Norenzayan



























  1. Something that can help with the guilt is to remember that a huge fraction of the callings in the Mormon church are just BS make-work callings. The purpose of many callings is not to fill an actual need; it's to give the member a responsibility so that the member feels needed. This concept is even stated explicitly in the missionary manual, to help retain converts.

  2. Spend $$$ so that you can get a membership card, then spend more $$$ so that you can have a bit fancier white dress or bag or white wingtip loafers or embroidered tie, to make sure everyone knows how wealthy and committed you are in this place where "everyone dresses the same and we're all equal!"

  3. Not at all, this is a beautiful stage of someone finding freedom from a high-control group. And even better is that so many more people will see it as a red flag and either do their due diligence before joining Mormonism, or it will be a springboard for their own journey out. Can't wait to see where he goes next!

  4. Yeah he's an asshat with fucked up beliefs who deserves to wallow in irrelevance, but I will always downvote a post mocking people's appearance.

  5. When I got mine there was a very specific blessing that was counter intuitive to my personality at the time but something I wished for myself. When my parents and I got the text of the blessing, we were told there was a problem with the recording at that spot and they couldn't transcribe it, but "don't worry, whatever is missing you are still blessed with, even if it didn't make it into the transcription!"

  6. Wow she managed to be demeaning to both men and women in this piece. Equality achieved!

  7. It’s condescending to talk to children as if they are children as well. As a person who works with children in my career, I know they appreciate being spoken to with respect and  not in a fake high voice. 

  8. Granted, maybe I should say infants, not children?

  9. I gave a few talks as a PIMO, and as with all things PIMO I felt extremely conflicted/dissonant about it. On the one hand it was kind of exciting to try to find ways to squish the topic into the humanist beliefs I hold now, on the other hand it felt bad to be supporting the doctrine at all, plus it always seemed like no one actually listened anyway, so why bother torturing myself and going to the trouble of messaging the topic to suit my own values?

  10. My topic was ensure to the end ….so I could kinda do it. Josephs search for the truth? Ugh that would be hard.

  11. Yeah I tried to make it about following our own search for truth even if it leads to unexpected or difficult answers, but in the end members are always going to interpret that to mean get the same answer as Smith and the answers the church tells you to get. 

  12. Hi fellow exmo! Welcome to the wonderful world of tea! I'm a bit of a newbie myself and the very informed people here are giving great advice, but I'll just throw my two cents in as a fellow ex-mormon. In my experience and you'd probably agree, the Mormon palate is extremely limited. Basically chocolate, sugar, sugar and sugar. So I actually had to put in intentional effort to learn to appreciate and enjoy flavors of the forbidden drinks. I didn't like them at first. 

  13. Thank God for whistleblowers shaking the money loose.

  14. In ours the speaker spent a few minutes talking about how important it is to talk about Jesus, quoted Nelson a few times about how important it is to talk about Jesus, then spent the rest of the time talking about the mechanics of keeping the Sabbath day holy

  15. The claim was about the Church "embracing the fantastical story told by Joseph Smith about the origin of [The Book of Mormon]". Are you saying the only evidence that the Church embraces that "fantastical story" is whether or not they're printing the copy of the BoM that had a reproduction of the "caractors" on the cover?

  16. I admit I overstated it, but achilles here caught what I was trying to convey. De-emphasis of the details, for sure. You can take your win for the semantics, but that's what I was talking about

  17. Which details do you think are being "de-emphasized"?

  18. Get rid of the endowment entirely. It feels culty, even I felt that my first time through as Utah Mormon kid with zero life experience outside the church to compare it to. It's a Masonry rip-off that Smith used to keep his disgusting sexual predation secret until he was murdered over it. Humans have a remarkable ability to reinterpret and reframe things to their own sensibilities, yes, but that's the truth of the origin of the endowment. 

  19. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The opinion of one singular person who has had it good does not invalidate the opinions and circumstance of THOUSANDS of people who have had it bad.

  20. I think that every conference and it ends up being exactly the same. Bland

  21. Yep, we get these posts every time and every time it is the same cardboard talks. Besides, it's way too late for this conference to respond to the IG post, the talks were submitted for scrubbing and approval by the correlation department months ago

  22. Check out the exjw sub. In the last few weeks to months, the leadership has officially allowed beards, allowed women to wear pants and men to go without ties (except when participating in programs), and members to communicate to some extent with disfellowshipped members, among other changes.

  23. The language to handle these situations is easy, others here have given some good scripts. It's the feeling of guilt that are difficult, but there's no way out but just pushing through them, experiencing them, and letting them go. Accept that you will feel guilty for saying you don't want to discuss it, but that feeling of guilt doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. It's just been programmed into you. The only way to overcome it is to keep practicing saying no (whatever phrasing you use) when these situations arise.

  24. Here's the thing. Patriarchy and other oppressive regimes require buy-in and complicity by at least a small fraction of the oppressed group (see also Charlie Bird and a long line of previous members like him). The ones with actual power can trot out these token supporters to legitimize their own power and try to silence dissenting voices. There's a reason the quote was by a woman. And if there is a response of some kind, it will likely be given by a women, most likely Annette Dennis herself. She won't acknowledge the insta post directly, but will just reinforce the sentiments stated there.

  25. I predict a hand-slap talk at conference, akin to Renlund's talk from April 2022. The church will not let this go unpunished, I'm sure. They will feel a great urgency to remind women of their place, which is on the bottom rung of the authority ladder.

  26. If there is a rebuking talk, it will be given by Annette Dennis herself, just like Ahmad Corbitt was sent out to shut down activism efforts. Leaders of patriarchal and authoritarian organizations loooove pulling this kind of stunt.

  27. he's a scientist trying to be a religious leader. He has no theological background or scriptural knowledge of Christianity. His biggest qualifications are his big family and money from being a doctor, then doing an operation on Kimball.

  28. Not a scientist, a doctor. There's a huge difference. Doctors learn some scientific facts to do their work, but besides physician-scientists, doctors don't actually do science or have to think like a scientist. Surgeons especially are even further downstream of science.

  29. "Wait, you're telling me there's another Jesus holiday we can cash in on by selling junk? Why have we been missing out on this revenue stream for so long??"

  30. Sounds like an organization that is flailing to keep control over an increasingly uncontrollable membership

  31. Participating in an organization that your don't believe in or feel genuinely connected to is a surefire recipe for resentment and inner turmoil in life. It will continue to be an incredibly difficult position until you find something to replace it. Humans need community. As a Mormon it feels like church is a uniquely necessary part of life, but you can find community in many, many other places. And it doesn't have to be a big global or even national organization. It doesn't have to be religion at all. Because the Mormon Church is so all-consuming, you may need multiple smaller things to replace it with. But you won't discover this until you start to explore outside church.

  32. I appreciate this, do you have any suggestions of things that worked for you to find community outside the church?

  33. It's going to be highly personal because it will be based on your own interests and desires, not those handed down from your parents or an institution. For me I have always enjoyed running, and I always thought of it as a solo activity. But it turns out there are running clubs and groups in pretty much every city and town, and if not it's pretty easy to start one. I found a group in my town and just starting running with them regularly. It took a while to build friendships because they aren't pre-packaged like they are in the church, but regular interaction and being genuinely curious about others has led to some good friends.

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