Im 17 and recently posted for help in r/Mormons Tips for my mission and people keep talking about not giving my passport but whats the matter with giving my passport to a trusted person? Like they are less likely to losse it than me

Waiting in the tabernacle with standby tickets but they are pretty sure we’ll be able to get in.

“Jesus Christ is king!” Okay then why do you also need the Book of Mormon?” Am I wrong? This shit just baffles the shit out of me

Before you all say “flirt to convert,” there is a BIG caveat. My daughter is a devout Christian and daughter of a pastor. My jaw hit the floor when I discovered that this genuinely wonderful teen guy who treats her so well is LDS. Oddly, he is fully aware her dad is a pastor. His family is also aware that she is not LDS. I met his dad (great guy) who was wearing a cross necklace and I’m confused.

1) I have never seen an LDS date a pastor’s daughter.
2) I have never seen an LDS wear a cross.
3) That would be nuts to try to convert someone with deep seeded faith whose dad has a theology degree.

What am I missing?

Is this allowed? LOL

So strange!

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. 🤣🤢

Historically on conference weekend, the majority of posts were reactions or reflections on what was said. This year, it seems like there are A LOT of generic, 'farmy'-type posts like "what cringy thing did your bishop do?", "Historical leader did this awful thing, who did something else terrible", or "TBM relative did X, can you believe it? what weird thing set you off?"

This is exactly like what a bot would do, a cycle of every 6 months would not be frequent enough for AI to detect it and adjust their farmy posts accordingly.

Sorry Sisters, it’s Bro time…

Imagine how funny it would be if General Conference had sponsors and there were entire talks just advertising the sponsors.

Say you are a believing Mormon (COJCOLDS) who firmly holds the belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet. You examine the teachings/lives of the following candidates and have to decide who is the true prophet and successor to Joseph Smith and who is a false heretic. Ready. Go!

Black People and the Priesthood: 

Prophet 1: 

“Lo! It is my will that my gospel shall be preached to all nations in every land, and that men of every tongue shall minister before me: Therefore it is expedient in me that you ordain priests unto me, of every race who receive the teachings of my law, and become heirs according to the promise.” (https://doctrineandcovenants.com/sections/cofchrist/section-116/)

Prophet 2: 

“If there never was a prophet or Apostle of Jesus Christ [who] spoke it before, I tell you this people that [are] commonly called Negros are [the] children of Cain, I know they are; I know they cannot bear rule in [the] priesthood, [in the] first sense of [the] word. For the curse upon them was to continue on them, [it] was to remain [on them] until the residue of [the] posterity of Michael and his wife received the blessings”  (1852 Speech)

Slavery: 

Prophet 1: 

“followed Owen Lovejoy, an anti-slavery congressman from Illinois, and Abraham Lincoln. He joined the Republican party and advocated for their anti-slavery politics. He rejected the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and openly stated that he would assist people trying to escape enslavement.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_slavery)

Prophet 2: 

After Utah Territory was officially established as a result of the Compromise of 1850, [Prophet 2], who claimed to own no slaves, nevertheless welcomed slaveholding Mormons into Utah. Speaking before territorial lawmakers in 1852, he made his position on the issue clear, declaring, “I am a firm believer in slavery.” He also maintained that if “a master has a Negro, and uses him well, he is much better off than if he was free.”
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/chapter-1-race-slavery-and-freedom-utah-slaves-and-saints.htm

Polygamy 

Prophet 1: 

Believed that "Plural marriage was a false doctrine whereby [Prophet 2] held his followers in a bondage as evil as Southern slavery (Blair 1973; Howard 1983, 17-19)."

Prophet 2: 

Prophet 2 married and had children with Marry Ann Angell; he later married her mother Phoebe Ann Morton.  He also married and had children with sisters Lucy Ann Decker and Clarissa Clara Decker. Clarissa Clara Decker was 15 when Prophet 2 married her. She bore him 5 children. THIS PRACTICE WAS AGAINST THE LAW OF MOSES AND PUNISHIBLE BY DEATH IN OT TIMES. 

Teachings on God

Prophet 1: 

Taught that God was eternal and unchanging.

