Church-related Rant.

[anatess2]

I just need to air this out because it is starting to eat at me.

So... a few months ago, my father-in-law who is the bishop in his ward, got into an incident.

Background:  His granddaughter grew up under their roof because his only daughter OD'd on drugs and died when the granddaughter was only 7 months old.  His son-in-law lived off and on in their house because my mother-in-law decided that she wants the dad in her granddaughter's life - which, in my opinion, was a terrible idea because the dad was the hard-core druggie.  My sister-in-law was only 16 when she moved in to live with him.   He was in his early 30's pushing drugs for a living.  The family didn't push to charge him of rape because my sister-in-law promised to kill herself if they did.  My sister-in-law died when she was only 21.  The granddaughter grew up to be a troubled child using her grandparents and her dad against each other to get what she wants.  She got into drugs and at age 14 started sneaking out late at night to meet with her boyfriend to come back in the wee hours of dawn.  She started posting rants about the Church on social media especially after her grandfather became the bishop and she started getting verbally abusive using the most offensive words you can think of at her grandmother.  She caused trouble at Young Women's and eventually quit going to church.

My mother-in-law has mental issues that she is taking psychotropics for.  All this has caused her mental health to decline rapidly so my husband decided to offer to have his niece live with us.  She was ecstatic and moved in with us and everything was fine and peachy and she even went back to church.  That lasted only 2 months because she told her classmates in school that my husband is abusing her.  Good thing one of the teachers is a member of our ward so she defended my husband to the principal and so they didn't call CPS.  My husband immediately sent her back to his dad because we couldn't risk having CPS investigate us especially with my IED problem.

So last year, my father-in-law finally kicked his son-in-law out of the house.  The granddaugther decided she wanted to live with her dad so she left too.  She lasted only a few months then she moved back to her grandfather's because she got tired of being hungry.  Not too long after that, she started verbally abusing her grandmother again... my mother-in-law was on the verge of a breakdown when my father-in-law walked into the room so he slapped his granddaughter across the face.  She then retaliated by physically attacking him.  My father-in-law stopped her from harming him and his wife by holding on to her forearms and blocking her shins with his leg.  After she calmed down, my father-in-law took his wife to their bedroom and they stayed there.... until the police knocked on the door and carted him off to jail...

The granddaughter decided to call her dad and sent him pictures of her bruises and they called the cops giving them a completely different story of what went down.  She posted the pictures on social media with a rant about how this is what Bishops in the LDS Church do, etc. etc.  My father-in-law spent the night in jail while his wife went on full breakdown.  We happen to be out of town at the time so we didn't know about it until my brother-in-law, who lives an hour away started looking for his mom the day after and called us asking if they're with us.

Anyway... what i am upset about is that the Stake President told my father-in-law that he can't go inside their ward building or any ward building in their stake until they sort things out.  My father-in-law thought they were just waiting for the court case to be completed.  So, after a couple weeks, the judge dropped all the charges against him.  But the Stake President still told them he couldn't go to any ward in the stake.  Nobody came to visit - no home teachers or visiting teachers even.  My father-in-law felt ostracized and lost.  Good thing our ward broke off from their stake and formed our own stake so he was able to attend church at our ward.  After a few months of my father-in-law being banned from his stake, he got released as bishop and then told he can come back again.

My husband was really upset at the church for a while.  It took quite a bit of us taking things through before he settled down.  I mean, he still continued to attend church and fulfill his callings (he has a very strong testimony) but there was a lack of joy in it.  He was upset that all it takes is for some silly girl to falsely accuse a bishop of child abuse and the church - including the first presidency (as it required counsel from the first presidency to release him as bishop from what my husband told me) - would turn their backs on their bishops.

So... thanksgiving is around the corner.  We planned on spending it with my in-laws but then yesterday we found out that the granddaughter is once again back at the house - although just to stay during the day and she goes back to her dad at night.  So far, she's in her good behavior.  But my husband told me we cannot risk having her with our boys in close proximity because she might end up causing trouble for them so we're not going to my in-laws for Thanksgiving.  This, of course, is now causing a big rift with him and his mother... and to top it off with a bow, my husband is starting to lose his joy with church attendance and his callings again.

I wish my husband and his family would stop giving this girl the power to turn their lives upside down.  But, there's nothing much I can do about that but help my husband through it.

