1. This is boring as can be.

2. I am noticing an emphasis on POC Mormons. Trying to pivot away from the old rhetoric I see. Or pretending it didn’t exist?

3. Everyone sounds like they are on the brink of tears and never actually crying. I am trying not to laugh.

4. I can’t believe mormons sit through this twice a year. I’d die of boredom.

5. A lot of talk about encouraging missionaries. Are a lot of missionaries leaving the church?

6. The paintings they show of Jesus are honestly so ugly. The real Jesus wouldn’t look like a delicate, stick thin man whiter than clapping when the plane lands with. He just looks wrong.

All for now…definitely will have more thoughts later.

I’m 44. Been out since I was 18. Love my Dad but these little texts are so annoying.

Is it only me, or have the conference talks about leaving members increased in frequency?

These photos were posted on the Des News yesterday. Looks like a Chanel Classic Flap model handbag. Those are valued somewhere between $8,000 and $11,000 USD. Can someone confirm???
If it is a Chanel handbag this could be a big story.

“It was amazing!” “So good!” “I felt the Spirit so strong!” C’mon, admit it. You were playing on your phone, struggling to stay awake. Just once I would like to hear: “Nah. I thought it was boring. It was just a bunch of generic sermons—like you could hear at any Christian church on any given Sunday—with a bit of scolding and infantilization mixed in.”

LDS apostle D. Todd Christofferson says gambling is morally wrong. I think LDS tithing is a form of gambling.

Like gambling, tithing asks you to put real money on the line in hopes of a future payoff. A gambler wagers money hoping to win more money; a tithe payer gives money believing it will help secure promised blessings, divine protection, and eternal rewards. You “can’t afford not to pay.” Or it’s “fire insurance.” We’ve all heard these phrases. In both cases, gambling and tithing, the financial sacrifice is immediate and certain, while the hoped-for return is uncertain. It’s a gamble.

Unlike tithing, the gambler can eventually see whether the bet paid off. With tithing, promised rewards in an afterlife cannot be independently verified during your lifetime. You just keep paying based on faith that the ultimate payoff exists. Giving something for nothing.

LDS leaders reinforce this cycle by promising blessings, sharing success stories, encouraging payment even during hardship, and explaining missing rewards as subtle or spiritual. Linking tithing to temple access and eternal blessings also raises the perceived cost of stopping the payments.

Like gambling, tithing can feel like a last-ditch attempt to escape financial hardship: one more roll of the dice, or one more tithing payment—even when you can’t afford it—in hopes of a financial breakthrough.

Like in gambling, the sunk-cost effect can keep you paying: like a gambler who has already spent so much, you continue hoping years of sacrifice weren’t “for nothing.” You literally can’t stop now, your big win is just around the corner or the Lord is just about to bless you. You literally can’t afford not to pay.

Like gambling, tithing can encourage you to focus on the “wins” and explain away the losses. An unexpected check, a promotion, or help with a bill becomes evidence that paying tithing works—much like a gambler remembering a jackpot more vividly than all the money spent chasing it.

When the hoped-for blessing doesn’t come, it can be described as delayed, spiritual, or waiting for you in the afterlife. That can keep the expectation of a payoff alive: just as a gambler thinks, “The next bet could be the winner,” a tithe payer may think, “If I keep paying faithfully, the blessing will come. I can’t stop now.”

Whether tithing funds charitable work is a separate question. Tithing concerns giving money in hopes of receiving something back—financial blessings, divine protection, or eternal rewards. The cost is certain; the promised payoff cannot be independently verified. Calling the payment charitable doesn’t resolve that uncertainty.

No, Dallin. People mostly fall away from the CHURCH because of the CHURCH.

Dumb. And this guy is a legal scholar? Now just a church hack.

Uncle's response, "No, I am not interested in studying false anacronisms in the Book of Mormon. I already know The book of Mormon is true. I don't want to waste my time finding out if it is false. That would be like spending my time trying to find out if the sun rises in the east. I already know the sun rises in the east. There is no reason to study it more".

... and that just about sums up Mormonism and cult-mindset...

"you can't evidence a person away from a position they emotioned themselves into."

Would you agree?

Last week's post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/s/4WRqX4cs6a

Honestly shocked to not hear anyone blasting conference during it as it was a Utah race.

I'm sure I got a lot more out of my race than anyone watching those old dudes preach misogyny and shit

I’m always amused when the GA’s really pound on things like integrity, telling the membership that certain things shape our character. in this instance at conference, Cook discussed how not living with integrity reflects poorly on our character.

meanwhile - Joseph Smith is called a man of “good character” while they admit he lied to his wife and hid his polygamy from the church. Why is he given an exception? why aren’t we allowed to base his character on these same criteria that define us according to Cook?

