What's Wrong With Me?

Haven't posted for quite a while, but wanted to address a question I recently received via Facebook, specifically, even if the church has some skeletons in its closet, why do I have such a problem with the LDS religion? That is a loaded question and deserves several different entries, so this will be a summary and I'll likely write more blogs as I have time. By the way, I'm putting this in my blog so that all of you Facebook friends who don't want to be inundated with my ramblings can just ignore this post if it doesn't interest you or you think you may be offended by it. If you don't want to read it, I don't blame you. Reading negative things about a religion you love and that has added so much value and goodness to your life is a tough proposition and, even though I hope you read this, I understand if you don't. Now let's get down to brass tacks.

 First, a confession. Even though I try to come across as not angry and try to be level-headed about this subject, I am admittedly angry and bitter at times. I struggle to contain my rage and lash out from time to time, especially when the LDS church issues public statements or writes things that I find damaging to either my family or my relationship with my family. Any time its articles cast me in a negative light because I no longer believe (notice I did not say "lost my testimony" because I believe there is such thing as a "testimony"), I get angry. When I hear the LDS church trying to indoctrinate my children and asking them to use their feelings to rule their lives rather than their brains, I get angry. When the LDS church fights against basic rights of people (blacks and the priesthood until 1978, and currently women and homosexuals), I get angry. So that being said, I will try to keep this post above board and encourage discussion rather than virtual shouting matches. But I think I need to be fair in stating that I am biased and am working through my emotions.

Why should I care enough to be angry? I mean when someone leaves, people constantly say, "They can leave the church but they can't leave it alone." Let's examine this statement. You are right, I can't leave it alone. It is still a part of my life, whether I want it to be or not. My family attends church every Sunday, I go to ward functions, I hear primary songs in my home, I see a constant barrage of "I'm a Mormon" posts on Facebook, I see posts about the new movie "Meet the Mormons" and how local leaders pressured and, in some cases, paid for members to attend the movie in order to boost up numbers. More painfully, I hear talks comparing me to Judas Iscariot, a traitor to his cause and a demonized figure of the New Testament. I also read lessons in the Joseph Smith manual about the "Bitter Fruits of Apostasy" that basically tells people that people who leave the church have lost the light and are in Satan's hands. This lesson gives no historical context to the statements Joseph Smith made in this manual and, for the most part, the people who publicly vilified him during his time were for the most part speaking the truth.

Let's talk briefly about one of those people who tasted the "bitter fruits of apostasy." William Law. Have you ever heard of the Nauvoo Expositor? William Law and his brother were in the upper eschelons of church leadership and saw how Joseph Smith was marrying child brides to himself and other men's wives and had a problem with it. There is quite a bit more history around it--you can catch up on it in Rough Stone Rolling--but basically, based on their observations, they believed power had gone to Joseph Smith's head and he was becomming corrupt. He was the mayor of Nauvoo, he had had himself anointed King of the World, he was excommunicating people who disagreed with him left and right, and the Laws had had enough. They wrote a scathing newspaper entitled, "The Nauvoo Expositor" that factually stated what Joseph Smith was doing. Joseph Smith, realizing the damage the paper would do to him and his religion, persuaded the City Council to destroy and burn the printing press the Expositor was to be published on. In addition to burning the printing press, he demonized the Laws and portrayed them as the bad guys. About all I can say in Joseph's defense is that what they were about to publish was not flattering and would have severely hurt his reputation. But in burning the printing press, he committed treason (at least that is what he was charged for) and violated the basic tenants of the constitutional protection of the press. In burning the printing press, he demonstrated exactly why the press needs to have this freedom--to keep elected and (in this case) religious leaders in check. He had lost control and wanted to stamp out the problem at its source. The burning of the printing press led to his imprisonment in Carthage, and ultimately to his death. I know the church wants to classify him as a martyr, but I respectfully disagree. He had a pistol and was defending himself, killing at least two people before he died. Furthermore, he wasn't being attacked because he proclaimed himself as a prophet. He was being attacked because of his abuse of power--i.e., marrying peoples' daughters and wives, asking men to give them their wives, then trying to secretly marry him behind the husband's back if the husband didn't agree. The point of this paragraph is that the church uses quotes from Joseph Smith regarding THIS type of opposition to demonize and cast fault on me and those like me who have left the church. I see this as harmful and no matter how you feel about Joseph Smith, he did those things and I'm not sure how I can be blamed for having a problem with it.

 Why do I care about the history? After all, it's in the past and the church no longer believes in polygamy (well, sort of, unless you include widowed men who were sealed to their first wife and are then subsequently sealed to additional wives, a spiritual form of polygamy). The church has sort of apologized for the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The church has sort of apologized for its racist doctrines. So, yeah, the church teaches love and compassion, but it has a lot of skeletons in its closet. I understand that it was a different time and place and that values were different in the 1800's. The problem is that those early church leaders claimed infallibility. They claimed that they spoke for God. Brigham Young stated that Adam was our god and the only God we need to be worried about. He declared it as doctrine. He said that the penalty for any white person sleeping with a black person is death on the spot. He said that as though it was doctrine. Joseph Smith taught that there were 6 foot quakers living on the moon. More recently, apostles gave horrible talks about African Americans. For example, see the book The Church and the Negro, which can be found at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2805810-the-church-and-the-negro. Things like this didn't take place in the 1800's; rather in the 1960's and 1970's, after Brown v. the Board and after the civil rights act had taken hold. The church was on the wrong side of history and about 30 years late to the dinner table in regards to race. Having said that, The Book of Mormon stands as a very racist religious book. If you are curious about what an outsider thinks of Book of Mormon racism, you can listen to this: http://mybookofmormonpodcast.com/2014/05/06/episode-7-2-nephi-3-8/.

