[dingobex]

Heber13 wrote:

dingobex wrote:

i take commitment and integrity very seriously

Based on some of the things you’ve shared, I would give you advice to wait on the temple. Temples aren’t going anywhere. So, no need to make it a hard decision. Simply tell your bishop that based on the study, you don’t feel ready. That is the safest route.

When you go to the temple, they ask for covenants and commitments that day. They allow you to walk out of a session if you can’t make those covenants…but that would be as hard to do as a bride at the alter walking away with doubts. Don’t leave it up to that moment to decide. Be all in…or wait. There is no reason you can’t wait a bit more until you no longer feel sick to your stomach.

Also…you may want to start studying about symbolism and church teachings and God’s love.

Damnation may not be as horrific as primary kids are taught. It feels to me it is a fear tactic to use such language. God is a god of love, not of fear. There is meaning in the symbolism we are taught.

Wait for the temple until you have no reservations about going to make covenants. There is no sin in waiting.

Thank you, this makes me feel somewhat more at peace.

[emoji4]

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[dingobex]

I think perhaps I’ve not explained myself well enough, I was never, ever doing this to check off someone elses check box or because i felt forced to or unready. If any of those things were the case, i would not be asking these questions i would be doing as thousands have done before me and ‘just do it’ anyway. When i first spoke to my bishop about the temple i was surprised he thought i was ready for classes but decided to take them, knowing that i feel no obligation to follow through until such time as i am ready. After a few lessons and coupled with my own personal study that i have been doing long long long before i started these classes, i soon found myself not only feeling ready but excited. Due to the size of our branch and the busy-ness of my bishop/president our classes have been irregular and so i have had months to think about this and until this past fortnight was confident i was doing what i both wanted and felt was the right thing. It was only when the past two classes become ‘damnation’ heavy that i started to question my ready-ness and then subsequently felt uncomfortable with this level of catastropication. I know many many many members who do not wear there garments all of the time, for many varied personal reasons, i also know many many many members who struggle with masturbation and the thought that they are all damned to hell because there not living there endowments with exactness sickens me. It belittles everything worthy, virtuous thing about them and condemns them to a fate worse than a non believing rapist, pedophile or murder. How is this ok? and why in gods name is something so anti-loving being taught in gods name?

As for the homophobia thing, my issue there is with shunning, i wholeheartedly disagree with it, i strongly believe it is a false biblical teaching and can not for the life of me understand why the church would endorse it. There is no scriptural account anywhere of god shunning any of his children, so why in the world is it a teaching of any religion.I understand the church’s position of wanting to protect children from feeling pressured to choose between the church and their parents, but labeling their parents apostates and the subsequent shunning that kids parents will receive causing equal to more damage.

I was in my late 20’s when i joined this church 6 years ago and i was shunned and excommunicated from my family because their church taught them i was apostate, i joined this church knowing that would be the case, but i would not wish that experience on anyone, let alone a child caught in the middle of it.

[dingobex]

I have a vague memory of someone telling me once that it is possible Adam and Eve were not the only people created but rather just the first,or something like that, but perhaps i am remembering this wrong.

Thoughts???

[dingobex]

Hi Rachel,

I thought you’d like to know i finally sat down with President Valdes this morning and he’s writing to SLC to reinstate my membership. Needless to say i am VERY HAPPY

[dingobex]

Myself personally if i am to not take the book of mormon literally then i can’t believe it at all. That being said, thank you so much!!! i remember as a kid learning from the bible about a large group of people leaving Jerusalem but i can not for the life if me, find the biblical scripture now to back that up. It was one of the reasons i listened to the misionaries when they came to my door, because i had always been curious as to what had happened to these people when they left jurusalem. The bible never elaborates on them. So i was shocked when i saw the movie because it presented it as though only the two families left. So now having read Nephi 5 i feel better.

I had considered their definition of city might be different to ours, especially since, the worlds population was smaller and i even considered that their definition of war might have been similar to say “warring mafia families” but that still didn’t explain genetics. I asked the missionaries and they reminded me of Adam and Eve but that just opens another can of worms for me, because i can think of no reasonable explanation for how two people could breed such diverse races. As a kid the Jehovah witnesses taught me, that we were closer to perfection back then and thus interbreeding wasn’t a problem and race was explained via the tower of babel when god scattered the nation to the four corners of the globe and changed everyone language.

But again i’m not sure how much of that i can swallow either.

[dingobex]

Hi Roy,

I actually never believed in creation, something that the missionaries told me wasn’t necessary but i’ve since found that the church does teach creation even if it has no official doctrine on it and thus those who openly believe in evolution are often criticized and shunned.

[dingobex]

Thanks Ray, i’ll keep that in mind. He mentioned something about finding me a study buddy too which hopefully will be good,if he can do that i’ll look forward to it.

[dingobex]

Ann wrote:

Just wanted to say hello, beccaboo, and I hope things are working themselves out.

Hi Ann and thank you

[dingobex]

LookingHard wrote:

Old-Timer wrote:

That is a lousy letter of resignation, frankly.

I think you were supposed to print that out on paper with 1 finger salute as a watermark!

Good luck NewB

LMAO 😆

[dingobex]

I spoke to my bishop this afternoon, he said i will need to meet with him and the stake president but he will look into reinstatement. As a police officer, he recognized that the disassociation letter was not written by a person but most likely a organisation, so he wasn’t surprised when i told him it was given to me by someone who found it on Mormon think. Because of the nature of the letter and his job, he wasn’t able to perform the usual practice of meeting with me prior to resignation as such he is not sure if the resignation can be rescinded or not. Either way i will still need to meet with him and the stake president, so when he has a time, he will call me back to arrange a meeting.