[NeuroTypical]

Yay families!  It's good to vent.  I don't really need to do it much these years.  The BiL we helped put behind bars, did his nickel and got out years ago, and seems content to just stay on his side of the rocky mountains and not bother us.  Last year I attended the funeral of someone who sexually abused my wife as a child.  We're going to church for Thanksgiving to be with other families who for whatever reason, aren't travelling or hosting.  Things are ok.

 

[Blackmarch]

Oi so sorry for you

[Sunday21]

Aweful! So sorry.

[askandanswer]

I think that in matters that might adversely impact on its reputation, the church tends to shoot first and ask questions later. It seems that in certain types of situations, an excess of caution by the church has led to an approach whereby you are guilty until proven innocent. We've had a situation in our stake in which a member of the stake with a prominent calling was charged with two offences, one of which was quite serious, and eventually found guilty of the lesser offence, for which they received a sentence of 6 months imprisonment, fully suspended for two years. During the various court procedures associated with the matter, particularly the sentencing, when other prominent church members around the stake were asked by the convicted person if they could provide character references, they were told by church authorities that no such references should be provided. Some leaders followed this counsel and did not provide a reference, and some ignored the counsel and provided a reference. Nothing bad happened to those who provided a reference, and nothing bad happened to the reputation of the church as a result of this matter. After the trial and sentence, some months later, the stake eventually got around to convening a disciplinary council and this person was excommunicated, and has since been rebaptised. I was a little surprised that the church felt that no discplinary action could commence until after the trial, and that no readmission procedures could commence until after the two year suspended sentence had been finished. This sounded to me a little like God's justice, and the process of rescuing a badly damaged soul and helping them to return, had to take a back-seat to the vagaries  and delays of temporal justice. What made things worse was that at the time this happened, the Courts in this part of the country had a huge backlog, and the person who was arrested had to wait more than 2 1/2 years until their trial came up. That's 2 1/2 years that they had to wait until the church felt that it could commence its disciplinary council and thus take this most important step in this person's repentance and rehabilitation process. And then another two years while they waited out their suspended sentence before the church was willing to consider taking the next major step in this person's repentance process by holding another disciplinary council, resulting in their rebaptism. The two processes of legal trial and disciplinary council, to me, seem to be quite seperate, with different purposes and methodologies, and I haven't yet worked out why the needs of temporal justice take precedence over saving a soul. The approach taken by the church seemed, to me, to be completely inconsistent with the teaching of Christ to go out and seek the lost sheep. In this case, what seemed to happen was that the lost sheep was thrown out of the fold, and then the gate was locked to prevent their return. 

It's times like this that we need to rely more on our faith than our reasoning and to have faith that God will make everything right in the end, and that until we get to the end, He will sustain us and help us overcome the obstacles, and give us the strength that we need to endure the trials if we continue to stay faithful.  

[zil]

11 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

It's times like this that we need to rely more on our faith than our reasoning and to have faith that God will make everything right in the end, and that until we get to the end, He will sustain us and help us overcome the obstacles, and give us the strength that we need to endure the trials if we continue to stay faithful.  

Sometimes, our faith is tried in the most unexpected ways.

[Guest MormonGator]

42 minutes ago, zil said:

Sometimes, our faith is tried in the most unexpected ways.

Amen to that.          v

[anatess2]

On 11/18/2016 at 8:13 PM, askandanswer said:

It's times like this that we need to rely more on our faith than our reasoning and to have faith that God will make everything right in the end, and that until we get to the end, He will sustain us and help us overcome the obstacles, and give us the strength that we need to endure the trials if we continue to stay faithful.  

This is beautiful and exactly what we needed to hear to give us strength.  Thank you aaa.

Edited November 20, 2016 by anatess2

[Guest]

This reminds me why I always had to be careful around the Young Women in my ward once I reached 19 and was still in the family ward.

[Guest MormonGator]

8 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

This reminds me why I always had to be careful around the Young Women in my ward once I reached 19 and was still in the family ward.

 Smart man. I always have at least one adult with me when I'm talking to a minor. If I don't have that, I don't talk to them. Period. 

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

 Smart man. I always have at least one adult with me when I'm talking to a minor. If I don't have that, I don't talk to them. Period. 

Ya with today's gossip and stories that are told you can never be too careful. I'm an executive secretary in my singles ward so I'm always outside the Bishops office while he's meeting with a YSA female just in case.

