took me another 3 years before I was ready for name removal. The issues I had with this largely revolved around my father.
During the period I was inactive no less than 3 people came and told my family that they'd had visitations from my father requesting that we be brought back into the fold. One was a friend from church but not one we had a lot of contact with. The second was a friend of my father's who had been out of contact for 20 years. The third was a complete stranger. The family feeling was that if it was my father's will then he would visit us himself and tell us. Which is why a certain paragraph in that book stood out.
"A few months later, my grandfather died. Shortly after his passing, I received an anonymous call from a man in California, claiming to be carrying a message to me from my grandfather from beyond the grave. He said my grandfather had appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to tell me he wanted me back in the church. I figured if my grandfather had regained enough of his senses in the afterlife to communicate with someone in California he didn't even know, he sure as hell could have contacted me himself."
WHat can I say? It struck a chord with me.
I've come to the conclusion over the past two weeks that the descion I made was absoluetly the right one. Here endeth my off stream of conciousness rant.
Which reminds me, I'm still waiting for the letter from the bishop...
