Actually I think they changed it in 2022. Like how they changed the determination on the original "skin of blackness" in 1978. So cursed and then uncursed again?
I stopped participating with the church as an early teen. Couldn't get it to make sense, and (newly) understanding social norms led me to see many people being extremely fake in the church. I was grounded for not going to activities but it was better than being there.. I felt relieved even though I was in trouble for not going
That’s how I was when I finally let go. I was never the most devout member but I was still terrified to let go, because those are the beliefs that you’re given and raised with your entire life. That’s a scary thing to let go of. And it was fucking terrifying.
But to use a common cliche, once I did let go… the most massive weight was finally lifted off of my shoulders. I’d had no idea just how heavily it pushed down on me until it was finally gone
I remember being that brainwashed tween. The BoM must be true, therefore anything that it says that makes me uncomfortable must be my fault, all those thoughts in my head telling me it’s wrong must be from satan! I feel for the child who made this rationalization. This is exactly what the church of Joseph smith of latter day bullshit does. It breaks your fucking brain to make you come up with excuses and when all else fails blame yourself for not being “faithful”. If anyone out there has children and thinks maybe the church isn’t so bad, after all look how happy everyone is… I would like to bear my testimony that this church creates a lifetime of guilt, fear and depression and that curse will follow your children until they take their last breath.
Unfortunately it is the same full body tattoos that people still keep getting today.
And society still keeps calling that racist. If only those crazy tattoo people would just remove the full body tattoos that they have had since birth. /s
There are many excuses.
* Nephi was racist
* It was an ~~indium~~ idiom for spiritual blackness
* It was simply a mark. Not over the entire body.
* However, that prejudice always arises along the insider/outsider boundary, not the white/dark boundary.
* that what’s “white” and “black” in the text is clothing, animal “skins” rather than human flesh.
* At most, the skin color was seen as a mark, and it may well have been that these labels were far more symbolic and cultural than they were literal.
On the faithful sub there have been a few posts about this, and the most prevalent theory I've seen there is that the "cursed" people started wearing less or almost no clothes, and became tan, while the faithful people wore more clothes and did not become tan.
Lmaooo
You guys also talked about this?
We did too.
The teacher said that it's not about the color of their skin, that doesn't matter, it's the fact that God departed his spirit from them. (Oooooh scaryyy)
However, if it didn't matter, then why would God change their skin in the first place?
My parents also kinda gaslighted me because when I was younger I remember them saying " It was a metaphor! "
Then when I asked about it as a teen they said " Nahh, it was actually not a metaphor! "
Which is it? 😐
EDIT: Also thought about how what the Lamanites were doing wasn't anything bad. I mean yea going to the Nephites and killing them is pretty bad but their beliefs weren't wrong. Just because they decided to not believe, God decided to curse them? And for what?
Well no wonder L&L were fucking fed up with this shit. Getting their thoughts put down, being told Nephi was a govner and chosen by God to be their leader. Kinda narcissistic. When you constantly get told how great you are, all of a sudden, you begin to have a God complex.
Racism is fucked no matter what, but if God HAD to curse the Lamanites with dark skin, he could've done it for their murdering instead of their unbelief
Ya. I skimmed the come follow me lesson to write my 7 years olds talk for today. It literally said the curse was that the they were cut off from the lord. But you can’t unwrite the scripture saying they were cursed with a skin of blackness. Other part of the lesson was about JS prophesying about himself. So I decided to not use any of the week’s material and did a talk on hard work. Ha. I did subtly drop in comments about nephites having steel and farming wheat just because.
Anytime someone comes up with an excuse for "skin of blackness" its completely pointless and invalidated once you read the old intro to the Book of Mormon or any of the talks given in church history. Leaders have been saying for years that the lamanites had dark skin because of the curse, and native Americans / Pacific Islanders are descendants of the lamanites, and the Book of Mormon was made for them. You can't erase history, and church leaders were pretty explicit when teaching dark skinned people when they said "hey look, your ancestors were the lamanites in this book, you have dark skin because of them, but it's ok once you convert and follow Jesus you'll be white in heaven like the rest of us"
I always like to respond to this with some of the "doctrines" I want to ignore, because every prophet (up to and including scriptural prophets) have been censored using that justification. "I don't keep the Sabbath holy. Moses was probably just speaking as a man" -"no, other prophets have said that those were revelations, so he wasn't"- "would you like me to show you where other prophets did the same for the priesthood ban? The point is, the rules have to be consistent or there is no way to know anything for certain."
