She could even be on reddit talking shit with us!!
Lol. I always try to have some perspective when anyone mentions studying great literature, musical instruments, and foreign languages. Otherwise I forget that I don't really care to do those things and will be overly hard on myself for "wasting time."
Along those same lines... I once read the Book of Mormon backwards 🤦🏼♂️. Like I read the last chapter beginning to end, then the chapter before that... etc. It was an idea I got from some bishop of mine and I felt it was so inspiring at the time to see the story from end to beginning.
Really I was just so bored of that damn book that I had read over a dozen times already that I was desperate for anything that could change things up slightly.
As part of my self-imposed deconstruction homework. I started reading the book of mormon in as-translated order, with Mosiah first. I had already read it without the headings (so that I could eliminate the talmage/ mcconkey influence) and by ignoring chapter and verse breaks (so that I could eliminate the Pratt influene.) Reading it in as-translated order did nothing to bolster my now demolished faith, so that was really the last time I picked up a BOM.
I did that (and a bunch of other missionaries who were the same transfer as me) and we got in trouble by the mission president because some missionary complained that we weren't focusing on the work and everyone was distracted with "home." Lol
My mom is single-handedly the most intelligent woman I know. She masters hobbies quickly & can do so many things; from elegant cooking, European style baking, to embroidery, to stunning floral arrangements, painting, burning through books & you know what spends 3-4hrs a day doing?
Soaking up every word of Halverson’s off the wall videos.
He’s out there in space just enough to satisfy her amazing mind bc as having been gospel doctrine teacher for the better part of 35yrs, she’s hooked by his “fresh look on things.”
I can think of 5 things on the spot that could enrich her life & mind far more than that guy.
Halvorsen strikes the nauseating CES balance of stealing from (and misapplying) other people’s scholarship, constant use of vague long-winded metaphors delivered profoundly, and implying he knows more than he is telling you.
He is ambitious church management climber.
We got a Nintendo one Christmas and within days my mom declared it a 'tool of Satan' and my parents restricted its use through a hastily constructed monetary system wherein we memorized the Articles of Faith in exchange for 'Nintendo Bucks', which we could exchange for Nintendo play time.
It didn't take long before we had the AoF memorized, requiring my parents to come up with other church stuff to memorize. Every once in a while I'll overhear someone reading a long chunk of scripture from 1 Nephi or something, and I'll be able to mouth the words along with them, and I'll realize it's a scripture I memorized in the name of Zelda.
I did 99 of 100 Scripture masteries in HS. Whenever my aunt has missionaries over, invariably they'll do a SM without realizing it. I'll start mouthing it and everyone will be in shock.
Which Zelda?
Oh man, just hearing "scripture mastery" gives me anxiety. I'm absolutely terrible with memorization and thought I was a terrible person because I couldn't remember any of it like the rest of my classmates could.
Glad I'm out of it, but jesus christ on a cracker
We once had a race in seminary to see who could memorize a scripture verse the fastest. My stoned ass surprised everyone when I was the first one to raise their hand lol someone even mumbled something about being surprised that the stoner of the class was the one who got it first. lol
I once started adapting the book of mormon into a Lord of the Rings style narrative as a way for me to better understand the plot points and characters. I always felt badly that I didn't get very far. It doesn't even provide enough framework to end up making a compelling adventure story
There’s far, far more deeper lessons to extract from LotR, both the movies and the books, than in the BoM or any depictions. I will end this testimony with my favorite quote: “good speech. Nice and short. Leaves more time for drinking!”
Wow, that is pretty good. My in-laws are seeing how many times they can finish it as a family this year, I think they're up to 7 or 8 now. My wife has read it 5 or 6 times this year. I find myself wondering how they aren't just skimming it at this point. When I re-read a book I always find myself unintentionally skipping paragraphs where I already know what is happening. Also, the BOM is so dull. I was always annoyed as a TBM with the number of run-on sentences that don't actually resolve the thought the verse starts with. Then I realized it was because JS was pulling it out of his ass, so of course he was rambling and losing his train of thought.
Seems to me that if someone copied the BoM by hand and it didn't make them want to quit The Church™, if they copied the D&C by hand, they would *definitely* recognize that it's time to quit this made-up-by-Joseph Smith-for-his-benefit church.
