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The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

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Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#231
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this quoted a lot whenever there is discussion of wealth. However, as with all verses, the context is important as well as the follow up verses. This is not in defense of. 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you…

As an atheist I love reading these passages.. it is amazing how people in this day and age are trying to find "meanings" from a book full of the stories of one person... who lived 2000+ years ago.. imagine if someone tried to find meaning in Beckhams biography 2000 years from now...

Jesus makes several truth claims, that if true, are extremely compelling for why someone may want to pay attention today. One of these is His claim to be God. You can either dismiss Jesus as a lunatic, dismiss Jesus as a liar, or accept Jesus for who He claimed to be. If Jesus was merely a good man, He would not have claimed to be God. That is not something good people do.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#232
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a lot of people invoke Christ, but have little to do with his teachings. Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.

You're missing the role of agency (or choice) in your evaluation. Forcing someone to do something vs someone choosing to do it of their own accord is quite different.

I don't think complaints about lack of individual agency fit with some of these Christian attitudes. eg. Someone violates said precious agency? Turn the other cheek. Concerned about excessive taxation? Render unto Caesar.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#233
post #221

Is this a deep, publicity lead to attacking the tax status of the LDS in the USA, as political retribution to Sen Romney ?

Only if we have a time machine that takes us back a few months: https://kutv.com/news/local/washington-post-lds-church-accus...

WSJ yesterday looks specifically like escalation, from here

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#234
post #193

So the Mormon Church has created an endowment instead of corruptly spending the tithes on trifles and graft for their leaders, in preparation to help their members when needed and continue their operations in times of scarcity. I see this as a very smart thing, not nefarious. Not any more “scandalous” or hidden than the Harvard endowment. Mormons are well aware the Church uses its tithes to invest. Much of this threa…

> Much of this thread’s comments are little more than ignorant and bigoted attacks on Mormons and Christians.

Please call out such. I'm sure dang and the mods would prefer to keep bigotry out of HN.

Especially if you are referring to my comments, I would like to be told where my expressions and observations are being perceived as bigotry. I love my currently Mormon family deeply and work hard to not push them away, despite their actions towards me.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#235
post #156
post #9

That is just what is uncovered in the investment market with one subsidiary. They also own 2% of Florida[0], huge land tracts in Argentina, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and attractive urban real estate in most major metropolises including apartment complexes in PA. They centralize donation collection of tithes and good will offerings such that about 8% stays back at congregations (based on personal observation as the fina…

> It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact. This is definitely not true. It may have been the case for you, but my dad and brother/wife all left years ago without any problems at all. We are still on great terms.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/1/18759587/mormon-church-qui...

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#236
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least that's what they tell me. Assuming the countless anecdotes on /r/exmormon are to be believed, nobody really gets a choice. Your local leaders will browbeat you and try to look over your financials if they don’t feel you are tithing appropriately.

/r/exmormon is a distillation of disgruntled exmembers. It's extremely biased and not representative at all of nearly anything. Not all exmembers are disgruntled. The ones that aren't disgruntled don't hang out in /r/exmormon. It's like distilling all of the people in the world who had a bad experience with the police to /r/fthecops and then using anecdotes in there to make assumptions about all police. Or using anec…

It's always the term "disgruntled" that is used when attempting to discount the experiences related by people who left an organization. What exactly does "disgruntled" mean to you? Take me, for example. I've spent decades of my life as a true believing member of the organization, willingly giving an incredibly significant amount of income, time, and work toward it. And then I discover on my own decades later that I had been indoctrinated to believe in a lot of false stories. This discovery was a very slow process that involved a lot of time, energy, and research. The psychological toll of reframing your entire worldview is large. I benefited a lot from online communities where a lot of people were going through the same journey. I'll always be a person shaped by my previous decades of experience as an active believing Mormon. Did any church members personally treat me badly? No. I've always fit all the right demographics, had the right behavior, and am the correct sexual orientation. Outside of being quizzed and shamed for masturbation as a child, I generally had it pretty good in the church, and I loved it. Did any church members treat me badly after leaving the church? No. They've been respectful enough about it, and I've had some good conversations with some of them.

And yet people like you constantly come along and want to categorize me as simply a "disgruntled exmember" with no opinion worth listening to, for the mere fact that I still participate in conversations about it online and in person with people who have had similar experiences as mine. This is a perfect characterization and example of what people who leave the church have to deal with. Even I, who never had it badly in the church, and was able to leave without too much drama from the local ward, will be labeled as an untrustworthy disgruntled apostate the moment I try to give a different perspective on this organization I was heavily invested in for decades. Online communities like /r/exmormon have a very large portion of people like me who have not had bad experiences in the church or leaving the church, but yet still have plenty to talk about for what should be obvious reasons.

And who are the people whose opinions we should trust about the Mormon church? Why obviously the believing Mormons of course. Trust the people who have been taught and trained consistently their entire lives to be "member missionaries" and put the best possible spin on their church to outsiders. They're not disgruntled, so therefore their opinion matters more. Trust the used car dealer to make the most honest assessment of the car they're selling.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#237
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not providing an exemption for donations is not taxing one’s beliefs.

So I guess we shouldn’t provide military service exemptions to conscientious objectors either. You either have separation of church and state or you don’t. As a practical matter I’m unaware of any church organization even the Mormons who are ‘killing’ it with the exemption. Very few people give 1% of their income to their church much less a full tithe or anything more than tithe despite the favorable tax treatment. I…

I’m not angry about organized religion and tax rules specifically. I just know that the more complicated the rules get, the more they get exploited.

Off topic, but I would also support mandatory service in military for all similar to Israel. I can’t think of any other way to make people care about their country’s actions.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#238
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s “the eye of the needle”. It was a very narrow gate into Jerusalem, which camels had difficulty traversing.

And it is hard for a rich man to pass through because they have many possessions. These are things you can't take to heaven. These are things you should not covet. This and many other of Jesus's teaching demonstrate that to be holy and good is to focus not on the material, but on helping your fellow man. There's nothing saying you will get barred from heaven if you're rich. But there's plenty that says you should giv…

According to the text, Jesus was an itinerant carpenter or stone mason (depending on the vagaries of translation). He wasn’t a billionaire philanthropist. And by the telling of Acts, his followers lived in communal poverty.

The problem with much of mainstream American Christianity is that it tries to reconcile the greed and amorality of Capitalist wealth accumulation with its own teachings and they are fundamentally irreconcilable. Or, if you want, by its own scripture:

“No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#239
Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound interest to get to this point. If used as an endowment to support 16 million people in 170+ countries that doesn't seem too crazy.

A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.

Re: The vast but little-known fund of the Mormon Church

#240
post #9

That is just what is uncovered in the investment market with one subsidiary. They also own 2% of Florida[0], huge land tracts in Argentina, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and attractive urban real estate in most major metropolises including apartment complexes in PA. They centralize donation collection of tithes and good will offerings such that about 8% stays back at congregations (based on personal observation as the fina…

> It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact. This is definitely not true. As a Utah native and one who left for my own reasons and still has family in the church, I would say that this statement is completely false. The Mormon church does not practice nor endorse any doctrine relating to shunning or harassment. Just because you left with some personality conflicts and bad terms w…

Ostracizing ex-members occurs in nearly every tight knit social group, especially ones predicated upon adherence to some ideology. It’s a basic tenant of human tribalism, and religions are perhaps the most tribal social groups we have ever invented.
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