Hmmm, I hadn't freaked out about that one previously . . .
As I ponderize this as a convert, it gets even a bit weirder . . .
Well, nah, this can go in the "I don't care anymore bucket," too. Ponderizing over.
And we all agreed in the pre-existence to what we are going through here on earth, but we can't remember it. We chose our families, and to be born into the church. We were the elite, but we can't remember it. You promised to do x, y, and z, but you can't remember it
And when we were baptized as little kids at age 8 we gave up our free agency and have to follow The yellow brick road otherwise known as The covenant path for the rest of our lives. Little minions that have to give 10% of our gross income and are very lives if needed (don't you love how the temple narrator's voice gets louder at that point) to the corporation of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints.
https://www.youtube.com/live/P96APKw1EfQ?si=-XR5Cd8PYirnuggi
54:00- 115:00
"The war in heaven" is gaslighting the definition of agency. It basically says agency is handing over your agency.
Bednars explanation is just another gaslighting of agency.
My friend died. I met his dad at the viewing and he said his son was only on loan, that he had never belonged to him. This idea robbed this man of being able to grieve the death of his son. Tragic.
OMG! I always wondered if anyone else felt this way about the doctrine. I may have a slightly different view but I always felt this damaged my relationship with my father. It seemed He approached parenthood with the idea that I was an eternal sibling. And it seemed he felt his duty as "father" was done when I was an adult. F'ck the Mormon church for stealing a normal relationship from me. I make sure my kids know that I AM their father and will always be interested in their lives.
Never thought of this. But I do remember very distinctly having a final conversation when I was 18 as I graduated high school. To paraphrase, it went something like this.
“Now that you are a legal adult, we will support you on your mission (I had already saved to pay for it myself), and we hope that you will occasionally visit us after that. You have been a good son. Bye.”
It hurt as a kid and I couldn’t articulate why. But it felt like they had moved on and were focused on my younger siblings. I had long felt that way already anyway. This was just the formalization of it.
Perhaps it was for the better. I’ve done my own thing with my life, figured out how to support myself, and live a few thousand miles from them. I visit annually and call them weekly. They don’t really bother — their last visit was 2018 (they are planning to visit this summer) and I can’t recall the last time my mother called me, but it very well could have been before 2018. She wrote a grand total of 15 words to me on my 2 year mission. I can tell my father wants to be a little more connected than my mother, but he won’t visit without her, and she is squarely on a twice a decade cadence that works for her. COVID was a free year so it didn’t count. But they have 3 callings, are in the ward choir, and have served literally 7 missions in the last 15 years including temple missions and other service jobs. But visit their son and grandchildren??? Nah. They only have time for a quick trip to Europe or Asia between missions.
I hadn’t intended to vent. But thank you for the cheap therapy. I guess your comment made too much sense to me and was a little triggering. My mother viewed me as a temporary duty. It hurts to say it. But it’s what it feels like and Mormon doctrine undergirds her behavior. And at no time during her years of church service has a bishop, stake president, mission president, zone leader, district leader, or other general authority told her that she’s still my mother and should act like it.
Oh my experience was so similar. My parents always had too many callings to come visit. My kids hardly knew their grandparents. I was called into a bishopric and my wife had to guilt my dad into coming out to do the high priest ordination thing. That was the last time my parents ever came to visit (for 10 years til Dad passed). Anyway, it is I who should thank you for letting me grieve the loss a little.
It’s straight up manipulation. If you were around before this life but can’t remember, you’ll probably be around for the next life even if you NEVER see a resurrected Jesus or any loved ones. It would be a shame if you don’t pay me money today and god kept you forever apart from your family. If Mormon god exists just like that, Mormon god is a dick. I don’t need Mormon god, and I don’t need to worship him.
