In my case, the church leaders ditched honesty and kindness too. They ditched a lot of important things that any church member would expect. The church leaders and others who were involved had their own narrative about what kind of a person they thought I was and they all worked together as a group to support that narrative and to treat me accordingly. It wasn't so much the injustice that drove me out.
I really wanted to keep believing in the church and was prepared to forgive and was trying to forgive them as fast as they were doing things to cause me harm. But finally, when I saw first hand how aggregious their actions against me were, I knew it was all wrong and that the church really is a cult. I decided that if I stayed under those circumstances, I would lose respect for myself. If I had been just and observer and not even the one they were doing these bad things to, I would have had to leave then too. I didn't leave because of what they did to me. I left because of what I saw them do to someone... who just happened to be me. That's how bad it was.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/03/2017 11:50PM by azsteve.
So much hate to go around something eventually has to give. Like a former convert friend used to say to me, he knew the church was either 100% true or 100% false based on how much its members persecuted each other. He'd never seen so much back stabbing, gossip or hypocrisy in his former life as a Catholic as he did as a Mormon.
He felt sure if it was true then it was Hasatan causing the division and strife between members. Or if it is false, then it has to be one of the greatest deceptions of all time.
* When you stop to think about it, it's both ie, division/strife caused by Hasatan *and* one of the greatest all time frauds perpetrated on the face of the earth. It doesn't need to be an "either or" proposition.
I once too irrefutable proof of theft of church money by a bishop to the stake president. I had copies of receipts, bank deposits, purchase orders the whole shebang.
He handed me back the folder without looking at it and said men in that position do not commit theft.
My ward clerk stole a tithing donation I gave to him directly one sabbath Sunday. I knew when I was handing it to him by the way he eyed the envelope (he could feel the cash inside,) and the way he looked back at me that my tithing would never reach SLC.
Sure enough, later that year when tithing settlement rolled around, there was no accounting for that donation on church records.
It wasn't long after that happened that the church came out with a new policy that ward clerks & anyone else except bishopric were not to accept tithing donations from members. It must've been a pervasive problemo throughout the church system.
I rarely gave cash in my donations. That was one of the rare times I did. And it was the last time.
It goes both ways. Sometimes church leaders act abusively (no atonement) and sometimes the members act like the atonement is just a big credit card with no credit limits that is issued to exclusively to the so-called elect (that being them). They charge that thing up as far as they can and for as long as they can, knowing ahead of time that that they're just going to bankrupt it anyway. They destroy the whole concept of atonement that way. Both ways, they are dishonest.
I honestly don't know. Most of them were fine. I was even allowed a temple recommend when my husband refused to pay tithing and wouldn't allow me to pay. I can't be too mad at the members, I used to act like them.
Circumvented friendship- Shunning the apostate is alive and well in the one true church. No priesthood directive necessary, just tribal instinct kicks in and they all turn their backs in lock step. After we resigned, 28 parents removed their students from my science classroom in the middle school where I taught. To my principal these cowards gave every conceivable reason except the real one- They just couldn't tell the truth, that it was because I had left their clubhouse. After I showed adminstration that all transfer requests were from active LDS parents only, were they able to dismissed it all as just so much Mormon weirdness.
Wow Durid. It was great you had a supportive administration. We read of shunning stories all the time, but yours is in a new category. It would take a strong person to endure that when they affected your profession. The ugliness of Mormonism is clearly demonstrated when you leave the cult.
I was taught to be chaste. Then when it came to saving my gay ex, then we could do anything except intercourse and they'd still allow us to get married in the temple. In fact, the bishop was in charge and would give my ex assignments as to what we were to do next. I couldn't go along with it. The whole situation was destroying me. I had been VERY CHASTE out of fear of ever talking about sex to a leader, but here I was talking to many leaders about sex.
I remember so many times telling the bishop that 2 wrongs didn't make a right and he'd shake his head back and forth and tell me this is how we had to do it. I don't know which was worse, that I was fearful of my boyfriend being a sinner or how they handled the sex issues. Are there any other situations where they tell the people to go out and sin and it would help?
The first time I ever French kissed AT AGE 25 was when the bishop assigned my boyfriend to french kiss me and NOT TO TELL ME. My boyfriend knew me well enough that he did tell me. That was about the extent of how far I could allow myself to go out of my own feelings and beliefs.
I finally found this bishop's address about a month ago and I told him how I felt about what he did to US. My current boyfriend loved that one of the last things I said was that now I wore with pride my badges of apostate adulteress.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2017 09:53AM by cl2.