Born under the Covenant..

[miss taken]

You know I had never really thought about this one, until I got onto my mission, and it was discussed by US companions.

As I understand it, being born under the covenant, to parents who are sealed in the temple, is a blessing earned in the 'spirit world' for righteousness.

I just could never get my head around that one...ever..
Joseph Smith was NOT born under the covenant, neither were most of the early apostles.

Yet suddenly it is a status symbol for those growing up in the church to feel good about themselves. We must have been righteous, we earned that blessing, and if you have parents who are bishops, stake presidents, or GA's then that really puts you on top in the status stakes.

I know it doesn't make the church true or false. But it has the potential to give many a superiority complex on the basis of nothing more than their circumstance of birth.

Surely we are judged on who we are, not the circumstances of our birth.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I just never thought that God worked that way. It never ever sat right with me, yet gave me a good cultural reason to feel inferior to born and bred members.

[Born Free]

You know I had never really thought about this one, until I got onto my mission, and it was discussed by US companions.

As I understand it, being born under the covenant, to parents who are sealed in the temple, is a blessing earned in the 'spirit world' for righteousness.

I just could never get my head around that one...ever..
Joseph Smith was NOT born under the covenant, neither were most of the early apostles.

Yet suddenly it is a status symbol for those growing up in the church to feel good about themselves. We must have been righteous, we earned that blessing, and if you have parents who are bishops, stake presidents, or GA's then that really puts you on top in the status stakes.

I know it doesn't make the church true or false. But it has the potential to give many a superiority complex on the basis of nothing more than their circumstance of birth.

Surely we are judged on who we are, not the circumstances of our birth.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I just never thought that God worked that way. It never ever sat right with me, yet gave me a good cultural reason to feel inferior to born and bred members.

ButC sounds like so many other Mormonisms - something really exciting and special that you are Oh, so blessed to be in on.

When teh scales fall from your eyes, you realise that it was part of the mind-games to entrap you. On the surface, teh message was "You are SO special, you had better be super conschy to show how eternally grateful you are for this special deal".

In reality, for me, it was one of the first rotten fish I smelt! When I first got the Special Folk message (ButC, Children of Isreal, Pat. Blessing etc.,etc.), I asked "Why do I get this special deal? What sort of God is into favourites? (Not any God I could respect!). All the answers offered just seemed so simplistic, that as I got older and read more widely and started to understand psychology better, and cult processes specifically, I concluded this is a crock!

So miss taken, I am with you, this 'specialness' smacks of 'special gullible', and 'so needy to be superiour, that you will cop any old bit of shallow elitism praise' and give away your control over your life to some power-trippin' junkie. Is it any wonder that white-supremist thinking has been so popular in Utard? They both have the same underpinning mindset - the need to be superiour to offset the underlying sense of inferiority.

Not for this little black duck, thank you!

Daryl

[miss taken]

Thanks Daryl. I have chewed on this one for many years, and I think what some of this elitist stuff did (and again I think there is good biblical precedent for it)was to give me a truly distorted picture of the relationship of mormons to the rest of the world, and to God himself.

Looking back I do not think that it is one of the more healthy parts of the religion. Though, I Have to say that there are some truly humble people in the church, so the arrogance that it could foster is not universal perhaps, but doesn't help.

I think my outlook is much more spiritually mature, and christ-like now, (but then I would say that wouldn't I).

Though I think that my experience in the church has helped me to see what indoctrination and deep religious conviction (whether right or wrong) can do to peoples and governments.

I suppose every political, religious group thinks their way is best and the rest of the world sucks....or should join them to become as clever and in tune as they are.

[Born Free]

Thanks Daryl. I have chewed on this one for many years, and I think what some of this elitist stuff did (and again I think there is good biblical precedent for it)was to give me a truly distorted picture of the relationship of mormons to the rest of the world, and to God himself.

Looking back I do not think that it is one of the more healthy parts of the religion. Though, I Have to say that there are some truly humble people in the church, so the arrogance that it could foster is not universal perhaps, but doesn't help.

I think my outlook is much more spiritually mature, and christ-like now, (but then I would say that wouldn't I).

Though I think that my experience in the church has helped me to see what indoctrination and deep religious conviction (whether right or wrong) can do to peoples and governments.

I suppose every political, religious group thinks their way is best and the rest of the world sucks....or should join them to become as clever and in tune as they are.

To get a good feel for how elitism gets packaged and we are trained to be blind to it, just look at the Old Testament. Spong makes the point that every time "God" told his chosen people that the Promised Land was theirs if they just obeyed, they then partook of genocide to take the land, little different from what we saw in Bosnia. Kill all the males, and females who have had offspring, and breed with (rape??) the virgins. Kill the ones that won't come to heel (and wonder thousands of yeasr later why women are passive and males agressive - those were the genes that got carried down!)

I believe that the holocaust was an obscenity, but wasn't Hitler using the same elitist tribal fear-based mindset? So I am a little amused(?) when Jews insist on their special status as victims after events of recent centuries, when their holy book not only records such events unashamedly, but with a pride that they are God's Chosen People. (BTW, I am also sickened by what happened to them and many other peoples in similar circumstances. Sadly that issue is so hot, that one is frequently not allowed the room to feel those 2 things concurrently.)

A mentor once asked me to mediate on what I was raised to believe was "Normal". Boy, was that an eye-opener. I realised that my Mormon experience was virtually constantly one of feeling inferiour or superiour, and frequently the two concurrently. Now is that muddle-headed or what?

That is the toxicity of most religion for me - the constant mixed message of being: the salt of the earth AND such a scum-bag sinner, that Christ had to be butchered in some sort of retribution for my sins.

Well, sorry, I now find the whole notion of shifting responsibility around and projecting it onto others as deeply unhealthy and immature..... sick even. The idea that Christ had to die for me is just one step removed (but on teh same continnum) from the idea that God would be impressed if I BBQed a heifer to him. It is so obviously of the same shame/reputation based mentality that still dominates the Middle East today, and that we regard as supremely primitive.

My family/tribe/nation is superiour to yours, and we will happily, even gleefully, kill to prove the point. Look at the Mountain Meadows Massacre for a good example of this mindset at work.

Elitism creates separation, which easily leads to fear. Then when social stressors arise, such as in Germany after WW1, then Hitler had fertile ground in which to till the notion that ALL Germany's problems were because of the allies (exacting reparation) and Jews, homosexuals and Communists.

BTW, I do not see humility as necessarily the opposite of elitism. Genuine humility is healthy, but what I observed more frequently in Mormonism was low self-esteem, which is a predictable by-product of many of the unhealthy elements of Moism. Elitism is not uncommonly the opposite of that. One aspect of the self-esteem issue frequently misunderstood is that grandiosity is not too much self-esteem, but just a dishonest face of low-self-esteem. So teh inferiority/superiority thing is very problematic IMHO!