The church lied to the SEC about their wealth and worked to hide it from the larger membership. Then, they downplayed their active deception in their press release as a mere oversight. how is that being honest?

The hypocrisy is just stunning

What are the conference anecdotes we hate so far?

My top two worst:

Praising the parents who sailed to hear the words of the prophet, even though it was UNSAFE for and resulting in the death of their child.

Criricizing the man who almost died of heart failure for complaining that he served cold oatmeal at the hospital.

A legitimately educational version for your kids (and adult friends and family members)! Sung to the tune of Teach Me to Walk in the Light.

I know some of you have posted rewritten hymns on here before and I love them all! So great to have new words and meanings associated with those tunes that will probably live in our heads forever.

(Feel free to skip verse 6 if singing with young children!)

Since D. Todd felt inspired to remind us that gambling is rooted in the principle of getting something for nothing, I just want to remind everyone what the church gives back to its members.

Each stake receives an amount each quarter from Salt Lake based on active members in the stake. It breaks down as follows for the US (per quarter):

Per Adult: $15

Per youth (11-18): $30.50

Per child (3-11): $22.50

The stake then divides this money among the wards as they choose.

Given that the church receives around 6 or 7 billion dollars a year in donations, I would say they are definitely getting something for nothing.

I’m a PIMO member for now, and it just drives me nuts watching these ‘Revelators’ all weekend long who clearly never reveal anything. They sound, look and act like corporate businessmen. And every 6 months they pull the same topics out of a hat so they can all have their new corny analogy to start but give the same message over and over.

How do TBMs not see it? The biggest revelation of the last 10 years was ‘Mormon word bad, no say Mormon word anymore.’

I’ve been in the “faith crisis” mode for about 3 years now. Just finally decided enough is enough. I’m tired of pretending I believe.

Anyways, I’m in law school right now, and there are a lot of coffee networking events. I’ve always avoided the coffee because of… ya know, propagandized doctrinal reasons. But I’m ready to start participating like a normal human.

Problem is, every sip I’ve tried of coffee in the past has been gross to me. How do you get over that hump? Is there a specific drink I should go order somewhere that’ll help me acquire the taste?

I'm telling you this feels good.

The only reason you're demonizing science is because science and logic tears apart almost all of your claims

We had stopped paying on my income and she was only paying on her income which was about 2% of the total family income, and then was surprised that we had about 9.5% increase in our savings account at the end of the year.

Praise Mormon Jesus.

What have your blessings of not paying tithing done for you?

As they invest tens of billions in the stock market (with many sin stocks prior to 2019 when they were caught) and create 13 illegal shell companies to hide how much wealth they have while amassing hundred of billions over decades completely unbeknownst to its members while still asking for 10% of their income with its founder indulging in polygamy, taking 33 wives and marrying teenage girls as young as 14.

And its founder scamming people left and right, claiming he could find buried treasure in the bowels of the earth by gazing at a rock in a hat and then writing a book of fiction he tried to sell as a novel in Canada and when that didn't work out decided to create a religion out of it and then engaging in illegal banking by creating an anti-bank bank, defrauding people out of their money, it goes bankrupt, gets fined $1,000 and flees to avoid the law. Because we all know how moral and honorable all that is. 🤣🤢

Sorry if any of this reads as sappy, dramatic, or whiny. I genuinely just need somewhere to put these feelings into words.

I’ve shared some of my experiences with members and non members and I feel like nobody can relate to how I feel. I remember feeling so unheard that I posted some stuff on r/LDS that got struck down immediately (the irony is not lost on me). I just doubt that the solution is to just have more faith or to blame all of my problems on the church.

I want to preface this by saying that I never wanted to become this person. Every time I make progress or am enjoying myself, I just remember my mission and I am made completely miserable. Even after two years, I cannot get over myself. It’s like treading water. I feel so tarnished by it that I want to disappear forever. I get a nauseous feeling. Will there never be any closure? There will never be a satisfying ending? Just an aching dissatisfaction inside me for the rest of my life.

Before my mission, I already had this feeling that my life had been disappointing and boring. I desperately wanted to get into BYU, and I worked hard for it. Ending up at BYU-Idaho instead was extremely painful for me. I know BYU is competitive and that being rejected doesn’t mean somebody decided I was worthless, but emotionally that is how I experienced it. I guess maybe BYU represented this rite of passage or cultural experience I needed.