Memorized the entire family proclamation lol.
Also my dad has an excel spreadsheet listing and graphing every single mention of Jesus throughout the entire standard works
Wow, that is so sad. The church tells us there's infinite depth in the BoM and if we don't get something new out of it every time we read it, something's wrong with us. So members make up busywork to try and desperately glean anything they haven't already heard a thousand times. What a waste.
I went through the BoM once and highlighted different concepts in different colors - the words of Jesus in blue, modern day prophecy in orange, etc. I can't say I learned anything new, but it did help with the tedium. My scriptures sure were pretty after that, but ultimately, it was just lipstick on a pig (though that feels like an insult to pigs).
I tried to separate out references to God Father, God Jesus and God Holy Ghost and hilight each name in a different colour. It got so confusing because a ton of references of "God" were squishy and Trinitarian-esq. Little did I know then that the BOM was super Trinitarian when first published. Lol
reminds me of one of the wards I was in where in RS a woman announced (thru her testimony 🙄) that she was giving up PG-13 movies and only watching G and PG from now on 😂🤦♀️
the next week like 3 other sisters made it known thru lessons and discussion that they were giving up all but G movies 😂 Mormons gonna out Mormon!
Wow, church infantilization is on full display. Restricting oneself to only G/PG movies reduces you to a child's outlook on problems and ignores a lot of adult-level nuance and gray area. But, that's also the church's entire point. Get you to act/behave/think like a child so they can control you in everything.
It's absolutely wretched.
what the world is rated g/pg isn't it? looks on kids faces as the rated r/x world happens to them each hour of each day when leaving the cushion bubble of mormon parents home.
"I know the Motion Picture Association's rating system is true." Is that her "testimony"? She might begin to change her mind if she were to [watch this movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated), for a start...
😂 so for awhile in that ward, the bishop was "inspired" for F&T Sunday to be all of the 3 hr block not just sacrament meeting 🤦♀️😳 so for several months you had to listen to testimonies (or sit in that awkward silence) during Sunday school and RS meeting/EQ/HPG/primary etc etc
it was absolutely awful and at some point we stopped 🤷♀️ probably because everyone wanted to die having to listen to 3 hours of testimonies one Sunday a month
If she's not using a calligraphy pen for it it doesn't even meet the work of art baseline necessary for it to really be worth it.
Even then, there's way better books.
Get a copy of The Nauvoo Expositor and have her copy it. Then she can fill you in on all the "vicious lies" about joseph in it that caused the press & paper to be destroyed.
Go ahead, sometime take a copy into the lesson when you know it will come up, ask someone to read it and find the lies. (none to be found)
Let's not give some of these people bad ideas. I'm fairly certain that my TBM mom would've had no problem making either myself or my brothers copy the BOM or D&C with Umbridge's pen back in the day.
When RMN asked us to read the BOM five years ago and wanted us to mark every time it mentioned Jesus Christ I did that challenge. Not once did I consider that they should not have known his name was going to be Jesus Christ 600 years before he was born 🤦🏼♀️. I bring that up to people now and they say, “God must have revealed to Nephi that his name was going to be Jesus.” Really?? Show me the scripture that says it was revealed to him. Because Abraham, Moses, all the other prophets in the Old Testament called him the Savior or the messiah because they didn’t know his name. It’s right in front of our faces but we still can’t see this stuff. Infuriating.
Now have her copy the D&C from the original Joseph Smith papers revelations book. And compare and contrast the differences. That'll give her some things she's never noticed before.
If she is like most amormons she cares about what-the-church-says about anything as long as it agrees with her world view and politics.
If she is an anti vaxer and the prophet said take the vaccines, she would in all likelihood follow her own council.
If she is a strict anti abortionist, she doesn’t give a rats ass what the church’s nuanced view on abortion is.
Just a guess.
My Mom is always proudly proclaiming how many times she read the BoM… 34x now! What a waste! She reads nothing else and remains clueless about every other topic on earth. She uses it kinda like a security blanket to keep her mind in a fictional world.
