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I was thinking about the Book of Mormon phrase, "wickedness never was happiness." The most sustained stressful and worrisome period in my life was my mission. I took my mission very seriously. I obeyed most of the rules most of the time (no one can obey all of them), I worked hard, I prayed hard, I tried my hardest to be righteous. I was going at maximum righteousness, so far as I have capacity for righteousness. But I found that the more you try to be righteous and perfect, the more you beat yourself up over everything and make yourself miserable. Instead of stressing over big mistakes, which I didn't make, I started stressing over small ones.

I was in a tropical region, so the women dressed for the heat. Any time I noticed some hot-looking woman, I felt immediate shame. The New Testament scripture about lusting after women and committing adultery in your heart was constantly brought to mind. I was raised on the Miracle of Forgiveness mentality, where each and every sin, big and small, counts against you and requires maximum effort and personal anguish in order to earn forgiveness.

So noticing hot women, looking at any part of their person but their face, was something I tried my hardest to overcome. I was never successful. But I felt shame each and every time it happened, which was many times each day. I wished I could be asexual and not be attracted to women anymore.

Other things I felt enormous shame for was for being tired and hot and consequently staying a little too long at member's houses for lunch, when the heat was the worst. Like many Mormons, I was super hard on myself, but very forgiving of others' mistakes. The atonement was for them, not for me. This kind of stuff is indicative of the type of "sins" I committed at the time.

So I was miserable most of the time. The only time I was happy was when I had no time to contemplate - having fun conversations with certain companions and friends in wards that let me step outside myself, or having a good conversation/lesson with investigators.

So, being obsessed with personal righteousness can only make you miserable. That's my conclusion. The closer you get to perfection, the more miserable and neurotic you get. Tiny mistakes are magnified out of proportion - the only way they're not is if you stop caring about your mistakes, and if you stop caring, you're not righteous anymore. Righteousness never was happiness.

I'm a lot happier now. I thank the almighty Atheismo for granting me the blessings that Heavenly Father promised but couldn't deliver. Thanks, Atheismo, for giving me the ability to stop caring and let it go. :)

Too bad you never tried the real Heavenly Father. I see nothing in your description He would have chastized you about.

Hoops wrote:Too bad you never tried the real Heavenly Father. I see nothing in your description He would have chastized you about.

I agree that the protestant ideas about sin and worthiness, in general, are much more healthy for the practitioners thereof.

Buff, I empathize with the emotions you describe. I too was plagued with them, and at Zone Conferences, particularly those with a visiting GA (and on one occasion that was one of the 12), we were excoriated for not trying/working harder.

Another missionary in one of my zones early on in my 2 years voluntarily left. I wrote to him at his home, and he responded back. His letter read much like your OP. Given how he was universally shunned by his home ward/community (which he said was 70%+ LDS) for having left his mission early, his parting advice to me in closing his one and only letter to me was to break just enough rules so I could stand to remain out there, on the mission. He said that is what he'd have done instead of trying to be 'perfect' per the rules, to the point of going home, as he felt he was within his family and community a 'marked' man for life for having gone home.

Buffalo,

Enjoy this freely:

But I found that the more you try to be righteous and perfect, the more you beat yourself up over everything and make yourself miserable. Instead of stressing over big mistakes, which I didn't make, I started stressing over small ones.

Which means your weren't actually living the gospel but rather, some pharisaical notion of it not extant in LDS doctrine.

bcspace wrote:

But I found that the more you try to be righteous and perfect, the more you beat yourself up over everything and make yourself miserable. Instead of stressing over big mistakes, which I didn't make, I started stressing over small ones.

Which means your weren't actually living the gospel but rather, some pharisaical notion of it not extant in LDS doctrine.

In other words, I was obedient to the teachings of modern LDS prophets, and my mission leaders.

bcspace wrote:Which means your weren't actually living the gospel but rather, some pharisaical notion of it not extant in LDS doctrine.

Code for "You took the religion way too seriously."

sock puppet wrote:Buff, I empathize with the emotions you describe. I too was plagued with them, and at Zone Conferences, particularly those with a visiting GA (and on one occasion that was one of the 12), we were excoriated for not trying/working harder.

Another missionary in one of my zones early on in my 2 years voluntarily left. I wrote to him at his home, and he responded back. His letter read much like your OP. Given how he was universally shunned by his home ward/community (which he said was 70%+ LDS) for having left his mission early, his parting advice to me in closing his one and only letter to me was to break just enough rules so I could stand to remain out there, on the mission. He said that is what he'd have done instead of trying to be 'perfect' per the rules, to the point of going home, as he felt he was within his family and community a 'marked' man for life for having gone home.

I think you really can't enjoy church life in general if you take it too seriously. Look at bcspace - he doesn't appear to take any of it seriously, and it seems to work for him.

The happiest missionaries were those who didn't really care about the rules. They also tended to get a lot of baptisms because they were also the charismatic ones.

zeezrom wrote:

bcspace wrote:Which means your weren't actually living the gospel but rather, some pharisaical notion of it not extant in LDS doctrine.

Code for "You took the religion way too seriously."

Who knew that the key to success in happiness in the LDS church was to not take it seriously? It wasn't what I was taught, but it's a sentiment expressed over and over again by apologists.