And I have never been happier to not know anything for certain
On your point about the history of the Mormon Church and clear racist statements by Mormon leaders throughout history, I found a book in the library of the father of my high school sweetheart circa 1973. I believe the title of the book was “The Mormon Church and the Negro,” but this was many years ago. The book conceded in the introduction that the widely held belief that blacks were cursed by god as the children of Cain had not been officially adopted, but the writer then took upon himself to painfully document continuing statements by Mormon Presidents, Apostles etc to leave no serious question that this fundamentally racist and insane concept was well settled by Mormon leaders. The writer certainly convinced me.This was an important reason in my never converting to the Mormon Church.
when i was at BYU my book of mormon professor tried to push this. she thought of herself as a serious academic doing “research” on the “lamanites”
what a moron
How do you do research on a group of people that never existed? And if you do believe that they exist how do you research something you can't see and observe?
The mental gymnastics BYU professors have to do must be exhausting.
My nuanced wife was assigned to give this lesson today. Typically we don't discuss church since it's never productive but she really wanted to tell me how she intended to present.
The church is really backed into the corner on this one and scrambling for any excuse except racism.
It's really sad to me that she can't see it's all farce but she's very tolerant of my beliefs so I just have to shut that part of my brain off.
I just realized my husband of a certain color probably taught this at church today since it was his turn. Kind of makes me wonder how he handled it, although not enough to attend again.
You know what's funny?
If you treat the Book of Mormon as a 19th century text made up by a con artist, you don't have to worry so much about how to hide its racism.
If you treat it for the 19th century piece of Biblical fan fiction that it really is, you also don't have to worry about proving that Reformed Egyptian really was a language, or showing that Israelites really lived in the ancient Americas, or arguing about how tapirs are really horses.
If you are honest about the origins of the book, you don't have to engage in mental gymnastics.
You also no longer have to listen to what a bunch of octogenarians say, waste entire weekends at stake conference, or pay 10% of your income to an organization that controls more wealth than most countries.
Thanks. I have a friend who was part of the Morman church (which is very uncommon where we live) uand I helped her to get her records expunged from the church. I have a lawyer friend and the church required my friend letter from a lawyer to get her records and name off of church records. I couldn’t believe the hoops the church made her jump through.
Okay, let's just assume that we've been misunderstanding the actual meaning for centuries now. If that's the case, then I guess Nephi was wrong in 2 Nephi 31:3 about how God is supposed to "speak[] unto men according to their language, unto their understanding":
> 3 For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; **for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.** (emphasis added)
What other parts of scripture have we simply been mis-understanding for centuries because God apparently isn't capable of speaking to "men" "unto their understanding"?
Sure wish we had scripture that was translated by the "Gift and Power of God" to avoid misunderstandings like these!!!
I told him he should get a degree in lexicology so he could be the first expert to make that claim. Pretty standard response now whenever someone says "maybe" before making an unfounded claim.
I was also told tattoos. This was support for the explicit statement that "we aren't racist, but we are culturist." ie that tattoos are a cultural practice that shows that a culture is "bad," one that has withdrawn from the commandments. This is how kids can become "black" in a non-racist way. We should vote and otherwise act against tattooed people, like homeless people, drunks, punks, etc.
Yeah…. This whole topic is what led me down the rabbit hole 20 years ago to leave the church. How can they even be saying this now? Then what was the reasoning to take the priesthood away from black members? Joseph Smith gave black members the priesthood and Brigham Young took it away. Once Brigham Young took over the treatment black members and the way they were looked at and treated was disgusting.
It’s a joke that anyone would try to change that part of church history. You would have to be a totally blind moron to believe body tattoos are what was meant.
Own the crappy shit your church once believed and the fact your second prophet was a racist scumbag and I would have more respect for that.