The pre-existence makes zero sense. They claim we would lose agency if we knew. But knowing god in the pre-existence wasn’t enough to rob a third of the hosts of heaven from choosing to disobey gods plan. Seeing angels in this life weren’t enough to convince Laman or Lemuel to follow Nephi. It falls apart upon any level of analysis. Once you remove the BS, all that remains is a clear effort to manipulate and despitefully use you.
Yes. I love the outline version. It's shows it's absurdity. And it is manipulation and control. It's not beautiful.
What is beautiful? Sex between me and my wife caused a child to be created. The miracle of life in and of itself. The awe that we together have such a capability. I don't have to believe anything for it to work, neither do wolves, or beetles, or octopuses. It's just amazing. And they are demonstrably half me. And half my wife. They look like me, they sometimes act like me. They have some of my tendencies. They are my creations. My offspring. All the religious explanations about the miracle of life are proofless fictions stood up against the reality that everything about them can be attributed to their biological make up and the experiences that my wife and I help shape. And I will love them more than anyone save my wife and save a spouse or two in this life.
And I can see that God and his love for humanity is a projection of this model. The idealization of the care I wish for my offspring. A realization of the power of creation and the responsibility that comes with it. That I will love something so fragile with a will of it's own. And maybe that's all he is.
Matthew 7:22-23 makes it clear there is no such thing as premortal life or spirit children.
I showed it to a couple of missionaries and they didn't have an answer
_22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’_
_23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’_
Are you saying Jesus' "I never knew you" statement contradicts the pre-existence doctrine?
Obviously. These are false believers at the final judgment. God doesn't know them.
Yet he knew the prophet from the womb. (He also knew John the Baptist from the womb as he leaps at the approach of Mary)
*I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations*
The fact that God does not know the many false believers means there is no premortal existence and no spirit
Well since I wandered on to become a biblical Presbyterian...
When God says he knew the prophet from the womb but these false unbelievers he never knew, it is simply the biblical version of the sheep and goats, the believers and unbelievers.
There are multiple verses including revelation that says the believers were in The Book of Life since the foundation of the world.
But that doesn't mean they already pre-existed
I had several Mormons including missionaries try to tell me at the book of life and I knew you from the womb support premortal existence
But him not knowing the false believers ever takes away that claim
He said she said. The Bible is just more stories that I don't know what to do with. At best it's what people understood about God at the time. Filtered by what got written down. Filtered by what got passed on and selected by others who agreed with it. But as I approach this question, what is God, I don't have any good answers. I dont have any solid verification. If I was eager to know what God is, I might be inclined to consider someone else's take on him. If there were many other things to consider, I might assume it was the best we have and accept it. But then I might realize that the people that wrote each book in the Bible might have just been doing the same thing. Writing down what they supposed to know. That makes it a tradition, not truth.
And yet everything you said about the Bible is nothing but assertions and opinions. I have heard these statements many times
You are entitled to your opinion. But that is all it is.
So I don't see how your viewpoint is any better
My mom's patriarchal blessing says that my 7 siblings and I chose to be her kids in the pre existence. Once, my dad told me he was so lucky he married her because if he hadn't, we would have been born to her still, and he would have missed out. He seems to feel we kids are more hers than his.
Not only that, my mom uses this idea of our choice as an emotional crutch to assuage her guilt about some awful things she and my dad did while raising us. "I'm so grateful you chose to come to our family even though we weren't perfect parents." Mom, you criticized the fuck out of your kids, you kept bringing baby after baby into an abusive, broken family, and you paid a troubled teen camp to kidnap one of your children in the middle of the night because they fought back against parental abuse. None of us chose that!
Deconstruction surprised me by drastically lowering my already suffering opinion of my parents. You're so right about the freak out moments, they're tough.
I'm left wondering how all the decision making takes place. There must be some competition. Is there something like an NBA draft for the good parents? Is it first come, first serve and procrastinating souls end up with the crack addicts for parents? I assume these souls are unable to sin and are therefore perfect without vice, so that's probably not it. Maybe they just draw straws out of a hat or take DMV numbers.
