In Alma 14 Alma and Amulek are placed in prison for their beliefs by the ruling priests and politicians. They face a kangaroo court trial and are smitten. The whole group of leaders gathers around them and says a phrase that chilled me when I was younger: “How shall we look when we are damned”? It seem almost gleeful in the idea that individuals would be damned.
Then John Dehlin and Kate Kelly were excommunicated and I read a host of Pro-LDS blogs and sites that seemed to twitter with the same feeling of gleeful damning.
And now I ask the TBM crowd, How shall John and Kate look when they are damned?
- Saying “Duh” to excommunicating someone who runs a blog and talks about mormon stuff, while running a blog and talking about mormon stuff
- Basically calls Dehlin a liar for stating that excommunication was related to Ordain Women, while ignoring previous statements by Stake President
- Discussion that if he “Humbles himself” and comes back in by not doubting things will be fine
- “Virtually no one” is disciplined without first being warned. We are all heretics but some are more heretical than others. Let’s be understanding of each other while agreeing to damn some people
- History of “timely guidance” fails to mention how Stake President blustered and illustrates how wrong Dehlin was for “Just asking questions” and that secretly he was doing more than asking questions, he was asking the wrong questions
This is just a handful of the loving, “Christ-like” approaches for someone who started as very much a believer, asked tough questions, and eventually determined the truth is not in the organization. So now all the LDS people can chitter on Sundays about how gleefully they are not as stupid as anyone who listened to Dehlin; as they discuss “How shall we look now that we are saved?”
Like the movie Dogma . Everyone will by simple requirements of physical nature be a ‘ smoothie ‘ !
What you are writing about is what I would call Ecclesiastical, Religious, or more specifically, Mormon schadenfreude; plain and simple. I’ve been the brunt this sort of thing, but what I say now (as should JD) is, “Good riddance and thank Heaven I don’t have to associate with so-called ‘latter-day *saints*’ ever again.” I’ve been so much happier ever since.
The old adage of, ‘When you laugh everyone laughs with you, but when you cry you cry alone,’ is far worse than this in Mormonism (as well as other religious and non-religious organization, I am sure). In Mormonism it’s, ‘You just don’t cry alone; hell no. We get to laugh and revel in your misfortune and grief, AND celebrate the fact that we are oh, so much more worthy and bound for glory! ”