churchblog

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Some of the more interesting confessions I have seen while browsing Mutual, a dating app for Mormons:

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I agree. I'll be the first to criticize the church and its past actions and current policies. This is me venting about the view I see where Mormons are considered to be a blight upon the populace. The proximity to us of something being used to explain why it's bad. I've seen people say things about "eradicating" (direct quote) our religion like they're Lilburn Boggs. And I just ignore them. That's why I made my own post for my own community.

The church has plenty of things to criticize, but blindly writing off its members as useless cultists or MLM Utah moms or whatever else is clearly reductive and erased all the good we've done in society, not in spite of our faith, but because of it.

Every time I feel petty about people talking about how gross and awful Mormons are I want to give them a list of stuff they can't engage with anymore. No more TV, no Mr. Brightside, no hearing aids or certain other medical procedures, no more Doom, no traffic lights, nothing Don Bluth touched, and I could go on. Below is an article with just a fraction of inventions by Mormons. Sorry to break it to you all, but this "regressive cult" has actively contributed to your life for the better, no matter how much you want to pretend it hasn't.

https://www.ldsliving.com/14-things-you-didnt-know-a-latter-day-saint-invented/s/74878

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seeing people discussing the concept of hell and how cruel the idea of eternal punishment is like, wow! i know this belief system you would love if not for your knee-jerk reaction against its name

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Every time I feel petty about people talking about how gross and awful Mormons are I want to give them a list of stuff they can't engage with anymore. No more TV, no Mr. Brightside, no hearing aids or certain other medical procedures, no more Doom, no traffic lights, nothing Don Bluth touched, and I could go on. Below is an article with just a fraction of inventions by Mormons. Sorry to break it to you all, but this "regressive cult" has actively contributed to your life for the better, no matter how much you want to pretend it hasn't.

https://www.ldsliving.com/14-things-you-didnt-know-a-latter-day-saint-invented/s/74878

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I am a TRADITIONAL MORMON and I follow TRADITIONAL MORMON VALUES

I am a COMMUNIST

I believe in PRISON ABOLITION

when I see someone being HOMOSEXUAL or TRANSSEXUAL, I mind my OWN DAMN BUSINESS

I support ROBUST URBAN PLANNING

I think all young women should learn INTEGRATED PEST CONTROL

I like my women how I like my men: VOTING IN EVERY ELECTION and BECOMING DOCTORS

I believe people are INHERENTLY GOOD and need to be ENCOURAGED WITH COMPASSION, not CONTROLLED WITH AUTHORITARIANISM

I think HANDCARTS are the BEST WAY TO TRAVEL

I practice WITCHCRAFT, MAGIC, DIVINATION, and ASTROLOGY

FOLLOW MY BLOG FOR MORE TRADITIONAL MORMON BELIEFS

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im actually so fucking tired of my religion being called a cult.

mormons aren't a cult. they dont "eXhIbIt A lOt oF cOnTrOL" over members lives. they don't believe in strict rules or requirements to get to heaven. it's guidelines on being a better person. its loving people regardless of who they are.

the secret lives of mormon wives was so incredibly distortionistic of the actual religion. stop hating and just. Spend A Day in an actual???? lds church????? not those flds or jehovas witnesses which are cults but ACTUAL. Mormon Churches Please. before you call my faith a cult.

there are so many queer people in the mormon church MYSELF INCLUDED who receive nothing but love and kindness. there arent any brainwashing or any of that. you are fully allowed and even ENCOURAGED to question every aspect of our faith. if you fuck up, youre not seen as disgusting or sinful. my dad did some pretty messed up shit that would definitely gotten him shamed out of any other church but instead everyone was so supportive and kind and understanding and didnt force him into anything.

youre allowed to do whatever you want with your life, within reason at least.

stop throwing the word cult around like fucking confetti.

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The holy spirit

Today, Jesus is holding:

The Holy Spirit

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I woke up at 4:30 this morning filled with existential dread.

I'm sure everyone can imagine why. I don't know if I've ever felt this hopeless about America. Angry, sure. Disappointed, lots. But I always had this hope that the better angels of our nature would triumph in the end.

I'm not hopeful anymore.

But here's a warning to all of my fellow Latter Day Saints, especially the ones who will never see this--our shared Christianity isn't going to save us. If the Christian Nationalists get their way and it comes down to an Us vs. Them scenario, we Mormons will always be classified as "Them."

For the past couple decades, LDS leadership has tried to strengthen ties with our fellow Christian religionists, which is a nice thought, while doubling down on Conservative Christian policies and culture war propaganda. It seems that leadership is trying to fit in, make us all snug and cozy with the Evangelicals and other right-wing Christians.

But let me tell you, none of that is going to keep us safe. They will never accept us as one of them. At the end of the day, regardless of our Christ-centered doctrine and our faith, they don't think we're Christian at all.

In the Us vs. Them equation we will always lose.

Stay safe out there my fellow Mormons, my siblings in Christ. Community is the only thing that might get us through.

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Alright folks, we’re going full Mormon on this bitch

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Mosiah 29:27

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Weird Grandpa Story #2

I remember asking my mom once, if her dad had gotten ornerier as he'd gotten old. I'd heard about that happening, and it would've made sense for him. He was already the orneriest old cuss I'd ever met. Couldn't even imagine him being grumpier than he was.