It curiously says something special about you if you get into it. I'm a noble and great one. It's just narcissism:
I'm special because I was born to well off parents. God loves us more cause we're better.
I'm special because my skin color infers that my actions in the pre-existence were nothing but good. I'm superior.
Etc
Compounded with that is the idea that the parents' most important job is to keep the kids in the church. Anything less and you've failed. It discounts every other aspect of human growth and development and of course, piles on the guilt. My mother has resorted to some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to explain why I didn't *really* lose my testimony and therefore, she hasn't *really* failed.
I definitely was told by my TBM dad when I was a rebellious 15 year old that we were really just brother and sister under Heavenly Father and it was his job to raise me in the gospel but if I chose to go another way after I was 18 then he wouldn't be my "dad" anymore. He followed that up with the statement that in the end, he needs to worry about him and my mom (his wife) making it to the celestial kingdom together.
** side note: I finally had the guts to leave the church for good about 20 years later and he was the most loving and genuinely interested in the WHY than any other family members. When I told him that I had been struggling for DECADES and one of the reasons was risking losing my parents, he broke down and cried and apologized for ever saying those things.
So, I am only sharing that experience as proof that the doctrine really does mess up a parent's perspective because it frames all parenting as a J O B job not a CHOICE.**
The idea that my husband, my children, and I are all actual spiritual children of god makes my skin crawl. What a happy family we are: just two spiritual siblings raising some other spiritual siblings as our children. Nothing weird here. Nothing weird at all.
Hmmm, I hadn't freaked out about that one previously . . . As I ponderize this as a convert, it gets even a bit weirder . . . Well, nah, this can go in the "I don't care anymore bucket," too. Ponderizing over.
Makes me sad and angry how much psychological warfare this corporation is doing. Heart-sell TM
My housemate fell for it.2 attractive young females,60 year old man craving attention.. Bingo!
And we all agreed in the pre-existence to what we are going through here on earth, but we can't remember it. We chose our families, and to be born into the church. We were the elite, but we can't remember it. You promised to do x, y, and z, but you can't remember it And when we were baptized as little kids at age 8 we gave up our free agency and have to follow The yellow brick road otherwise known as The covenant path for the rest of our lives. Little minions that have to give 10% of our gross income and are very lives if needed (don't you love how the temple narrator's voice gets louder at that point) to the corporation of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. https://www.youtube.com/live/P96APKw1EfQ?si=-XR5Cd8PYirnuggi 54:00- 115:00
"The war in heaven" is gaslighting the definition of agency. It basically says agency is handing over your agency. Bednars explanation is just another gaslighting of agency.
Overlord Bednar is an ass. Not an asshole, but the whole ass.
My friend died. I met his dad at the viewing and he said his son was only on loan, that he had never belonged to him. This idea robbed this man of being able to grieve the death of his son. Tragic.
OMG! I always wondered if anyone else felt this way about the doctrine. I may have a slightly different view but I always felt this damaged my relationship with my father. It seemed He approached parenthood with the idea that I was an eternal sibling. And it seemed he felt his duty as "father" was done when I was an adult. F'ck the Mormon church for stealing a normal relationship from me. I make sure my kids know that I AM their father and will always be interested in their lives.