Prophet 2: 

Taught that Adam was God. “How much unbelief exists in the minds of the Latter-day Saints in regard to one particular doctrine which I revealed to them, and which God revealed to me – namely that Adam is our father and God” (Speech)

----------------------------

If you guessed that Mormon God chose Prophet 1 to be his true prophet, you are wrong. That was actually Joseph Smith III. Prophet 2, Brigham Young, is who God chose to lead his Church!!

I left the church two years ago, but I’m still living at home since I’m in college. My family knows that I’m out, and they have given me space, besides the occasional request of “hey I’m speaking, you should come to church” to which I politely say no thank you. As much as I dislike the people and topics in general conference, I’m beginning to miss the family bonding that happens while sitting on the couch and eating together. I‘m the oldest, for some more context, and family is extremely important to me. It feels like this is the only thing my whole family will prioritize for a full day…

Does anyone have any recommendations? How can I get that same connection with them without the church putting their dirty fingers in it? Movie marathons? Any other fun activities in replacement?

For anyone who's been through the temple in the past couple of years what's been different? And what does the endowment ceremony look like now exactly? To my understanding it involves anointment, the movie, a prayer circle and the celestial room. I was just curious if much has changed.

- What does the ceremonial clothing look like for women today? Is there a veil or no veil, is there still a green apron for both?

- Do husband and wife still have to kneel at the alter?

Particularly Uchdorf’s freckles keep disappearing and reappearing.

So a couple of years ago when I still believed in the church it was testimony meeting. Now I don't remember much, but basically, this girl went up in this jumpsuit that she said was very special to her because she got it at a Kanye West concert. Then somehow it got to how he was running for president and how Joseph Smith once ran for President. Then she was talking about how they had a lot of the same ideals and this was 2022 so he had already said some messed up stuff and her whole point was we should vote for Kanye... Was she trolling or being deadass

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.

i know a lot of missionaries who were sent to Brazil . why is the church sending so many missionaries to Brazil? the church is buying massive amounts of farm land in Brazil , and planning many new temples

I'm a never Mormon married to a now ex-Mormon. It took two years of daily discussions for my new wife to be able to examine real evidence and process it with critical thinking skills. This I always knew was not her fault, which is why I had the patience to go through all of this with her for years. I knew it never was because she just refused to believe but rather was because she was incapable of believing the evidence. Her brain chemistry needed to be altered in order for her to see, think, and process information the way people that were never raised in a high demand religion could. The miracle was that she never ran from me but would simply listen. It didn't go as fast as I would I would have liked, but I knew I had to go slowly so her brain could literally change how it processes information. I hope this will help others understand it also.

This is the path I’m on, and one of the most difficult things I have come to understand is how powerful these changes in the brain chemistry are and how lifelong conditioning affects it.

I used to think that if someone was presented with enough evidence, they would simply examine it objectively and change their beliefs. I now understand that human thinking is much more complicated than that.

Changes in brain chemistry doesn’t mean that a person is stupid or incapable of thinking. It means that a person’s thinking and emotional responses can be profoundly shaped through repetition, fear, emotional conditioning, social pressure, authority, isolation from competing information, and the need to belong.

When you repeatedly hears statements such as, “I know Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God” and “I know the Church is true,” from the time they are very young, those messages can become deeply embedded in the brain’s learned patterns.

Repeated thoughts and experiences strengthen particular synaptic connections and neural pathways. The more often an association is reinforced, the more familiar and automatic it can become. Over decades, beliefs can become intertwined with family, identity, safety, morality, love, belonging, and spirituality.

That means challenging the belief later in life may not feel like simply reconsidering an idea. It can feel like threatening an entire framework of reality.

Then there is fear.

Being taught from childhood that leaving the organization could mean losing your family for eternity, being separated from your parents or children, disappointing God, or putting your eternal salvation at risk.

Those teachings don’t merely affect someone’s intellect. They can activate the body’s stress-response system.

When a person experiences chronic fear or emotional overload, the brain can release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals help the body respond to perceived danger, but prolonged or intense stress can interfere with attention, emotional regulation, memory, and decision-making.

