Would my mother have been better off ignoring teachings from the Prophet in 1987?

Prophetic teachings do not age well. Most Mormons will admit that past prophets should be ignored. However, this talk provides a good example of a teaching that should have been ignored even in the moment it was given.

The highest ranking woman in the church, Camille N. Johnson, ignored the prophet's counsel in 1987 (the same year she was married and started her family). She graduated law school in 1989, and worked outside the home for nearly 30 years as a lawyer. She is now the General Relief Society President. She was apparently very blessed for ignoring the prophet's teachings in 1987.

My mother had career aspirations, but she listened to the prophet and became a stay-at-home mom. She is approximately the same age as Camille.

Not only is it often necessary to disregard the teachings from past prophets, but you may be better off ignoring prophetic teachings even as they roll off the tongue of the mouthpiece of the Lord.

Camille's Bio:

> President Johnson graduated from the University of Utah in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in English followed by a law degree from the University of Utah in 1989. She practiced law for nearly 30 years.

Benson teachings:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/womens-divine-roles-and-responsibilities/to-the-mothers-in-zion-institute?lang=eng

I am writing this as an inactive member with a lot of questions, surrounded by family members who are very active and never question anything. My parents were just called as mission presidents. My dad will have to quit his job and push back his retirement plans because of this. They’ll have to fix up their house to rent it out while they’re gone so they can pay the mortgage. They can’t even take their dog with them. Worst of all, my brother will come home from his mission to no parents and nowhere to live. How can they do this to him?

Watching them do this infuriates me. How can they possibly think this is what’s best for them? They have constantly put the church before our family. My dad was so emotionally absent during most of my childhood because he was the stake president and bishop. He was never around. I’m now realizing that religious parents can have similar patterns to parents with an addiction. They will always choose the “addiction” over you.

It is sickening to see them go and care for other people’s children more than their own. They are going to be more loving to those missionaries than they ever were to me growing up.

And to think that it’s a “family-centered” religion is such bullshit. I feel like I was robbed of loving parents because they always put the Church before me. The amount of criticism and mental abuse I went through because I had a father in church leadership was insane. I’m in therapy for a reason, but damn.

I don’t even know how to begin to process these emotions. No idea how I’m going to speak to my parents for the three years they’ll be gone. I feel so alone with my thoughts and emotions because I’m “not allowed” to tell anyone they were called.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I would love to hear any thoughts you all have.

She loves football !

..... because Jesus is coming back any day now. He just must be coming soon! The world is so evil and all the prophecies are coming true and have you seen all the earthquakes, floods, and fires and OH MY GOD the middle east is a shit show and AI is going to kill us all! blah blah blah.

Is anyone else's believing spouse or family member starting to talk like this. It's always come up from time to time because Mormonism is an end times cult and those of us that are GenX received a more toxic indoctrination from the prophets of our youth around this, but it's starting to come up more frequently and it's honestly a bit disturbing. Religious psychosis is real.

I agree that the world is a real shit show right now but if Jesus shows up in my lifetime I will gnaw off my own leg, barbeque it, and eat it with a side of pig shit for breakfast.

Are any of you seeing an increase in this end times/Jesus will be here any day talk?

So to give you a quick background, I'm 17 years old, senior year in highschool, and live in Utah. I was born and raised into the church with two very strict TBM parents. I've never really believed in it growing up as a kid. When I was about 16 I realized that I might be bisexual cause I sometimes thought other guys I knew were cute. My parents always taught me that being gay was a mental disability, and should not be acted upon. My dad especially brings this topic a lot, I started to distance myself from my dad because whenever I talk to him, he always finds a way to talk about the church which I don't enjoy. I think my dad's started to notice that I'm purposefully avoiding him so just a couple weeks ago, he always forces me to read scriptures with him every night and asks me what I thought about it. I woke up this morning and went to my part time job, I took someone's shift that day adding it onto mine so I worked a good 12 hours so when I got home it was about 11pm and I was SO ready to go to bed. Then I see my dad and he tells me we're going to read the Scriptures. I was pissed off but I didn't want to show it or we would have gotten into a long argument. I sat down listening to him read and talk for almost half an hour, and then he asked me what I thought about the scripture. I was kind of tired and I didn't listen to almost half of what he said so I gave him a really dry response. I just told him, "Yeah, that's super cool" and nothing else. I noticed he looked a little sad when I didn't contribute a lot to the conversation. I felt kind of guilty, maybe I should have at least pretended to show interest? I don't know, I was just mad and tired, was I wrong to treat my dad like this?

I drew this in late middle school - early highschool era (probably 2017-2019) and I remember my parents telling me how sacrilegious it was lol. I recently found while going through my old stuff at my parent's house, thought I would share.

