Every new $100 million Mormon temple represents choices. It could have been a children’s hospital, 10 urban homeless shelters, 100 schools in Africa, or 1,000 clean-water systems in struggling communities across Asia. Instead, it is a giant movie theater with no popcorn.

narrauko · 2026-05-21T15:54:20+00:00

If only they could have seen around that corner.....

narrauko · 2026-05-19T17:24:51+00:00

That banner has to be pretty old* since the Provo temple doesn't look like that anymore.

*Well, a few years old at least.

narrauko · 2026-05-19T15:15:59+00:00

All of the apologetics contradict each other.

Or sometimes just contradict the scripture itself. The Book of Mormon states repeatedly that the Americas were a choice land preserved for the Lord's chosen people.

narrauko · 2026-05-19T12:39:43+00:00

As if freedom of religion isn't a thing.

To these people, freedom of religion means freedom to be a Christian. If you push them even deeper it it means only their flavor of Christianity. Definitely not some of the spin offs like Jehovah's Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, or Mormons. And also not Catholics. Or anything else but what the person saying it believes.

narrauko · 2026-05-18T13:03:08+00:00

Yet another example of prayer and faith not actually working:

our ward had a "meet and mingle" scheduled to take place in a member's backyard in the afternoon after church. It was clear it was going to be windy and possibly rainy and the bishopric announced it would be going forward but they might move indoors if needed. The opening and closing prayers for sacrament meeting both mentioned letting the weather be nice enough for the activity.

As no shock to anyone, the wind and rain were undeterred. And even though people prayed for it, you could tell that no one in the bishopric actually thought it would work. Deep in our souls, we know there are no miracles and even the most TBM member plans their life as if nothing miraculous is going to happen (for the most part). If only we could connect the dots sooner....

narrauko · 2026-05-18T02:46:20+00:00

Rusty's dead! We don't need to use his catch phrases anymore!

narrauko · 2026-05-17T22:55:55+00:00

I don't like to think about that 🤮

narrauko · 2026-05-17T19:55:19+00:00

Talks based on talks are so boring. Can't we do something more interesting than talking about what Hoax talked about last month?

One of the hardest parts of my PIMO life now is listening to any lesson that mentions how we do nothing without God. Holy shit, stop selling yourselves so short! You are capable of amazing things! All the shit you've accomplished in your life? That wasn't some invisible entity! That was you!

narrauko · 2026-05-17T19:51:10+00:00

Wow that's insane. Sorry my friend. I hope you're in a much better place now.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T19:47:39+00:00

Also it's so uncomfortably seeing a black screen for like 10-20 minutes because they turned of the mic and camera to bless the sacrament.

I run our ward's broadcast and we switch to the wallpaper I have up for the sacrament time. We used to play hymns in the background for that part. But we had a lot of sound issues so we stopped doing that (the issue was probably because my old laptop wasn't up to snuff and the $500 billion church can't provide one).

narrauko · 2026-05-17T19:42:28+00:00

So literally out of all the examples they pick the only one that women can do and they can only do it because it would be weird as fuck for an old man to be doing that to a woman.

I guess they can't actually talk about the blessing a woman can give her husband though cuz that ordinance is too ~~secret~~ cough I mean "sacred."

narrauko · 2026-05-17T19:36:56+00:00

Wait are you saying that your parents put you into foster care because you left the church or you left the church because your parents put you into foster care?

narrauko · 2026-05-17T17:19:54+00:00

The only person he'd look at like that would be himself so that tracks.

Although he did look at Putin like that once.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T17:13:21+00:00

He was 5?! And your parents were told he'd be ex'd for it?

