NOM

I think I've been an internet Mormon for too long. During my time I've read hundreds of posts, blogs, and articles, listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts, and read or watched every leaked document or video ever released.

One common theme I see among the disaffected, apostate, and exmormon communities is the expectation that the church should act and look like a church. This means that the church should collect donations for humanitarian efforts, feed and clothe the poor, and stop building shopping malls and real estate developments.

As a TBM I didn't expect to ever serve in the local homeless shelter or soup kitchen. I didn't expect to leave the comforts of my home and fly to Africa to help build water wells and teach personal hygiene lessons to the poor and needy.

I expected to serve at the welfare farm or cannery and knew that these facilities supported people in need. More specifically, Mormons in need. In fact, I noticed an overwhelming desire and need for Mormons to take care of Mormons. If other people needed help, they could take the missionary discussions and get baptized.

With the recent pay stub leaks it proves that the church is run and operated by a group of administrators who on weekends pretend to be a lay ministry. So what if they get paid, active believing members will say? They're right. Church administrators should get paid.

As the current church operates today, it's time to start calling it a corporation that sells intangible religious benefits. A corporation that sells a religious based participation subscription and collects dues from its customers. A corporation run by 15 white men who act and speak like a board of directors.

It's time to stop calling the church a church.

Red Ryder wrote:It's time to stop calling the church a church.

You're right RR.

But after spending more than half a lifetime serving the Corporation, I can't help but have a tiny bit of hope that the board of directors will do the right thing, maybe just once, to cause a little bit less pain amongst my family and loved-ones.

Yes, my teeny-tiny bit of hope keeps getting dashed, over, and over, and over and...

I remember John Larsen making a similar point about the church. The church itself doesn't think it's like other churches, but believes it is "building the Kingdom of God on Earth." Therefore it is justified in any and all business activities that promote that end. Who says that a church must be poor or use all excess funds for welfare? (Well, besides Jesus anyway ) How are you going to build God's Kingdom without money and all the machinery necessary to create and maintain it? I'm sure in their minds they do balance welfare activities with investments, local buildings, missionary efforts, temples, and so forth. For us to expect them to do otherwise and act like other churches is a waste of time because they are on a totally different playing field.

fh451

Fair point. The question that comes to mind for me is, is that a problem?

Jesus was all about ushering in a kingdom. He may have preached about the danger of pridefulness and riches but he also preached that once that kingdom arrived...mansions for everyone!! Joseph was all about setting up a kingdom. Kingdoms need real estate and places for people to find goods and services. It needs administrators that are going to need "modest" compensation. Are kingdoms more like churches or corporations? Maybe we were wrong to ever expect a "church".

Red Ryder wrote:It's time to stop calling the church a church.

Preach, Brother Ryder!

LDS leadership went from beleaguered religious group into surprised real estate magnates. But the culture of the average member still holds that anti-Mormon mobs are still determined to burn down a temple in the 21st century. Mormons still believe they are persecuted and under siege and thus have not matured into what the Seventh Day Adventists and Salvation Army became. These are churches that spend a large portion of their budget on hospitals and soup kitchens. Mormons built a law school and a shopping mall.

Red Ryder wrote: One common theme I see among the disaffected, apostate, and exmormon communities is the expectation that the church should act and look like a church. This means that the church should collect donations for humanitarian efforts, feed and clothe the poor, and stop building shopping malls and real estate developments.

As a TBM I didn't expect to ever serve in the local homeless shelter or soup kitchen. I didn't expect to leave the comforts of my home and fly to Africa to help build water wells and teach personal hygiene lessons to the poor and needy.

I expected to serve at the welfare farm or cannery and knew that these facilities supported people in need. More specifically, Mormons in need. In fact, I noticed an overwhelming desire and need for Mormons to take care of Mormons. If other people needed help, they could take the missionary discussions and get baptized.

I could even get on board with helping people locally in our communities and even people within our wards/stakes by reaching out and supporting what it is to have good family relationships. To value education. To be good citizens. To be a participating member of a community.

Some people may say the church does this, but in my experience the wards that do, do so for members who don't really need the help. The truth is, there are certain people that are really difficult to help. They are difficult to love. They are the people marginalized within our communities. It's easier to write a check or do a RS project for a cause in Africa or to drop off a meal to a family who could order pizza than it is to help support certain members of our wards. When I hear in meetings, "They brought it on themselves and god is sending them a message. When they repent their situation will improve," it tells me exactly what kind of church it is. Unchurchlike behavior. Unchristlike behavior.

The people within our communities, and yes, even ward members, who could benefit from the church the most get the least out of it.

Rant over.

You bring up a good point MM.

Our ward has a few people who are in need of help. When the RS went over to visit one such lady, they noticed the home in extreme disarray, with what one sister called a total disaster. What possessions these people owned would easily be considered not worthy of purchase even in a Goodwill (or DI for you Utah people). Total junk. The place was filthy, the occupants unemployed, and the smell was capable of ending the last day of the month's most long winded home teaching visit ever recorded in the history of the church.

The gospel according to Jesus would require the RS sisters to not judge this lady and to offer support and help in the near term while offering long term development and support. Instead, the gospel of Mormon, Moroni, and Monson creates judgmental faux Christians who determined that this poor unemployed women only needed to attend church, become righteous, and partake of the prosperity Jesus would pour upon her.

Her weekly attendance and 100% monthly visiting teaching assignments would transition her dirty dab wardrobe into fabulous dresses with cap sleeves and modest neck lines. She would become employed (even against cultural norms for women) in order to better her lifestyle. Her prosperity growth would require a call to the elders quorum president requesting moving assistance as she forever says goodbye to the moldy over-calked corners of her bath tub in the 1 bedroom apartment she's been leasing.

Her new found prosperity comes with blessings. She now is assigned a new home teacher who happens to be a mortgage broker and locks her into an over priced 30 year loan on her new mormon mansion that comes complete with a basement and food storage bunker. She doesn't blink at the disparity between the monthly payments and her modest paycheck from her school cafeteria job. Jesus has her back because she paid her tithing first.

You see, the church is a club for the betterment of man. A club that takes bad men and makes them good, and good men better with a promise to become god. After all, it's the plan of happiness that leads to salvation. Or is it the plan of salvation that leads to happiness?

Actually, it was the issue of church help that put a huge weight on my shelf. I had some serious problems with my kids when they were teenagers. I had always believed that the church would be there to help, and I needed family counseling but couldn't afford it. I went to the bishop, who offered me nothing except his observation that our family was really dysfunctional. After that meeting, he avoided talking to me at church, and it was just really awkward.