"If This Mission Were A Horse, I'd Shoot It." -- Jeffrey R. Holland

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Holland sure loves to use images of gun violence in his speeches. Recently, he tried to blame the mission and missionaries for the shrinking membership in England and told them if their mission was a horse, he would shoot it.

I'm sure the shrinking membership in England has nothing to do with the product the missionaries have been given to sell.

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... ntent=PSR1

[Wonhyo]

Good grief, Jeff...

Paying for the privilege of being a full-time missionary, subject to the ecclesiastical abuses that it all entails, becomes less and less attractive every time Holland visits a mission and opens his mouth.

[drumdude]

Yeah, yell at the 18 year old kids just out of high school Jeff. All the church’s problems are their fault, not the 80 year olds who have been running things for half a century.

[Kishkumen]

After years of gathering data and analyzing it, I feel safe in concluding that the LDS Church’s methodology is, to a large extent, assholery. It’s not that these LDS leaders are necessarily assholes by nature, but it is pretty clear that becoming an LDS leader often turns a person into an insufferable, self-righteous asshole when he acts in the role of an LDS leader. Elder Bednar may come by it more naturally. I think Holland honestly had to work at it, but boy did he perfect his assholery in his leadership role.

[Philo Sofee]

Absolutely ridiculous beyond description. Grow the F*Celestial Kingdom UP JEFF.

[consiglieri]

After years of gathering data and analyzing it, I feel safe in concluding that the LDS Church’s methodology is, to a large extent, assholery. It’s not that these LDS leaders are necessarily assholes by nature, but it is pretty clear that becoming an LDS leader often turns a person into an insufferable, self-righteous asshole when he acts in the role of an LDS leader. Elder Bednar may come by it more naturally. I think Holland honestly had to work at it, but boy did he perfect his assholery in his leadership role.

The same thing has been known to happen to lawyers who become judges for the record.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The same thing has been known to happen to lawyers who become judges for the record.

[tapirrider]

Question for Jeff - A horse or a tapir?

[Wonhyo]

The church has felt comfortable in its a**holery towards members, and especially missionaries, for the past however many decades because members and missionaries have consistently viewed and treated leaders like Holland as God's literal mouthpieces on earth. The sense of power, of influence, of being venerated as prophets must be intoxicating. It's very much a form of corporate nobility and the members are simply subjects of the crown, in a sense.

Giving someone near absolute ecclesiastical power over you is cultish, and it's exactly what Mormons have done since the beginning. Arguably, it happens in other churches, too, but the extent to which that spiritual control washes over Mormons is really remarkable.

I grew up out in the Morridor in a household that had bookshelves filled with materials written by strident leaders such as Harold Lee, Boyd Packer, Spencer Kimball, Mark Petersen, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce McConkie, and others in their theological corner. General Conferences were broadcast throughout the house on each television and radio at high volume. Mormon leaders were, to people like us at that time, expositors of absolute truth and their words were take-it-to-the-bank scripture. And I don't think our home was much different than any other Mormon household. In fact, compared to my friends' families, we were notably more liberal.

Imagine then, the kind of havoc that a leader who spouts a bunch of horse crap can wreak on members who are totally "in". They'll take almost any level of abuse and keep coming back to ask for more if it means pleasing God and earning their way to Mormon heaven.

Until more members vote with their feet and empty the eyeball-splitting florescent lighting of the average Mormons chapel on Sunday, the church leadership is unlikely to change how they view or treat the members and missionaries.

[consiglieri]

The same thing has been known to happen to lawyers who become judges for the record.