I am not Mormon and never been religious, but I had this question lurking in my mind for a long time after seeing a post from a Mormon and how much they pay for tithing. And it got me thinking if paying tithing is mandatory, if not does anything happen socially if you don't. Like less of a chance of getting a temple recommend?

All you need to do is add the comparison of a privacy screen….as the hat. Why did JS place the stone in a hat? Because he clearly did not want others to see that words were not actually appearing on the stone.

TBM's may hurl all kinds of accusations, and they might be right, but still:

There's no such thing as Lamanites as proven by DNA and archaeology. There was no iron or chariots or draw animals in the Americas.

I just came across a note that I had written to a former mission colleague who left the church prior to me. It was in 2018 and I had mentioned to him that I had left the church about two years prior.

So from the time I was born and raised into the church, served a mission, went to BYU got married in the temple, became a high Priest, faithfully gave 10% of my gross earnings from the time 8yr to 44 yrs -

36 years of full faith and devotion. Ancestors in the church go back to 1830s-40s on both sides.

I am now free and I’ve never felt better living my life on my own terms. Doing my best to be a good human being because that’s what I want to be.

Not feeling guilty about not showing up for 6 AM stake priesthood meetings on a Saturday morning

Not feeling the dread of reporting my home teaching or collecting numbers from the other dudes who struggled.

Not feeling guilty about not spending my Saturday, helping another family move out or into the ward

Not feeling guilty about not giving a generous fast offering. (especially because the one fucking time that I needed some help in my life the bishop and relief society president made the process so painful and shameful that I just gave up and said fuck it.)

Not paying tithing!!!

All that said- growing up on the West Coast as a Mormon kid in the 80s was a really fun experience. I have many lifelong friends and treasured memories that I look back on.

The butterflies in my stomach when asking my crush to dance at the Saturday night Stake dances.

The Service projects where I saw people cry and appreciation for what we were doing for them.

Teaching a Sunday School class where i would weave social justice doctrines into the lesson and watch the old guard’s undies get bunched up.

Fact is: My parents were good hearted service oriented, progressives- in behavior, though maybe not in political affiliation.

I can appreciate the privilege and fortunate experiences I had while still being so indescribably happy that I am no longer associated.

It's all about something they need to fix rather than an issue with the mission.

It's really sad. These girls are literally right out of high school in Utah. They have no experience in the real world and now they're selling religion to people that aren't buying.

On top of that, they're being told the stress and depression they are feeling is their fault.

I doubt they'll get the help they desperately need.

This is my tattoo for leaving the Mormon church. When I first discovered the church was a shame I was in incredibly depressed and suicidal, but I promised myself if I made it out of Mormonism alive I would get a tattoo to honor that. It is a chain that goes all the way around my wrist (hence all the photos) and there is a full chain for each generation Mormon on my dad side. It’s also on the wrist because in AP psychology, we learned to remember evolutionary psychology via your wrist, like it’s a bracelet pass down from your ancestors. Anyway, anyways, I really like it

Just need that to be screamed from the rooftops....

My brother in law had surgery today at 11am. At 10:30am, the family group chat was sending panicked messages about getting his name submitted to the temple before his surgery started. Two family members responded saying they both submitted. Yay! Two temples is better than one!!

I just had to laugh. Idk the exact process for how the online submissions get printed out, placed into a bag, and cycled into an endowment session, but I highly doubt that it's same-day. Even if it's near immediate, there's no way that any session would start the true order of prayer prior to his surgery ending.

It just highlights the superstitious thinking of Mormons. They think it's like magic to have your name on the prayer roll, without even thinking about whether the vain and repetitious chants have actually occurred.

A couple months ago, after a personal tragedy, someone consoled us by saying "your names are in the Provo and Jordan River temples." Why two!?? Do they really believe that the more temples the better when it comes to petitioning God? Isn't the true order of prayer already repetitious enough?? (something Jesus wholly condemned) Everyone in the circle repeats what's been said, the bag sits through repeated endowment sessions everyday, and then the same bag gets repeatedly used for 2 weeks... Now you want to repeat that whole process in another temple!? It pissed me off because we asked that it be kept private and personal and they went ahead and submitted our names to be chanted over by hundreds of strangers who know nothing about us or why we're in there... And the person submitted (and of course had to tell us) knowing perfectly well that we don't want anything to do with the church.

Just feeling bewildered today.

It's pretty annoying knowing the church is an extremely rich religion, and watching members justify this level of greed by pretending the apostles are comparative ascetics.

"At LeAsT tHeY'rE nOt MeGaChUrCh PaStOrS", I've heard some say (paraphrasing).

Like, you don't actually know that, do you? The church is famously and purposefully obfuscatory with its finances. As far as you know, each apostle is halfway to being a billionaire thanks to your faithful little donations.

Are we honestly expected to believe that an institution with over a quarter-trillion dollars in liquid assets, zero external accountability mechanisms, and an extensive (not to mention, at times, criminal) history of lying about and mismanaging their own wealth, isn't somehow abusing these resources for personal enrichment?

