Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
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)
Date: June 29, 2015 12:35PM
That is all it is. It doesn't matter who you are; it will get to you.
Just say no. Why not? why a cover story? EFY is "faith promoting." They are going to hook him and reel him in with a false prospectus, "milk before meat," numbing him to the impending criticisms of other people telling him he's just been swept up by a cult. They will hammer the Book of Mormon: read to believe, pray to confirm. They will take credit for the Christian message whilst poisoning the well that he should take advice from anyone else concerning the doctrine of Christ. He will come home believing there is something to it all: "there's something about the Mormons" is what he'll be pantomiming.
The process is nefarious. If confronted about their bullshit, the tbms amp up their game by back-peddaling, trying to appear transparent, saying some things aren't true and some things they were just about to get to before you asked. Trivialize, distance, bait and switch, role-reversal, guilt-trip, puppy-dog pout, and last but not least: testify and walk away. The most innocent Mormons who aren't deep enough into it yet probably won't realize this is the way their church works, because they defer to the more experienced members who know exactly these methods but really do believe they are completely justified.
Start with Joseph Smith's illicit sexual behavior and work your way down from there. Show him the quotes where Joseph lied about it, even to his wife, and called the women whores who tried to expose him. Talk about the polyandry, the pedophilia, and sending Orson Pratt on a mission to bed his wife. Talk about the Nauvoo Expositor, how the real reason Joseph Smith was killed was for destroying a printing press against the 1st amendment of the constitution to cover up the TRUTHS it was printing about his secret life. Talk about how he tried to run away. Talk about the six-shooter he fired out the jail door killing some men.
Teach your son what a cult is. Teach him that he needs to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove in order to see through these people. Test them without them knowing it. Catch them in the very act of "milk before meat" if he doesn't believe you. If confronted about it, they will use every tactic I mentioned above. Tell him they will use every trick in the book to get him to suspend his critical faculties and to watch for these efforts. Teach him that the world is full of credulous people who follow a leader or leaders they believe completely inculpable. Teach him that things that sound too good to be true always are, no exceptions, and that this is how the real world works.
This approach works. I know, because as a missionary for this damned organization, who believed it as much as anyone ever has, I lost "investigator" after "investigator" to so-called "antimormonism." I hated antimormons and antimormon literature. I thought they were all liars in bed with Satan, and I engaged them directly only to find out that they were right –– about nearly everything. The chinks that did me in were in this order: Book of Mormon changes (obviously most mormons don't know shit about these, even while explaining them away as "grammatical corrections." They haven't sat down and reviewed them! They got this explanation from someone else, from some authority figure whose "gospel knowledge" they admire and defer to. For those that act like authority figures: they read it from an apologist 99% of the time.) Book of Mormon changes made me sensitive to appearing deceptive, and so I tried hard to be all up front about everything. The Book of Mormon, though, contains no modern Mormonism. None. It's worse than being a book of simple doctrines meant to prepare us for higher doctrines. Milk before meat means bait and switch, means contradiction is ok because the ends justify the means. The Book of Mormon poses as a near-orthodox, harmless Christian message. Realize that nothing you learn about Mormonism off the bat bears any resemblance to the version they end up cattle-prodding you to swallow whole, especially nothing they will have you believing within a year of being baptized. The last piece of information that destroyed me was polyandry. Why? because I had never been told this. It seemed so important, I should have been told it. that's when I realized what they were saying about Joseph Smith's sexual life were not lies and I had been lied to. I had been milked-before-meat-ed just like I was doing to my converts.
That's what a cult is. It took me several years to accept it, but I finally got it. You have to fight them by being more upfront, honest, transparent and sincerely concerned about him than his new tbm friends. Be careful not to make the tbms themselves, as human beings, sound evil or like they know they are doing something wrong. They do not. Even when they know they are engaging in sleight-of-hand, they will find a way to justify it to themselves. Your son needs to understand that he is a fallible human being and there will be seemingly well-intentioned people interspersed throughout his life trying to sell him snake-oil for a modest profit –– they'll have all the testimonials prepared to show they aren't a fraud like every single other person who does what they do, the testimonials of people they've already duped. Know what a placebo is.
Teach him good skeptical skills. The point of all this is not to be a fear-mongerer –– it's to arm oneself against a harsh reality: our own fallibility. We can usually give people the benefit of the doubt, except for when they start preaching that all our problems will be solved and eternal bliss can be ours if only we will offer up our critical faculties once and for all to their pretended authority or expertise. Don't.
Even if you are religious, teach him that physical evidence is important.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)
"There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." (Proverbs 14:12)
I would ask you not to make special exceptions for a Christian faith, though, because if he realizes some of the same criticisms can be applied to your own thinking, the tbms have found the soft flesh where they will drive in the stake. Mormons love siphoning off of other Christian sects the best, because they are the only other ones on whom Joseph Smith's and Brigham Young's transcendentalist, 2nd-great-awakening scripture logic will even begin to work. There is no spirituality in Mormonism except cross-referencing scriptures to both makes sense of a mess of doctrine and justify it to themselves against detractors. They claim a fullness of the gospel, but their members wallow in guilt and shame and perfectionism –– obviously they don't know Christ, though they claim to be disciples of Christ. They have learned how to interpret hardship, self-deprecation, and nonbelievers pointing out how miserable they look as evidence that they have the truth.
Pray he never has to fully comprehend what it is like to be in the mind of a tbm. They are normal people... except for all the ways that they are saddled and ridden by a cult... so, then again they are not normal people. We don't have to cut them from our lives –– we only have to "harden our hearts" and "stiffen our necks" against them when their Morg mentality comes out. When they use those words, rub it in their faces. Make them see what they are trying to do. Their religion doesn't deserve the benefit of your doubts, because it has too many credibility issues. Be adamant, and if there is no true friendship there whatsoever, they will trim you from their life themselves and move on, always on the prowl for another project.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2015 12:48PM by Cold-Dodger.