The LDS church one ups itself

I did not think I would live to see it happen, but I believe this church has just one-upped itself in level of deceit and deception.

When I was going through my faith crisis, I was looking for reasons to stay, as opposed to reasons to go. I had known about lots of the historical problems and had found ways to resolve them. True Brigham was racist, Joseph may or may not have been an adulterer, the Book of Mormon had some problems, but I was willing to accept lots of the “they were just flawed human beings” type answers. I could have done that, but the part that bothered me most was not all that stuff from the past, the racism and polyandry, it was bad, but it was in the past. What bothered me most was the continual deception and telling of half-truths by the LDS church. The cover up was far worse than the crime. That was bad, but the Church has just one-upped itself.

If someone lies to you and comes back within a few hours and admits to their lying and apologizes, it does not excuse the lie, but most all good-hearted human beings would be willing to forgive.

Now if the person lies, and then a few days later you catch them in the lie and confront them about it, and when you do they admit to it and apologize, that would be harder to forgive, but as I am the forgiving type, I would in almost all cases be willing to extend the olive branch. 

The next level up is when they lie, they are caught in the lie, confronted about it, and still continue to deny that they lied for several hours/day/years until some other external threat comes and they finally confess. That is a lot harder to forgive, and that is exactly what the church has been doing for the last hundred or so years. The church has essentially been denying racism, polyandry, and all this stuff for a hundred of years, denying, or purposely avoiding, which is the same thing. It was only recently that the church finally made confession, and really it was the outside authority of the internet which had so thoroughly exposed the church that we can hardly say “made confession” when in reality what happened is the church was forced to confessed due to the barrage of truth reaching the members from sources such as mormonthink.com and the CES letter. 

The church was forced to confess after a century of denial and avoidance. That is a hard sin to forgive. But I am a forgiving person, and I just may have been able to do it. I was just warming up to being more NOM (New Order Mormon) over the past few weeks I have been remembering lots of the good lessons I learned in church (“lift where you stand,” “by small and simple means are great things brought to pass”, and many more) I felt maybe with a good full confession, this relationship could be restored. If they had said “look we messed up really bad, we have been less than honest, and in many cases outright dishonest for the past few hundred years about these issues, and we are sorry.” I would have said it would have been nice if you had said this before (like a hundred years ago), but you know, things could work. But instead they dropped one foot deeper into the mud of pride and deceit.

If a friend lies to you, doesn’t confess, is confronted with the lie, and continues to deny for a lengthy time before finally being forced to admit, that is bad, but what makes it worse is when some other person confronts them about the lie and confession (say a whole bunch of media outlets all reporting on how you have denied the truth for over 100 years) and instead of admitting to what happened you say, “Oh yeah, we have said this all along,we have been completely honest about this for the 100 years.” That is when you know that person has not repented. To use the church language, that person is full of pride and stiffnecked, there is no humility or honesty left in them. They are just as deceitful and full of B.S. as they have been from the first, because it isn’t about honesty, it isn’t about telling the truth, all they are saying is whatever they can say and get away with. That is how you know they would not have told anything if they had not had to, they would not have confessed if  they had not been confronted, they would not have done anything except they were backed in to the corner.

Anyone who says the church has been upfront about these issues all along knows they are being completely dishonest. Maybe there was reference to these issues in some obscure ensign article, or 150 years ago a seventy said such and such at the pulpit. But look through every church student manual, Sunday School manual, etc. etc. and you will find no reference to Joseph Smith having a 14 year old wife when he was 38. It will be Joseph and Emma, Joseph and Emma, and that is it. If not outright lies, the church has at least not told the whole truth, which according to how I learned about honesty in Sunday School, is the same as lying. 

The church has to know that people are hurting right now. Hurting bad. I just read a heartbreaking story about a Stake President and Bishops in Honduras learning about the truth they had been told to fight as lies for years. Can the church not see that people have given their entire freaking lives to this, given years and years, hours and hours, and their last drop of income to this, all based on lies? How incredibly insensitive can a church be? To drop this truth on them, they have to know it is going to hurt like hell (Not that the truth hurts or is bad, but rather the fact that they have been dedicated to a lie). And then to tell these people who are, in the spiritual sense, bleeding and writhing in pain, “oh, well we have known about this all along, we have always been honest about this.” That is to just spit in their face. That is more than adding insult to injury, that is adding injury to injury.

I have had hopes that the institutional church could be repaired, that it would somehow be honest and make amends. That obviously Is not going to happen. To use the language of the church, the church is itself ‘past feeling.’ The church is a stone face that not only lacks a contrite heart and spirit, it has no heart at all.

There are good people, even great people who live in the church, people I love and admire. There are great lessons and morals that I learned in the church. But I cannot stay with the church because I love those people and love those morals. To stay with the church, is to stay with the person that insults and mocks the people I love. To stay with the church is to be a part of an institution that abhors (in practice, regardless of what they say), the morals I respect.

I love people and I love morals too much to sell myself to that whore who pretends to love both, but really is just using them to take their money, give them nothing, and lie to them about it the entire time.