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Thank you for your community, it has helped me gain a lot of perspective. I have a history / background similar to other people here. I come from a family with plenty of history in the Church, have conservative parents, and have been active my whole life. I was overzealous on my mission, and mellowed out after I got home. I never had a big testimony experience, but was a firm believer in the life-long testimony and peace-is-my-testimony idea. I’ve had a couple of emotional responses after recommitting myself to my testimony after a period of doubt. I married a wonderful woman in the temple. We have 2 children, and a very happy marriage.
I’ve had a long, slow exposure to troubling history in the church, and have begun waking up to the idea of things being more complicated than they first seem. I’m almost done with Rough Stone Rolling. Bushman and this site have helped quiet almost all of my concerns. I understand why the church needs to protect itself institutionally, and that explains much of the stuff that bothers people.
There are two things, however, that I can’t seem to get over.
The first is Polygamy. This isn’t a problem by itself: I think Bushman makes it clear that it’s too simple to say Joseph was motivated by simple lust or power. The problem is that it is one of those reality-check points that, once crossed, means you’re likely caught up in an unhealthy organization (let’s call them cults). Something like that should shout out that something is wrong.
Now, I’ve decided that there is no way Joseph was deliberately deceitful. He genuinely believed what he was doing. But that’s the case for
every single cult leader I can think of.Some of them are more shallow… they’re clearly subconsciously justifying sexual desire. It may have been more complicated for Joseph, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be in the same category. (Let me know if you need other examples) Which brings us back to faith and testimony. If revelation is allowed to pass ALL reality check-points, and there are so many other groups that cross those lines that are clearly wrong, we must be convinced the revelation is actually from God or we’re really gambling on long odds. Given hundreds of spiritual groups that claim revelation, visions and miracles, our chances of being in the right one are less than 1%.
The problem is that if you try to explain the experience of other groups, you undermine your own. There are only a couple of explanations for miracles. They are either 1) caused by God. 2) caused by Evil or 3) caused by some kind of psychosis (maybe for a whole group for shared experiences).
We can’t responsibly say that our group’s visions and revelations are all caused by God and claim the others are psychosis. It’s clear that there are many groups with miracles/revelation similar to ours. It’s also clear that many of these turned out to be very, very wrong. How do we know they were wrong? They crossed a reality-check point! They either committed suicide, did something crazy sexually, or killed people.
So, we have to apply reality-check points to our own religion! Otherwise we’re no better than the folks who killed their own kids with the purple kool-aid.
The problem is, the only tool we have to distinguish REAL revelation from false is testimony and the spirit, but how can that be trusted? Every single person in these clearly wrong cults felt like they were absolutely doing the right thing. These cults use
exactly the same rhetoric the Church does in testimony meeting!Do you see my issue? When we get up every month and say we knowsomething is true, when we don’t, in the hopes that we WILL know it’s true, aren’t we just brainwashing ourselves? Why should I trust my feelings more than reason when I was born into this church and have been conditioned to feel good about it? I can’t even really trust peace in my heart, because I’m always going to feel peaceful doing the thing that feels like home. So, that’s my dilemma. It seems that either the Church is only as true as a thousand other paths are, and God doesn’t really care what path we follow, or it’s the result of cult psychology, and there is no right path (only many wrong ones). I don’t know how to reconcile it. I’m very open to the idea that my logic is wrong, and there’s a way for the Church to be the one true path, but I don’t see it.
For now, I’m riding on my own inertia. I don’t know what to do. I’m visiting Europe from Utah, and am surrounded by millions of people who don’t even believe in God. The idea of giving up the Church frightens me, because I don’t know how to have meaning in my life without it. I’m afraid to take the “easy” path, which in my experience is usually the wrong one, by simply quitting everything difficult I do (callings, garments, church and temple attendance). However, I am almost incapable of getting excited about the church again until I resolve this, and I realize that my lack of action is itself a choice to slip away. The temple and scriptures are boring, and I’m slowly losing any desire to be spiritual. My prayers seem to be getting better lately though.