Instead of answering the question directly, she told me about what it was like going to church with him as a kid. Their church was a small Mormon ward out in the sticks of Colorado, and he served as their Bishop - mostly by virtue of being the only one willing to do that much unpaid work. He was also the ward pianist. He actually liked playing piano, and he liked having an audience, so it was more or less understood that he was willing to be the bishop in exchange for being the pianist. 

Which could've been a good trade, but there were a few problems.

The first problem was that Grandpa Dale played every song at about triple speed. He was a deeply impatient person, and that extended to how he played music. The second problem was that he had a bad habit of cursing under his breath. That would've been a scandalous  enough habit for a Mormon bishop, but was made much worse (and also much funnier)  by him being pretty damn deaf. So what he thought of as "quiet" cursing under his breath was more of just a verse hoarse way of yelling. I only visited him for a week or two every summer, and I still learned most of my bad words from him. 

So every Sunday would start with a quiet prayer, and then Bishop Grandpa Dale would go to the piano, sit down, and play the nightcore version of Praise to the Man. He would occasionally play other hymns, but he really, really liked that one. This would continue until he hit a wrong note, which was basically inevitable because his music philosophy was that if he could play a song flawlessly, it was time to play it faster. So he'd play until he hit that wrong note, at which point he would scream-whisper SHIIIIIT and, because he did not actually read music so much as memorize it, the only way he'd be able to get his rhythm back was by going back to the start. 

If it was a good Sunday, he could get it in two tries. Some Sundays took as many as five. 

I learned two things about Grandpa Dale from this story. The first was that he could play piano. I'd never actually seen him do that before. Still haven't, come to think of it. Second was that the man that I visited once a year, who always seemed on the verge of exploding, who scared the absolute dickens out of me, was actually the chilled out version of the man my mom grew up with.

And it helped knowing that, actually. I'm actually a pretty anxious person, and my mom is, also, a pretty anxious person, and as a teenager we'd sometimes get in these doom loops where we'd wind each other up until our springs cracked. She'd be worried about me growing up to be happy, and I'd be worried about letting her down, and my worrying would make me unhappy, and my unhappiness would make her unhappy, and we'd just kind of dissolve into these anxieties like cotton candy in the sea and become totally unbearable to be around for a bit. Then my dad would sit us both down and very politely tell us that we were being crazy. He had this quote how being sad that someone else is sad that you're sad is the emotional equivalent of being a Klein flask and that at some point you have to just say I am allowed one (1) single layer of emotional recursion, at most, and ideally zero. 

And it was always kind of embarrassing and silly, but when I was tempted to be more upset with my mom about it, I could remember the piano story and go: Sheesh. She has more of a right to be anxious that I do. For me it's really just genetics, but she grew up with the Cactus-Killing Gopher-Smasher. A whole 18 years of that. I spent two weeks every summer with that guy, and I love him, but I always came home feeling like I'd survived something. She's a trooper.

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I was walking out of the Walmart today, and a car passed me, and I got this incredibly vivid impression. It wasn't really in words, but if I had to put it into words, the two key points would be

a). I needed to watch that car and

b). That I needed to be careful, because the driver of the car was a massive bitch.

It kind of took me by surprise, because I really had no reason to be beefing with that car, and I also hadn't really had an impression like that since I was religious, which was in my teen years. Right? It'd been a decade since I had a little voice whisper in my ear, and I'd basically written it off as nonsense.

Anyway, I watched the car, because The Spirits or whatever were very insistent that I did. Car drove fine, went into the parking spot, inched forward, and right when it should've just stopped, the driver gunned it for some reason and it ran into the curb and cracked its bumper.

So, the driver got out, and she went to the front of the car to check that yes, she had cracked her bumper, and then she turned to look at me. The parking lot wasn't empty, but we were the only two people standing in that row, and I'd probably been staring at her for tenish seconds now.

She demanded very angrily to know why I hadn't warned her of the curb. And I could have said I didn't know you were about to gun it or is it my job to help every stranger park, or even could you have even heard me, inside your car?

And all of those would have been fine, but I was really, really busy digesting that I had somehow communed with Mormon Jesus again for the first time in fifteen years, and that the communion had mostly been there to let me watch someone park badly (?), so what I responded with was:

"Because it was foretold."

And I can't tell which would be funnier, if she went silent because there's not much to be said to that, or if she went silent because in Utah, she might actually believe me, but we parted ways without more words.

I'm still kind of digesting this myself, actually.

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chat I can not keep doing this

in seminary today we sang 'oh come all ye faithful'

it's november

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According to my LDS Temple Calendar, today is the 128th anniversary of when fasting occurred regularly on the first Sunday of the month. So happy first Sunday fast Sunday day!

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I'm glad it went well for you guys but what is this?

Good heavens. Best of luck to you all.

The bishopric reminded the congregation to focus on Christ in their testimonies before they turned the time over and that gives me hope that they’ll shut off the mic if anyone speaks about the election

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do you guys think jesus, the son of a carpenter, smelt the wood of the cross & temporarily thought of home

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Very funny take from a random terf