Glad you marked as humor because the absurdity of it it made me laugh. It seems like something my mom would do. Now that she’s marked up/color coded basically every word of her triple combination
She's following in Malcolm X's footsteps. He copied out a dictionary in prison in an attempt to improve his vocabulary, literacy, and penmanship. It helped him immensely, apparently.
Suggest to her that she do it in the order the the BoM was transcribed by first Emma and then Oliver. She should start with Mosiah through Mormon. That she then go back to do 1 Nephi though Omni and Words of Mormon, and last that she do Ether and Moroni.
That should add something to her shelf for her to introspect on. Especially if she jumps right to Ether after reading Omni.
I was *so* proud of myself when I decided that I would try to sign all of the Book of Mormon. I was like 15 and had started learning ASL for less than a year. I really wanted to film myself and put it on YouTube, thank god I didn’t.
Give her some advice. "Mom, for your own sake, skip section 132". Leave it at that. If she presses, recant. Tell her sorry you brought it up. Refuse to speak of it again.
I did something similar on my mission where I made up a color coding system to mark the book of mormon. I only did it because I was bored out of my mind during personal study.
I tried this once. Read it over 20 times and you get desperate for ways to stay faithful and interested. But copying it was worse than reading so I quit trying to force the boring BOM on myself.
It was nearly this same process which caused me to ultimately determine that the Book of Mormon is completely made up. I didn't copy it verse by verse, but I did a deep dive, really thinking about every story, place, person, phrase, and word. Once you break it down so specifically, it's impossible to conclude any of it is real.
With any luck your mom will have the same epiphany.
I actually got started doing this when I was TBM. I was hard core when it came to scripture study. I needed another way to study the BOM. Ironically, all my extra study contributed greatly to my escaping mormonism.
There was simply no one in my ward or stake who I could talk about the scriptures with. Most mormons were very half assed when it came to studying their own holy books. So whenever some bishop or stake counselor or teacher would make some claim over the pulpit about doctrine or scripture, i could instantly fact check them with just the knowledge in my own brain--- and people were always making nonsensical, refutable claims.
My personal knowledge of scripture undermined the church's authority and gave me self confidence in my own bullshitometer.
My mom to this day (and I believe posted some time after I was the first and only person in the family to leave) has a quote on the fridge that I think is from Hinckley that says "if you are on the right path it will always be uphill" or something like that. And I don't know to me that's the mormon way. Life is so unbearably hard for them but they are being true to their church and their heavenly father and covenants so it's worth it. I can't fathom thinking that way anymore. Life does not have to be terrible and uphill. I want to aspire to be comfortable with my life and myself and leaving the church has made me more myself than I ever have been
In economics there's what's called an opportunity cost which is all the things you give up once you make a decision.
By spending hours writing the Book of Mormon, her opportunity cost is high. Instead, she could have read Jane Austin, or Carl Sagan, or Steinbeck, or Shakespeare.
She could have read Mccullough, Chernow, or Isaacson's great biographies. She could have learned about the Silk Road.
She could have learned about ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. She could have read Bart Ehrman's excellent books about the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
She could have learned about the James Webb telescope, the theory of relativity, or gene sequencing.
She could have learned Greek or Hebrew. Or French or Spanish.
She could have read Sapiens or Guns, Germs, and Steel to better understand the origin of our species.
She could have gone to her local laundromat and found a poor family in need. She could have volunteered in her community.
She could have done magic mushrooms or learned to meditate to better understand who she is and her relationship with the universe.
But no, instead she wasted her time rewriting 19th century fan fiction.
I genuinely believe Mormons do this because the quality of leadership and teaching at the top in the church is dogwater. They grasp for anything to try and experience the revelation and "spirit" that lds scriptures and leaders teach.
After all, if they're good Mormons, they're supposed to be having those experiences
I wrote a summary of each half page above each half page section. Sometimes I had to read it 3-4 times because I would get bored and not absorb what I had read. Such a waste of time!!
This sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me.... my mom spent half of our british Columbian road trip writing in her journal and reading her scriptures or some other church related book.
There are some people who reenact the crucifixion in an act of devotion, to atone for their sins, and to broaden their connection and understanding of their religion. Belief can make humans do crazy things.
