I forced myself to dig up his talk on the LDS website seeing that I somehow missed it, along with all of the other conference talks.
He seems to believe that his force of verbal effort is a viable substitute for real evidence. In place of real evidence he substitutes contrived logic in wondering why Hyrum Smith would seek solace in a book that had the potential to be a fraud.
Unless Holland has a time machine he really does not know what actually happened. He is conveying it as he wants it to have happened which also coincides with popular LDS myth and folklore.
More telling is that he dared mention Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding. Those names have probably caused him as much grief as answering questions about Joe's extra wives. Were they not causing people to "crawl" around the Book of Mormon in the first place he would not need to mention them at all.
For Holland to utter their names from the pulpit at General Conference is as big a blink as the "among" addition to the Book of Mormon introduction. He will probably live to regret it.
His metaphor of crawling around the Book of Mormon to escape the clutches of the LDS church is indicative of his inflated opinion. Like his force of verbiage, he sees the Book of Mormon as some kind of impenetrable wall that instills fear and awe in those who gaze up at its lofty heights.
In reality, most people don't even notice it or care. Those who did, and left Mormonism, discovered it was not a wall at all but a Hollywood set easily knocked over.
Perhaps the one thing Holland can't stand is that, in spite of the veins popping out on his forehead and his eyes red with frustration, there is not enough emotive power in his whole body to overcome the fraud.
Here's the Holland quote the TBMs on the blogs seems to delight in the most:
"If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text, teeming
with literary and semitic complexity, without honestly attempting to
account for the origin of those pages somehow, especially without
accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound
spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers,
if that is the case, then such persons elect or otherwise have been
deceived and if they leave this church, they must do so by crawlingover, or under, or around the BoM to make their exit."
Clearly, he's belittling those who have left the church. I've already seen a couple references from TBMs referring to anti-mormons 'crawling' out of the woodwork to discredit his powerful speech. Is this what they've come to these days? Name calling and insults for those who have left? Sad, very sad.
I guess this quote rings true:
"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."
Personally I don't allow myself to be insulted by what is obviously just plain old fashioned demogogy. I don't buy into it and actively work to dispell the bogus myths and prejudices perpetuated by 'group think'.
Time to rise above the whole 'us' vs. 'them', 'right' vs. 'wrong', group think mentality.
I think Holland achieved his objective WELL beyond what he might have hoped. He was not talking to us, he was talking to the dwindling number of faithful, and doing just as Philosopher Roi indicated: drawing a line in the sand, and assuring those who remain faithful that their sacrifices are warranted.
His energy and passion were devices that effectively shook the membership out of their traditional General Conference induced glazed state, and awakened in them a heightened sense of superiority over all the "little ones" who couldn't keep the faith, who "crawled on their belly" (not unlike Satan in the Garden of Eden) as they fled.
His talk will likely go down as one of the most successful conference talks in modern history, because the members HEARD it.
He couldn't care less what we think. We are not his concern. We are already lost. It's his job to help stop the hemorrhaging, and the only thing he CAN do is push the faithful further back from the edge. He does that by demonizing us, and by instilling fear in the faithful.
The net effect, however, will be interesting.
I've been of the opinion for years that the church is headed for division, with the "blind faithful" defining one camp (loyal to SLC), and everyone else defining the other camp. I've modified that opinion lately, and no longer hold that the church will split in the conventional sense. Rather, it is already splitting, and we are representative of that split--the two camps are the core, and those who left, and the demarcation between the two is widening. The core of the church is what it must protect, and they have decided that they can afford to jettison the fringe (look out Rock Waterman) in order to salvage the core. The core is who pays tithing and serves in all the leadership callings anyway...it's easier on everyone if the fringe is split off.
Holland strengthened the core in his talk, and was willing to push a few people off the edge if need be to accomplish his objectives. The canyon between us just grew considerably.
So it seems to me...
I think you're right, Peter-Mary, and I do expect that eventually they'll have had enough of my windmill tilting and cut me loose.
Judging from the responses to the Pure Mormonism blog (for some reason I don't get many comments on site, but I do get lots of responses in my email box and on Facebook), I seem to have struck a chord with a certain disaffected element in the church membership. These readers express a growing awakening that something has been going seriously awry for the past decade or two, and they concur with my efforts to try and put my finger on it.
I realize I'm a bit of an anomaly on this forum since I do retain a belief in The Restoration. Yet I maintain that in modern times the train has gone off the rails. There used to be much to recommend about an organization that once stressed love without judgment and whose theology supported the freedom of conscience of its individual members.
