I'm developing a theory that many critics of the Church were ignorant/crappy members.
They worshipped Joseph.
They lived in fear.
They were ignorant about history.
Connection? Nah.
It has been said recently that us in the exmo circle were not faithful members. To this I say Who gives a damn what we did outside of the walls of the compound you build around your life? I and others like me don't give a damn what joe said because he and people he dragged into that mess lied along with him. Proven a criminal on several occasions, each time joe skipped town a new revelation on who would be outed as the scapegoat or new principal ordaining so and so to this office.
Our worlds crumbling down into disorder, we who were raised in the church did what we could to break free of the old disorder into the new order outside the compounds emotional walls.
My dear wife and children only go out on Sundays. I suggest we do things with the kids but is so worn out on the weekend getting ready or recovering from 3 hours of repetition and social exclusion. The church is the only outlet she uses for a social outlet. Once a year we attend the Christmas Dinner at Hilton's Holiday events. Were taking a riverboat down the Mississippi this year, just our Dept. Tunica Ho!
I love my wife and kids. But in the church one is seen as expressing love to another by making sure they are enslaved to your Goddamn cult. So realise that because you believe you are right does not indicate you are. What it indicates is your inexperience with trying to make sense of landing in a different worldview and gladly pulling off your garments and placing them uncut and far from destroyed with the marks still visible, into the trashcan. That day was truly one of the happiest days of my life. It was the day that a constructed world view was stripped from in front of my eyes, uncovering the real world.
I have joined a fraternity similar to Mormonism now. I always have been a sucker for ceremony. Rules and acting on the level is important to me. I do not sin, because sin is an artificial construct used to brand a behavior created for the purpose of exclusion. Rather, ethics and laws with safe morality are in play, replacing the asinine rules of Mormonism. My secular Jewish ways I guess.
It is a little unnerving at first but what you realize is that everyone around you has committed worse "sins"than you have. Everyone has been branded in their struggle with homosexuality and earrings. The more one learns about the church the more one learns about how the walls of the universe come toppling down. Court records, business statements, ledgers, notes, journals and other collected works the church holds as well come into play to delve into what were individuals true motivations. The truth is that individuals are not prosecuted because of religion. People are prosecuted because they are a detriment to prosperity in a community and must be weighed according to the law. As Joseph Smith moved from a local swindler into becoming a corrupt local politician, the evidence was so thick that a common thing happened, they lynched the dumb bumpkin moron. A group of shiftless poor lived in the swamps dying of yellow fever and he's off using his priesthood to get another piece of ass. This shifty businessman who rallied gullible individuals into one place and proceeded to control them and their families was a prophet? No, he was a sociopath.
Your rules are useless. Trade them in before you lose more of your life to trying to convince yourself you are a God in embryo.