11) " Faith over Fear "

Today i have been thinking a lot about the " Law  of Tithing" We as memebers, we are asked to pay a full tithe, which is 10% of your total income. If you dont do this you dont qualify to recieve a temple recommend, if you dont go to the temple you wont make it to the Celestial Kingdom or be entitled to certain " blessings" It is a lot of pressure. We are taught that the tithing money is used to build up the Lords house, our Temples and is used for humanitarian services to help people in times of disaster. 

        As a memeber i didnt know that the Law of tithing has changed over the years. I didnt know the church owns a shopping mall in Salt Lake City,  i didnt know that the church is connected to 13 LLC companies. These companies collectively owned the stocks at the end of 2017 and provides the collective value at $ 32,769,914,000. There is a lot of information on Mormonleaks.com.
The LDS Church has not disclosed its finances since 1959. The church is a corporation and everytime you pay your tithing your feeding into it.

       So lets talk about how the law of tithing applied in my life. When Alan and I got married we tried so hard to be worthy temple reccomend holding members. When we hit hard times thats when we struggled so hard to pay a full tithe, but we wanted those blessings promised to us so we would do it. As a members we are told story after story of people who were dirt poor and they had a choice to make, they either pay tithing or buy groceries for there family. They would choose tithing, and somehow magically money would just appear out of thin air and they had enough to provide.  What a blessing right? Well these stories made us feel like a piece of shit. Im sorry but magic isnt real, money doesnt just appear out of nowhere. Where were our blessings? We fought day after day to make it as a young couple with little kids, and a husband in school. I would be worried sick week after week, i would cry privately so Alan didnt know how worried i was. There were times we would stop paying our tithing and we could catch up on our day to day, paying bills, getting grocieries and buying diapers. We went through this agonizing cycle of me feeling a heavy burden to uplift Alan and encourage him to stay faithful, so we could pay a full tithe together. We would pay it fulling expecting to be blessed, we had the faith! I tried to put faith above the fear.

         This idea of putting Faith above Fear... its a tool that religions use to keep members faithful.  It invokes these feelings that are interpreted as a spiritual confirmation,  or experience. When you are joyfully giving all you have to the gospel you will be more willing to serve and give of all you have. If you dont pay..... the guilt.... the cycle of " If i had been more faithful i would have recived more blessings".... back n forth again and again, it was awful! Meanwhile as we cant afford to buy grocieries for our family we are depending on the church for help. We needed food and they paid some bills we couldnt afford to pay. Since leaving we got 10% of our income back! Now we can pay our bills, buy groceries and not feel the burden of not being worthy to receive blessings. In fact we have had little " miracles" if you want to call them that since we left that have helped us tremendously! Alan got a much deserved raise, i found 60 bucks in a random book, we also got a check in the mail for $300 from somewhere unexpected. Where were these " blessings" when i was crying on my knees begging God to help us? Why were we not blessed when we were being faithful and striving to be worthy?

      I cringe when i listen to my best friend vent about the struggles they are facing with her husband out of work and they are paying a full tithe. Where is there magic money? These stories the church tells us are just that, faith promoting stories with not a lick of truth in them. The LDS church is a corporation. I am so glad im out!

10) "Festivus for the rest of us!"

Whew, after i got those last posts out of my system a lot of the build up of anger i was feeling was released. I am feeling the build up again lol It is almost Christmas after all and my FB feed is filled with testimonies and posts of scriptures, its awful lol. My God the Shame and guilt that members feel for every tiny damn thing is soooooo crazy!!!  I think i am finally ready to say it, to embrace it, I am an Athiest. I repeat I AM AN ATHIEST!!!
Ahhhh damn that felt good. 

     This holiday season has really helped me to realize how i feel and to sort out all the thoughts and feelings i have had. Atheism does not make me an angry, spiteful, lost, soulless person. I had a friend put it into perspective for me once. She said "What if there is nothing after this life, how would you treat people ? At that moment i realized why religion is so awful. Every single time religion is involved people treat others so horribly. We are judgmental, we shame people we think we have the real truth and when we look at others we cant help but see there "sins" With Mormons it is so much worse because if someone drinks coffee or tea oh man that is a sin. If someone wears shorts above the knee or a tanktop oh man how sinful. If someone has a tattoo or " more than one set of modest earrings" oh man SIN! we are programmed to believe that all of these things are so bad and wrong and sinful. We look at these people of the "world" we see the sin and we then  have to choose to think and look for things that are great or beautiful about this person and think about how much God must love them. We remind ourselves that they are children of God, but that isnt how to love someone. Why do we always have to jump through hoops to see the good and beauty in people?  Without religion it has just come naturally to me!! I see someone with a tattoo and i think oh wow that cool. I dont need to look through blinders to see someone as being good person, or to just think nice things about them. I am not perfect at it, but i am hell of a lot nicer and i like myself so much better this way. 