Anyway, advice is appreciated. Thanks for all your help! I hope to be able to progress here.
Sorry the post was so long! I didn’t mean to sound antagonistic, either. Emotionally, it’s not as big of a deal as I made it sound, but it does seem to be an intellectual stumbling block for me. Thanks. Welcome, Sean! I’m sure your experiences are quite similar to many here. And, I know I went through the same cog/dis problem you are having. My guess is that your paradigm of “many paths lead to X” are what most of us here believe.
The cult paradigm is absolutely correct, imo, but I think the church overcame that reality-check, self-corrected and was able to move on. Mostly, by separating from society but also by sheer force of will. And the church has continued to have to overcome those reality checks (priesthood ban) and will in the future (gender/sexuality bias).
As for your comment about the hard thing being to continue as a TBM, from my experience it was the opposite. The hard thing was to NOT continue to be TBM, leaving was infinitely more difficult than staying would have been. And, I don’t think you can judge the path by its level of difficulty. Life is too full of paradoxes to know what lies ahead.
swim beat me to it, but I agree with him. seanhess wrote:The problem is, the only tool we have to distinguish REAL revelation from false is testimony and the spirit, but how can that be trusted?
It is a hard thing to have trust in such a method, huh?
For me, I have done as swim alluded and let go of “one and only true” way of doing things. There aren’t always right and wrong…to me, I just think there is good and bad and sometimes good and better. What is right for me isn’t always what is right for everyone else.
I have thought through the numbers as you have, and see that surely the church is good…but there are so many other people in the world also doing good outside the church. There must be a way to allow that to be “true”, even if Joseph Smith really did see God.
I believe he did. I believe the church is worth holding on to. I also believe I can think for myself and find my way to God without having to live in fear if everyone in my ward agrees with me or not. I focus more on love, more on goodness, and less on rules and “right/wrong” or “black/white”. And I accept that others can’t live that way…and that’s ok too.
Welcome to the group. Thanks for sharing.
Welcome Sean! Glad you found us. Try to take a deep breath, relax. Unfortunately there are no “easy” answers, but take comfort in knowing you’re not the only one on this journey.
For me, I’ve found a new use for my mental “shelf.” I used to put all the thoughts up there that I couldn’t reconcile with church teachings. Now, after it came down under all the weight it bore, I put up there concepts that I’m trying to understand. Concepts like “the one true church” or “exclusive priesthood authority.” I’ve realized these things don’t directly impact my day-to-day interactions with my fellow men – and they don’t affect my trying to become a better person. I simply don’t understand them at present so on the shelf they sit!
I look forward to hearing more from you!
Welcome Sean, I can really remember feeling exactly as you describe:
“It seems that either the Church is only as true as a thousand other paths are, and God doesn’t really care what path we follow, or it’s the result of cult psychology, and there is no right path (only many wrong ones). “
Please don’t dismiss that crazy 3rd option….that the restoration really is what the early prophets say it is….that polygamy isn’t doing something “crazy sexually” but really is/was a commandment for the priesthood and then the Church…etc. Obviously, I disagree with Bushman on his polygamy view but agree with him on many other issues.
It took me about 20 years or so to resolve many of these issues, and probably will take another 100 or so to resolve more but I can say that I believe that anyone that really tries will get to the other side and find a peace that works for them and their families.
I ended up at a different place than many/most but have learned to never assume that I have “arrived” anywhere. We’re all still in transit IMHO.
Look forward to your comments.
Thanks for sharing your life story. It is nice to get to know people. I hope you can find a place to talk about it all here, with others who understand and have been through it too (we are all still going through this process). I can’t answer all you questions in a simple response to your introduction. Actually, we can’t even tell you the right answers. I promise you will figure it out if you keep moving along down the path though. You will have answers that are yours, that you own. That is a good thing.
