Many people, Mormon or not, have followed the recent events in the Mormon Church with a keen interest. For the last couple of months, disciplinary councils, excommunications, and church resignations galore have sat in the forefront, the effects of intense debates and often major conflicts in a mostly peaceful American religious movement. This post is the first of what could be many, where my intentions are to air out my own concerns, struggles I continue to experience because of what I see as a mishandling of men and women, people’s salvation (by their church standing), and a lack of clear guidance from church leadership in many of these matters, despite the best efforts of many true-blue-Mormons (TBMs) to wrest the scriptures and the words of the prophets into their own persecutive agenda. And why persecute? Why treat women and men whose beliefs don’t perfectly align with theirs? Why play the same role as many early persecutors of the Mormon Church? It’s simple. For Mormons, it’s all about the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of the King James Bible (KJV):
“Now these are the words which Jesus taught his disciples that they should say unto the people. Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged; but judge righteous judgment” (Matt 7:1-2 JST).
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