I think anyone from Utah and most TBMs from everywhere likely think of the morg as some kind of credible standard of leadership and ethics.

No one can recover unless they throw this idea into the undersink garbage bag with the coffee grounds and chicken bones.

Every one of us needs to grow into the role of being our own beacon of ethics. We have more to offer as authority figures than any so called mormon leader.

A morg "leader's role" is always to promote the organizational agenda. Doesn't matter that many of them are "nice guys" or that they do good works. That doesn't make them better than us. It only means they're doing more than the minimum in their callings. If they're loyal to the morg and their higherups, we have to question their authority and their agendas.

I'd trust Anagrammy, Stray Mutt or almost any exmo poster over every single church leader I've heard about met.

BUT most of all, I trust MY OWN senses logic and perceptions and I would hope that others would do the same. It's a huge piece of the recovery puzzle.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2011 11:37AM by Cheryl.

Becoming exmo means taking back the power and authority we once gave to the Morg, and discovering that the most reliable recipient of our trust is *ourselves*.

Relying on "authority" and the "older and wiser" is not a bad thing, even in the case of momo. The problem with Mormonism is that these "leaders" are trusted without question, which I think is your point.

12-year-old "priests" and 19-year-old "elders" speak volumes on the level of authority divvied out willy-nilly.

It's frightening.

Seriously. Authorities often disagree. Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser.

I would have died in 1989 if I'd relied on easily available and locally respected doctors who were telling me not to worry about what turned out to be an extensive and very painful brain tumor.

This year I would have very likely ended up blind if I hadn't sought out an eye sugeon I found to be more credible and skilled than the ones my family doctor and opthemologist recommended.

Not blindly following my parents, their church, or other authority figures is the only reason I am alive, on the path to reasonably normal sight and still mentally and emotionally viable.

We all need to learn to read character, learn to recognize and formulate viable rationales, and trust our own logic and insticts. It's an important part of recovering from a cult.

Women especially are taught to be suspicious of our own internal compass because the erosion of our confidence in ourselves makes us more malleable to be controlled by the cult. Through us, they can control our valuable priesthood-holding husbands.

I have had conversations with my children about the horrific things medical doctors wanted me to do to my children that I refused.

My six month old had a distortion in her hip bones at the joint which caused her feet to point out. Let's break her legs, they suggested, then they'll be straight. No. So I put her legs in a brace instead, which worked fine.

My six year old boy was wetting the bed. Let's widen his urethra with this special device we have. Like, cut it? Sure--it might be too small. No. So I did nothing and he outgrew it.

Anagrammy

That procedure was sooo fun! I was in 3rd grade. Hurt to piss for a week. Idiots. I outgrew too.

Personally, what I do is look at each church leader seperately. The ones that do nasty things, I don't like, and the ones that do nice things, I do like.