Freedom to Pay the Price

The Freedom To Worship As I Please

I think the freedom to worship as we please also includes the freedom to not worship if we don’t please.

What it doesn't include is the freedom to force religion on somebody else through trickery,

fraud,

or even the sword.

Or shunning. Or economic sanctions. Whatever.

That is one of the many reasons I left Mormonism

for a life of better alignment with Christianity.

Worshiping as I please.

Allowing others the same privilege.

Leaving Mormonism was for me a time of being shunned. Still is. Not quite as bad as that first five years, but there is no middle ground for those who defend their faith with closed minds.  There just is no middle ground available when one of the parties KNOWS they have the right info and the rest of the world doesn't.

An open mind will for sure learn something.  Guard against that.

In the last world-wide conference Mormons were advised (according to someone who listened)  to remember feelings that guided them to the truth in the past or in the first place.  

Avoid those textbooks and research, ye who know the truth already.

A closed heart is even worse than a closed mind, but many with closed minds do not close their hearts and they pray and weep for those who do not believe as they do. Still and all, no middle ground.

My bias is that if feelings are where it is at for a testimony, then everybody else's feelings are valid also.  
Or as one of my sons said as a teenager after an outing with the brethren, "No two people on the earth have the same religion!"  My son was disgusted but I thought he was profound for so young a boy.

One of the red flags of mormonism is the shutting down of perspectives.

Wikemedia Commons

Now don't get miffed!

As Donald and Mitt might say to each other, if you agreed with me on everything and every issue, I would only hate you 10% less.

Riverwatch      (and now you know why I go by an alias)

OK.    I will go ahead and admit Mormons are not the only people who shun me. But Mormon's shunning is tangled with religious freedom.  Not cool.