But those teachings have pretty much been jettisoned, and they'll probably jettison me simply for bringing them up. Hopefully until then I can do some good from the inside.
I realize I'm a bit of an anomaly on this forum since I do retain a belief in The Restoration. Yet I maintain that in modern times the train has gone off the rails. There used to be much to recommend about an organization that once stressed love without judgment and whose theology supported the freedom of conscience of its individual members.
But those teachings have pretty much been jettisoned, and they'll probably jettison me simply for bringing them up. Hopefully until then I can do some good from the inside.
-Rock
Rock, you have my admiration for your integrity and courage. I'm sorry that you find yourself in such a tough place.
"teeming with literary and semitic complexity" - a meaningless phrase. What the heck is semitic complexity? Really, really technical Middle Eastern stuff? I mean, really what a silly thing to say! And the literary complexity claim is made without support. Let's begin by stripping out all direct quotes - what does that do, drop the size of the book by 1/3? More? Now remove all clearly derivated stories (conversion of Paul etc) which excises another chunk. For the sake of the reader we should probably take out all those 'and it came to pass' bits which could lower the word count by half (okay, exaggeration, but still!). Move anything that is just silly or illogical to one side (cutting off all those arms, removing Laban's head without getting blood everywhere, sea voyages in sealed dishes etc). What's left, really?
Ah! I almost died when I read that - it was like Derek Zoolander commenting on conference!
draft of Holland's speech at this point:
__
[some word that means 'full of' maybe with the connotation of lots of mosquitos or creepy bugs all wriggling around in filth] with [some descriptive word about writing] and [word that sounds all jewish and intellectual] complexity
do not at any point use anything of real academic, scientific, or intellectual value, as rhetoric, meaningless adjectives, and fist pounding keep the sheep in line better than anything else
__
my first conference experience was... eye opening - thank you jeffrey holland!
Here's the Holland quote the TBMs on the blogs seems to delight in the most:
"If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text, teeming
with literary and semitic complexity, without honestly attempting to
account for the origin of those pages somehow, especially without
accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound
spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers,
if that is the case, then such persons elect or otherwise have been
deceived and if they leave this church, they must do so by crawlingover, or under, or around the BoM to make their exit."
Clearly, he's belittling those who have left the church. I've already seen a couple references from TBMs referring to anti-mormons 'crawling' out of the woodwork to discredit his powerful speech. Is this what they've come to these days? Name calling and insults for those who have left? Sad, very sad.
I guess this quote rings true:
"If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."
Personally I don't allow myself to be insulted by what is obviously just plain old fashioned demogogy. I don't buy into it and actively work to dispell the bogus myths and prejudices perpetuated by 'group think'.
Time to rise above the whole 'us' vs. 'them', 'right' vs. 'wrong', group think mentality.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
The Book of Mormon testimonies are the last thing they're desperate to hang onto...Book of Abraham has been found faulty, as the Kinderhook plates. There's no Middle Eastern DNA in the Indians...they can't find archaeology to back up the book...so it's just the testimonies that are left.....hanging by a thread.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
I'm just so far beyond anti-Mormonism/atheism, there isn't even a name for what I am. My attitude is "why identify myself in terms I reject?"
I'm nothing in relationship to religion. I have no relationship with Religion.
On FB my religion is listed as: My Karma ran over my Dogma. (Updated from: Militant Agnostic - I don't know and neither does anybody else.)
Religion in general is just becoming increasingly irrelevant to me and Mormonism is even less relevant, but the more I focus upon it, the more it occupies my thoughts, which is just the the opposite of the outcome I want to determine for myself and my relationship with others.
I agree, the illegitimacy of the BoM was not even among the top 10 factors which finally forced me to see what is patently obvious to anybody but the most biased and subjective believers, the faithful.
If the Book of Mormon is what the Mormon church claims it is, the absolute TRUTH, then wouldn't people draw that logical conclusion independently? Why does it take a standing army of 60,000 missionaries and 13 million member missionaries to convince people that it is something it's becoming increasingly apparent, that it's not? It was a poorly written anachronistic 19th Century myth, before Joseph's Myth even sent it to the printers.
To be honest, my faith was never built upon the literal TRUTH of the Book of Mormon. I barely made it through it once before my mission.
It was always for me, what it was to Mark Twain, "chloroform in print." and it still is.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
<snipped>
Kori. You just articulated what I have been thinking. Holland is nobody and his speech was insulting but in my opinion not surprising.
The church itself is close to insignificant.