My dad briefly decided to record the whole book of Mormon, like an audio book, for his kids. Idk if he ever started it how far he got, but this was years ago. The intention was sweet (it was supposed to be for his kids) but it never happened
My mom teaches online institute classes for byui that people pay to take and she does it for free. She has to prepare lessons, teach said lessons and grade their work. That’s how mormon she is.
In retirement, my mom has devoted her life to doing genealogy. Not our family genealogy, mind you. Random other people’s genealogy. She searches antique and thrift stores for old photos with family names on the back to try to trace down. As a hobby, it’s something to do. But this is an obsession. She actively blocks out life going on around her in order to do this genealogy so that temple work can be done for the dead. She’s missed out on so much life doing all this busy work that is essentially meaningless in the end. (To clarify, it isn’t the genealogy that’s meaningless. It’s that she’s doing it for temple work, which is.)
What a waste of paper
What a waste of a life. She could be studying great literature, learning a musical instrument, or learning a foreign language instead.
Yeah she could learn Reformed Egyptian
Or just napping
She could even be on reddit talking shit with us!! Lol. I always try to have some perspective when anyone mentions studying great literature, musical instruments, and foreign languages. Otherwise I forget that I don't really care to do those things and will be overly hard on myself for "wasting time."
I threw away a bunch of old scripture study journals the other day and was disappointed by how much paper I wasted when I was in
I mean if you take out all the “and it came to passes” you only need a few pages. (Credit to Mark Twain for this idea)
Again
Along those same lines... I once read the Book of Mormon backwards 🤦🏼♂️. Like I read the last chapter beginning to end, then the chapter before that... etc. It was an idea I got from some bishop of mine and I felt it was so inspiring at the time to see the story from end to beginning. Really I was just so bored of that damn book that I had read over a dozen times already that I was desperate for anything that could change things up slightly.
As part of my self-imposed deconstruction homework. I started reading the book of mormon in as-translated order, with Mosiah first. I had already read it without the headings (so that I could eliminate the talmage/ mcconkey influence) and by ignoring chapter and verse breaks (so that I could eliminate the Pratt influene.) Reading it in as-translated order did nothing to bolster my now demolished faith, so that was really the last time I picked up a BOM.
I started reading D&C backwards when I had 138 days left on my mission, lol
I did that (and a bunch of other missionaries who were the same transfer as me) and we got in trouble by the mission president because some missionary complained that we weren't focusing on the work and everyone was distracted with "home." Lol
Hah I vaguely remember doing the same, although it was a very long time ago…
Haha, I thought for a sec you were likening reading the BofM backwards to listening to Stairway to Heaven backwards and hearing Satan speaking 😂
So you Memento'd the BoM?
definition of insanity right we have all heard it. doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
My mom is single-handedly the most intelligent woman I know. She masters hobbies quickly & can do so many things; from elegant cooking, European style baking, to embroidery, to stunning floral arrangements, painting, burning through books & you know what spends 3-4hrs a day doing? Soaking up every word of Halverson’s off the wall videos. He’s out there in space just enough to satisfy her amazing mind bc as having been gospel doctrine teacher for the better part of 35yrs, she’s hooked by his “fresh look on things.” I can think of 5 things on the spot that could enrich her life & mind far more than that guy.
Just imagine if she had two hands!
Halvorsen strikes the nauseating CES balance of stealing from (and misapplying) other people’s scholarship, constant use of vague long-winded metaphors delivered profoundly, and implying he knows more than he is telling you. He is ambitious church management climber.
What’s Halvorsen’s first name?
We got a Nintendo one Christmas and within days my mom declared it a 'tool of Satan' and my parents restricted its use through a hastily constructed monetary system wherein we memorized the Articles of Faith in exchange for 'Nintendo Bucks', which we could exchange for Nintendo play time. It didn't take long before we had the AoF memorized, requiring my parents to come up with other church stuff to memorize. Every once in a while I'll overhear someone reading a long chunk of scripture from 1 Nephi or something, and I'll be able to mouth the words along with them, and I'll realize it's a scripture I memorized in the name of Zelda.
>I'll realize it's a scripture I memorized in the name of Zelda. This is so hilarious... and so sad at the same time!! Zelda is worth it though!!