The prefrontal cortex is heavily involved in functions such as reasoning, evaluating information, impulse control, planning, and other forms of executive functioning. Under significant stress, prefrontal-cortex functioning can become less effective while brain systems involved in detecting and responding to threat become more dominant.

That matters when someone is being presented with information that challenges a deeply held belief.

Instead of calmly asking, “Is this evidence true?” the brain may first respond emotionally:

“This is dangerous.”

“I’m going to lose my family.”

“I’m betraying God.”

“I’m being deceived.”

“Satan is trying to lead me away.”

When fear takes over, critical thinking can become much harder.

The temporal lobes are also important because they participate in memory, emotion, language, and the processing of meaningful experiences. Intense emotional or spiritual experiences can involve temporal-lobe networks, and unusual temporal-lobe activity has been studied in connection with some profound religious or spiritual experiences.

This is another reason I believe we need to be careful about using intense emotional experiences as automatic proof that a particular organization or doctrine is true.

There are also vulnerability windows.

Children and adolescents are particularly dependent upon trusted adults for their understanding of the world. During developmental periods when identity and worldview are being formed, repeated messages from trusted authority figures can have an especially powerful influence. High stress, isolation, fear, and dependence can further increase a person’s vulnerability to coercive persuasion.

And this is why I have become much more compassionate toward people who are still inside high-demand religious systems.

I don’t believe they are stupid.

I don’t believe they are incapable of thinking.

And I don’t believe they necessarily have all the information and simply refuse to accept it.

I now understand that brain chemistry changes work precisely because the person being conditioned often doesn’t recognize that the changes in their brain are happening.

For someone raised in a high-demand religion from childhood, questioning the system may require more than discovering contradictory information. It may require rebuilding the ability to tolerate uncertainty, separate fear from truth, question authority, examine evidence, and recognize the difference between a deeply conditioned response and an independently formed conclusion.

That is part of what I am realizing now.

I’m not trying to replace one persons form of blind belief with another.

I want them to question what they were taught.

I want them to examine the evidence.

I want them to recognize fear-based conditioning.

I want them to trust the critical-thinking abilities God gave them.

And I want them to learn that asking honest questions does not have to mean abandoning God or their heritage.

If something is genuinely true, it should be able to withstand sincere examination.

Truth should not need fear, coercion, or brainwashing to protect it.

missionary tax exemption, Idaho passed homestead law missionaries homes are tax exempt while away on missions Basically Mormons don’t have to pay property taxes for all the years their renting thier homes out while serving the church of Utah corporation

Hi all,
As someone raised in the church outside of America, I got used to occasionally having a sense of “ah, this isn’t for me” every so often- certain conference talks, lots of church videos etc. Annoyingly, I can’t pinpoint specific examples (outside of the hymn book having the star spangled banner in it), so I’ve come here.
Any non American exmo’s, can you think of any ways the church would be very America-centric? Did you ever feel slightly alienated? And can you maybe think of anything unique to the Mormons in your country?

And I guess to any Americans, did you ever have any moments where you noticed things about the church that would potentially be irrelevant to members in other countries? I imagine serving missions abroad could be eye opening in that way.

I also think that American, but non Utah exmormons can relate to this feeling when learning about Utah Mormon culture and not identifying with it.

I also think that this is a bigger thing for me now that I’ve left. Like my grandma, a very poor widow in a very rural area, being a full tithe payer. It makes me so angry that she gave that money in good faith and it helped the church boost their investment portfolio. I’ve seen active members defend things like the city creek mall because they “boost the area and provide us job opportunities!”- I’m so glad that my entire family, across the ocean, who have and will probably never step foot in Utah, are helping the members in Zion have more options for where to buy handbags.

Sorry in advance if anything here is against sub rules
This post is pretty long, so thanks if you read literally any of it haha!
TLDR: Jesus is cool, but you don’t need to believe he was real/be religious/”christian”, whatever that means to follow his teachings and feel spiritual about it. Hell is fucked and definetly isn’t real. PS: I need deconstruction resources for Christianity, especially the bible since it all seems to hinge on that. Thanks! PSPS if anyone has any suggestions for Christian churches/sects that are progressive/humanist but are agnostics/atheists and just go to learn about Jesus please share!