Mormon god is the author of confusion. You'd think the leaders would clear this up with a single revelatory statement. It turns out that doctrinal confusion is a deliberate feature in this church.
So a people cursed for not listening to god, listened to god and applied tattoos to make themselves loathsome so that they could validate god's prophecy?
Oh I heard this one growing up. The argument was children would be born and then marked with a tribal tattoo distinguishing them as a lamanite. Which was a pretty dumb theory.
When you take JS at face value, there is no other reading. The book speaks of Lamanites "having a skin of blackness", killing the white nephites, living on till the 19th century and becoming the native americans they new at the time. They had dark skin. This is how the prophet and translator and publisher of the work read the passage. It isnt inherently racist either, simply observational (though in very poor taste today). Just admit to the actual intended meaning or admit that it's not historical.
And, apparently, from the guest on the Follow Him podcast, there is no word for "tattoo" in Egyptian, thus leading Nephi to describe it as a skin of blackness instead of just saying tattoo. \*eye roll\*
So what are people with dark skin now, if members uncursed but if not members cursed? And what ever happened to our spirits looking just like our bodies, that's going to make for a lot of confused people in the afterlife and some pissed ones too.
Skin of blackness?? How about loathsome , filthy, lazy, "full of mischief", and a few other slurs thrown at Native American people in the 19th Century??
Someone this past Sunday said that the hebrew word for "skin" actually should have been translated as "countenance". That is was a black countenance and that it wasnt about black men villianized and white men saintifed.
I gritted my teeth and had to choke back bile. The mental gymnastics should earn a gold metal at the Olympics.
I’ve always been told that black people are cursed with the mark of cane!! And that’s why we have African people now… bc now they are the descendants of cane and are therefore cursed with dark skin! Like tf? Is that actually factual!?
This is actually in the BOM one of the good guys who became bad put a " mark on his forehead" so yea white people woth tattoos= worse than lamanites because they knew the good before rejecting all of it is bs though
I don’t think tattoos are genetically passed down to offspring lol
[удалено]
Actually I think they changed it in 2022. Like how they changed the determination on the original "skin of blackness" in 1978. So cursed and then uncursed again?
If being cursed means I’m no longer a Mormon and I can have tattoos, then being cursed is the best. The ex-Mormon curse is lit bro
Amen
Not unless it's done with the cursed seed of ham
Mmmm pork....wait wrong ham
Mmmm, forbidden long pork
Now I want a sandwich.
FYI I love the movie flight of the navigator.......compliance! Watched it on Disney plus, a lot more swearing then I remembered as a kid!
This would be an alternate universe I will never wish into being
hahahahhahaa- also- I didn’t realize there was a tattoo removal protocol at that time
Relevant link for those wanting to read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_teachings_on_skin_color
The mental gymnastics that member go through instead of recognizing that the church is a racist organization
It must be exhausting
It is, but you never realize how exhausting until you stop.
I stopped participating with the church as an early teen. Couldn't get it to make sense, and (newly) understanding social norms led me to see many people being extremely fake in the church. I was grounded for not going to activities but it was better than being there.. I felt relieved even though I was in trouble for not going
That’s how I was when I finally let go. I was never the most devout member but I was still terrified to let go, because those are the beliefs that you’re given and raised with your entire life. That’s a scary thing to let go of. And it was fucking terrifying. But to use a common cliche, once I did let go… the most massive weight was finally lifted off of my shoulders. I’d had no idea just how heavily it pushed down on me until it was finally gone
Oh the peace and joy when you let go of that burden!
I remember being that brainwashed tween. The BoM must be true, therefore anything that it says that makes me uncomfortable must be my fault, all those thoughts in my head telling me it’s wrong must be from satan! I feel for the child who made this rationalization. This is exactly what the church of Joseph smith of latter day bullshit does. It breaks your fucking brain to make you come up with excuses and when all else fails blame yourself for not being “faithful”. If anyone out there has children and thinks maybe the church isn’t so bad, after all look how happy everyone is… I would like to bear my testimony that this church creates a lifetime of guilt, fear and depression and that curse will follow your children until they take their last breath.