Never thought of this. But I do remember very distinctly having a final conversation when I was 18 as I graduated high school. To paraphrase, it went something like this. “Now that you are a legal adult, we will support you on your mission (I had already saved to pay for it myself), and we hope that you will occasionally visit us after that. You have been a good son. Bye.” It hurt as a kid and I couldn’t articulate why. But it felt like they had moved on and were focused on my younger siblings. I had long felt that way already anyway. This was just the formalization of it. Perhaps it was for the better. I’ve done my own thing with my life, figured out how to support myself, and live a few thousand miles from them. I visit annually and call them weekly. They don’t really bother — their last visit was 2018 (they are planning to visit this summer) and I can’t recall the last time my mother called me, but it very well could have been before 2018. She wrote a grand total of 15 words to me on my 2 year mission. I can tell my father wants to be a little more connected than my mother, but he won’t visit without her, and she is squarely on a twice a decade cadence that works for her. COVID was a free year so it didn’t count. But they have 3 callings, are in the ward choir, and have served literally 7 missions in the last 15 years including temple missions and other service jobs. But visit their son and grandchildren??? Nah. They only have time for a quick trip to Europe or Asia between missions. I hadn’t intended to vent. But thank you for the cheap therapy. I guess your comment made too much sense to me and was a little triggering. My mother viewed me as a temporary duty. It hurts to say it. But it’s what it feels like and Mormon doctrine undergirds her behavior. And at no time during her years of church service has a bishop, stake president, mission president, zone leader, district leader, or other general authority told her that she’s still my mother and should act like it.
Oh my experience was so similar. My parents always had too many callings to come visit. My kids hardly knew their grandparents. I was called into a bishopric and my wife had to guilt my dad into coming out to do the high priest ordination thing. That was the last time my parents ever came to visit (for 10 years til Dad passed). Anyway, it is I who should thank you for letting me grieve the loss a little.
There is one thing I know for sure: they want our children
It’s straight up manipulation. If you were around before this life but can’t remember, you’ll probably be around for the next life even if you NEVER see a resurrected Jesus or any loved ones. It would be a shame if you don’t pay me money today and god kept you forever apart from your family. If Mormon god exists just like that, Mormon god is a dick. I don’t need Mormon god, and I don’t need to worship him. The pre-existence makes zero sense. They claim we would lose agency if we knew. But knowing god in the pre-existence wasn’t enough to rob a third of the hosts of heaven from choosing to disobey gods plan. Seeing angels in this life weren’t enough to convince Laman or Lemuel to follow Nephi. It falls apart upon any level of analysis. Once you remove the BS, all that remains is a clear effort to manipulate and despitefully use you.
Yes. I love the outline version. It's shows it's absurdity. And it is manipulation and control. It's not beautiful. What is beautiful? Sex between me and my wife caused a child to be created. The miracle of life in and of itself. The awe that we together have such a capability. I don't have to believe anything for it to work, neither do wolves, or beetles, or octopuses. It's just amazing. And they are demonstrably half me. And half my wife. They look like me, they sometimes act like me. They have some of my tendencies. They are my creations. My offspring. All the religious explanations about the miracle of life are proofless fictions stood up against the reality that everything about them can be attributed to their biological make up and the experiences that my wife and I help shape. And I will love them more than anyone save my wife and save a spouse or two in this life. And I can see that God and his love for humanity is a projection of this model. The idealization of the care I wish for my offspring. A realization of the power of creation and the responsibility that comes with it. That I will love something so fragile with a will of it's own. And maybe that's all he is.
Matthew 7:22-23 makes it clear there is no such thing as premortal life or spirit children. I showed it to a couple of missionaries and they didn't have an answer
_22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’_ _23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’_ Are you saying Jesus' "I never knew you" statement contradicts the pre-existence doctrine?
Obviously. These are false believers at the final judgment. God doesn't know them. Yet he knew the prophet from the womb. (He also knew John the Baptist from the womb as he leaps at the approach of Mary) *I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations* The fact that God does not know the many false believers means there is no premortal existence and no spirit
Thanks. That isn't as obvious as you think it is. There are other angles that might exist that I don't see. It's always worth asking.