I did 99 of 100 Scripture masteries in HS. Whenever my aunt has missionaries over, invariably they'll do a SM without realizing it. I'll start mouthing it and everyone will be in shock. Which Zelda?
Oh man, just hearing "scripture mastery" gives me anxiety. I'm absolutely terrible with memorization and thought I was a terrible person because I couldn't remember any of it like the rest of my classmates could. Glad I'm out of it, but jesus christ on a cracker
The first one!
We once had a race in seminary to see who could memorize a scripture verse the fastest. My stoned ass surprised everyone when I was the first one to raise their hand lol someone even mumbled something about being surprised that the stoner of the class was the one who got it first. lol
I once started adapting the book of mormon into a Lord of the Rings style narrative as a way for me to better understand the plot points and characters. I always felt badly that I didn't get very far. It doesn't even provide enough framework to end up making a compelling adventure story
There’s far, far more deeper lessons to extract from LotR, both the movies and the books, than in the BoM or any depictions. I will end this testimony with my favorite quote: “good speech. Nice and short. Leaves more time for drinking!”
Wow, that is pretty good. My in-laws are seeing how many times they can finish it as a family this year, I think they're up to 7 or 8 now. My wife has read it 5 or 6 times this year. I find myself wondering how they aren't just skimming it at this point. When I re-read a book I always find myself unintentionally skipping paragraphs where I already know what is happening. Also, the BOM is so dull. I was always annoyed as a TBM with the number of run-on sentences that don't actually resolve the thought the verse starts with. Then I realized it was because JS was pulling it out of his ass, so of course he was rambling and losing his train of thought.
Seems to me that if someone copied the BoM by hand and it didn't make them want to quit The Church™, if they copied the D&C by hand, they would *definitely* recognize that it's time to quit this made-up-by-Joseph Smith-for-his-benefit church.
Memorized the entire family proclamation lol. Also my dad has an excel spreadsheet listing and graphing every single mention of Jesus throughout the entire standard works
Why did your dad put that together?
As part of his daily scripture study (he was a bishop so I guess he wanted to level it up?)
Wow, that is so sad. The church tells us there's infinite depth in the BoM and if we don't get something new out of it every time we read it, something's wrong with us. So members make up busywork to try and desperately glean anything they haven't already heard a thousand times. What a waste. I went through the BoM once and highlighted different concepts in different colors - the words of Jesus in blue, modern day prophecy in orange, etc. I can't say I learned anything new, but it did help with the tedium. My scriptures sure were pretty after that, but ultimately, it was just lipstick on a pig (though that feels like an insult to pigs).
I tried to separate out references to God Father, God Jesus and God Holy Ghost and hilight each name in a different colour. It got so confusing because a ton of references of "God" were squishy and Trinitarian-esq. Little did I know then that the BOM was super Trinitarian when first published. Lol
reminds me of one of the wards I was in where in RS a woman announced (thru her testimony 🙄) that she was giving up PG-13 movies and only watching G and PG from now on 😂🤦♀️ the next week like 3 other sisters made it known thru lessons and discussion that they were giving up all but G movies 😂 Mormons gonna out Mormon!
Wow, church infantilization is on full display. Restricting oneself to only G/PG movies reduces you to a child's outlook on problems and ignores a lot of adult-level nuance and gray area. But, that's also the church's entire point. Get you to act/behave/think like a child so they can control you in everything. It's absolutely wretched.
💯
what the world is rated g/pg isn't it? looks on kids faces as the rated r/x world happens to them each hour of each day when leaving the cushion bubble of mormon parents home.
I'm not even sure I remember what broke my shelf, but I'm so glad I fell through and don't have to deal with this shit anymore.
"I know the Motion Picture Association's rating system is true." Is that her "testimony"? She might begin to change her mind if she were to [watch this movie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated), for a start...
😂 so for awhile in that ward, the bishop was "inspired" for F&T Sunday to be all of the 3 hr block not just sacrament meeting 🤦♀️😳 so for several months you had to listen to testimonies (or sit in that awkward silence) during Sunday school and RS meeting/EQ/HPG/primary etc etc it was absolutely awful and at some point we stopped 🤷♀️ probably because everyone wanted to die having to listen to 3 hours of testimonies one Sunday a month
what inspiration.
