There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
I know you didn't ask me but:
I did a mission, not gonna fully dox myself but it was in a border state between the US and Mexico, US side. I learned Spanish as part of that. Overall it sucked very thoroughly, no personal time, you aren't allowed to use your first name so you start to lose your previous identity, they take your passport if you're not from the US (just like other human traffickers), lots of gaslighting (the reason you aren't baptizing converts and generally feel like shit isn't because you've been separated from everyone you know know and work 12+ hours a day, it's because the Spirit of god cant be with you due to the fact that you don't get up exactly on time, you aren't focused enough on scripture study, you let your companion take too long in the shower, etc, and yes those are all real). So even though noone should ever go on a mission, at the same time I do in some ways still value parts of it, I mean I wouldn't speak spanish without it. Idk it's still a weird space in my head.
Yeah, I got it and believed it. Mine was pretty easy to believe, it was pretty boring stuff, "You will get married" "you will have a career". Just added in a lot of stuff about how god felt about me, how there was this incredible plan for my life, but yeah not a lot of hard details, as one might guess. I did know a girl in college who got one that told her she would mature into a "striking beauty" and that all men would desire her, and it gave her incredible body image issues because she was overweight. If you patriarchal blessing doesn't come true, we're taught, it's because we chose the wrong path, so for her weight loss and appealing to the male gaze was a commentary on like the purity of her soul.
Late 20s, it was a result of political radicalization. I started caring about a variety of issues, including american foreign policy, and was pretty let down that the Mormon church was radio silent on all that, and instead wanted to die on the "no gay" hill. A lot of reasons, but I think that was the core of it, I began to feel that an organization actually led by an all knowing, all loving god would give his church different priorities/insist on them not being completely shitty.
Mormon's are very racist, sexist, etc, but in like a clueless grandpa kind of way, for the most part. The actual members, I mean, the top brass are just straight up racist. So like a mormon guy gets all his opinions from church leaders, so like if they tell him "gays shouldn't be married" then like yeah of course they shouldn't. You could hate gays, but chances are you really don't care, you just know that god speaks through church leaders and that's it. End of story. Not to excuse it, but it's a very effective organization when it comes to thought terminating epithets, to steal from citations needed. But yes just to be clear they are still all of those things, but not in the same way like a maga chud would be.
Thanks for your answers. It's all so fascinating from an outside perspective. The other day someone mentioned how America Mormonism is and it feels truer the more I think about it.
That detail about the blessings is really disturbing. I've only known Mormon guys and I can only imagine how horrible the ones directed at girls could be.
Yeah, after I heard about hers I always wondered about what they were like (for women). Even though I spent so much time in the mormon church, that's one thing I feel I don't have much of a clue about, since the blessings are considered sacred and supposed to be secret (I know most couples let their spouse read theirs). You're allowed to share details "if moved upon by the spirit," so occasionally you'd hear someone in a church meeting vaguely allude to theirs, or hear through the grapevine what someone said second hand. The only other "girl" blessing I heard about was one that actually did give some pretty wild specifics, like that she was going to be a musical talent who traveled the world with her husband, and her husband's position would be significant enough that she would play for dignitaries and so forth. She did end up learning an instrument at a professional level, in spite of teachers telling her she had plateaued talent wise before that. Not sure if she ever married a diplomat or whatever that would be, but yeah I mean who knows what that does to someone mentally if a blessing with that level of promise doesn't "come true" and the only explanation is "huh i guess you goofed up at some point, only god can say teehee."