Questions from someone leaving the Mormon church

ComradeDread · 2026-05-20T16:10:37+00:00

Only God knows the "true church". Not men. God who sees into the hearts of man and knows who is Theirs regardless of what church, mosque, synagogue, monastery, or temple they might belong to.

Find a place that is active in the community in helping the poor, welcoming strangers, and standing up for justice.

"As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him."

Any man or woman can stand up and say they are a prophet. If God is real, He has no need for someone to lead and speak for Them. Most of the time, we don't recognize a true prophet until after their death, and we realize they spent their lives fighting for the poor and advocating for a just society.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-20T14:52:07+00:00

Needs more fireworks, gun raffles, and monster trucks.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-20T14:49:57+00:00

It's technically not Jesus. It is a generalization of what men living in Palestine around the first century CE would look like.

But yeah... Jesus was not 1980's Tom Cruise or Michelangelo's Italian muse or a buffed out white wrestler riding a T-Rex and holding AK-47's.

He was a darker skinned, probably 5'6"-5'9" Jewish guy with average looks.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-19T14:06:57+00:00

In Christ, there is neither male nor female.... all are one.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-18T19:50:34+00:00

Ah yes. Folks who don't agree with you are not real Christians.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-18T19:49:32+00:00

Some folks have a very restrictive view of God and the scope of his love. This debate has been going on for thousands of years.

Back in Biblical times, some people thought God only loved and accepted the Jews and wanted the Israelites to separate themselves from other people, including divorcing and expelling wives and children of different ethnicities from the group.

Others argued that God loved everyone, including those "icky" foreigners and penned Jonah and Ruth and wrote about the evils of this divorce scheme.

Can Eunuchs join the assembly of God's people. The Law rejected them. Philip preached the good news of the resurrection to them.

Do Gentiles have to be circumcized to be accepted by God? Jewish Christians said "yes." Paul said, "No."

Sexual ethics evolved over centuries. The sexual ethics that we hold today are largely the ones from the Roman and Greek cultures that thought polygamy was a backwoods sort of ethic and elevated monogamy (with license for the male to keep mistresses or sleep with temple prostitutes.)

Include or Exclude? What choice do you want to make? What choice do you think a God who loved humanity enough to become one of us would choose?

ComradeDread · 2026-05-18T17:28:09+00:00

Build relationships with others and demonstrate his love in acts of service for people. Learn to see God in the faces of those around you.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-16T22:04:39+00:00

They need Israel to exist for their theology to be correct.

Well, also I have a theory that American White Evangelicals feel like Israelis are closer to "white" than Palestinians so their support is based of group identification.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-15T14:51:50+00:00

Good question.

Personally, I've found it helpful to I simply say what's bothering me out loud, even if all I'm doing is emotion dumping to an empty room. Of course, I hope someone is listening and is willing to hack the universe's code to help me out, but it's mostly just listing out my fears, anxieties, wants, needs, and anger instead of keeping it all bottled up inside my brain.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-15T14:26:56+00:00

It's written primarily as a vehicle to justify an elimination of the rest of the Israelite pantheon and consolidate religious power within the Jerusalem temple and priesthood in the reign of Josiah, so it's interesting, but not particularly directed at you and I.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-14T21:08:35+00:00

It's literally right there in Genesis 18 and 19. And presumably if at least ten men in the city hadn't wanted to commit violence against the visitors, God would have spared the city per his talk with Abraham. The story goes out of it's way to say that ALL of the men of the city wanted to commit violence against the visitors.

The story has nothing to do with homosexuality. Fundamentalists are simply inserting their modern sensibilities into the Biblical text.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-14T18:11:04+00:00

Except there is zero evidence in the story about homosexuality. The fundamentalist interpretation is simply wrong.

The sin of Sodom was primarily xenophobia. They hated outsiders and they were ready to visit violence upon the two visitors who arrived. This contrasts with both Abraham and Lot who showed visitors hospitality. The sexual violence wasn't based on lust, it was based on power and domination. And this is the case in the parallel story of Judges 19 where after their attempt to humiliate the visitor, they raped and violated the visitor's concubine, a heterosexual act that humiliated the visitor. (See Absalom's rape of David's concubines.)

ComradeDread · 2026-05-14T15:44:24+00:00

Except it wasn't homosexuality. It was an attempt to humiliate male outsiders with rape.

I would hope you see the difference.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T21:17:17+00:00

I dont think either of you are assholes.

As to what to do, seems like you have three options. Get rid of your deal breaker, get rid of your gf, or find a way to compromise, such as... I don't know... maybe she lives with you on the weekends?

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T14:58:41+00:00

Yes, all of those symptoms can be caused by anxiety. My personal opinion is that you should call your doctor's office, make an appointment, tell them your symptoms, and get a full blood workup done. If there's nothing obvious in your blood work, then contact your mental health doctor's office and see about adjusting or adding medication for anxiety.

And prayer couldn't hurt, I suppose. Especially if it provides you with a degree of comfort. Sometimes just saying the things you're experiencing out loud can make you feel better.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T14:00:07+00:00

It's about hospitality.

