Scriptures... Bring it.

I did what I had been admonished to do I turned to the scriptures and really focused, doing my best to remain objective. Here are a few things that were insurmountable.

My first BIG problem, polygamy, lets liken the scriptures unto ourselves:

Doctrine and Covenants 132
54 And I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law. 

So Emma needs to agree to the polygamous arrangements of her husband or she will.... DIE.
Wha? WHAT??
That's harsh.
Who will kill her?
THE LORD THY GOD... WILL DESTROY HER.

61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.

If the first give consent? Of course she will give consent! Because if you haven't forgotten from an earlier verse if she does not give consent what will happen?

SHE WILL DIE.
Wha? WHAT??
That's harsh.
Who will kill her?
THE LORD THY GOD... WILL DESTROY HER.

Oh yeah facepalm.... totally give consent (two thumbs way up Emma, I'd pick door number one for consenting to sharing with the other nice ladies!)
But how many women might I be sharing my man with, Emma might ask?


 62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

TEN Emma, the answer is TEN. Or 33... who is counting?


Book of Mormon:

1 Nephi
23 And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.

Just to sum that up, very briefly: If you dwindle in unbelief you will turn dark. (Is black the word they are looking for?) and not just dark, but also filthy and also loathsome.
Because that is both totally scientific and not at all racist. Wonder if my new crush would appreciate this scripture?

Now if you are strong and procreative in context of faithfulness? You turn fair, previously the text said "white and delightsome" ... This was part of the many, many changes made over the years to the Book of Mormon. For the 'most correct' book on earth its needed a little tweaking.

4 Nephi 1
10 And now, behold, it came to pass that the people of Nephi did wax strong, and did multiply exceedingly fast, and became an exceedingly fair and delightsome people.

Is this right:

2 Nephi 29
 6 Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?

No research on this one yet but.... When Lehi's families got the plates AND before Christ had come AND therefore before there was ANY New Testament... Were they calling it 'the Bible'? Or did Joseph sneak that in to account for extreme skepticism of his work?

What in holy hell are we teaching our daughters?

Moroni 9
9 And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue—

So in regard to daughters being taken PRISONERS and RAPED.  They have lost THEIR chastity.

slow blink

blink...

blink...

THEY LOST CHASTITY and VIRTUE

because they were taken prisoner and raped?

CUE MOMMA BEAR scream!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and I haven't even gotten to, that in the first place, a woman's chastity and virtue is the most precious and dear thing about her ABOVE ALL ELSE?

Dear daughters, your sexuality is amazing. It is not the most important thing about you. It is not, nor ever will be. And if by horrific chance you are raped. You have done nothing wrong yourself. You have been wronged and are in need of nothing but justice.

PS. This scripture is referenced in Personal Progress.... and that is not ok.

Want more? Go here or here.


If I gave you a Book of Mormon. I am sorry, I wasn't really aware, like I thought I was.

"You are more moral than the God that they forced you to believe, that they conned you into accepting" - Matt Dillahunty

A better alternative for morality

I was really angry when I first dived into some of the atheist thinkers, they were just so offensive. Then I had to really examine how come I was offended by their denial of scripture, but not offended by the ill treatment of women IN the scriptures. 

Hello confirmation bias, My name is Janie.

eyes.

opened. 

PS. I'm not done. There is more, including the Old and New Testament. 

First Day of School

If you could just be mad with me too...

When I started reaching out here and there to people to talk about my 'faith' issues. I noticed a trend. No one would be mad with me. There was this invisible wall, a pedestal, so to say, where "The Church" got put up and they could only try to help me via spin if it didn't make the church look bad.

I didn't really want answers ALL the time. I got to the point where I knew those weren't really possible. I just wanted someone else to be mad too. I needed to know that it wasn't all an ivory tower.

Be mad with me! This is infuriating. I could stay if maybe we weren't stepford wiving this pretending all is great, when it is not. There is value here but we have tarnished it.

When I would say... babies right now are dying from 100% curable diseases and malnutrition. Babies will be born to malnourished mothers, live only knowing hunger and die in childhood only ever having known pain. That will happen now in 2013! And Gods one true church in the 'fullness of times' built a billion dollar mall. That should piss off logical people. I think it would piss off Jesus, When I try to picture myself believing in a savior again he's tearing up shit at City Creek mall angry as hell.