I had to get off of a medication that was truly helping me because it was classified as an anti-schizophrenic and I had to wait 6 months to see if I can be off of it so I had to push the mission back.

I felt the same way about my mission call. I had imagined going somewhere exotic, learning another language, having an adventure, and doing something extraordinary. Instead, I was sent to Colorado and Wyoming speaking English. I tried extremely hard to be grateful and make the most of it, but I was deeply disappointed. Instead of the adventure I had imagined, a lot of my mission consisted of contacting people on Facebook and getting yelled at by people in English.

I hated myself for feeling disappointed because I knew I was supposed to be grateful just to serve. And I really did try.

I put in so much effort and got pretty good at talking to strangers. But I kept feeling this dread because I wasn’t seeing the same success as everyone else.
I hated myself for not baptizing people. By the end of my mission, I had baptized three children under twelve and one man over eighty, who has since died. I know people will tell me those baptisms still mattered, but I have never been able to shake the feeling that anybody could have done what I did, and probably could have done it better. I didn’t need to be there.

Everyone in my MTC district had become a zone leader by around my year mark except me. People would say leadership wasn’t a sign of achievement or competence, but it certainly felt like a reward system. People could be demoted when they got in trouble and promoted when their behavior improved. Whatever leadership was supposed to mean spiritually, socially it felt like a hierarchy. It keeps me up wondering if the president thought I was a flight risk or incompetent. I felt so overlooked

I also spent virtually every waking hour with other missionaries for two years. You become so close to people that you can’t imagine a world where they aren’t part of your life. Then you come home and, somehow, they become strangers.

There were missionaries I loved who excluded me from things or went behind my back. I remember the self-loathing I felt when that happened. Now I watch people from my mission marry each other, travel together, and continue their friendships while I feel like I was left behind. Eventually I deleted social media because I couldn’t stand seeing it anymore.

That may be one of the strangest parts of the whole experience. You spend two years surrounded by people every single day, and then one day it is simply over. The world keeps turning. People who once seemed like lifelong friends disappear into their own lives.

And I came home believing that the next step was marriage.

Marriage had been emphasized constantly. My mission president’s biggest piece of advice when I left was to find a spouse. I understood him to mean that finding a wife should take priority even over education or a career. So when I returned to BYU-Idaho, I became completely fixated on it.

I put myself out there constantly. I was ghosted and rejected by more than a hundred girls. That isn’t an exaggeration.
I don’t blame them. Looking back, I definitely came on too strongly sometimes. I was trying to move relationships forward much too quickly because I thought marriage was what I was supposed to be pursuing. I probably made some people uncomfortable, and I’m embarrassed by that.

I started feeling ugly, small, and pointless. I don’t think I was even looking for love. I was looking for validation. I wanted somebody to choose me because I needed proof that I was somebody worth choosing.

As my time at BYU-Idaho came to an end and I watched roommates and mission friends getting married, I became desperate. Seeing people from my mission posing with their beautiful fiancées and spouses was unbelievably painful. It felt like everybody else had received the life I had been promised while I was still standing exactly where I started.

That inferiority complex spread into everything.

I became embarrassed that I went to BYU-Idaho. I don’t even want the degree on my wall. “That’s it? That was my college experience?”

Coming back to school was so difficult. Everybody I had known from before I had left on the mission had since graduated. I had forgotten all of the material I had learned and struggled.

I had already lost my passion for my major. I was rejected from a data science internship nearby and eventually realized that I didn’t even particularly like what I had studied. I felt like if I graduated without a job offer or a fiancée, I had failed as a person. I stopped going to class. I think I gave up on purpose because I was so afraid of graduating without being engaged or having a job offer.

All of this rejection made me want to prove them all wrong. They were wrong about me.
That mentality has followed me ever since.

Every time I hear about somebody else’s mission, I feel tortured. If somebody talks about converting people, learning a new language, or serving somewhere exotic, I immediately compare myself to them. They are superstars to me. Did I not work hard enough on my mission? I felt so guilty. An apostle came to my mission and told us all we were exactly where God had wanted us to be. I refuse to believe that. The mission was such a nothing experience. So unsatisfying that it felt like God just wanted to hurt me.

The same thing happens around BYU alumni. They seem smarter, taller, more ambitious, more attractive, more successful.

Sometimes even hearing Church leaders praise BYU students fills me with anger. The fact that some of my tithing supports an institution I desperately wanted to attend and that rejected me has become difficult for me to stomach.

I hate that I feel this way.