[anatess2]

On 11/21/2016 at 8:30 PM, Zarahemla said:

Ya with today's gossip and stories that are told you can never be too careful. I'm an executive secretary in my singles ward so I'm always outside the Bishops office while he's meeting with a YSA female just in case.

These days, it's not just YSA female... It's not even just female of any age... I'm serious.

[Guest]

@anatess2,

If we can call a truce over our exchanges in other threads, I'm going to try to add something (hopefully) positive to this thread.

I was actually thinking about your post here at church the other day.  The High Council speaker started talking about a family that went through something very similar (apparently about 20 years ago or more).

Here's my paraphrase of his story.

Quote

The parents were quite worried about a daughter who was going wayward.  They went through much effort to work with her and the bishop and therapists to help her.  After a while, the son decided that the "punishment" was not sufficient for what his sister had done.  He blamed that on the parents, the bishop, & the Church as a whole.  Tension built until he could no longer stand being around any of them.

He left the Church.  He refused contact with any of the family.  The daughter started to feel guilty because she thought that it was somehow her fault for him leaving.  She started backsliding.  She fell away again.

The parents continued to hope, pray, fast, have faith, and stay open to their children whenever they might want to turn around.

After 20 years, the son and daughter (independently and almost the same time) came back to their parents and wanted to get back into full activity and fellowship with the Church.

Unfortunately, his point was about another topic than the thrust of this OP, so he didn't go into much more detail.  But the story struck me as being so similar to yours that I had to post something about it here.

Recently I was at a BYD Q&A session.  The question was asked,"What is the best advice you can give to get through all the challenges of teenage life?"

My response was,"Don' worry.  Be happy.  So much of the stress and difficulty in making decisions tends to come from us making everything bigger than it actually is.  If we can remember things in terms of the Atonement and Eternity, we begin to realize the old Irish saying: #1) Don't sweat the small stuff and #2) It's all small stuff."

I know that as adults we recognize that the troubles of youth really seem pretty trivial.  But sometimes I get the impression that our Heavenly Father sees a lot of the stuff that we "adult" mortals stress over, and He considers it small stuff.  While I recognize that the stuff in the OP is pretty severe, I have had a new perspective recently.

My BIL is truly having a trial of Job.  His body is basically rotting.  I fear he's dying.  It's almost like flesh eating bacteria, but it is his bones, his muscles, his everything.  And doctors don't even know what it is.  The latest report had a slew of additional symptoms.  His condition is bad enough that he may be losing his business that he's spent years building up to be quite successful.

He's got a wife and three kids.  He's got employees.  Just hearing about his symptoms melted my heart and had me dropping to my knees to say a special prayer for him & his family on the spot.  

I thought about all the people I know that are going through trials, including myself.  And there are a lot on my list.  But his is beyond anything I've encountered in my entire life.  Since then, I've stopped complaining about virtually everything.  I still have the habit of going to the complaint box.  But when I start praying about anything, my thoughts go to my BIL and realize that no matter what I think is wrong with my own life, I've been truly blessed.

The bottom line is that the Lord knows what He's doing.  We just need to keep doing the best we can in what we are doing.  We love the Lord.  We love our neighbor.  We continue to endure to the end in faithfulness and a steadfastness in Christ.

Things will work out in the end.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Guest

[anatess2]

19 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

 

Despite our agreement/disagreement in other threads, I'm going to try to add something (hopefully) positive to this thread.

 

 

One thing that is a big part of who I am is that I am Miss I-Have-An-Opinion-On-Everything-And-Will-Tell-Anybody-Who-Cares-To-Listen-About-It.  A subset of that part is the Miss I-Want-You-To-Tell-Me-Your-Opinion-On-Everything-So-I-Can-Talk-To-You-About-Mine-And-Then-We-Can-Get-To-Know-Each-Other and the Miss If-You-Want-Me-To-Go-Somewhere-Or-Do-Anything-Account-For-The-Time-I-Spend-Talking.

So, yes, I spend a lot of time agreeing/disagreeing with people.  It doesn't change the fact that I love them.

 

19 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

And the bottom line is that the Lord knows what He's doing.  We just need to keep doing the best we can in what we are doing.  We love the Lord.  We love our neighbor.  We continue to endure to the end in faithfulness and a steadfastness in Christ.

Things will work out in the end.

This is beautiful.  Yes, when we set our eyes on Christ, things become simple even as the going is hard.  Faith leads to hope and can lighten the load.  I truly do believe this.  Thank you.

Edited November 23, 2016 by anatess2