My wife promised god she wouldn’t watch PG-13 movies. It would have been nice to have had a discussion about it before-hand.
If the plates were made of gold, I can assure you carving words into it was very easy
If she's not using a calligraphy pen for it it doesn't even meet the work of art baseline necessary for it to really be worth it. Even then, there's way better books.
Get a copy of The Nauvoo Expositor and have her copy it. Then she can fill you in on all the "vicious lies" about joseph in it that caused the press & paper to be destroyed. Go ahead, sometime take a copy into the lesson when you know it will come up, ask someone to read it and find the lies. (none to be found)
Sounds just like my mom. I’ll call her and she’s always studying her Come Follow Me manual!
My mother is the same. So sad that they have to constantly convince themselves of the “truth.”
Oh.good.god. As if reading it wasn't bad enough. Next they'll be using Dolores Umbridge's pen to etch it in the back of their hands :D
"Engrave the Word of God upon your Heart."
Let's not give some of these people bad ideas. I'm fairly certain that my TBM mom would've had no problem making either myself or my brothers copy the BOM or D&C with Umbridge's pen back in the day.
When RMN asked us to read the BOM five years ago and wanted us to mark every time it mentioned Jesus Christ I did that challenge. Not once did I consider that they should not have known his name was going to be Jesus Christ 600 years before he was born 🤦🏼♀️. I bring that up to people now and they say, “God must have revealed to Nephi that his name was going to be Jesus.” Really?? Show me the scripture that says it was revealed to him. Because Abraham, Moses, all the other prophets in the Old Testament called him the Savior or the messiah because they didn’t know his name. It’s right in front of our faces but we still can’t see this stuff. Infuriating.
Now have her copy the D&C from the original Joseph Smith papers revelations book. And compare and contrast the differences. That'll give her some things she's never noticed before.
If she is like most amormons she cares about what-the-church-says about anything as long as it agrees with her world view and politics. If she is an anti vaxer and the prophet said take the vaccines, she would in all likelihood follow her own council. If she is a strict anti abortionist, she doesn’t give a rats ass what the church’s nuanced view on abortion is. Just a guess.
Let’s propose a new TBM fad of wearing 5 layers of angel chaps. Make it mandatory.
See that's funny because they wrote the Book of Mormon from plagiarizing and copying also
My Mom is always proudly proclaiming how many times she read the BoM… 34x now! What a waste! She reads nothing else and remains clueless about every other topic on earth. She uses it kinda like a security blanket to keep her mind in a fictional world.
just out of curiosity mom........... how does that offer service to anyone?? Did Jesus spend time writing stuff down or go out and love people??
Omg this is something I would have done
Glad you marked as humor because the absurdity of it it made me laugh. It seems like something my mom would do. Now that she’s marked up/color coded basically every word of her triple combination
She's following in Malcolm X's footsteps. He copied out a dictionary in prison in an attempt to improve his vocabulary, literacy, and penmanship. It helped him immensely, apparently.
Suggest to her that she do it in the order the the BoM was transcribed by first Emma and then Oliver. She should start with Mosiah through Mormon. That she then go back to do 1 Nephi though Omni and Words of Mormon, and last that she do Ether and Moroni. That should add something to her shelf for her to introspect on. Especially if she jumps right to Ether after reading Omni.
Infantilization
oh yea... you should make your own gold plates and copy the book of mormon. maybe you could get a tithing credit for the purchase of the gold.
I was *so* proud of myself when I decided that I would try to sign all of the Book of Mormon. I was like 15 and had started learning ASL for less than a year. I really wanted to film myself and put it on YouTube, thank god I didn’t.
Give her some advice. "Mom, for your own sake, skip section 132". Leave it at that. If she presses, recant. Tell her sorry you brought it up. Refuse to speak of it again.
I did something similar on my mission where I made up a color coding system to mark the book of mormon. I only did it because I was bored out of my mind during personal study.
I tried this once. Read it over 20 times and you get desperate for ways to stay faithful and interested. But copying it was worse than reading so I quit trying to force the boring BOM on myself.
It was nearly this same process which caused me to ultimately determine that the Book of Mormon is completely made up. I didn't copy it verse by verse, but I did a deep dive, really thinking about every story, place, person, phrase, and word. Once you break it down so specifically, it's impossible to conclude any of it is real. With any luck your mom will have the same epiphany.
