Conformity

There is a wave of people leaving the Mormon church. It is being noticed by the bishops, stake presidents and the higher ups. People like me are leaving. The new mormon ads that are hitting the air waves are only one sign of how the church is trying to counter its image, both inside and outside its ranks. It tries to force all its members to fit square pegs, like myself, into round holes.

It tries to tell those who stay and those who leave that those of us who have left did so because there is something wrong with us, not something wrong with the church. If only we would have conformed. If only we would have stopped questioning why Joseph Smith had sex with 14 year old girls behind his wife's back, in secret; why he married other men's wives after he sent these men away to England on missions. If only we would stop questioning why Brigham Young believed Quaker's lived on the moon and that blacks were inferior to whites and would never be worthy of receiving the priesthood in the Mormon church until after the Millennium, or that Adam was God. If only we would stop questioning why Gordon B. Hinkley lied when he told Larry King, '"I don't think we teach that."

If only we would become cafeteria mormons and just learn to pick and choose what we believed and ignore the rest. After all, the mormon church does a lot of good, right? It recently announced that it has given 1 billion dollars to humanitarian efforts in the last 25 years. Thats a lot of money! Yeah for the church! But wait, what isn't the church telling us? Lets look at those numbers:

* 1 billion in 25 years, breaks down into

*500 million in 12.5 years, or

*.5 million in 1.56 years, or

 *roughly, every year and a half, they've given 62.5 million dollars

*they have 13 MILLION members on their books, so, 62.5 million dollars DIVIDED BY 13 million members: This comes out to $4.77 per member per year and a hallf!  Let’s be generous and round it up to $5 per member per year!

This is what the Mormon church brags about. What it doesn't brag about is that it is spending $3.3 billion on a mall in downtown SLC. They have spent 3 times as much on a mall than on humanitarian efforts. Yeah for the corporation/church!

 What these new fangled ads aren't telling are the stories of people who are leaving the mormon church. People like him:  http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/23323/#414385

And him: http://www.exmormonfoundation.org/messege.html

People like me.

Group conformity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA&NR=1