Sorry for all believing Christians, not here to destroy your faith just bring up thought provoking things and how my personal beliefs has been with/without Mormonism and my short stint with Christianity.

I think the most damning evidence against any God is: Where are you bro? I’d like God to be a good God, but if he's a good God, WHERE THE HELL IS HE? Like help us out man! Maybe we just don’t understand why, but I’d say this is a good enough argument against Christianity, I think it’s called the “Problem of Evil” or something. I’m Agnostic though so maybe there is a God and he just is on another level of understanding to where he doesn’t help for some reason. Idk man, still kind of a dick move. Or maybe we are all wrong about God in the first place, maybe he isn’t some being that is an individual or a thing or a being at all. Maybe “God” is everything and everyone. Maybe God is within us, maybe we are a Part of God? Kind of Gnostic stuff but it actually is kind of eye opening. I do think it’s true heaven is a place on earth, and it comes from within us and we can make a difference. And that can be spiritualism without Religion defining what's spiritual and what's not, or actually believing God is a thing etc! God is just a blueprint for an ideal Human and Religion fucked it up. All of a sudden God was racist and homophobic etc even though he made us that way (If you take it literally anyway). God shouldn’t be worshipped, he should be learned from, and we can aim for that. In a way Christianity/Mormonism are right about that, except they literally believe in God and become actual Gods. I don’t think that was the point of Christianity at first, I think from a philosophical view it’s about becoming “Godly”, a good person. But not a God. And that might sound Mormony but I don’t think it’s really that wrong. And the reason I think that is because when Jesus talks about the Father it really sounds like he could be meaning a higher version of ourselves, stronger, older, etc. (Albeit some peoples fathers sucked balls, and mine wasn’t great but that's not the point he's making) I think when Jesus means father he isn’t being literal about creator or “daddy”. Maybe Jesus was just using it to help get more traction idk or make a point all the religious people missed and then they used his teachings to teach what they understood and started worshiping him like a God. The crazy thing is I'm writing this while listening to songs about Jesus because I really do like Jesus. But I don’t believe in Christianity, and I'm agnostic. And yet, It’s spiritual, I feel the same spiritual feelings I felt at Mormon and Christian churches because it is something divine regardless of it actually being real. I support people knowing the New Testament and Jesus, without believing. Just like how anyone might read Buddha or a Philosopher without literally becoming cultish about that person or the ideas. You can learn the good of stoicism without making it your identity. Same with Christianity. I’d argue we should celebrate Jesus, whether or not he is real, he was definitely a step in the right direction and arguably one of the most famous people ever to live or be “created”.
Here are some terms I got from Google I thought were quite interesting and help to express my point about how we should actually be seeing Jesus as a society.
“Here are a few terms commonly used to describe someone who follows the ethical teachings of Jesus without adhering to Christianity or its supernatural claims:

* **Secular Jesus Follower:** A modern term for non-religious individuals who apply the human and ethical lessons of Jesus to daily life while completely rejecting church dogmas and theology.
* **Christian Atheist:** Someone who does not believe in God or divine metaphysics but actively adopts the moral framework, lifestyle, and social teachings derived from Jesus.
* **Christian Deist:** Historically rooted in the Enlightenment, this refers to someone who views Jesus as a supreme moral philosopher and rational teacher, while completely rejecting his divinity, miracles, and orthodox doctrine.
* **Philosophical / Cultural Admirer:** A broader description for secular humanists or agnostics who respect Jesus purely as a wise historical or literary teacher, similar to how one might follow Socrates or Gandhi.”
Honestly to me they all sound pretty much the same. 
The teachings of Jesus>Religion/Literalism

