kurty[B]

I was raised Mormon, and mostly followed the teachings of the Church till I was 18. Now... It has been quite a few years since I last went to church, and so I'm not fresh on everything, but 4 years of early morning seminary, and 3 hours of church meetings/sunday school every week and a lot soaks in.

I don't particularly enjoy defending the Church, but at the same time a lot of what I see on people's misconceptions about it get on my nerve. Same goes for when I hear about a Mormon neighborhood that made life miserable for a non-Mormon, so they left. This may break-down to my shpeal about organized religion and hypocrisy within any organized religion, but i will avoid going there. And, afterwards I'll even share my personal experiences after I stopped going to church, maybe this will help explain people's reactions to Mormons who haven't really known them before.

1) To my knowledge caffeine is still not allowed, well, let me rephrase that. In the Doctrine & Covenants it says "Shall not partake of hot drinks" or something along those lines, and the prophet of the church translated that as caffeinated drinks (tea and coffee), which became caffeinated soda down the road. It was still No Caffeine last time I went to Church, but that was over 4 years ago, they might've said "No Hot Drinks as in coffee and tea", but I don't know for sure.

2) I'll get to this later...

3) This falls into family values. Each Mormon who is fully enthralled with the Church believes it is their duty to convert EVERYONE on this planet to the "Truth", while most Mormon parents would like their children to date non-mormon girls, they also enjoy using the opportunity to teach anyone about the church, I believe some people take this into extremes, but there's no rule about not going on second dates with people. I dated a non-member for a LONG time, and I'd attend her church, and she'd attend mine, everyone was hopeful she'd become a member; I really didn't care, I was having more fun with ice cubes, whip cream, rope, and sexual exploration at that point than attempting to convert her to my religion so I could marry her and then do those things.

4) Women, this is a fun topic, and it's even more fun getting a women's rights activist and a devout mormon down together and letting them argue this one out (I like getting opposites together and seeing what happens in my spare time). Well, there is the Priesthood, every WORTHY male member of the Church can have the Aaronic and Melchizedik Priesthood, there's a variety of blessings and practices they can do with this "power". Women do not have the ability to have the priesthood, but that does not make women useless. Every person has a different take on this, like with any group of people, some will say "A woman belongs at home", and some will say "A woman can do what she wants, she just can't have the priesthood". I don't like when people use one jack-ass Mormon machovinist pig to define the whole religion.

5) Afterlife - if you want to get into detail with this IM me, or MSG me, I can go into every detail as far as the various levels of heaven, oh, this breaks down bigtime.

As far as having more children to grow your afterlife godliness, that's wrong. The amount of children you have is up to the family. This really has nothing to do with the teachings of the church.

6) This is true in a sense. These ceremonies are called cealings. An eternal bond between a man and a women, not until death do them part, but forever. This ceremony is held in Mormon Temples which only WORTHY members are allowed to go, you are deemed worthy by meeting with your Bishop, and your Stake Leader. I wasn't old enough to attend my brothers and sister's cealings. Most Mormons have a formal reception which is more like a normal marriage ceremony so that those people who weren't able to attend the ceiling can at least get the wedding ceremony feel.

Now, as far as stories...

Being raised Mormon... I can't complain, that sense of community the family closeness, that's what the religion is really about, that is sometimes what I wish people would see when they think of Mormons, instead of religious fanatics/cultists. My family was close to each other, and we still are (even though two of us kids have since stopped attending church and have quite different ideals). I was always the kid in sunday school questions who would question the teachings, and would really try to keep the teacher on their toes, but deep down I really did believe the teachings being taught me. Now, one thing I must say, being in a Mormon Temple, great feeling, just a warm comfortable feeling, be it simply a feeling created by my brain by the values and beliefs instilled in me by that religion at that time, it was a very good and overwhelming feeling.

Now, the things I don't like about the Church that caused me to really put it behind me and not look back...

After I graduated I moved out of my parent's home within a week. I still went to Church, still participated in activities with my Church friends and non-Church friends, and worked full-time like I always had throughout high school, just was on my own. I'd occasionally work setting up networks for hotels during that summer, and would miss out on Church on Sundays. Then, I moved once again, and was in a different Ward, where people did not know me. I stopped going, not because people didn't know me, or because I didn't have any friends at that Ward, but because I had started drinking, and smoking pot, and enjoyed sex, and didn't feel like being a hypocrit who went to Church although I didn't live by the Commandments. Well, the Missionaries, or stake missionaries would stop by, and at first I'd sit with them on my porch, and listen to what they had to say, agree with their teachings, and at the end when they asked if I'd promise to come to church the next week I'd say "No, that's alright", eventually these bi-weekly visits started getting on my nerves. One time, I had literally just finished a large sunday afternoon smoking session, and DING-DONG. Get up to get the door thinking it's some of my friends, and see two men in suits with nametags. "Is Kurt Home?" I looked over at my friends, and back at the missionaries "No, he's not" I said, as my roommates started busting out laughing in the background. missionaries: "well, would you like to hear the word of christ", me: "no", it was probably the fact that I was high, but I really didn't want to deal with them, but they felt it was their job to bring me back to the "fold", and would keep stopping by. I just stopped answering the door for them, you can recognize them, I'd go to the door, see it was them, they could see someone went to the door, and would just go back to what I was doing, and ignore their ringing of the doorbell. Sometimes they'd purposely wait till I'd be sitting on my porch, and drive up then, and ask to talk to me, I'd say No. One time they even dropped by while we were drinking on the roof, and asked if I wanted to listen to a lesson. No... Eventually I broke down and told them "I'm doing my own thing, if and when I want to come back to church I will, on my own accord, not because someone else wants me to." The visits slowed, but they would still drop by.

The Church is organized, they don't want to lose their members, and they want to grow. After my bout of wanting peace and freedom, a life away with the church, well, that just turned me off to it even more. My parents still try and get me to attend church, but they're polite, I simply say No, and they say "we gotta try", my sister-in-law's a little sneakier about it, she'll invite me to dinner, or to breakfast, then after I agree she'll say "Oh, it's at the church", or when I show up "Oh, the missionaries are coming over", I simply grub, and afterwards when they want to teach a lesson I am polite and say "Sure, I'll listen", at the end when their hopes are up, cause I can answer ALL the questions they ask me, and they think I'm turning back to righteousness I say "Thanks for the lesson, keep doing what you're doing, but I won't be attending church anytime soon".

I have this thing against organized religion in general now. It's groups of people pushing their believes on the world, cause they are right, and everyone else is wrong. I like to take bits and pieces from what I know from my religious background, and from other religions and do what feels right to me. Now, some people do need organized religion, they do need strong rules and guidelines to make it through life, to get day to day. At this moment, I'm not sure what I believe, but I know what I've experienced, and I know what feels wrong, and what feels right. A lot of the things religion teaches are so strict, cause if you give some leeway, some people take it out of proportion.

NeoSparky, if you have any other questions send me an IM or a MSG, I'd be happy to answer any to the best of my knowledge.

I like what phukraut had to say, a decent mormon person, no, a decent person in general will be accepting of others, and will make them feel right at home. Now, too bad when some people become fanatics they take a "holier than thou" attitude, and this happens with any religion, it's just most people who are strangers to the Mormon religion only see this part of the religion, cause their "holier than thou" Mormon neighbors spend all their time and energy trying to convert everyone on the block.