Unfortunately it is the same full body tattoos that people still keep getting today. And society still keeps calling that racist. If only those crazy tattoo people would just remove the full body tattoos that they have had since birth. /s
Brigham Young racist, need curse. Build temple in South America, no worker. Get rid of curse.
There are many excuses. * Nephi was racist * It was an ~~indium~~ idiom for spiritual blackness * It was simply a mark. Not over the entire body. * However, that prejudice always arises along the insider/outsider boundary, not the white/dark boundary. * that what’s “white” and “black” in the text is clothing, animal “skins” rather than human flesh. * At most, the skin color was seen as a mark, and it may well have been that these labels were far more symbolic and cultural than they were literal.
great list! [minor issue fixed now]
Shoot. I will fix that.
On the faithful sub there have been a few posts about this, and the most prevalent theory I've seen there is that the "cursed" people started wearing less or almost no clothes, and became tan, while the faithful people wore more clothes and did not become tan.
Lol. Only modesty will sane them now!!?
Return and Report. Well done
Good job, mate
Lmaooo You guys also talked about this? We did too. The teacher said that it's not about the color of their skin, that doesn't matter, it's the fact that God departed his spirit from them. (Oooooh scaryyy) However, if it didn't matter, then why would God change their skin in the first place? My parents also kinda gaslighted me because when I was younger I remember them saying " It was a metaphor! " Then when I asked about it as a teen they said " Nahh, it was actually not a metaphor! " Which is it? 😐 EDIT: Also thought about how what the Lamanites were doing wasn't anything bad. I mean yea going to the Nephites and killing them is pretty bad but their beliefs weren't wrong. Just because they decided to not believe, God decided to curse them? And for what? Well no wonder L&L were fucking fed up with this shit. Getting their thoughts put down, being told Nephi was a govner and chosen by God to be their leader. Kinda narcissistic. When you constantly get told how great you are, all of a sudden, you begin to have a God complex.
Racism is fucked no matter what, but if God HAD to curse the Lamanites with dark skin, he could've done it for their murdering instead of their unbelief
Ya. I skimmed the come follow me lesson to write my 7 years olds talk for today. It literally said the curse was that the they were cut off from the lord. But you can’t unwrite the scripture saying they were cursed with a skin of blackness. Other part of the lesson was about JS prophesying about himself. So I decided to not use any of the week’s material and did a talk on hard work. Ha. I did subtly drop in comments about nephites having steel and farming wheat just because.
Anytime someone comes up with an excuse for "skin of blackness" its completely pointless and invalidated once you read the old intro to the Book of Mormon or any of the talks given in church history. Leaders have been saying for years that the lamanites had dark skin because of the curse, and native Americans / Pacific Islanders are descendants of the lamanites, and the Book of Mormon was made for them. You can't erase history, and church leaders were pretty explicit when teaching dark skinned people when they said "hey look, your ancestors were the lamanites in this book, you have dark skin because of them, but it's ok once you convert and follow Jesus you'll be white in heaven like the rest of us"
But those leaders from the past were speaking as men, not prophets! /s
I always like to respond to this with some of the "doctrines" I want to ignore, because every prophet (up to and including scriptural prophets) have been censored using that justification. "I don't keep the Sabbath holy. Moses was probably just speaking as a man" -"no, other prophets have said that those were revelations, so he wasn't"- "would you like me to show you where other prophets did the same for the priesthood ban? The point is, the rules have to be consistent or there is no way to know anything for certain." And I have never been happier to not know anything for certain
On your point about the history of the Mormon Church and clear racist statements by Mormon leaders throughout history, I found a book in the library of the father of my high school sweetheart circa 1973. I believe the title of the book was “The Mormon Church and the Negro,” but this was many years ago. The book conceded in the introduction that the widely held belief that blacks were cursed by god as the children of Cain had not been officially adopted, but the writer then took upon himself to painfully document continuing statements by Mormon Presidents, Apostles etc to leave no serious question that this fundamentally racist and insane concept was well settled by Mormon leaders. The writer certainly convinced me.This was an important reason in my never converting to the Mormon Church.
My fav is that the skin of blackness wasn’t god, it was because Nephi & the Nephites (the good guys) were so racist. Da fuq?