     The God in the Bible is such a jerk! He plays games, asking a Father to kill his son as some twisted game then  have him Prove his faith?! Wow no thanks. As Richard Dawkins once said " The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction; Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogyistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalominiacal, sadomasochisic, capriciously, malevolent bully." 

   After Moses Dies and Joshua takes over, God sends him on a campaign of genocide. That's not hyperbole, God literally commands the Jews to wipe non- jews off the planet. He sends Joshua's armies out to kill men and women, to dash babies against rocks, to burn the cities and salt the fields, and even to destroy all the property that the gentiles had. Treasure, clothing, livestock you name it. The goal seems to have been to erase all gentiles of any evidence that they ever existed. That is how you serve the God of the Bible. 

  The Bible is riddled with Mass Murder, So is the BOM. Mormons have changed the vision of who God is and who Jesus Christ is. They try to paint this picture in your head of an all loving, gentle person who loves his Children but they ignore the stories  in there scriptures of God being a jerk! 

     I just cant get behind religion. If there is a God he i will have to not care one ioda about us serving him because there is to many lies and horrible things for us to sort through. I will not spend another second of my life serving a God, i will focus on what is right here in front of me. My family, my friends, my community. I will cherish every memory and encounter with those that i love. I will strive to better myself in ways that i choose to because that makes me happy. I will shed myself of Guilt and shame for my choices. I will love people for who they are and not recognize there "sin" as religion would have me do. I will experience happiness on a whole new level while in this life. 

     Religion sucks! I hate what it does to people. I am SO GRATEFUL I GOT OUT!  I hope more people can find the truth, and find there own way. 

9) " My Last Prayer"

        There are so many more things that i can share that are just out right lies from the church. Secrets, and things they dont want us to know. Each time i learn something new it just adds onto the pile at this point as my pile gets higher and higher it just strengthens my testimony that this church is not true, see what i did there? ;) When i first delved into polygamy i thought to myself Alright lets see if there is anything to this, lets see if all the people who are leaving the church in droves have a leg to stand on. I was blown away! I had no clue, no freakin clue. I was so lost in my Mormon bubble with my Mormon friends, my Mormon family, my Mormon way of life. I just couldnt see it, i didnt see the mass apostasy happening right before me. There are FB groups of "Ex-Mo's" ( people who leave) with thousands of people sharing there stories within this church and how they left. It is really eye opening and heartbreaking, i just wasnt really prepared for what would happen and where i would be today. I didnt look into these things with any intention to want to leave the church, i just wanted to learn more about my faith, i wanted to have an open mind and not judge my friends who had left. I just wanted to understand, but i cant " Un- know" all these things. I cant go back now! Everything i knew was just... gone, broken. Its a very scary place to be :( 

       You loose so much when you leave the church, now i have been asked what i DO believe now. Well this is hard question for me to answer. When i said my Last prayer , when i laid my whole heart broken and in pieces down and poured out my soul to him i walked away from that prayer with an emptiness inside of me. I knew that i had just lost everything i had every believed in. I think our minds have an amazing ability to protect us when we go through trauma. Now looking back, i think i knew that i didnt believe in God anymore, But it was to much, i wasnt able to handle it all at once, loosing everything. I went on desperately trying to hang on believing that God was real. I started to read the New Testament a lot. Everyday i was studying it, but there was something wrong. Why hadnt God answered me yet? Why after he knew that i had crumbled inside, why hadn't he rescued me? Why didnt i feel the spirit ? The silence broke my heart. All my life i have struggled to believe that i was worthy enough to be loved, i had always clung to the belief that God loved me no matter what was going on in my life. That was enough to get me through anything, suddenly my lifeline was gone. 

      You know what? I didnt sink, in Mormonism there is a great fear that without the church you just cant make it out in the big bad world. Everyday i got up, and i was grateful to not believe in a lie. The truth no matter what it is, is ALWAYS better than a lie. Everyday i was more sure of myself, i started to truly get to know myself, and ya know what? I like me! Im a good person, i make mistakes but i genuinely care a lot about people. I love to learn, i love to laugh and smile. I love to love and be loved in return. While i know all my posts seem so angry and like my life now really must suck lol But i have found happiness i didnt know was there. I have discovered so much about myself and about Alan! Oh how much i love that man, he is my rock. He loves me and treats me like his queen. Everyday is a gift, he makes me laugh and i feel so loved when i am with him. I love our lives together. :)