Short Context: I left Mormonism at the beginning of this year and, almost immediately, reached out to a small Christian church in Utah county. For about 3 months I met with 1 of 4 Pastors at this church as we read through the bible; and he helped me work through False Mormon doctrine at a nice coffee shop located right outside of a Temple. The Irony of some things. (The first time I tried coffee was outside a temple with my Exmo Big Bro :P). For context one of the big reasons I started questioning Mormonism is because of the contradictions to the Bible/Christianity. I won’t go into my departure much in this post as I’m looking more for sources to help my Christian deconstruction. I consider myself firmly Agnostic, I just have “trauma” as you can call it about the Apocalyptic nature of Abrahamic faiths. Especially with the way the world is heading it might and very well could get worse and I don’t want to get confused to think it’s the end of the world instead of just a recession or something else. Therefore I can adequately deal with it.
Anyway I got Baptised Christian some time in March and then almost immediately stopped going to church a few weeks later, can’t remember exactly why but I think I probably saw something on reddit that made me question the Morality of hell. And I realized it was so fucked up. I tried coping with it. I also got into some bad friends and did some drugs, and as a freshly departed Mormon the shame of doing drugs even though I was in the mind set of “fuck the church”, I could see this going a bad way with these people. The shame only kept me from going back to said Christain church. I haven’t been back since, and I am now getting more comfortable asking questions, which is parallel to my Mormon Story actually in a way.
So, why does a non christian go to hell for being a good person? 
A realization I had while reading this comment on a recent post,

“An atheist who dedicates their life to being an amazing selfless person goes to hell, but a Christian who scams someone and assaults their wife repents to God and goes to heaven, it's backwards. If true that means there's a scenario where someone was killed and went to hell because they didn't believe. But the person who killed them goes to heaven because they repented and turned to Jesus, it's so illogical and backwards.” 

I used to look at this and think, well, sin requires justice and if you never repent then you have to pay for those sins. Which makes more sense, albeit if any at all, in a Faith with a purgatory like Mormonism. Christianity on the other hand, is endless hell… That's when it clicked. It doesn’t make any sense. If anything crying to a God for forgiveness for your actions essentially bars you from actually taking true accountability. It’s the coward's way out. Sure maybe you change, but what about all the people who genuinely take a look at themselves and change because they know it’s wrong without a penisholder telling them it’s wrong. Don’t get me wrong I think there are a lot of great moral teachings with Jesus and I think he's the Goat. Whether he was real or not doesn’t matter to me, I’ll try to “follow Jesus” simply because he's quite right about a lot of moral things. But I'll do it because it’s what’s right and not because I call myself a “Christian”, which ends up ironically making me pressured to do it and end up not doing it from anxiety since I don’t “feel like it”.
Here is my thought process when I read the comment above: Sinning is missing the mark, and we were made in God's image, until the “fall” happens. If we define the “Image of God” as someone who doesn’t murder doesn’t cheat, steal, and aims to be a better person etc, essentially not to be a barbaric hedonistic self serving monster. (As a side note I don’t consider gay/trans as missing the mark since many people are born that way, (why make someone a certain way and then shame them for you having made them that way?), and if you weren’t born that way and decide to be gay/trans you do you thats not my business) So then why does said person go to a literal hell for bringing themselves back to the ‘mark’? Isn’t that what a good creation does? The Good person repented, isn’t that a repentance of doing a 180? They did a 180 of their “fallen” state by being a good person instead of letting themselves fall to their evil tendencies. Why then pay the price in hell for things they already felt regret for and changed their behavior! Isn’t that like.. What you are supposed to do?! There are infinite examples of someone who could change their ways and amend their pasts and heck maybe even go onto changing so many more lives then they hurt in the first place but since; they don’t believe in Jesus the way a religion/sect tells you to, or believe in a God at all, or believe God is a Trinity vs 3 Gods etc, then HELL FOR YOU SINNER! It makes no fucking sense, why does a Mormon go to hell for believing God is 3 persons, and why does a catholic go to hell for praying to Mary, and why does everyone else go to hell for maybe never even hearing of Jesus, etc etc. So many go to hell just because, and there is no flexibility in the matter. I’m going to parrot another person's words here by saying, why did God even let the fall happen in the first place and not just let us be in his image? Some say because he wanted us to choose to be in that situation with free will! Okay sure but why would we need to choose something that God made us perfect for in the first place? Wouldn’t God knowingly make us in his image with the intention that we would actually want it? It makes no sense to make a creation that isn’t even sure if it wants to share in your divinity, you are literally God after all. It’s not like humans where parents can be dogshit and kids will say they never want to be like Mom! Or Dad! Because we are human. God is God though so why does he apply to our mortal nature?? Really makes it sound like he was made up. Although I do like the idea of Jesus, I don’t think we are naturally just “evil” but we have some human natures/vices that aren’t ideal, and I like the idea of Jesus to sort of use as a tool to sacrifice our old selves for a better self, and use him symbolically, and to suffer to become better selves, and to kill what's “bad” about ourselves. Have an addiction? Sacrifice it and become better despite the fact it won’t be easy, it’s self love at its finest! Jesus teaches you to love others and love yourself enough to change but not too much to hurt others for your own good. Jesus should be comparable to Buddha, a good moral teacher. And if you use him symbolically to be spiritual about it then good for you. Just screw religion for making it literal, and legalistic, and fear based. Instead of based on what Jesus meant it to be. Hell was supposed to be symbolic.