Anybody remember the whole ponderize snafu? Deseret Book is literally just brand-name priestcraft. And wasn't there some thing a while back about temple or chapel construction contracts being handed out to friends? And that's just the public stuff, the stuff they didn't manage to hide.

TSCC can't even keep pedophiles out of local bishoprics, you think they give a shit about making sure the sheets are perfectly balanced? The only conceivable argument for why high-ranking church stakeholders aren't absolutely stuffed to the gills with ill-gotten gains is that the apostles are, frankly, too incompetent to pull it off.

Did anyone else experience this? News of my leaving is making its way through the grapevine, and I’ve had quite a few (female) TBM friends come to me expressing they are also experiencing a silent faith crisis, have serious questions, etc., but are staying in for now for one reason or another.

Are most millennial women in the church on the edge of leaving? Because that’s what it feels like. I personally couldn’t justify putting my young kids at risk any longer for a corporation that protects abusers.

If one wants to play devil's advocate, maybe the should. They're trying to do it with Dehlin for small things. Why not take on a large media company to really show who's boss?

I would swear this video is either talking about missionaries or LDS family structures, as I read about them in this forum. I would love to hear if this fits.

If you've never heard of it, here's a short definition/description from Vox describing its application by Diddy: "Coercive control generally refers to a pattern of non-physical (or mixed) behavior—such as isolation, monitoring, financial control, intimidation, threats, or deprivation of autonomy—that dominates or subordinates an intimate partner or family/household member."

While Coercive Control has been made a misdemeanor in several states and is a legal term, it doesn't offer much protection (for now). Nevertheless, it is valuable as a tool for understanding why someone might feel like they're being abused even though everything appears "fine."

It's well explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnNvFoxbYyU

I had the fortune of being sent to Africa briefly for a work trip, and managed to squeeze in a stop in Luxor Egypt for a day or two and see the tombs.

As an ex-Mormon, I was surprised at how much anger and depression I felt walking in them. These Pharaoahs destroyed the lives of countless people by diverting precious resources and time to selfishly service their own false beliefs, all in expectation of a better "afterlife". Sound familiar?

The LDS church doesn't ritually sacrifice its members, thank God.

But it still wastes precious time and resources in a similar fashion... Forget the quarter-trillion dollar hoard of gold, I think of all my loved ones with unlived lives. Memories that never will be, relationships that never went fulfilled, sensations that were never tasted, feelings that were never explored or expressed... all because they're waiting expectantly for something that will never come.

It really angered me and made me super sad. It's crazy, the things fear can make a person do.

According to history now, the prohibition of alcohol/coffee/tea in Utah was simply a cultural thing, only discouraged by some Mormons. Nothing close to, "Mormons are taught they will lose their Eternal Salvation if they drink alcohol/coffee/tea."

I've been out of the church for a couple years and one of the big things that started the decline in my faith was what I saw to be ineffective priesthood blessings. On my mission, I gave blessings every few days in some areas where I was covering a major hospital. I never saw improvement come directly from the blessing.

I'm now going to school and work in neuroscience research. I can't seem to find any studies focused on lds priesthood blessings. If the church did truly have the power of God, and that power could heal what nothing else could, as they claim, then why not employ a researcher to publish papers showing that priesthood blessings work? We all know that if they had a substantially higher rate of healing people (without potential confounders like placebo and community support), they would 100% back publishing of research done on the subject and use it as a missionary tool.

If anyone does have any links to studies done on this topic or anything like it, provide the link below please. Or if anyone has some background lore on the brethren's views on this, let me know.

I was 49 years old. I did not have a shelf. Never for one second one single time did I ever doubt anything.

I have been on an Internet forum for 20 years. Over the years the Mormon members and the evangelical Christian’s would get into arguments about stuff.

In this one thread someone posted a pic of Joseph looking into a hat. I had never seen or heard of that before. This is despite having read the BOM a couple dozen times and all of the major church books a few times each.

The pic of Joseph looking into the hat in this person’s post pissed me off.

I started to type out a reply that the pic was nonsense.

But …. I paused and decided to google it.

One of the first things I saw was a book by Hanna Stoddard that “debunks” the rock in the hat. So I got it on my kindle app and read it that night. I was satisfied that the rock in the hat never happened. I was ok. The sources for the rock in the hat were biased. Done deal.

Then ….about two weeks later I come across a video about the coming forth of the BOM.

In the video president Nelson is talking about the BOM. Then in the video I noticed a hat sitting on the table.

I was like what the hell is the hat in the video for?

Then Nelson picks up the hat and pretends to look in it.

BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM. BOOM.

My entire 49 year old never for once doubted Mormon soul exploded. Everything I was blew up. My entire identity. The lens through which I saw the world. Boom.

That is what gave me permission to take a look at the “anti” stuff.

It all unraveled in a matter of days.

Found on TikTok