Leah Remini: the night before I turned 8, I sat alone in my room playing with my pocketknife considering suicide so I wouldn't have to reach "the age of accountability" and risk my eternal salvation. Please expose this cult.
I posted previously about this here.
Allow me to add some detail. In Mormonism, you are taught that if you sin, you have to repent and never do commit that sin again if you are going to be saved. If you do sin again, you are "unforgiven" of all the previous sins, and you are condemned for the current infraction in addition to every prior instance.
But none of that matters if you die before you are 8, because little children cannot sin and are therefore saved, according to the Book of Mormon.
So that night when I sat on my bed, twirling my pocket knife in my fingers, here are the wieghty thoughts that went through my 7.9 year old mind.
"Would my parents be sad if I committed suicide? Of course they would. I wonder who else would mourn for me. Would God forgive me if committed suicide? But I'm not eight yet, so it's not a sin. But does it matter that I'm so close to 8? What if the sinning kicks in a few days before I'm eight. Oh, how I wish I had died a year ago so I wouldn't have to think about this! I wonder if my knife is even sharp enough to push into my chest. I checked the point of the blade with my fingertip. This seems doubtful. Am I even able to do this? Could I really even kill myself? Would it hurt? Am I able to push the blade through my bones (the sternum)? Where is my heart? Would it go deep enough to kill me? What would my parents think if they found my body dead with a knife in it? Would they be sad and miss me? Of course they would. If I commit suicide they would be very sad. They would probably be sad for the rest of their lives. Would they blame God? Would God blame me? What if I commit suicide and I meet God and he looks at me and says 'sorry, but you know suicide is a sin, and now you can't live with me forever.' What does the 'age of accountability' mean? Does that age start exactly at 8, or can it be sooner or later? What if I already missed my chance? If I get baptized, I know I'm going to fail. What if I sin so much that God won't forgive me for my sins after I'm baptized? I don't want to be unclean. Would it be worse to be unclean after I'm baptized or commit suicide before I'm baptized. Does it matter that I already know that suicide is a sin? Does that mean I'm accountable already?"
In my original post, I said this was the night before I was baptized, but in reality this was a couple of different nights. And I thought this way for hours. Fortunately for me, most eight-year-olds are not mentally capable of suicide. Fortunately for me, I ultimately decided it was worth risking everything for a chance at life.
Some will say that I misunderstood the doctrine. I didn't. But even if I had, the spiritual environment of the church is what drove me to these thoughts in the first place. It is the same environment that leads our gay youth to suicide when they realize that the only thing for them in this life is a lifetime of narrowly escaping the sins that will condemn them to hell forever, if they make it through to the other side without sinning.
But any religion that puts so much shame and fear on a young child that it drives them to analyze the risk of sinning throughout life versus the risk of sinning by committing suicide... is a cult. Any religion that places such sober thoughts in the mind of a 7-year old, is a cult. I was deeply ashamed of this event and never told anyone about it until I left. And perhaps most frightening of all, I never once considered it might have had something to do with how the church teaches little children about worthiness and sin until I left. I thought it was something wrong with me.
Mormonism is a cult in transition. It is slowly becoming mainstream and the worst aspects of the cult are fading. This is true for any cult that survives long enough. But make no mistake, it is still a cult. And even more so for my ancestors.
Edit: Thank you for the gold! And just as much, thank you for all of you who have shared your own stories. It is important that we share these stories because these highlight the harms of Mormonism more than anything else. And more importantly, we need to get them out so we can heal and move on.
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