Bart S. Croxford: 'I would like to respond to the article by Tanner Call of December 7, entitled “LDS Church gaslights the world and manipulates its members.” I think it would only be fair to allow a member of the church to present an opposing view.'
A Women's Choir from various Stakes in Utah open the Women's session of LDS General Conference at the Conference Center, on Saturday, April 2, 2022.I would like to respond to the article by Tanner Call of December 7, entitled “I think it would only be fair to allow a member of the church to present an opposing view.
Even a gym membership requires that its participants exert themselves physically, even perhaps to exhaustion to accomplish the desired goal of being physically fit. I guess Mr. Call thinks the church should guarantee its members that they will be happy regardless of any efforts put forth its believers.
All the “techniques” that he lists are not unique to the church he is criticizing. “Treasures in heaven” are promised by the Savior in The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:12, which is believed by all Christians that I know, yet he claims the this is “one of the most insidious ways the LDS Church controls its members by conditioning them to focus on a promised future instead of the actual here-and-now.
“A peculiar people,” he says is a psychological manipulation to enforce an “us vs. them mentality.” No member that I know believes that anyone who leaves the church is of the devil, as he claims. On the contrary, our church believes that all but a handful of people that have ever lived will receive some level of glory, depending on what kind of life they lived.
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