Welcome Sean! You describe difficulties that nearly all of us have dealt/are dealing with. I, for one, am still dealing with these types of issues and constantly struggling to gain further understanding. It seems that the majority of people here give up on it being the “one True church”, but decide to stay in the LDS community for a variety of reasons. I’ve pretty much given up on this or any other church being the “one True church.”
I definately have times when I feel that Joseph Smith founded a cult (and I’ll admit that I have an increasingly difficult time believing there was any Divinity in its organization), but it seems that the cult evolved into a church sometime around when the church really gave up polygamy and decided to become mainstream. I think the church does a lot of good now and I feel that growing up in it was a good thing for me and that I’ve become a pretty decent person. I think the church is full of sincerely good people. I think there are a lot of sincerely good people in other churches as well and it saddens me that Mormons frequently are blinded to the goodness of others by their misguided insistence on being the “one True church”, as if they had a monopoly on goodness. While I’m here on StayLDS, I haven’t made a firm decision to stay LDS. A lot of my being here is because i grew up in the church, so it is familiar to me. However, my wife is a convert (now disaffected) and doesn’t necessarily feel this is “her tribe”, so we may go elsewhere to raise our child. I do want my son to have a strong moral upbringing, but we haven’t decided if the negative stereotypes perpetuated by the church outweigh the good. He is only 2, so we have some time to decide. In the meantime, he is in a Christian (non-LDS) daycare and we attended a Catholic family retreat over the summer (with plans to return next year), so he is getting lots of goodness from LDS and non-LDS sources.
Your struggles with trying to understand personal revelation vs. our own feelings is also familiar to myself.
How is your wife dealing with your struggles? If she is struggling and still a true believing mormon, I recommend you referring her to FacesEast.org, a forum for believing spouses of disaffected members. It is a very supportive community and could help her find some peace and support.
I think my view has evolved to view that some people are more prone to make cults out of things than other people. It’s not “inherently” a cult unless you can’t leave it without your life being endangered (in a technical sense). But some people get so engrossed and fanatical in their devotion that they make things into cults. The 9/11 highjackers made Islam into a cult, for example, but it’s not a cult for the majority of adherents. Some people make their families or marriages into cults. Others make their company devotion feel cult-like. And then there are professional sports. It’s a fine line. I have to believe that a church is not an eternal thing. There’s no 3-hour block in the afterlife. These are human, earthly boundaries. Some people love the form and misunderstand the function behind it. Anyway, just a few thoughts.
Welcome to the forum!
hawkgrrrl wrote:It’s not “inherently” a cult unless you can’t leave it without your life being endangered (in a technical sense).
There is certainly some historical evidence that apostasy was preached as one of the sins that should be blood atoned and that at least occassionally someone was killed when trying to leave the church (according to Quinn). If it quacks like a cult . . .
Yes, welcome! Your intro brings up so many good topics. Hopefully, you find something here that resonates. One things that Heber brings up strikes me… How do we KNOW if something is true, I mean, really and objectively? Hard, hard to answer. But Heber talked about what’s ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We DO know when something is good or bad.
This, I believe, is an absolutely necessary ingredient in our metamorphosis. So much energy is spent on knowing whether or not we are right. Scary to let go of that because feeling right feels so good. But how can one be sure? Almost a futile pursuit, if you approach it scientifically (like we usually do).
Goodness, though, is very chase-able. And when you start chasing it, suddenly you find it everywhere: in our church, in other churches, all over. I take it wherever I can get it.
Now I also think that certain things are true and not true – like I believe that JS really did have a vision, and I believe the Book of Mormon is truly inspired. But instead of acting as proofs, these ideas become caves where I can mine goodness. I don’t know, I’m talking spacey talk.
But welcome. I’m excited to see where your journey takes you.