But no one was mad. They talked about asset protection, portfolios, future endeavors of the church, investing, using the profit for more good... It was like I had gone crazy, or I was the last sane one in the room.

"I've been to City Creek. Its nice"

nuclear facepalm.

Thing is, I don't care what businesses do. I care what churches do. We gave tithing to do GOOD. To build houses of the Lord and what not and for humanitarian aid. Every relief fund I had nothing left for I didn't feel so bad. I was giving to an organization who knew how 'to do what is right and let the consequence follow."

When I found out about Joseph Smith having 33 wives. I was flaber.gasted! This can't be, surely people who have never been in the waters of baptism or sat through four years of early morning seminary can't know more about Joseph Smith than me...

Nope oh wait a second. They totally do.

But no one from a blindly faithful perspective could be mad with me. Even when I asked parents to their face "would you be ok with your fourteen year old marrying the prophet even if she didn't want to?"

Except for one exception I can think of - I got either blank stares, redirection or a reluctant yes.

Two roads diverged in a wood.... And I'm taking whichever one you are not taking.

I began to see 'faith' for what it really was: the ability to abandon reason and even good moral sense to preserve what you want to believe.

No one if they weren't conditioned to think otherwise could read a report (names removed) of what Joseph Smith did and be ok with it.

Would the body of the church have voted to build a mall?

Or how about the scriptures? Rape, incest, genocide, slavery. Most bad things in the bible were done by God.

Then there is my new frustration. Sandy Hook happened because we took "God out of school"

oh my stars above.

God is so vindictive that if he doesn't get praise all the time in all locations he totally stays his hand in the face of unadulterated violence?  If I did what god did, I knew a man was walking toward a school with guns and ammo and intent to kill and did NOTHING. What would society think of me? I think those would be criminal charges am I right?

God's way is - "I know that child will be raped. I will wait until that is over then one day, one day I will punish that perpetrator."

That is how it goes. God can never ever ever ever lose with the faithful. Good things were because of god. Bad things were because:

God is not bad, people are.
He is protecting free will.
He can't show himself that would destroy faith.
It was a trial for you.
Unanswered prayers are blessings too.
His ways are not our ways
He works in mysterious ways

So we look for the tender mercies and table all the times we are ignored. We pray for cell destruction and re-growth for the ones we love with cancer. But we know better than to pray for the amputee to re-grow a limb. We know that doesn't happen. I mean, we aren't silly.

Things came to a head one day for me. You can mess with me god but don't mess with my kids. One of mine was feeling particularly vulnerable and rejected. I won't share much of the details beyond that but to aid this situation we needed a little intervention. I prayed.

I prayed hard, hard, hard.

We need to get out of this, their tender feelings are on the line lord. Anything. Let the power go out in the building. Anything we just need to go and save face simultaneously.

Nothing happened.

The disappointment was faced and we left when we were supposed to, both of us silently cried the way home.

I got past it that night when I realized. I was only talking to myself.

And it was totally liberating. Sad yes. But there was immense peace to realizing I wasn't being ignored. I was not unworthy. There were no more mental gymnastics to do trying to understand why it was a "miracle" that an acquaintance found her nordstroms gift card but god's will that babies are starving and being shot.

This life was mine. No one was judging me from the sky or Kolob. I had one life to live and I wasn't wasting it anymore begging for help that may not come.

"for with god all things are possible" except - well, world hunger and jamming the guns of school shooters.

San Antonio

We joined Tony's great family for a family reunion on the beautiful San Antonio Riverwalk. And wrangled six kids in a hotel. 

 Good food. 

 nice views

 snuggles

Riverwalk Tour

The kiddos

Snapple truck on the way to the Alamo

the Alama was insanely crowded so we played with this overly domesticated squirell

Banquet night 

 Late night walk (double date) with Meg and Justin

Side trip to Kerrville: 

AND this was so COOL! An awesome Micheal Jackson impersonator. Even though I was not a big MJ fan, this was awesome: