Recently I've become obsessed with researching polygamy in the United States in the religion of Latter Day Saints. With the new season of Sister Wives starting this month, I have had a renewed interest in the show. I started watching some of the previous seasons on Netflix but quickly found that I couldn't watch too many seasons before both becoming bored (I actually find the show extremely boring) as wall as depressed about the conditions that the "wives" were living in. Despite the best efforts of TLC and the Brown family, I felt that the sadness, loneliness, and jealousy still showed through. I also started reading things about the Brown family online and saw many people mention that the book they have written shows a lot more of the sadness of their lives. I went online to Amazon and read the sample of the book. Unfortunately, the excerpt I read with Kody writing was too much selfishness for me so I did not purchase the book. However, there were other books suggested that also talked about polygamy. Over the last week, I have poured myself into reading multiple stories about women living in Mormon polygamy.
You can do your own research into the history of polygamy in the Mormon church. Polygamy is not accepted now in the mainstream Mormon church. Only the fundamentalist Mormons still practice polygamy. While reading the books, I started realizing there were so many similarities between Mormon and Christian fundamentalists. They all claim that you have to live a superior life to make it to heaven while the rest of the world is going to hell in a handbasket. They believe in suppressing women. They believe that children don't really matter except for advancing the gospel or out-populating the unbelievers. They believe the American government is the devil himself and that Christ will someday pour out all kinds of judgement for all the evil things the government has done.
Growing up, I was taught that the unbelievers (all people who did not live their lives exactly as we did) were empty and soulless. I was taught that their lives felt pointless and that they were never truly happy. I was taught that they had a huge gaping hole in their heart that could only be filled by the god. Although many things that I was taught growing up never came with real life examples and thus evidence for me, this was one thing I thought my dad was an authority in because he had been an unbeliever up until his late teens.
I have been questioning many things about the god recently. I have found that I can't really believe that he is there, at least the way the Christian world paints him. Sometimes I have become jealous of people who have grown up in normal homes because they can go to Church without questioning all the horrible lies the church teaches them. One of the things I've been questioning is the whole theory of the emptiness of unbelievers. One night as I climbed into bed with my partner, I looked at him and realized he was one of those people who my dad taught me had a deep emptiness and could never truly be happy. That's when I realized that my dad was just plain wrong. My partner does not have a hole in his soul. He's not always turning from one bad thing to another to fill that "hole". He's not unhappy. In fact, I think he's happier than my dad. I think his life is way more fulfilling than my dad. I think he feels his life has more purpose than my dad thinks about his own life.
The next day as I was driving to work, I started looking at the people in the cars next to me. I realized that all of my life I had been taught I was superior to them because I knew the "gospel". I had been taught that I was privileged because I had been taught religion from my youngest age. I was taught that I was superior to them because I actually did believe in what our religion said while all the other people didn't. These people aren't any better or worse or different than me. We all feel the same things. We all are trying to achieve what we think is the most important in our lives. We are all doing what we feel morally obligated to do. I'm not any better than them. I am not more enlightened than them. I am not holier than them. I hate that I was taught these awful lies while growing up. I hate that I was taught that our way was better and the only way. I hate that I was taught that other people had something fundamentally wrong with them just because they didn't believe the same as I did. I hate that I was taught the only way to happiness was through believing everything my parents told me.
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