Thank you so much for your many replies. I certainly feel welcome and comfortable working things out here. I think I made a mistake using the world “cult”. It’s too loaded. I was referring mostly to the fact that cults encourage people to stop thinking, and that that clearly leads them down the wrong path, so that kind of decision-making can’t be trusted. We also can’t assume that the one true church would be a don’t-think organization and we just happen to be in the right one.
swimordie wrote:The cult paradigm is absolutely correct, imo, but I think the church overcame that reality-check, self-corrected and was able to move on. Mostly, by separating from society but also by sheer force of will. And the church has continued to have to overcome those reality checks (priesthood ban) and will in the future (gender/sexuality bias).
The church has certainly prevented itself from pursuing damaging courses, but the reality checks usually show you that the literalism you’ve been applying isn’t correct, so you can’t overcome them and continue to claim that everything you do is inspired by God.
@everybody who spoke of Goodness vs RightnessThere’s definitely something big in that. Moroni 7:15-16. My Dad said something like that during a while ago. He said he know God wanted him to have his family be in the Church, and that was more important than it being true. And you’re right, it’s easyto discern good from bad. @Bruch in MontanaI’m not dismissing it, I just don’t see how that could possibly be an option. It’s not so much about Polygamy, but about the chances that our claim to revelation is right, and the others are wrong. It seems like either all visionary religion is true together, or all false together, because there’s nothing that distinguishes the early Mormon experience from others except that it survived. (Even if it survived by institutionalizing and losing it’s visionary aspect). I really WANT to be able to consider that option, but it seems to do so I have to dive back into the don’t-think mentality. Does that make sense? @MisterCurieMy wife has been handling it very well. She’s reading Bushman too, and we’ve agreed that at worst the Church is a good place for us, so she’s pre-decided she’s going to stay no matter what we/I decide. I think the transition will be painless, and I think she’s willing to stick with me no matter what I do too. @hawkgrrlMy misuse of the word cult is shining through here. Have I defined it better now? Thanks for all your help!
seanhess wrote:the reality checks usually show you that the literalism you’ve been applying isn’t correct, so you can’t overcome them and continue to claim that everything you do is inspired by God.
I agree that you’re going to have to give up the idea that the church is literally true. It isn’t what it says it is and it isn’t what you thought/believed it was. But it is good, at least in its current form.
It can be a frustrating experience to go to church when everyone believes in the literalism. Hopefully this forum can help you to navigate the path of staying LDS when you no longer embrace the literalism.
Quote:I agree that you’re going to have to give up the idea that the church is literally true.
Unless you re-define “true”.
It can mean “pointed to the desired end” (compass); it can mean “consistent with one’s understanding” / “not dishonest” (Nephi’s statement that his record is true because it was written “by mine own hand” and “according to my knowledge”); “of the right kind; such as it should be; proper: to be arranged in a true order”; etc.
I am much more enamored of the “living” claim than the “true” claim, even though I don’t mind the true claim when that word is redefined to fit what I think is the actual point of D&C 1:30 – and I like that I can parse “true and living” to allow LOTS of “truth” outside the LDS Church – since I really do think that the LDS Church is the only “true and living” church within Christianity in at least two very important ways.
If you are interested in a fuller parsing of that concept, I wrote the following:
“Common Scriptures in Review: The Only True and Living Church” (
http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/12/common-scriptures-in-review-the-weapons-of-their-rebellion/ My personal opinion only: Part of a solid Stage 5 point of view in Mormonism, if that is the direction someone is drawn, is to give one’s self permission to be immersed in the idea of being a “true” religion (even if that takes a redefinition or adjustment) ANDat the same time being comfortable with the fact that is only a symbolic element in our LDS mythology. The LDS Church, as a concept, has a need to be “True” in order for a lot of it to work. That is the “conjunctive” faith development, combining the recognition of the symbols as mediating a transcendent thought with the ability to be in them, working with them at the same time. It is a new combination of our conscious rational self with our unconscious, intuitive (irrational) self. It is a “willful” or “second” naivete’.
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