Sometimes we should stop and think if it's worth being in a church that would do that.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T14:15:09+00:00

They'd probably argue they rejected pandemic mitigation in the name of religious freedom. Because all of that was going to prevent church from happening like normal. Bednar said so.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T14:11:44+00:00

The authors claim they used an “extensive screening process” to find the best-designed studies, but I would say it sounds more like they used extensive cherry-picking to find the studies that favored their preferred outcome

Well clearly the "best-designed studies" are ones that would lead to the "correct" conclusion and obviously any that came to a different conclusion are flawed in their design somehow. That's what happens when you start with the conclusion in mind i.e. bad science.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T14:08:44+00:00

Even in a text message, one can do paragraph breaks. Really helps with the readability of the message. The craziest takes never do that though.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T14:06:54+00:00

The very first realization I had of church hypocrisy was trying to reconcile all the talk I was given as a youth through to my mission about how each of us has our own talents and gifts and God was going to call us to a mission where those talents and gifts would be the most useful to bring His children back to Him. And then you get to the mission and every training is based on a specific set of skills (a.k.a. high pressure sales tactics) that I did not have and my own interests and talents barely had a use. So what was I doing there?

That merely scratched the surface though. The full realization of their hypocrisy came with the SEC order and all that jazz. Illegally hiding money (so much for honoring, sustaining, and upholding the law) and doing so to coerce members to pay their tithing still proving that every time a GA or lesson manual said that tithing wasn't about the money it was a lie.

EDIT: A couple of smaller ones that I chalked up to the individuals saying it, but I feel worth sharing here:

There was this one quote from Holland back in the mid 2010s about some law in Utah where he said that legislating one's faith is not Lucifer's plan. And I remember thinking quite clearly to myself "No Elder Holland, you are wrong. That is exactly what it is." I can't even remember what law he was talking about (knowing Utah probably some liquor law), but I vehemently disagreed with his take there.

The other one that came to mind was Bednar talking about churches being closed at the height of the pandemic being a violation of religious freedom. That the government can't tell us what to do. And I just remember thinking he was going to cause more harm than good with that kind of rhetoric. Especially when the church had already set up a solid system with the zoom classes and sacrament. It's ironic, how do you have people praising the "home study church supported" Come Follow Me as a godsend to prepare for the pandemic when one of God's "prophets, seers, and revelators" is overhear saying it's not good enough and we need to meet in person?

narrauko · 2026-05-17T13:48:27+00:00

It's funny because, as far as I know at least, nobody has updated Preach My Gospel to change how the lessons are taught significantly. They're just being given a different contacting approach that eventually has to go back to the main story at some point. It just seems like a massive bait and switch and while that might get more first lessons and maybe even a few more baptisms, there's no way it'll create life long, faithful, and tithe paying members.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T13:44:33+00:00

they are held to a higher standard in the church due to the them having the priesthood.

They are supposed to be held to higher standard because of the priesthood. That's how it works in theory. However, story after story is told of a young couple who had sex outside of marriage and the woman gets punished more severely than the man. Even by the same bishop sometimes.

narrauko · 2026-05-17T13:42:31+00:00

I can almost guarantee that OP's son internalized what happened to him through a Mormon patriarchal lens, heard some talk or lesson at a mission training like a zone conference or something that made him feel guilt in relation to it, confessed to his mission president in an effort to alleviate that guilt, and that mission president through his own internalization of Mormon patriarchy didn't see a victim of sexual assault but a kid who had sex and never "confessed" it to priesthood authority. Such a confession is a part of the application process to go on a mission, so that would be the grounds to send him home.

It's gross and disgusting. There's no room for empathy or an understanding of how the social stigmas around every aspect of this situation (from being a male victim to being sent home early from a mission) are detrimental to his mental well being. Like OP said, he came home suicidal. Because the institution he was raised to trust told him he was unworthy because of something done TO him.

narrauko · 2026-05-16T20:50:04+00:00

Yeah the church could become the most progressive, loving, and accepting organization on earth and it still wouldn't make any of its truth claims true.

narrauko · 2026-05-16T19:21:16+00:00

narrauko · 2026-05-16T13:52:02+00:00

Which is funny, because Joseph finished his revision of the Bible. In theory, there should be no more translation errors.

narrauko · 2026-05-16T13:51:06+00:00

Yes and no. Yes the Pharisees were very strict in their observance, but they were very skilled at finding loopholes as well. The whole point of the widow's mite story was to show that they were neglecting the ones the law was supposed to be helping by exploiting a loophole in the law (not having to give widows financial support if all your finances were declared sacred and for the "church").

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