Mormons as an oppressed minority? Really?
The problem with Mormonism is not that it is misunderstood. I understand it perfectly. To criticize it reasonably is not bigotry or hatred. Mormonism is so completely knowable, right down to Joe Smith’s gun battle, stone-peeping, Egyptian burial ritual gold-plate con-job that it offends the faithful Mormon to hear it one more time.
We’re not talking about a mystery far removed in time’s scope by the centuries, like the Shroud of Turin. Who knows? We’re talking about a relatively few short years in the scope of history. Practically yesterday. We’re talking about decipherable writing on the Golden Plates that don’t say what Joe Smith translated them to say. They just don’t. Deal. Step up like grown ups and answer reasonable questions.
But that is why it is rightly mocked. It has a form of godliness that is manufactured by human effort and was conceived as a scam. Its “revelations” are utterly adjunct and useless to the problem of sin and the human condition. It does not fit the arc of God’s story of redemption. It’s Vampire Diaries for people bored with the same old-same old.
Mormonism’s origins come from the same mindset that gave us Scientology. Sure, lots of people buy into Scientology big time. They claim their moral superiority and healing powers. We know they’re kooks because we watched their beginnings. In another half-century of collective and willful amnesia, people will call those who mock Scientology for what it is, bigots. Scientology pays big bucks to control their own Narrative and story.
People today deny the Holocaust ever happened. Because it’s what they want to believe. I never thought I’d live to see it, but it’s amazing how much amnesia money can buy; what money and key influences can achieve. Mormons have depended on that same sort of amnesia to their advantage. The “poor us” routine does not come from being persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Joe Smith was no martyr, he died while the barrel of his gun was still a smokin’.
Faith is not a leap in the dark or a warm feeling, it’s a reasoning together with a present God about our human condition and His relationship with us; His goodness and our inability to be good. It’s the only real human dilemma, and it had its answer 2000 years ago.
Peopel are known by the company they keep or the movies they like such as cruelty, rape etc.