Indoctrination

Since I have been out, I have observed many who indoctrinate their children without really knowing that that is what they are doing. Many have their children memorize the Articles of Faith or other scriptures. I believe this is a form of brainwashing. I don’t think it is done intentionally but it is what they have been taught a good parent does. Another example of brainwashing is testimony meeting.  I remember hearing in church about the importance of bearing one’s testimony and that by bearing it often we would get a stronger testimony. President Boyd K. Packer stated, “A testimony is to be found in the bearing of it.” Shouldn’t we know what we believe before we get up and testify of something? Plus they tell you what a testimony is to consist of. This tactic works with just about anything. If a person tells themselves something over and over, and if they hear it over and over again they begin to believe it. There are also those parents that take their children up and whisper in their ears what to say. These young children are not old enough to know what they believe and the only reason they repeat LDS doctrine is because they are taught the same concepts week after week. 

Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach our children to be good people, but that we should teach them to keep an open mind and to not be afraid to doubt their their beliefs and to double-check things (in other words, to not "doubt their doubts). We should teach them to always seek for knowledge and truth and not to just shut the door because we think the one way is the right way. Everything should be questioned in this world. No one person can ever stand up and say I know this, but we can believe and have faith in something. But even then we should continue to gain knowledge and be open to hearing others’ points of view.

 The following link is to a well done video that discusses this topic further.

Josh breaks down Mormon mind control

Sadness

The other day when I was driving I saw a former youth that I use to serve in the LDS faith. As I passed this young man I felt a tremendous amount of sadness for him and what he was facing in the next couple of years (a mission). This young man comes from a strong LDS family and I know that many look at them as a great example in our former ward. I can only imagine that he must be feeling an immense amount of pressure to live up to what is expected of him. For all I know he is excited but I have observed this boy over the years and know a few things about him that would cause me to think differently. So I feel sad for those that stay because of the pressure they feel from loved ones. I remember how I felt years ago coming out of the Temple for the first time thinking, that was it… how weird was that… I must not be very smart because I don’t get why the creation story, secret handshakes, and signs and tokens are so important. But I was too scared to say anything because I didn't want others to think that I wasn't spiritual enough or that I wasn't worthy enough. Then I felt guilty for not getting it and went weekly for several months hoping that if I pondered long enough in the celestial room it would all make sense.  I wish now that I would have had the guts to say that I don’t want to get married in such an uncomfortable place. I hope others can find the courage to get out sooner than I did. I hope more people still in the church find a way to not put so much pressure on the young kids. 

Our Story of Why We Decided to Leave Mormonism

To begin, I would like to post our story and why we decided to leave Mormonism. I hope this blog is helpful for those currently leaving the Mormon faith. I also hope it helps those in the Mormon faith understand their friends and family who have left. 

The year before we made the decision to finally leave the church I was struggling with my own testimony and life in general. But as a Young Women Presidency we decided to have a Book of Mormon Night and to challenge each of the young women to read the Book of Mormon straight through. I took this challenge very seriously and studied the Book of Mormon with all my heart like I had never done before and never received any sort of answer. I was saddened to not receive the answer I was hoping for. I tell you all this so that you may know that I really did try to stay with the LDS faith.

This decision was something that was not made quickly or in haste but was one that was made with lots of thought and prayer. Joseph and I have both vented various frustrations to each other over the years, often after church on Sundays. While I loved being in Young Women for almost 5 years and I loved those girls with all my heart, I did struggle some Sundays with the lessons that were given because of the content of the material. The teachers were all wonderful and did an awesome job teaching, it was just the content in the manuals that would bother me.

Then last September or so I stumbled upon a modesty blog that a friend had posted on Facebook. It was a very well written article and it expressed a lot about how I feel. This is what got Joseph and me officially into looking at other concerns about the LDS church. Then in October Joseph showed me a few other things he had found out about the church and I was in shock as I began reading. It wasn’t long after that, maybe 2 weeks that we decided that we would be leaving the church. I first asked to be released as Young Women President in December and then we began phasing the church out by only attending once in a while until mid February when we attended our last meeting. It was very difficult sitting through church meetings listening to lies.

The reaction from our Bishop and Stake President was one of shock sadness [EDIT: SP came to visit and corrected this part] when we told them that we would no longer be attending church and that we no longer believed the church to be the one and only. We had been prominent members of the ward and had both served in leadership callings. A few of our friends were also shocked has the news spread because we didn’t seem like the kind of family that would just up and leave. But Joseph and I reached a point where we just couldn’t pretend anymore.

Please read our concerns with caution because some of what I write may cause you to question your own faith. 

Temple

·         The Endowment was copied mainly from a mason ritual

·         The Endowment has changed considerably since its introduction, most recently in 1990, when it dropped the penalties, 5 points of fellowship, and a significant part played by a Christian minister. This was brought about by a survey given to temple attendees.

·         Initiatory was changed in 2005 to what Mormons accuse Catholics of doing with baptism (sprinkling).

·         Garments have been slowly changing over the years to accommodate fashion changes.

·         The endowment’s order of the creation conflicts with the BoA and Genesis

Book of Mormon

·         The Book of Mormon was translated by a seer stone put into a hat, not the “Nephite interpreters,” and the plates weren’t in the room most of the time.  Why aren’t we taught this in church? Documentation for this can be found on lds.org

·         The BoM cites references to things not found in the new world until Columbus’ time, such as: horses, cattle, oxen, donkeys, goats, wheels, chariots, barley, wheat, and steel.