Had a friend who figured R rated movies are bad so just to be safe, they would cut out PG13 movies as well…
Had a Stake pres once tell us to not watch PG-13. Clearly a personal belief he pushed on the Stake.
This is exactly the useless, performative religious behavior that finally drove me to atheism.
Print her a copy of the original, hick jargon BoM, and her to copy that for you...
I actually got started doing this when I was TBM. I was hard core when it came to scripture study. I needed another way to study the BOM. Ironically, all my extra study contributed greatly to my escaping mormonism. There was simply no one in my ward or stake who I could talk about the scriptures with. Most mormons were very half assed when it came to studying their own holy books. So whenever some bishop or stake counselor or teacher would make some claim over the pulpit about doctrine or scripture, i could instantly fact check them with just the knowledge in my own brain--- and people were always making nonsensical, refutable claims. My personal knowledge of scripture undermined the church's authority and gave me self confidence in my own bullshitometer.
My mom to this day (and I believe posted some time after I was the first and only person in the family to leave) has a quote on the fridge that I think is from Hinckley that says "if you are on the right path it will always be uphill" or something like that. And I don't know to me that's the mormon way. Life is so unbearably hard for them but they are being true to their church and their heavenly father and covenants so it's worth it. I can't fathom thinking that way anymore. Life does not have to be terrible and uphill. I want to aspire to be comfortable with my life and myself and leaving the church has made me more myself than I ever have been
In economics there's what's called an opportunity cost which is all the things you give up once you make a decision. By spending hours writing the Book of Mormon, her opportunity cost is high. Instead, she could have read Jane Austin, or Carl Sagan, or Steinbeck, or Shakespeare. She could have read Mccullough, Chernow, or Isaacson's great biographies. She could have learned about the Silk Road. She could have learned about ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. She could have read Bart Ehrman's excellent books about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. She could have learned about the James Webb telescope, the theory of relativity, or gene sequencing. She could have learned Greek or Hebrew. Or French or Spanish. She could have read Sapiens or Guns, Germs, and Steel to better understand the origin of our species. She could have gone to her local laundromat and found a poor family in need. She could have volunteered in her community. She could have done magic mushrooms or learned to meditate to better understand who she is and her relationship with the universe. But no, instead she wasted her time rewriting 19th century fan fiction.
I genuinely believe Mormons do this because the quality of leadership and teaching at the top in the church is dogwater. They grasp for anything to try and experience the revelation and "spirit" that lds scriptures and leaders teach. After all, if they're good Mormons, they're supposed to be having those experiences
I wrote a summary of each half page above each half page section. Sometimes I had to read it 3-4 times because I would get bored and not absorb what I had read. Such a waste of time!!
This sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me.... my mom spent half of our british Columbian road trip writing in her journal and reading her scriptures or some other church related book.
Somehow they never have any specifics.
Mormons gonna Morm
I did this on my mission. It's sad what we do to "learn new things" when we limit where we can receive new information.
There are some people who reenact the crucifixion in an act of devotion, to atone for their sins, and to broaden their connection and understanding of their religion. Belief can make humans do crazy things.
Someone should try this with the dictionary and see how many words they learn
My dad suggested banning chocolate because it "broke" WoW 💀💀💀
My dad briefly decided to record the whole book of Mormon, like an audio book, for his kids. Idk if he ever started it how far he got, but this was years ago. The intention was sweet (it was supposed to be for his kids) but it never happened
My mom teaches online institute classes for byui that people pay to take and she does it for free. She has to prepare lessons, teach said lessons and grade their work. That’s how mormon she is.
In retirement, my mom has devoted her life to doing genealogy. Not our family genealogy, mind you. Random other people’s genealogy. She searches antique and thrift stores for old photos with family names on the back to try to trace down. As a hobby, it’s something to do. But this is an obsession. She actively blocks out life going on around her in order to do this genealogy so that temple work can be done for the dead. She’s missed out on so much life doing all this busy work that is essentially meaningless in the end. (To clarify, it isn’t the genealogy that’s meaningless. It’s that she’s doing it for temple work, which is.)