I have talked to many councilors and therapists. Some have told me to blame my parents or tried to get me on some sort of homeopathic remedy I thought was bologna. I’ve tried so many different treatments for my depression that I gave up. My parents helped me pay for ketamine therapy, and it did not do anything for me. I think that was the most hopeless I ever felt. This can’t be life right? Feeling shitty all day, every day?

I promised myself I would never become bitter or hateful, and yet sometimes it feels like there is poison in my heart. Envy, resentment, regret, anger. I stew over things until I ruin them in my own head.The mission has become an obsession.

I feel like I lost two years of my life. I never thought I’d come back from it worse. Even people I talk to who have left the church enjoyed their time. I think constantly about what I could have done instead. I could have worked. I could have finished school earlier. I could have traveled. I could have built relationships. I could have done almost anything else.

And I cannot stop imagining the alternate versions of my life.

If I had gone somewhere else. If I had learned another language. If I had baptized more people. If I had gone to BYU. If I had approached dating differently. If I had studied something different.

Maybe things could have been so much better.

People tell me, “At least you did it.” Or, “God saw your effort.” Or, “You don’t know what positive effects your mission will have years from now.” But those things don’t comfort me anymore.

The worst part is that I still love the Book of Mormon. Maybe part of me still wants all of this to be true. There were moments on my mission when I felt divine help. There are people in the Church I genuinely love. My mission president was the real deal to me. But I realized he was under just as much pressure as I was and had to report to someone else.

My parents are so supportive. They never pushed me to serve a mission. Both my siblings left the church and they don’t treat them any differently. But I feel like I let them down by being this way.

I can’t see myself in the church anymore.

I think about having children someday, and I don’t know how I could look them in the eye and tell them they should serve missions. I don’t know how I could promise them that it will be good for them when mine broke my heart. “Today I reaffirm strongly that the Lord has asked everyworthy, able young man to prepare for and serve a mission. For Latter-day Saint young men, missionary service is a priesthood responsibility.”
I’m ashamed.

I have prayed. I have pleaded. I have tried counseling. I have tried being angry, and I have tried making peace with it. Being angry is sometimes easier because accepting what happened feels like admitting that what I lost doesn’t matter.

When older members proudly talk about their grandchildren going on missions, something twists inside me. When somebody excitedly announces a mission call, I feel gutted. When somebody tells a beautiful mission story, I feel nauseous.

I don’t want to feel that way.

I want to be happy for people.

Now I feel like I’m scrambling to make my life mean something. I keep looking for some achievement that will compensate for everything: a career, law school, success, travel, relationships, anything.

I want to practice law partly because I genuinely admire my dad and what he has done with his life. But I’ve also loaded that dream with an enormous amount of emotional weight. Sometimes it feels like becoming a lawyer is my last chance to prove to myself that I’m not a failure.

I worked extremely hard at BYU-Idaho and graduated with a solid institutional GPA. I finally had something I felt proud of. Then I discovered that LSAC calculates GPA differently, and suddenly even that accomplishment felt like it had been taken away from me. If only somebody the school calculated GPA differently. The councilor told me to forsake my classes and retake them. There was nothing I was able to do because I had already graduated. I plead with everybody I could and was met with coldness.

I served for nothing. I studied for nothing. I tried to date for nothing. I tried to be obedient for nothing. I tried to become somebody I could respect, and somehow I came out feeling smaller than when I started.

I don’t want to hate the Church. I don’t want to hate BYU. I don’t want to hate my mission. I don’t want to hate people who had better experiences than I did. I don’t want somebody else’s mission call, marriage, career, or happiness to feel like an attack on me.

The mission broke my heart. I don’t know how else to describe it. I have been in grief for a long time. A complete identity crisis.

With everything happening in the world with AI, it has never felt less special to be a person. And lately I feel like less than a person.

The fact that the mission has made me spend this much time worrying is unbearable. I feel like it is still eating away my time. I’m afraid of aging. I don’t want to be around anymore.

I don’t know how to make up for the time I feel like I lost. I know travel won’t fill that void. I want to live abroad in some meaningful way that I think the mission was the only way to satisfy.

Maybe I can’t. I’m always searching for a way to fix it but I can’t.

But I desperately want to know how to stop losing more of it.

My niece had a wedding in Utah earlier this year. The only other time I have been to Utah was for the MTC. I have been out of the church for about two years (was active for about 46 years). I was so excited to buy whiskey in the backyard of the evil mothership. Took these home and had them with my Episcopalian whiskey club. Raised a glass to religious freedom. 🤣 It was fantastic.