·         There are a lot of population logistics that don’t work out. For example, the time it takes to go from a group of about 20 to millions of people is shown to be in a few hundred years’ time.

·         Some of the English mistranslations from the KJV of the Bible are in the BoM, including the name Lucifer.

·         Some of the parts are copied from the Bible (like the Sermon on the Mount), and are supposed to be a more pure and plain source because it hasn’t gone through the many translations that the Bible was subjected to. But then they were corrected in the JST. Which version is right?

·         Other parts are taken from other sources, most prominently “A View of the Hebrews,” by Ethan Smith (no relation to Joseph).

·         The text of the BoM has changed over the years. While it is true that many of the changes are punctuation and grammatical in nature, there have been some pretty significant changes in the doctrine as well. In fact Joseph confirmed this with an Original Copy replica he bought just after he got home from my mission.

·         DNA studies on Native Americans show they are of Asiatic descent, not Hebrew.

·         There hasn’t been a single Nephite artifact ever recovered, nor any other archeological evidence that there was any kind of civilization resembling what is described in the BoM.

·         A map of the New York/Great Lakes area has place names and locations that match up pretty well with a map of the BoM’s cities/lands.

First Vision

·         The First Vision was not taught in church until 22 years after it happened.What we now call Moroni’s visit was referred to as his first vision during the early years of the church.

·         There are 4 “official” versions of it, all of which differ in the details. The accounts contradict each other on certain points. Many other unofficial versions exist.

·         In The Messenger and the Advocate, a church newspaper, Joseph Smith wrote that in 1823 he was praying to find out if a supreme being existed. One would think that after seeing two supreme beings one wouldn’t have to ask again.

·          

Joseph Smith

·         He was convicted of “glass looking” in a New York court of law. There is enough evidence that it appears he was a clever con man.

·         His own mother described him as being able to fabricate intricate stories about the former inhabitants of this land and have an excellent memory for reciting books.

·         Wilbur Fugate claimed to have found buried plates that he gave to Joseph to translate. Joseph said they were written by a Jaredite descendent of Ham, but then later Wilbur admitted they were a hoax and made by him. Modern testing confirms this.

·         A similar incident happened when someone gave him a Greek Hymnbook (called a Psalter) and he declared it to be a dictionary of Egyptian.

·         The reason he was in Carthage Jail was for destroying a printing press because it was about to expose some of the hidden details of his polygamous marriages that he didn’t want out in the public. Even Dallin Oaks (a lawyer) admits he was breaking the law when he did this.

·         He wasn’t killed for his beliefs or for claiming revelation. Rather, he was killed by a group who was angry at his practice of polygamy and polyandry and for taking their wives while they were out on missions.

·         He didn’t go “like a lamb to the slaughter,” unless lambs are armed with pistols. Joseph fired off at least 3 shots into the mob (some accounts say 4 with 2 misfires).

Others

·         Polyandry – familysearch.org proves JS married other men’s wives while they were out on missions, which goes against the “rules” for polygamy set forth in D&C 132, which, by the way, go against what it says in the BoM and Bible.

·         Polygamy continued well after the 1890 Manifesto, and it was never legal in Illinois as some have claimed. Also, many of the recent church manuals make it seem as if Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were monogamous by omitting certain things.

·         One of Joseph Smith’s wives was 14 years old! He was like Warren Jeffs in that way.

·         The church spent $5Billion dollars on a mall and helped finance it by making members clean their own buildings instead of paying a full-time janitor or letting bishops give out the job in exchange for welfare. It has only spent a total of 1.2 billion on humanitarian aid since 1980.

·         Mark Hoffman was able to scam the church and convince them to buy fake documents, which the church tried to suppress. Even Jerald and Sandra Tanner (prominent enemies of the church) figured out that they were fake documents before these “prophets and seers” did.

·         Gordon B. Hinckley lied to press (Larry King, Time, etc.), and Jeffrey R. Holland lied to BBC. When asked if we teach that man can become like God; Hinckley said, “I don’t know that we teach that.” A simple Google search will show this. Why lie? Holland also gets caught in a few lies in a BBC interview done during the election last year.

·         The papyrus for the Book of Abraham was found in 1967, and it’s just a common funeral text, found to be dated about 100 BC, not 2000 BC. This is pretty clear that he was never able to translate Egyptian, and that he pretty much just made it up.

·         The church seems more like a well run business than a church to us. The Great and Spacious Mall is a great example of this.

·         The church recently changed some of the introductions to the scriptures. This is part whitewashes some of the “ugly” history, such as denying the priesthood to blacks, and obscuring the fact that it was taught from the pulpit that Native Americans are Lamanites.

Just like in court cases, it’s best to hear both sides of the story, not just the defense. Most of this can be verified through LDS-friendly websites (lds.org, familysearch.org, etc.), but the best site is http://www.mormonthink.com because it treats each issue like a court case and offers both sides of the story to the reader and lets you decide.  There is also you tube video that is really well done that tells the Top 5 Myths about why people leave http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP3GJeYIN3s&safe=active

The preceding examples are just a few of our concerns. We do feel that the church does teach good family values and good standards and we will continue to teach our children those things.