DAE go to SOAR?

For ppl who don't know, SOAR is a weeklong BYU camp, sort of like EFY, for "multicultural" (i.e. anyone who isn't 100% white lol) students going into senior year, where we learn about BYU admissions and prep and take the ACT. It's very churchy, ofc there's devotionals and all that, but there's also a bunch of other fun stuff like hiking the Y, a dance, a ropes course, and a "culture share" show-and-tell/talent show thing, and some other tours and stuff you can choose to do (I went to the art museum and the nature walk).

Honestly it was better than I expected, I actually really liked it besides all the Jesus stuff. I was thinking about posting this earlier in the week so I could see if I could meet any other tapirs but I was kinda hesitant bc I don't wanna get caught or anything (I'm a little paranoid, thanks anxiety).

The "Sensing the Savior" thing was kinda messed up tho. Basically what it was is we were sitting blindfolded and they played music telling the life story of Jesus, while they gave us stuff to hold, like some hay for his birth, wood blocks for his carpenter days, oil which was supposed to be blood for Gethsemane, and a big nail for the cross, so we could visualize his life. It was an emotional experience for a lot of the other people there because the whole point was to help us appreciate what Christ supposedly did for us. I'm an (closet) atheist, so it didn't affect me, but a lot of people were crying after that, or "feeling the Spirit" which then is proof that the Church is true and they need to follow it. Some people were pretty emotionally messed up by that for a little bit. But it got me thinking, that's emotional manipulation. If Jesus's pain is caused by all of our sins, then basically they're telling you: if you don't do what we say, you're hurting someone who really cares about you. It uses people's empathy to guilt guilt them into shelving the weird and bad things about the church. And the people who led it, our counselors, didn't have bad intentions at all either. They were former campers who went through the same experience and wanted us to "feel the Spirit" too. I just feel really bad for people who buy into it, they're being emotionally manipulated but they think it's a good thing they want to share with other people, it's like a virus.

But other than that and the other Jesus stuff it was super fun and the other teens and counselors were super cool too. I'm kinda sad because most of the other ppl are planning to go to BYU so they were all saying we're gonna see each other again, but there's no way I'm going to BYU and I didn't tell them that. I didn't really notice anyone else acting exmo (I hid it) and I doubt any of them are here on reddit but maybe there was someone else I didn't notice or someone from another week (or year) who had a similar experience.

Submitted July 21, 2019 at 10:21PM by Pokemonzu https://ift.tt/2LyueKR