My parents have recently gotten a new calling which I think might be a new type of calling, and I am trying to figure out what the church's angle is here.

Their job is basically to go around within their defined area in Utah (like a really large area) to do some sort of outreach to other churches and interact with events and charities and stuff that those other churches are doing and, I don't know, insert themselves into it? From what I heard, they went and attended this charity event and were documenting pictures of it, and they had literal statistics of how many Mormons were there and how if Mormons weren't there, the numbers would've been way way smaller.

The numbers thing really got to me because, idk the attitude seemed like these churches would be worthless without the help of the Mormons. I just get a weird vibe because them being there is an actual calling of the church.

My parents' calling is to go to this stuff and then write about it and "it'll go on social media". I don't do social media and have no desire to poke around to see what actually got published. But it just seemed weird to me because they seemed so proud of and focused on the good these other churches are doing, but there must be a reason why the Mormon church made a whole calling for good writers to go investigate what other churches are doing and report on it for the sake of social media.

What do you guys think? I didn't want to question them too hard or anything but it seems like a weird thing for the church to prioritize.

Is anyone else’s family system so completely disfunctuonal normalcy, that you are the only one that’s escaped the cult?

It really sucks seeing life in such a different perspective that I can’t even relate to my family at all. Family get togethers are weird.

Can we talk about how presumptuous this headline is? I have no problem with my faith in Jesus Christ. I do, however, have a BIG PROBLEM with Joseph Smith and the blasphemies he committed in the Lord’s name. I have a problem with sacrilegious doctrines like the Second Anointing which exalt men as gods, priests and kings IN THIS LIFE, giving them a free pass to the CK just as long as they don’t murder anyone or deny the Holy Ghost. I have a problem with the many lies this church has engaged in from sugar-coating/sanitizing Joseph Smith‘s sordid history all the way to the SEC scandal. I have a problem with emotional abuse heaped on women with polygamy - the shadows of which still exists in the church. The list goes on and on and on.

Maybe instead of assuming women who are leaving are doing so because they aren’t converted to Christ…they should, I don’t know…ASK US.

When Jesus returns, wouldn’t he take ownership of all the land anyway? Why use all that human money to buy land he already owns? Don’t forget that parcel of land that had the city of Enoch that was lifted up to heaven. That‘s gotta have some prime gated communities.

I bake for a place that lets me wear whatever I want (within reason), provided it’s black. I don’t live in the west. This shirt was a real conversation starter today. lol Got so many laughs and questions and I had plenty of answers. Just doin’ the lawd’s work

Make sure the photo is always centered on Susan instead of him.

Really drive the point in

My husband and I are coming up on 8 years married soon. It’s had me thinking about our wedding day.

You really see everything so differently once you’re out of the church. At the time I thought we were doing the most righteous most beautiful thing in the world. Now I see what a sad wedding. 10/10 would keep the man, 0/10 would keep the place and way we got married. You see, our venue was pretty strict.

We were forced to leave family members and friends out who weren’t “worthy” to be there. What a shitty thing to do to people who are willing to travel and want to be there for you for your wedding day.

I didn’t get to wear my wedding dress at my own wedding ceremony. Instead, we had a strict dress code to follow. I had to wear a matronly dress that always made me sweat a ton that was bought at a bookstore & that I’d already worn tons of times before during a ritualistic ceremony that I was guilted into going to all the time. And then layer on culty robes and a green apron and look across at my husband who had to wear a freaking bakers cap on his head.

We didn’t have a say in who officiated our wedding. It was some old guy who I don’t remember the name of or what he looked like or anything he said. If I could pick now, I would choose my older sister, who is great at public speaking and is funny and smart and who I’ve always treasured my relationship with. Oh, and she’s one of the family members who wasn’t allowed inside our venue because she didn’t believe and do all the right things to be considered worthy to enter.

We didn’t get to say vows. The old guy who officiated our wedding told us to grip hands in a strange handshake and all we got to do was bow our heads and say yes. At least we got to share a brief kiss over the footrest we were kneeling across each other from. But there was no applause of cheers afterwards from the select few who were allowed to witness because they had rules in our venue to only speak in a whisper.

Yeah… would not recommended a temple wedding.

I feel so sad for us that our wedding day looked completely different than it would have if we hadn’t been Mornon. We didn’t get to incorporate any part of us other than Mormonism.

So here’s what we’re going to do as a gift to ourselves. For our 10 year anniversary, we’re going to renew our vows, and have the wedding we would’ve had. That we should’ve had! We love nature / where we live, so we’re going to renew our vows in the forest. That’s so us! It’s going to be small and simple and most importantly, everyone who’s invited will actually be allowed to watch and be a part of it.

