Fraud ≠ Doing your best

     I have been told many times that we should trust all that the church leaders say, they speak to God so they can't/won't lead us astray. Now that I am looking closer at some of the things our leaders have said, we do a 180 and say that "of course we should not listen to all that they say, they are just human, sometimes they will not fully understand what God told them and sometimes they are just giving their own opinion and they are wrong. They are just doing the best they can." That is scary, a group of men that have millions of people that would take every word that they say from the pulpit as the word of God, they could tell them anything, they have a unique power over a huge number of people. Many of the things that have been taught for years and years were so incredibly offensive and immoral that in light of PR issues, the leaders of the church have changed the doctrine, saying that their predecessors were wrong. Generations of people lived and died thinking that blacks were the seed of Cain, the representation of evil on Earth and millions of them were denied the blessings of the Church and taught that they were to be servants in heaven, because those men used their power and authority to push personal, racist opinions on them as if it was literally the word and law of God. If they truly had a line of communication to the divine, would a loving Heavenly Father allow this to continue? Why would he allow it to go on for so long? And don't tell me it is because of the culture of the times. God would not bow down to adverse public opinion. If you say he would deny black people the priesthood to keep the whites happy, please take a moment to think about who you think God is.
     The lies and fraud of Joseph Smith are too many to pass off as just an imperfect man doing his best. The fact that he used God as the source of so many of his lies is the worst part for me. Like when he said that God sent an Angel with a drawn sword to kill him if he would not practice polygamy in secret, without the knowledge or consent of Emma, she was the 25th woman to be sealed to Joseph! Or the entire section 132 of D&C. Or the illegal bank that he started in Kirtland and used to steal money from so many saints that believed him when he said that God told him to start this bank, and that it would swallow up all other banks and last until the second coming. He used God to get money.

So how can we believe the words of a fraudulent thief? If he used God to get money, do we really believe that it was God that commanded him to practice polygamy/polyandry, or plagiarize masonic symbols and practices, or create a fictitious book of Abraham? Would God allow Gordon B. Hinckley to spend millions of dollars of tithing money on fraudulent documents to hide them away because they made the church look false? I think that if God thought that tithing were so important, and if he really guided and directed the prophet, he would have been able to see through the deception and sent Mr. Hoffman on his way.
      If Pres. Monson today said that all the members need to put their money into the Bank that would swallow up all banks, and it went belly-up and he skipped town and was later convicted in court, would you still think that he was a true prophet? Why do we give Joseph so much slack? He was a deceiver, a greedy, perverted liar that used religion to get his way. People are disgusted with Warren Jeffs, but he is following the example of Joseph Smith more than any modern LDS prophet.
    To believe in Joseph Smith is to believe in a God that is worried about public opinion, that commands leaders to lie, that used be racists, but is not so much anymore, that used to be okay with polygamy/polyandry but these days would send you to hell for masturbation/sexual thoughts, that would let members of His own church starve while billions were spent on a mall that sells that vain things of the world, that would create someone as a homosexual and then have them tortured and shown porn to try and make them strait.
     The church does some amazing things, I have been a part of the good things of the church. But all churches have and do good things. That does not mean that God also did the bad things, it means that the men that did the bad things had to put on a good face so that others would follow them.