Windy Sydney

A couple days ago, my grandpa called my Mom (woke her up, too!) and told her to hurry up and turn on KBYU television. He knew she was questioning the church, and still has no idea she has resigned. He wanted her to see Gladys Knight give her testimony, as if that would change the facts and events that changed my Mom's mind. It got me thinking about how Mormonism (and other religions I suppose... but mainly Mormonism) lives and dies on the testimony. If you don't feel it, you don't believe it. Why? Because it's unbelievable... and when you look at the evidence, without the Mormon goggles on, you see it for what it really is... a con.

Over and over I heard the phrase, "Fake it till you Make it."

If you didn't have a testimony, you should tell people do you anyway. Yes, one of my Sunday School teachers actually told us that in class. She said that if we said it enough, we would start to believe it. Not making it up. Really.

Should that really be necessary?

One Sunday every month was devoted for the sharing of the testimony. My school teachers would get up to the podium and promise me the church was true. They would cry about it. They would share the burning in their hearts that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. How could a little kid not be touched by that? The same teacher that says 1 + 1 = 2 says Joseph Smith was a true prophet... the kid is going to believe it, aren't they?

If you didn't have a strong testimony of the Mormon Church, you knew better than to tell someone that. I never felt the desire to get up and lie to everyone about how I felt the church was true, because I didn't feel it. I would be lying, and my parents didn't approve of that. So, I sat there like a good kid and watched kids my age get up there (with their mother's whispering in their ears most of the time) telling of their testimony. It's morally wrong to do that to a child. *That* is brainwashing.

My first year at Young Women's camp I was called out in front of everyone for not sharing my testimony with the other girls in my ward around the campfire. I was pissed, and they knew it. You don't force someone to say stuff like that, but I guess they do. You say it, or you are singled out as someone who is still an outsider. Someone who doesn't believe. Someone who is being led astray or not yet saved.

There is no "knowing" that this church is true. Knowing something is knowing it... I know the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning. I know I am going to have a diet coke in about 10 minutes. The things the church tells you that you should "know" are most of the time extremely hard to believe if not impossible. Why am I looked at like a crazy person when I say that? Many TBM's to email me on a regular basis tell me that I am not open to the feelings they experience... and with these feelings the spirit proves to them the church is true. Sorry, thats wrong.

People get the warm fuzzies outside of the church as well. People who have never heard of the Mormon church are receiving these feelings. Why is it then, that it proves the church is true?

It doesn't.