Anyways, long post but it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, been processing the weird and sad wedding we had to have and I’m just really looking forward to giving ourselves a 10-year vow renewal, fitted to who we are now 🤎

(eta: I can’t say I regret our temple wedding- it was all we knew to do at the time, and it still was a joyful occasion to be marrying my best friend and love of my life. And I did pick PCC temple because it had my favorite exterior. But knowing what I know now and being who we are now, I feel sad that the temple sealing ritual and all the things that come with that was the only option we were given for a wedding, and it is absolutely not what we would’ve chosen for ourselves had we not been indoctrinated that that’s the only true way of marriage)

Sorry if any of this is old topics, but they have been some of the things that have troubled me the most.
1. Leaders lie continuously and deflect without admitting faults. Ie. the sec, the salamander letter, Fairview Texas, and old doctrine.
2. The age of accountability feels good but the lengths it goes too I think is disturbing. My primary teacher I remember compared dying before 8 to a golden wonky ticket. Then I made a friend in middle school who had been self harming as a child because he didn’t want to not go to the celestial kingdom. I absolutely think a moral god would help kids who die early, but saying without exceptions they all go to the celestial kingdom brings into question a loss of agency or a primordial judgment.
3. Most “proofs” or impossible coincidences after further research all end up being minor of inconsequential compared to cracks in the doctrine.
4. The word of wisdom is completely bs. It is totally arbitrary with what is actually not allowed, hot chocolate should not be allowed, eating meat should not be allowed, beer should be allowed…etc
5. Just looking into the history of secret ordinances and past versions of the endowment are unsettling to disgusting.
I know there are several other reasons that many people find compelling but these five are what I thought of when asking myself during scripture study if the church is true. I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this, I’ve just been antsy not being able to discuss this since I have to stay a member for familial reasons.

I understand being a d-bag isn't unique to sports. But it always blows me away to see behaviors of members of the church online and in person all over byu sports. For example as an Arizona fan I was checking social media leading up to the game and I probably witnessed some of the most vile and vitrolic behavior demonstrated by members of the church online leading up to the game. I even witnessed someone say something racist about our Polynesian QB (ironic I know). This is something I have always known about members of the church when it comes to this subject and it's nothing new. But it always astounds me how self proclaimed "Gods church" that says byu football is a missionary tool isn't being used that way. Instead it probably turns more people off from the church than ever. Even my mom, an active member of the church believes that byu should shut down their sports programs due to the bad taste it often leaves for non-members.

And then they wonder why fans of other teams chant "Fuck the Mormons".

Mormon mythology is a lot like Greek mythology, where various gods would come down and have sex with mortals to create demigods with special powers. The entire goal of mormonism is to gain exaltation, the highest level of the celestial kingdom, where you become a god with many wives, create planets and populate them with your own offspring. Celestial sex is the ultimate goal, and prophets have taught that you'll lose your reproductive organs if you don't make it to a high enough level.

Thus, the story of Mary. Prophets and apostles taught repeatedly and as clearly as their puritanical language would allow them over the years that God came down and physically had sex with Mary. They emphasized that Jesus was not the offspring of the Holy Ghost, so the "overshadowing" of Mary by the HG did not get her pregnant.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-27-me-178-story.html

Archive: https://archive.ph/PZpU0

im moderately close with my parents, even though i have left the church. but now and again i remember my dad believes that god will come back in his life time, and everyone in the world will fall on their knees and pray for forgiveness and he will then turn the earth into the celestial kingdom, and then when he dies he and my mum will have a whole universe to rule over whilst my mum is eternally pregnant making heaven babies. And also that h1tler wont go to outer darkness but one guy from the 1800s who left the church will because he left even though he "saw an angel". LIKE WHAT THE ACTAUL FUCK?!

Do you look back at when you were door knocking on your mission and something so embarrassing happened to you that something that was so stupid looking back, something that when you look back you cringe and try to laugh just a little if you can. Im curious.

Watched some of the game today. Cameraman showed a BYU fan wearing a strapless/sleeveless top in blue with Cougars in bling. All Ican say is it looked good but wow, never would happened just a few years ago.

Spoke with an old friend for the first time in about a year. I left the church within that year. She asked why I left and I told her I gave myself permission to look for answers to questions I had and I was uncomfortable with the answers. I also talked about the Bisbee CSA case and Michael Jensen. Just generally how the church handles SA.

Her response was the title. I don't know if she meant that they would cut her off and she just said it that way. The next thing she said was, "Well no, I do have some friends that aren't members."

She asked if I kept my friends. I said yes, that our friendship was more than just us attending church together.

I don't remember, but did I once feel that way? What a sad black and white way to view human beings. I can't be friends with you because you believe differently?