 In members' defense and in my defense while I was a member, the thought that the Book of Mormon was racist NEVER occurred to me and, in fact, the one time it was brought up (on my mission), I was momentarily disturbed, but a fellow missionary brushed it aside and said it wasn't a big deal, so I dutifully became OK with it and didn't think of it again. I know some of those reading this blog absolutely love The Book of Mormon and are likely offended at what I just said. I invite you to take a step back and think about the concept of God turning someone's skin dark so they are ugly to white people because the dark skinned people didn't believe. That is definitely what the people of the 1830's thought to be normal, but why would an all-knowing God allow this to take place? Why couldn't he foresee the fact that those of us in modern days would have a very real problem with it and it would likely lead to people not being converted because of the racism it implies? I don't understand.

 I keep getting sidetracked. Here's the problem with LDS history and why it leads so many people out of the church. As I said before, the church claims infallibility. Modern leaders have said they would could not, would not, lead the church astray. If I take a step back and look at this logically, that statement says that church leaders are incapable of speaking incorrectly for God. Well, Gordon Hinckly said in his interviews with Larry King and David Wallace that he condemns the practice of polygamy. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, Wilford Woodruff, and many others took part in this practice (Parley Pratt was killed because he tried to marry another man's wife), and taught it as doctrine. D&C 132 speaks very clearly that in order to get to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom, you have to have more than one wife. There is a fundamental contradiction there. Either Gordon Hinckley was lying or Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, etc. were in error. I have to do some serious mental gymnastics to get around this very obvious contradiction. Many people are able to do that. I just can't. I can list a few other such items, most of which are in the Journal of Discourses, including Adam God (BY taught this as doctrine, Spence Kimball called it a theory and it has also been called a deadly heresy), the age of the Earth (D&C 77 states that it is 6,000 years old, while I and 99% of the world's scientists agree that it is much, much older), the fact that Joseph Smith taught that the Garden of Eden was literal and was in Missouri, while we are now getting to the point where many believing members think it was symbolic because they somehow have to justify a belief in evolution AND the Garden of Eden. Again, if these prophets spoke for the Lord, please explain to me why they wouldn't have known it was symbolic and also known that the earth is much older than is calculated in the Old Testament? It has to be one or the other. It can't be both--either it is 6,000 years old or it isn't.

 What I am saying is that if I take the church at its word that what prophets speak is LITERALLY true, how do I in good conscience choose one prophet over the other? The church, in my mind, has backed itself into a corner by claiming infallibility. If leaders didn't make statements such as, "Thus saith the Lord," we wouldn't be here. But they did and I can't ignore that.

 The church asks a lot of its members in the way of time, talents, and money. I don't want to contribute any of these items to an organization that has taught racist doctrine explicitly and now implicitly still teaches it both in the Book of Mormon and in the Book of Abraham. I'm reluctant to want to participate in an organization that was the inspiration for the Mountain Meadows massacre and still refuses to apologize for it. How did it inspire the massacre? Google the Oath of Vengeance early members had to take in the temple.

 Finally, fair readers, you or others may be inclined to say, "You know, you've always known, you still know it's true." Number one, that is condescending. It implies that I don't know my own feelings. I've heard the opposite said of members that "They know it isn't true." Neither statement is fair nor true. Believing members most certainly don't know it isn't true. And asking me to "know it's true" is the same as asking me to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny again. They are great figures and were fun to believe in when I was a child. I "knew" they were real. I remember being in fourth or third grade and having a teacher tell us that the Santa wasn't real. I "knew" she was lying and told my parents so. Keep in mind that I was older than 8 and somehow I didn't know enough to disbelieve the "Santa" myth, but did know enough to be baptized into the one true church. Furthermore, now that I am almost 40 and have decided to step out of the box the LDS church has put me in, there is something wrong with me. I am being deceived. How is it that I wasn't deceived when I was 8 and still believed in Santa but am now that I have the ability to discern truth from fiction?

 Most of what I said above may be considered "anti-Mormon" by many of you. Let me clarify what "anti-Mormon" is. Anti-Mormon is The Godmakers and any other lying, ridiculous document by the likes of Ed Decker. While I have added editorial commentary to the above post, what I am basing my conclusions are established fact by both the LDS church and its detractors. If I have misspoken and stated something that as a fact that I was mis-remembering or making up, please let me know. I do not want to be the person who is misrepresenting history.

 Anyway, those are my thoughts. I may post again. I may not. Your comments are welcome below or on my Facebook page. Thanks for reading.

 Some websites and other materials to see:

www.mormonthink.com--this website tries to stay unbiased in its review and analysis
www.mrm.org--a clearly biased website hosted by Born Again Christians who rely only on published church literature for their documentation
www.cesletter.com--a letter that more clearly discusses my above statements
www.fairlds.org--an LDS apologist website that will help you feel better if you are troubled by what I said
In Sacred Lonliness--a book by Todd Compton (an active member of the LDS church) about Joseph Smith's wives
www.lds.org--the LDS church's website. You can look up much of the above information in its essays (note that what I have stated above used to be considered "anti" but is now being acknowledged)
Rough Stone Rolling--a biography of Joseph's Smith life written by Richard Bushman, a believer, who refutes my assertion that The Book of Mormon is racist