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The original was posted on /r/exmormon by /u/Rude-Neck-2893 on 2025-05-06 16:32:32+00:00.
In this video they share a quote from Joseph Smith:
“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it.”
On its own it sounds good, pretty innocent and maybe even uplifting. It’s used very often in conference talks, you can find it being shared by TBMs all over Facebook and on the church’s website, but then when you put it in context it changes everything. I don’t know why these things still shock me after everything I’ve read.
This quote comes from a letter which Joseph Smith wrote to 19 year old Nancy Rigdon while in Kirkland, Ohio after she refused his previous “offer” of being one of his secret plural wives. He has locked the door then proposed this to her, she refused, and told him she would call for help if he didn’t let her leave. He then wrote a letter to her to convince her to reconsider, here’s another quote from this letter:
"That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another.”
All of this can be found on the Nancy Rigdon Wikipedia page with sources of you’re curious to read it all, it’s a pretty short page.
I sent the quote to my wife and the context and she said “yeah that sounds great but in context it’s really creepy”.
She then sent 1 Nephi 4:13 “13 Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” and said “I don’t know to what extent Joseph Smith and the rest of the prophets are inspired by God or how it works but he obviously did horrible things. Maybe he was killed because God knew he wasn’t listening to him anymore and wasn’t leading the church correctly. (I’d shared with her previously the quote that various general authorities have used that says God will strike them down if they lead the church astray.)
Maybe it doesn’t sound like much but when I left the church in December of 2023 she thought that I’d been tricked by a bunch of liars who have the church and want to destroy peoples testimonies, she didn’t know any of the controversy’s that the church has had with money or with its it’s history, overtime as I’ve talked with her and shared with her the things that I’ve read she’s come to understand why me and people like me loose their faith and that we don’t like the church not because we’ve been tricked by the devil, but because there are genuinely so many things that the church has done that go against the same morals that they taught us.
She still believes that the BOM and the church are inspired by God, but she’s definitely become more nuanced and is in a place similar to where I was before deconstructing thanks to all the people who have put the information out there showing everyone what the church really is.