[dingobex]

Hi Ray,

Thank you for your bluntness, i appreciate it! I don’t always understand tact.

Apparently that letter is the standard letter on mormon think, It’s also on almost every ex-mo forum site out there. I googled exit letters to compare and all i found was this one. So touch wood, the church is so used to receiving these letters, my bishop will recognize i did not write it. I was informed by my friend these “legal letters” are the only ones the LDS church understands, hence the tone but as for the legitimacy of it, i don’t know anything about that. At the time, i simply didn’t want members calling or visiting me all the time trying to change my mind, i didn’t want to have to explain myself but also i have chronic health issues and random drop ins, regular visits, calls etc..really are too much for me to cope with, even my friends won’t do that. A bishop once told me, in comparison to the Jehovah witnesses process of “shunning” members, that mormons prefer to “love bomb” members into repentance, that is why i was concerned about excessive visitation and phone calls, because a previous bishop had told me that is what happens.

That all aside i do believe my name had already been removed from the members list, because i can no longer log in online. I am yet to receive any letter confirming that but …

I will return my bishops call in the morning and hopefully we can find a time to talk.

[dingobex]

I thought i’d follow up with a “what’s happened so far” I was too sick on Sunday to make it to church, i woke with a migraine and spent the day vomiting, I’ve been under the weather ever since. So i didn’t get a chance to visit with my bishop but he did call me tonight, unfortunately i missed that call as i’d turned my phone off, because i was resting, by the time i checked my phone it was 10pm and i didn’t want to call at that hour, so i’ll try him tomorrow and hopefully we’ll catch each other.

For what it’s worth this was my disassociation letter and my subsequent “I’ve changed my mind letter” I thought i’d share it with you since people have asked. The disassociation letter is a copy of the one my exmo friend gave me to send in.

Quote:

This letter is my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it is effective immediately. I hereby withdraw my consent to being treated as a member and I withdraw my consent to being subject to church rules, policies, beliefs and ‘discipline’. As I am no longer a member, I want my name permanently and completely removed from the membership rolls of the church.

I have given this matter considerable thought. I understand what you consider the ‘seriousness’ and the ‘consequences’ of my actions. I am aware that the church handbook says that my resignation “cancels the effects of baptism and confirmation, withdraws the priesthood held by a male member and revokes temple blessings” I also understand that I will be “readmitted to the church by baptism only after a thorough interview”.

Let me make myself clear, I DO NOT BELIVE IN JOSEPH SMITH, THE PROPHETS, OR APOSTLES!!! I DO NOT BELIEVE IN CREATION AND I DO NOT BELIVE IN THE CHURCH, THERE IS NO SALVATION THROUGH LDS INC!!! The church is an abusive cult like religion preying on members and society for its own financial gains.

My resignation should be processed immediately, without any ‘waiting periods’. I am not going to be dissuaded and I am not going to change my mind.

I expect this matter to be handled promptly, with respect and with full confidentiality.

After today, the only contact I want from the church is a single letter of confirmation to letting me know that I am no longer listed as a member of the church.

Any member attempting to visit me at my home will be arrested and prosecuted for stalking harassment and trespassing. NO means NO, LDS members are NOT exempt from obeying my NO RELIGIOUS CALLERS and NO CANVASERS SIGNS!!!

You legally have 72 hours to remove my name from your records as I waive your 30 day holding period policy. Refusing to or ignoring my request for resignation will also be prosecuted under article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC).

Sincerely,

This is my “i’ve changed my mind letter”

Quote:

I am wondering if it is possible to withdraw my “withdrawal” from membership of the church? I recently wrote in using a letter given to me by a friend to withdraw my membership from the church, however it has come to my attention that the information given to me by my friend about the church may not be accurate. I have begun reading Mormon think for myself and I am finding many inconsistencies and “cherry picked” arguments. For example, my friend and Mormon think claim Joseph was a great story teller and thus the book of Mormon is just another work of fiction like for example Lord of the Rings. But after checking for myself I find the “great stories” they claim, Joseph’s mother talked about, were in fact BOM stories and only started after the first vision. They also claim Joseph copied much of the BOM from the book “View of the Hebrews” but then claim that book was only released 5 years before the BOM. The arguments make no sense, either Joseph began citing BOM stories as a kid after the first vision, as his mother claimed or, he copied the whole BOM from another book. They also claim Joseph could not have been as illiterate as Emma and others stated because both Joseph Snr and Hyrum were part time school teachers, but why then did they not also teach him proper grammar. I am yet to meet a teacher who isn’t a “grammar nazi”

Mormon think and my friend claim that if one problem can be found then surely that brings into question the whole LDS teachings, by that definition I can apply the same theory to Mormon think and my friends’ logic. Currently I am not personally sure what to believe, I was a Jehovah witnesses till the age of 24 and spent 7 years in full time preaching service to them. Losing my faith was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, I would not wish that loss and subsequent emptiness on anyone, but for the same reason I am hesitant to blindly follow another religious organisation. I have often felt that I was baptised too soon and before I had a proper knowledge and foundation in the LDS faith, but similarly I am not now comfortable to hastily remove my name from your membership records on what now appears to be the illegitimate heresy of a friend. I would like therefore to cancel, my request to withdraw my membership from the church.

Kind Regards

Hopefully it’s enough for the Bishop to at least consider re-instating me

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