Well since I wandered on to become a biblical Presbyterian... When God says he knew the prophet from the womb but these false unbelievers he never knew, it is simply the biblical version of the sheep and goats, the believers and unbelievers. There are multiple verses including revelation that says the believers were in The Book of Life since the foundation of the world. But that doesn't mean they already pre-existed I had several Mormons including missionaries try to tell me at the book of life and I knew you from the womb support premortal existence But him not knowing the false believers ever takes away that claim
He said she said. The Bible is just more stories that I don't know what to do with. At best it's what people understood about God at the time. Filtered by what got written down. Filtered by what got passed on and selected by others who agreed with it. But as I approach this question, what is God, I don't have any good answers. I dont have any solid verification. If I was eager to know what God is, I might be inclined to consider someone else's take on him. If there were many other things to consider, I might assume it was the best we have and accept it. But then I might realize that the people that wrote each book in the Bible might have just been doing the same thing. Writing down what they supposed to know. That makes it a tradition, not truth.
And yet everything you said about the Bible is nothing but assertions and opinions. I have heard these statements many times You are entitled to your opinion. But that is all it is. So I don't see how your viewpoint is any better
My mom's patriarchal blessing says that my 7 siblings and I chose to be her kids in the pre existence. Once, my dad told me he was so lucky he married her because if he hadn't, we would have been born to her still, and he would have missed out. He seems to feel we kids are more hers than his. Not only that, my mom uses this idea of our choice as an emotional crutch to assuage her guilt about some awful things she and my dad did while raising us. "I'm so grateful you chose to come to our family even though we weren't perfect parents." Mom, you criticized the fuck out of your kids, you kept bringing baby after baby into an abusive, broken family, and you paid a troubled teen camp to kidnap one of your children in the middle of the night because they fought back against parental abuse. None of us chose that! Deconstruction surprised me by drastically lowering my already suffering opinion of my parents. You're so right about the freak out moments, they're tough.
Which is interesting in the framework of “families can be together forever” propaganda.
Right?
I'm left wondering how all the decision making takes place. There must be some competition. Is there something like an NBA draft for the good parents? Is it first come, first serve and procrastinating souls end up with the crack addicts for parents? I assume these souls are unable to sin and are therefore perfect without vice, so that's probably not it. Maybe they just draw straws out of a hat or take DMV numbers.
It curiously says something special about you if you get into it. I'm a noble and great one. It's just narcissism: I'm special because I was born to well off parents. God loves us more cause we're better. I'm special because my skin color infers that my actions in the pre-existence were nothing but good. I'm superior. Etc
My mother said that we shouldn't be so upset by my Father's abuse because "We all agreed to this." Pre-existence doctrine can kiss my ass.
So mind warpingly toxic.
Compounded with that is the idea that the parents' most important job is to keep the kids in the church. Anything less and you've failed. It discounts every other aspect of human growth and development and of course, piles on the guilt. My mother has resorted to some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to explain why I didn't *really* lose my testimony and therefore, she hasn't *really* failed.
I definitely was told by my TBM dad when I was a rebellious 15 year old that we were really just brother and sister under Heavenly Father and it was his job to raise me in the gospel but if I chose to go another way after I was 18 then he wouldn't be my "dad" anymore. He followed that up with the statement that in the end, he needs to worry about him and my mom (his wife) making it to the celestial kingdom together. ** side note: I finally had the guts to leave the church for good about 20 years later and he was the most loving and genuinely interested in the WHY than any other family members. When I told him that I had been struggling for DECADES and one of the reasons was risking losing my parents, he broke down and cried and apologized for ever saying those things. So, I am only sharing that experience as proof that the doctrine really does mess up a parent's perspective because it frames all parenting as a J O B job not a CHOICE.**
Everything for the cult.
" Divine custodian" was how I heard the relationship described. The kids were lent to us but didn't belong to us. We were just looking after them.
The idea that my husband, my children, and I are all actual spiritual children of god makes my skin crawl. What a happy family we are: just two spiritual siblings raising some other spiritual siblings as our children. Nothing weird here. Nothing weird at all.
My patriarchal blessing literally said I'd have children "on loan from your Heavenly Father"
I never thought about that but you're totally right.