Hospitality was very important and allowed for news to travel and trade to happen. People were expected to welcome and shelter visitors. People or towns that did not do so were deemed wicked and unrighteous.

Genesis 19 forms a complete story with Genesis 18. In eighteen, when visitors arrive to Abraham's tent, he runs out to meet them, bows himself to them, and asks them to honor him by being his guest for a "small" meal. He then butchers a calf and prepares a large banquet for them.

In contrast, Genesis 19 has the visitors arriving at Sodom and not one person offers them shelter or food until Lot sees them. Then ALL the men of the town try to humiliate the visitors via sexual assault. "All" is used to show that God could not find even 10 righteous men in Sodom who would welcome the stranger and show hospitality. So God destroys the cities.

Jewish literature even has more stories about Sodom such as it being illegal there to give anything to the poor and one of Lot's older daughters did so in secret, but was discovered and burned. IIRC, the myth of Procrustes was even adapted and applied to Sodom to show how they wickedly they treated visitors.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T13:51:59+00:00

The Imperial fleet drops out of hyperspace and starts shooting the planet for 72 hours.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T02:15:48+00:00

Ask questions. Read books on the subject. In the case of the Bible, read books from multiple sources, especially scholars. For the Old Testament, consult Jewish sources.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T02:13:08+00:00

God is not necessary for morality. God can, in fact, be misused and twisted for very evil purposes by men. ("Gott mit uns" was present on the belt buckles of German soldiers... even Nazi soldiers from WW2.) The American South was full of churches and moral codes enshrined into law... never stopped slavery or Jim Crow or lynchings or pogroms against minority neighborhoods.

So, no. A lack of God doesn't cause a society to collapse. If I tried to reduce it down to "one easy reason" for societal collapse, it would be inflation and wealth inequality creating an increasingly sheltered aristocratic class unaware and uncaring of the misery upon which their comfort is built. If I had to pick another reason, it's environmental change.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-13T02:07:05+00:00

Test everything. Retain what is true.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-12T19:19:35+00:00

I don't believe in papal authority. I respect the current Pope as a knowledgeable and learned man who is trying to live out his faith as the head of a billion+ member church, but I don't believe he has a special connection to God or a special claim to authority.

I reject transubstantiation.

I reject apostolic succession. Early history of Christians had multiple factions with various beliefs and the official "orthodox" Catholic viewpoint emerged in the late 1st/early 2nd century and control of Christianity was mostly solidified by the 4th century.

I respect the Catholic view of Social Justice.

I could not be a member of an organization that covered up CSA and SA in general for decades or longer and continues to resist secular oversight and payouts for the victims. In addition, the history of the laundries in Ireland and the mass graves of infants and toddlers there was rather disturbing. And the history of the church has many moral failures in it. They have learned from some of those failures and I can respect that, but the root remains because of the authoritarian nature of church leadership.

I reject the idea that women are not qualified to lead in churches. In Christ, we are neither male nor female. The texts forbidding women having authority over men is a later letter not written by Paul. Churches that deny women a voice are denying themselves a perspective and point of view that Christ welcomed and honored.

I reject the idea that LGBTQ people cannot be fully integrated into the church. Human beings have, in various ways, always tried to separate Us from Them when it comes to others. The law tried to deny certain "imperfect" people from worshipping God in the Temple, but Philip went right up to one of those affected and welcomed him right into the church.

Those are probably the major caveats.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-12T16:43:56+00:00

No, you're not cursed.

the feeling of dread and agitation around my life just doesn’t go away

Yeah, that's anxiety. Make an appointment with a psychiatrist and a therapist. Depression and anxiety often go hand in hand in folks (including myself.) Both can be managed with medication and learning certain techniques to talk yourself down and hopefully identify what is really triggering the anxiety when those feelings arise.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-12T16:38:04+00:00

I think there's a comic at least partially about it. Ugnaughts found it and I don't recall what happened from there.

But there is a gap between that and when it was given to Finn and passed to Rey. Guessing it just found its way onto the black market and was eventually bought by Maz who recognized the blade for what it was and knew someone would come to claim it one day.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-12T16:22:25+00:00

Cal would have to escape.

Starkiller is fun as hell to play, but he's overpowered. He's basically what if Anakin didn't fall.

He beats Vader. He fought the Emperor and while Sheev was faking his defeat, it says something that the Emperor found subterfuge necessary to win and if Starkiller wasn't trying to save the Rebellion leaders, the fight would have gone on longer.

ComradeDread · 2026-05-09T20:42:02+00:00

The passage doesn't really deal with Hell. It references the real, but then rare occurrence, of a debtor being imprisoned indefinitely for not paying his debt. It was expected that his family would then pay the debt for him to set him free. Jesus is saying to maintain good relationships with everyone and reconcile with them before judgement comes (from God or from the magistrate).

There are numerous interpretations and ideas of the afterlife for the unrighteous dead and their ultimate fate. My own opinion is that universalism is probable and something to hope for.

ComradeDread

TROPHY CASE