We give Holland credibility by paying attention to him. His speech was baiting apostates for a fight.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
<snipped>
Kori. You just articulated what I have been thinking. Holland is nobody and his speech was insulting but in my opinion not surprising.
The church itself is close to insignificant.
We give Holland credibility by paying attention to him. His speech was baiting apostates for a fight.
We don't have to rise to the bait.
Exactly.
Engaging in arguments with delusional TBM's is like wrestling pigs in sh!t, the pigs love it and you both come out smelling like sh!t.
Just don't even get in the same sty with them. Let them wallow in their own sh!t in their tiny little sty.
We've got a whole wide, beautiful world, where people properly dispose of their own sh!t instead of wallowing in it.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
<snipped>
Kori. You just articulated what I have been thinking. Holland is nobody and his speech was insulting but in my opinion not surprising.
The church itself is close to insignificant.
We give Holland credibility by paying attention to him. His speech was baiting apostates for a fight.
We don't have to rise to the bait.
Exactly.
Engaging in arguments with delusional TBM's is like wrestling pigs in sh!t, the pigs love it and you both come out smelling like sh!t.
Just don't even get in the same sty with them. Let them wallow in their own sh!t in their tiny little sty.
We've got a whole wide, beautiful world, where people properly dispose of their own sh!t instead of wallowing in it.
Hear here! A perfect analogy that I need to take to heart. Thank you.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
<snipped>
Kori. You just articulated what I have been thinking. Holland is nobody and his speech was insulting but in my opinion not surprising.
The church itself is close to insignificant.
We give Holland credibility by paying attention to him. His speech was baiting apostates for a fight.
We don't have to rise to the bait.
Exactly.
Engaging in arguments with delusional TBM's is like wrestling pigs in sh!t, the pigs love it and you both come out smelling like sh!t.
Just don't even get in the same sty with them. Let them wallow in their own sh!t in their tiny little sty.
We've got a whole wide, beautiful world, where people properly dispose of their own sh!t instead of wallowing in it.
Hear here! A perfect analogy that I need to take to heart. Thank you.
Yup. It should all go completely unnoticed. I should go back to being
oblivious to anything concerning my TBM family's religion (I didn't
even know who Holland was until 2 months ago when someone posted the
video of him indoctrinating 'the youth'). I'll give up junk food while
I'm at it. All the things that are useless, unhealthy and
irrelevant. I'm going to need a new vice.
I forced myself to dig up his talk on the LDS website seeing that I somehow missed it, along with all of the other conference talks.
He seems to believe that his force of verbal effort is a viable substitute for real evidence. In place of real evidence he substitutes contrived logic in wondering why Hyrum Smith would seek solace in a book that had the potential to be a fraud.
Unless Holland has a time machine he really does not know what actually happened. He is conveying it as he wants it to have happened which also coincides with popular LDS myth and folklore.
More telling is that he dared mention Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding. Those names have probably caused him as much grief as answering questions about Joe's extra wives. Were they not causing people to "crawl" around the Book of Mormon in the first place he would not need to mention them at all.
For Holland to utter their names from the pulpit at General Conference is as big a blink as the "among" addition to the Book of Mormon introduction. He will probably live to regret it.
His metaphor of crawling around the Book of Mormon to escape the clutches of the LDS church is indicative of his inflated opinion. Like his force of verbiage, he sees the Book of Mormon as some kind of impenetrable wall that instills fear and awe in those who gaze up at its lofty heights.
In reality, most people don't even notice it or care. Those who did, and left Mormonism, discovered it was not a wall at all but a Hollywood set easily knocked over.
Perhaps the one thing Holland can't stand is that, in spite of the veins popping out on his forehead and his eyes red with frustration, there is not enough emotive power in his whole body to overcome the fraud.
I have heard that GBH mentioned these names from the pulpit in 1993, i may be wrong but my point it that google did not exist in 1993...........holland just sent a lot of tbms to google and they are going to type in ethan smith and I agree, he is going to regret it big time.
I'm not insulted by him or any other mormon, I know why I left TSCC. There is something to be said for those who stick up for themselves and don't let loud demagogy go unchecked. We all know the BoM isn't the roadblock out of mormonism that he would have his fellow sheeple believe that it is. Silence implies acceptance. Those who leave TSCC aren't the ones who are weak, foolish, or mislead.
Michael Franti reminds me of Deepak Chopra, except he can sing. It's all good.