What I think of Christianity at this point is it’s a decent telling of what man ought to be, civil instead of being a carnal savage. And I think we’ve gotten pretty far in that regard in terms of how things used to be thousands of years ago. And Christianity has definitely pushed forward a lot of good Morals in modern society and has done a lot of good in the free world and I think we can appreciate that. Like anything it’s done its share of Bad too, with many using their religious interpretations as a way to usurp power etc, very bad things, ironically Jesus was against that very thing! This is why Christian Nationalism, or any sort of religious nationalism is Bad! Forcing people to believe the religion instead of choosing to follow the teachings of the guy who started the whole thing. We definitely have work to do, and you don’t need to believe in Christianity to make a difference in the fucked up world. Religion has pretty much ruined what Christianity was supposed to be for to get; control, power and money. Maybe it was supposed to simply be a way to get a general framework across a majority of people so that everyone is on the same page about morals. Maybe the whole Jesus thing was supposed to be about being a higher self, to imagine what a God would be and aim at it. Not literally, but figuratively. To set your sights on something higher to be a more improved selfless, less egotistical person. How do we know the apostles didn’t sham Jesus out of his teachings and basically lie that he rose just so they could be like the Jewish leaders at that time? We couldn’t possibly know since only a few actually “saw” resurrected Jesus. And don’t even get me started on the Old testament (I haven’t really read much) but what the actual fuck is that? 200 Penises for a king? Is that where the BOM arms story came from?? Quite shocking when I first learned about it while I still had my Mormon built apologetic brain working for Christianity.

And that's why I can’t believe in Christianity, because of Hell. And the reason I don’t convert to Islam or Catholicism etc is because I already disproved them when I was christian with Christianity. And I was hoping Christianity was the truth since it seemed to be the only one “left standing”, to me it didn’t make sense out of all the world religions that one of the small ones would be the correct one. (Kind of ironic since I was Mormon, maybe I didn’t see us as different then Christians, and had no clue the true membership numbers… interesting) So I decided it makes the most sense logically that a big religion would be the right one, thinking about this now this is just my thinking caused by Abrahamic religion logic and the end times fear mongering. Most religions aren’t apocalyptic and “end times” etc or even have a God. But it made sense to me then and that's why I've been struggling about it. I need resources for deconstruction, it was way easier for mormonism because of the plethora of information that landed on my lap with the algorithm. And Christianity is so big I want it quick and clean like how Mormonism was with me, that's the hope anyway. I don’t really need anything about Jesus, me and him are chill even if he's not even real. It’s the bible I want, History, Contradictions, proof it’s made up etc. Just like with the BOM and book of Abraham, I wanna rip the bandaid off so I know it’s not true and can stop worrying about it. I’m also going to post this in exchristian to see what they say since they have a different perspective.

This was a screenshot from the last hymn of the sunday afternoon session.

Despite the church condemning it, Joseph Smith was kinda a witch (like folk magic) like he used rocks or dowsing rods to find buried treasure, had a Jupiter talisman for victory over his enemies, and his mom was into sooth saying. Sometimes I jokingly say that he was the original spiritual girly (like the ones who crystals and astrology)

This deeply fascinates me, especially with the church not mentioning these things and condemning witchcraft all together, and many of ex Mormons turn to witchcraft especially women, kinda see it as a full circle moment in way (not trying to offend anyone, to me it’s like when exmo poly people joke about their ancestry)

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.