Adults vs Children

This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
Post Reply
User avatar
Linked
Posts: 1533
Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:04 pm

Adults vs Children

Post by Linked » Thu Feb 21, 2019 1:59 pm

Adults in the mormon church are kept childlike. They are pressured into not making real decisions, but to follow the decisions made by church leaders. The local leaders, both official and unofficial, simply encourage everyone else to follow along too; they don't make any real decisions. Those people are ideal for the church.

It's like a class of children where you have some kids who follow the rules and encourage the other kids to follow them too. The kids that tell their friends not to watch the Fortnite video on youtube because the teacher said it's not appropriate for school. As a teacher these kids are wonderful to have around and they help the class go smoothly. But that doesn't help the kid in an adult situation when they have to make a decision about what is right to do. The church doesn't want people making decisions about what is right, they want people ceding that authority to them.

I did this for many years. It was really frustrating when I was ceding my moral authority to the church, then when I would ask what was right in a specific situation I was told that I should be able to make those decisions myself.

(I was talking to my sister recently and shared a story where I felt like I was really adulting well. I'm in my mid-30s, so I should have that figured out by now, but I'm still learning. Later, I found myself having a discussion with her in my head about how adults in the church aren't really allowed to be adults, and I thought of this story to illustrate my point.)
"I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order" - Kurt Vonnegut

User avatar
jfro18
Posts: 2064
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:41 pm

Re: Adults vs Children

Post by jfro18 » Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:16 pm

One of the most frustrating things to me was when I would mention that things like the Word of Wisdom were controlling (mostly referring to the absurdity of coffee being on there), I was told that we have free agency and that we are blessed for following it.

But at the end of the day, free agency in Mormonism is just the privilege of blindly following church leaders.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 42 guests