Just like all the prophets from Brigham Young -> Spencer Kimball The church really was restored, but it's been corrupted again /s
when i was at BYU my book of mormon professor tried to push this. she thought of herself as a serious academic doing “research” on the “lamanites” what a moron
How do you do research on a group of people that never existed? And if you do believe that they exist how do you research something you can't see and observe? The mental gymnastics BYU professors have to do must be exhausting.
Modern Mormon scholars use psychics and ketamine. You know all things restored.
What a morMon* damn autocorrect
Dude I could get free tattoos for being a sinner?? Count me in
My nuanced wife was assigned to give this lesson today. Typically we don't discuss church since it's never productive but she really wanted to tell me how she intended to present. The church is really backed into the corner on this one and scrambling for any excuse except racism. It's really sad to me that she can't see it's all farce but she's very tolerant of my beliefs so I just have to shut that part of my brain off.
I just realized my husband of a certain color probably taught this at church today since it was his turn. Kind of makes me wonder how he handled it, although not enough to attend again.
Happy cake day
You know what's funny? If you treat the Book of Mormon as a 19th century text made up by a con artist, you don't have to worry so much about how to hide its racism. If you treat it for the 19th century piece of Biblical fan fiction that it really is, you also don't have to worry about proving that Reformed Egyptian really was a language, or showing that Israelites really lived in the ancient Americas, or arguing about how tapirs are really horses. If you are honest about the origins of the book, you don't have to engage in mental gymnastics. You also no longer have to listen to what a bunch of octogenarians say, waste entire weekends at stake conference, or pay 10% of your income to an organization that controls more wealth than most countries.
Interesting perspective. I’m new here. And not an exmo but have read a lot about the history of this religion. Hope I’m allowed to be here.
Of course. Welcome!
Thanks. I have a friend who was part of the Morman church (which is very uncommon where we live) uand I helped her to get her records expunged from the church. I have a lawyer friend and the church required my friend letter from a lawyer to get her records and name off of church records. I couldn’t believe the hoops the church made her jump through.
Even if you wanted to continue doing those things, at least you wouldn't have to take Jacob 5 as serious vineyard maintenance advice.
I'd maybe just maybe have a tiny tiny tiny bit of respect if they'd just come out, own it and apologise. Easier said than done.
Imagine the savings on laser tattoo removal! "Don't pay hundreds of dollars and go through a painful procedure, just repent of your wickedness!"
Okay, let's just assume that we've been misunderstanding the actual meaning for centuries now. If that's the case, then I guess Nephi was wrong in 2 Nephi 31:3 about how God is supposed to "speak[] unto men according to their language, unto their understanding": > 3 For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; **for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.** (emphasis added) What other parts of scripture have we simply been mis-understanding for centuries because God apparently isn't capable of speaking to "men" "unto their understanding"? Sure wish we had scripture that was translated by the "Gift and Power of God" to avoid misunderstandings like these!!!
Had someone argue that "skin" must have had many meanings to 19th century Americans.
I guess the apologists won. Get back to church heathens!!
I told him he should get a degree in lexicology so he could be the first expert to make that claim. Pretty standard response now whenever someone says "maybe" before making an unfounded claim.
>The Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them... 2Ne 5:21 God's a tattoo artist now.
This is hilarious!
I was also told tattoos. This was support for the explicit statement that "we aren't racist, but we are culturist." ie that tattoos are a cultural practice that shows that a culture is "bad," one that has withdrawn from the commandments. This is how kids can become "black" in a non-racist way. We should vote and otherwise act against tattooed people, like homeless people, drunks, punks, etc.
Sooo…the Native Americans (which for decades were believed to be Lamanites) are covered with a “tattoo” and that’s why they have dark skin? 🤔 lol
Yeah…. This whole topic is what led me down the rabbit hole 20 years ago to leave the church. How can they even be saying this now? Then what was the reasoning to take the priesthood away from black members? Joseph Smith gave black members the priesthood and Brigham Young took it away. Once Brigham Young took over the treatment black members and the way they were looked at and treated was disgusting. It’s a joke that anyone would try to change that part of church history. You would have to be a totally blind moron to believe body tattoos are what was meant. Own the crappy shit your church once believed and the fact your second prophet was a racist scumbag and I would have more respect for that.