How loud is it? I mean really, there's nothing in the press outside of Utah, about Holland's comments. The only people who seem at all impressed with his comments were already rabid TBM's who are easily herded into the stockade of 'faith' through that type of fear mongering.
The only ones who're really giving Holland's innane hate speech undue attention is us.
<snipped>
Kori. You just articulated what I have been thinking. Holland is nobody and his speech was insulting but in my opinion not surprising.
The church itself is close to insignificant.
We give Holland credibility by paying attention to him. His speech was baiting apostates for a fight.
We don't have to rise to the bait.
Exactly.
Engaging in arguments with delusional TBM's is like wrestling pigs in sh!t, the pigs love it and you both come out smelling like sh!t.
Just don't even get in the same sty with them. Let them wallow in their own sh!t in their tiny little sty.
We've got a whole wide, beautiful world, where people properly dispose of their own sh!t instead of wallowing in it.
Well said, Kori!
I agree with you about not arguing but when relationships with my parants and siblings are on rocky ground as it is over the church I am not thrilled when someone goes and throws fuel on the fire by giving a talk like Holland's!
I agree with you about not arguing but when relationships with my parants and siblings are on rocky ground as it is over the church I am not thrilled when someone goes and throws fuel on the fire by giving a talk like Holland's!
Yeah, it's definitely not cool, but what's new?
It's just more of the same old delusion.
In one of the last Gospel Doctrine classes I attended, my cousin was the GD Teacher and we were discussing the BoM. He started out the discussion by saying that he was just baffled as to why the rest of the world didn't just accept the BoM as true.
Uh, duh. Accpeting that it's true has all kinds of other implications. If it's 'true', then Joseph's Myth was a 'true' profit. If he was a 'true' profit, then the crutch he founded is 'true', God lives and Jesus is at the head of the Crutch started by Joseph's Myth. If all of that is 'true' then the current leader of the mormon crutch is a 'true' PRofit. If that's 'true' then he is literally God's one and only mouthpiece on the earth today.
The unraveling of my testimony started in the opposite direction. Obviously the current PRofit is no kind of a PRofit at all if he has no clue about God's intentions for monumental human tragedies, like 9-11 and instead of actually 'revealing' any kind of divine inspiration, he decides to issue a Fatwah against fashion accessories, rather than any kind of a statement about the worst terrorist attack in American history. If the PRofit is no kind of a PRofit and God doesn't intervene on our behalf for tragedies like 9-11, then why call Him God? If no Savior is going to come to our rescue from the worst aspect of ourselves for something like 9-11, then he's probably not going to come, ever. I for one an tired of waiting. Not only is Mormonism false, all religions are just corrupt institutions of men that prey upon people's deepest fears. Joseph's Myth is obviously bogus and as you go backwards to the First Vision, it's obvious that everything about Joseph's Myth is a fraud, which was the only way I could ever reconcile the nonsense with reality.
Anybody who claims they can reconcile the nonsense with reality any other way, is either in denial, ignorant or delusional.
I've been of the opinion for years that the church is headed for division, with the "blind faithful" defining one camp (loyal to SLC), and everyone else defining the other camp. I've modified that opinion lately, and no longer hold that the church will split in the conventional sense. Rather, it is already splitting, and we are representative of that split--the two camps are the core, and those who left, and the demarcation between the two is widening. The core of the church is what it must protect, and they have decided that they can afford to jettison the fringe (look out Rock Waterman) in order to salvage the core. The core is who pays tithing and serves in all the leadership callings anyway...it's easier on everyone if the fringe is split off.
Holland strengthened the core in his talk, and was willing to push a few people off the edge if need be to accomplish his objectives. The canyon between us just grew considerably.
So it seems to me...
I think you're right, Peter-Mary, and I do expect that eventually they'll have had enough of my windmill tilting and cut me loose.
I have to agree. Two talks define the split.
DH Oaks says it's OK to treat those who leave differently. In other-words, don't get close to them. It's OK to be distant.
Then Holland draws the line in the sand. Hollands talk will polarize the audience. Those who value truth and honesty, and those who think that an apostle couldn't lie, so why check and let's ostracize those who say they do lie. Sort of a self selection process.
What is absoutly disgusting is that the line cuts across families. It seperates siblings, parents, children and breaks up families through divorce justified by Oaks talk. They have no shame, and no inhibitions about destroying anyone who gets in their way.
It also tells me absoutly, that Holland KNOWS that it's BS. His talk has so many lies and logical flaws that there is only two possibilities. That he is stupid, or that he is dishonest.
