Thread by @hollywelker

Belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints damaged many of my relationships, but one of the most profound was my relationship to the whole world, which the church deliberately sought to poison. 🧵1/

#Worldliness was a terrible sin. Especially when I was in college, we were told to "keep ourselves unspotted from the world" & to be "in the world but not of the world."

The world = evil & danger, the church = righteousness & safety. 2/

The church taught me that the world is a terrifying, hostile place full of people who will judge & try to thwart you.

I mean, it is.

3/

But the world is significantly less terrifying & less dangerous & people are less judgy & obstructive when you're not trying to convert everyone to your religion & telling them they're going to hell if they don't join your church.
4/

My mission call sent me to Taiwan, a place I knew nothing about. I had to learn Chinese so I could go to China & tell Chinese people that they needed to be more like me, which is textbook cultural imperialism. 5/

At some point it really started to grate on me when returned missionaries would talk about how much they loved the people they served among. I would think, "If you loved them so much, why were you so focused on CHANGING them?" 6/

A movie I completely LOVE is "Moonstruck," which came out a year after I got home from my mission.

I loved it so much that it broke my heart. 7/

imdb.com/title/tt009356…

The characters in "Moonstruck" were wine-drinking fornicators & adulterers, exactly the sort of people I'd been told to shun.

But I loved them, just as they were. I was glad they were in the world--I felt they made the world a more joyous, interesting, fulfilling place. 8/

I knew the church would say I should want to convert those people to Mormonism. But I didn't want to. I wanted them to stay who they were. I thought, "If I can love these people just as they are & see their goodness & decency without wanting to change them, why can't God?" 9/

Eventually, of course, I realized that if god exists, she can of course love people just as they are. She doesn't require us to change the people around us. In fact, she requires us NOT to try to change them, NOT to judge them as somehow unworthy of her love & presence. 10/

The hostile, judgmental environment I needed to fear was not the world but the church. The church manufactured a host of dangers & difficulties for its members & then projected them onto the world. 11/

As I've stated before, the church gives us all Stockholm Syndrome. It demands that we pay it 10% of our income for the privilege of letting it control, coerce, exploit, & judge us. 12/

https://twitter.com/hollywelker/status/1556719146108235776

The world's best-known myth is about a god who tries to keep humanity ignorant & obedient, & then punishes humans when they actually learn something about themselves & the world.

It tracks really, really well. 13/

If someone tells you that they'll keep you sheltered & safe if only you give them 10% of your income & obey their every command, they're lying & gaslighting you.

They'll put you in a prison & call it safety.

Stop paying your jailers.

Cast them off & be free.

14/14

thanks, btw, to everyone who has agreed this this thread. I know it says stuff a lot of people really don't want to know.

As so often happens when I tweet about the COJCOLDS, some of my tweet are getting significant hate from believing Mormons.

But hey. Those who've been deceived always get pissed about hearing from someone who can show them the error of their ways. 😉

For those freaking out because I refer to Taiwan as China: Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China. Most people living there call themselves 中國人, meaning "Chinese person." The Taiwanese are ethnically Chinese; they just got there before Chiang Kai-Shek.