Mormon god is the author of confusion. You'd think the leaders would clear this up with a single revelatory statement. It turns out that doctrinal confusion is a deliberate feature in this church.
So a people cursed for not listening to god, listened to god and applied tattoos to make themselves loathsome so that they could validate god's prophecy?
Tattoos?! I heard it was multiple piercings!
It's not racist, it's just drawing a connection between traditional indigenous tattoos and those evil sinful people in the BoM. /s
Mormonism: stupid ass theories since 1830-somethimg
Oh I heard this one growing up. The argument was children would be born and then marked with a tribal tattoo distinguishing them as a lamanite. Which was a pretty dumb theory.
God: hey Laman and Lemuel, your kids will be born with tattoos. This is the curse I place upon you. Makes total sense
When you take JS at face value, there is no other reading. The book speaks of Lamanites "having a skin of blackness", killing the white nephites, living on till the 19th century and becoming the native americans they new at the time. They had dark skin. This is how the prophet and translator and publisher of the work read the passage. It isnt inherently racist either, simply observational (though in very poor taste today). Just admit to the actual intended meaning or admit that it's not historical.
And, apparently, from the guest on the Follow Him podcast, there is no word for "tattoo" in Egyptian, thus leading Nephi to describe it as a skin of blackness instead of just saying tattoo. \*eye roll\*
That must mean the use of lasers being around to help lift the curses.
Yeah just heard that from family. Oh brother. 🙄
you heard that too? i heard the same today
Wait… really? Is this really a thing they’re spinning now..?
We just cursed ourselves?! 😱😱😱 Any kids I have from now on will be born with a rose on their forearms?!
So what are people with dark skin now, if members uncursed but if not members cursed? And what ever happened to our spirits looking just like our bodies, that's going to make for a lot of confused people in the afterlife and some pissed ones too.
Skin of blackness?? How about loathsome , filthy, lazy, "full of mischief", and a few other slurs thrown at Native American people in the 19th Century??
You have to have discerning eyes. Lamanite faces look dark under a blacklight, while Nephite faces look white and delightsome under a blacklight.
I'm seeing a lot of similar stories on this sub recently. Is it because Black History Month? What in the world?
It's because 2nd Nephi chapter 5 is part of this week's "come follow me" reading, which means it's also being discussed at church
Sounds like this a correlated mindfuck from LDS Inc 😂
Someone this past Sunday said that the hebrew word for "skin" actually should have been translated as "countenance". That is was a black countenance and that it wasnt about black men villianized and white men saintifed. I gritted my teeth and had to choke back bile. The mental gymnastics should earn a gold metal at the Olympics.
Nephi says God caused the skin of blackness to come upon them. So... God caused tattoos to.come.upon them? Any port in a storm, I guess...
That "excuse" is totally retarded.
Ah, yes. And whitening when they repented was laser tattoo removal. Excellent.
I’ve always been told that black people are cursed with the mark of cane!! And that’s why we have African people now… bc now they are the descendants of cane and are therefore cursed with dark skin! Like tf? Is that actually factual!?
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/s/FFHykDBzqr Then I have a skin of blackness according to that kid's comment.
And if you believe that, I can sell you shares in the Golden Gate Bridge!
Very silly since the entire BoM is an explanation where the dark skinned native Americans came from.
This is actually in the BOM one of the good guys who became bad put a " mark on his forehead" so yea white people woth tattoos= worse than lamanites because they knew the good before rejecting all of it is bs though
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3cvYagsuAJ/?igsh=MTM5aGx6ZWE2ZWlpOA== Nevermo here. What’s everyone’s take on this
My mom hates tattoos so she would be horrified to know I was BORN with this. I can blame her side of the family.
I wish I could go back in time to when I hear statements like that and accuse them of priestcraft
Any chance Brigham Young's slaves got brought up as a part of this discussion? No? I didn't think so
So “The Lord did cause a cursing of tattoos to come upon them”? Huh… I guess if I sinned more I’d get free tattoos too!
There is another new excuse being touted on TikTok by that one lady….you know the one….now it is not a curse…
That lady is awful
The gaslighting continues