Posted by:
Kori
(
)
Date: September 22, 2012 01:03PM
I posted this under Willful Ignorance, but I think that it needs to its own topic.
It used to be that Mormonism really taught some pretty cool concepts and members were encouraged to "work out their own salvation", all the principles that Smith taught were taught and discussed, you were to learn the deep doctrine, because only knowing god would allow salvation, they explained science and the universe with doctrine, they taught that no man could be saved in ignorance....fast forward to now.
The best members are considered to be the ones that always have this type of response- "I don't know nothin' about that, but I don't have to, all I have to do is do what my bishop and the prophet tell me and I go to heaven", I have heard this one twice in the last year: "even if Joseph Smith appeared to me and told me the church was not true, I would not leave it" or "we are not supposed to talk about those things, they don't affect our salvation and we will learn them later, for now I rather worry about paying my tithing and doing my FHE".
This joy in ignorance, this willful ignorance is the only "faith" that can keep people in the church. Most of the Sunday school lessons haven't just been watered down, they have been carefully redesigned by the correlation department to teach this final point at the end of each lesson: ....and that is why we should just do what our leaders tell us. This is why the church has revised history, censored Smith's teachings, changed the temple ordinances and doctored the BOM: to turn it all into a fairy tale for adults.
It is no longer the church that smith founded, in reality they are the ones that have apostitized from Smith's teaching and even Christ's. The new LDS church is all about faith promotion, but faith in the church, not the gospel. It's not about becoming sons and daughters to an eternal father, it's about becoming sheep to men.
Most of us have tasted this change in the recipe and have decided to leave while the ones that remain believe the cake is magical.
This phenomenon, aided by the advent of the Internet, the ability to read the recipe and see how it has been changed, is what is having a devastating effect on the church. You can live, but very unhappily, that is where most member have to live; in this seething, passive aggressive,emotional-confirmation, denial sludge, where truth, facts and even Mormon doctrine are not welcome.