For Holland to utter their names from the pulpit at General Conference is as big a blink as the "among" addition to the Book of Mormon introduction. He will probably live to regret it.
I have heard that GBH mentioned these names from the pulpit in 1993, i may be wrong but my point it that google did not exist in 1993...........holland just sent a lot of tbms to google and they are going to type in ethan smith and I agree, he is going to regret it big time.
Highly doubtful. Since they've heard the names cast in the light of "foolish" and blasphemous and altogether ineffectual at discrediting their precious book, they won't give it a second thought. There's another famous quote about the thinking having been done once a church leader speaks; this will be a classic example.
In fact, mentioning those names in that particular context was, as has been said, probably a calculated move, or at least an unintentionally strategic move on Holland's part. The names have become taboo, or their taboo has been reinforced; Mormons will see these names in text (either in books or on the internet) and will skip over them unheedingly because Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding are "foolish" -- Jeffrey R. Holland said so. Very passionately and convincingly.
As for the original quote: The interpretation I got out of it is that everyone who leaves the church can lambast doctrines and teachings and policies and ideas, but they must creep around the gloriousness of the book because the book is very solid and unshakable. Being still deeply entrenched with my devout Mormon family, it sickens me that they listened to this while I was in the same house as they and they probably thought of me. I have a family function to attend in about ten hours and I'll probably be getting Looks, especially since the function is to celebrate the baptism of one of my nephews, which will be happening an hour before the party (and which I won't be attending). It could be awkward.
But it also does me good that I can look at this quote and laugh, because I know that the man who said it is full of shit. And I'm more than prepared to defend this stance against the ineffectual flailing of anyone who tries to use that quote or that talk against me.
They know what they're doing. You could take his speech as well as Oaks and highlight the control techniques used to keep members in the 'fold'. From Steve Hassan's Cult Characteristics:
7. Phobia indoctrination : programming of irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority. The person under mind control cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group.
a. No happiness or fulfillment "outside" of the group b. Terrible consequences will take place if you leave: "hell"; "demon possession"; "incurable diseases"; "accidents"; "suicide"; "insanity"; "10,000 reincarnations"; etc.
c. Shunning of leave takers. Fear of being rejected by friends, peers, and family.
d. Never a legitimate reason to leave. From the group's perspective, people who leave are: "weak"; "undisciplined"; "unspiritual"; "worldly"; "brainwashed by family, counselors"; seduced by money, sex, rock and roll.
I just want to comment that following conference my family(siblings, in-laws and children) have been posting wonderful glowing praise about this talk on Facebook. They have called it "Powerful" and "Moving" among other things. To put it in the words of my youngest daughter...she "Loooooooooooooooovveed" it!
During the middle of conference I posted on my FB wall the link to ldsapology.org "Petition to The Mormon Church Gay and Lesbion Reconciliation" along with a brief open apology to my Gay or Lesbion friends or family members for anything I might have ever personally said or done that was hurtful to them while spouting LDS doctrine that I formerly believed to be true...
This was the first (and only) time I have publicly acknowledged my newfound lack of faith in TSSC.
In real life...
Since then I have literally been followed around while the names were called and insults were hurled at me for being "childish", "weak-minded" "immature" and an "unfit mother" I have also been repeatedly emailed with personal attacks on my character. At first I made an attempt to defend my position, to no avail, until I could only put a stop to it by saying: "It's obvious that all you want to do is to fight and be right. So, I give up. You win. I love you and good-bye."
I personally think that this GC talk by Jeffrey Holland gave my certain ones of my adult children the "permission" for them to react so viciously to me. This has started a chain reaction in the family...the older children are out to save the younger ones from me.
I am emotionally exhausted by this, and will think twice before I again openly express any further "light and knowledge"...Except maybe here at PostMormon.
I'm so sorry for what you are going through, all because you no longer believe in that *@#%ing "church". You need to take a stand and inform them that you will not have them persecute you. Throw the Art. of Faith #11 back in their faces, what a bunch of unchrist-like hypocrites. Their childish behavior toward you is offensive and speaks volumes about their true character. You shouldn't take this from anyone.
I feel no need to argue with anyone about religion, but I will not allow someone to openly disrespect me or my beliefs (or disbelief).
I personally think that this GC talk by Jeffrey Holland gave my certain ones of my adult children the "permission" for them to react so viciously to me. This has started a chain reaction in the family...the older children are out to save the younger ones from me.
It is always interesting when this type of firestorm happens....because the thought always comes up "Methinks thou protesteth TOO MUCH!!" They know the lies....and they're trying to convince themselves....
