Bill Reel Recent Podcast

I agree DJ – my question is if he links the podcast should we just let it ride. Or do we intercede. I haven’t listened to it yet so I can’t state an opinion. Maybe just keep our eyes open on his thread?

DJ – In all honesty I think Bill might be going the same route as John Dehlin. He has changed since moving to Utah.

I think your right. My husband sent the link with the phrase, “Look whose moved to the dark side?”

I feel for his wife. I got the feeling she was still a firm believer. Now that may have changed, I don’t follow them much or listen to his podcasts. His style never connected with me. But if he has moved – It could be a bumpy ride for their family.

I’m too tempted to launch into a discussion about the points raised in the quoted section but that’s not what this discussion is about.

1) He hasn’t posted anything here yet.

2) If he did, would there be pages of discussion where things gradually got out of control or would it be like most discussions that follow when he posts a link to an episode of his blog, one or two replies complementing him on a good episode and that’s pretty much it.

3) The ‘today it ends’ didn’t sit well. I searched for the implicit rule here and couldn’t find it. Perhaps it’s an unwritten order of things :angel: but I thought one of the bigger rules was no demanding church leaders do things. But…

4) He hasn’t posted anything here yet.

5) I think some points he raised (in the quoted text, I haven’t heard the podcast) are discussions that need to take place somewhere along the Mormon spectrum. That doesn’t mean that discussion has to happen here.

Now we can discuss the points raised. Everyone chime in.

That’s a tough discussion. Again, just going off of what was quoted, not the podcast itself. I hope to get around to listening to it.

I’ll start off by saying that for me there weren’t enough coulds, somes, manys, mys, a part ofs, a fews, etc. peppered throughout. On the initial reading it felt like he was trying to say this is the de facto Mormon experience, which I can’t get behind. For the math nerds: it’s presented as an “∀” Mormon experience but there needs to be more language to convey that is an “∃” Mormon experience.

There’s also a lot of language that conveys certainty. E.g. No ifs, ands, and buts.

I’m not sure that there’s any clear group in the cross-hairs, maybe the culture itself, but there is a system and it’s been designed this way, which implies intent. It’s also hard for me to get behind that implication.

All that said, Bill is coming from a place of emotion, he says as much up front, and I think it’s understandable that more calculated language disappears when dealing with raw emotion. Heck, sometimes it’s nice to take a vacation from all the thinking and just get words out.

So there are my disclaimers… but I find myself agreeing with Bill on many points, just not necessarily on the way he expressed them.

First the idea that Mormonism wants to write people’s stories. That one got me hard. During my mission years I struggled with being happy because those were the years where I first started feeling the pressure to alter my personality to conform to church culture. I conflated aspects of my personality that didn’t match up with culture with sin. It was uncomfortable. I wasn’t at a place in my life where I was capable of separating church culture from what I felt god wanted me to be. Church culture was what god wanted me to be. Yikes, right?

But who is the abuser in that scenario?

I think “Mormonism” wants to write people’s stories because (IMO) a part of human nature is to want certainty. When you show up to Heaven State University there’s no wrangling or anxiety over which major to choose, there’s one major for men, another major for women. The roles that are presented at church, the “plan of salvation” that takes you from pre-birth to death and beyond… what’s the human need that those things satisfy? The need for certainty in an uncertain world and having something (like a plan) to guide us through all the unpredictable stages of life.

Why does Mormonism write people’s stories for them? Maybe because people want the story to be written, maybe they need a story until they figure out what they want to major in at HSU. Bill extends this to talk about insistence that someone stick to the prescribed story even after they decide they want to study a different major and whether people can feel comfortable and free to do so.

It’s a stage 3 organization. Many of the things Bill mentions are to be expected.

If you got this far you read the disclaimer already. What follows is me talking about me and no one else.

There are lots of aspects of Mormon culture that remind me of abuse I suffered at the hands of someone with mental illness. Yes, my reality is colored by the lens through which I look, it’s hard for me not to draw the comparison.

I have to anthropomorphize the culture to continue. The culture is this living, breathing entity that has a survival instinct. This particular living, breathing entity also views itself as the one True church forged by God himself so I’m not surprised that there are elements, elements mind you, of narcissistic disorders present in the culture. It’s going to happen. Narcissists abuse people, it’s going to happen.

Here’s a sad little lesson that I’ve learned, wrong or right:

It must stop. Today it stops. Today…… it ……. ends!**

It’s not going to stop. It’s not going to end. If there’s a strong belief that there’s only one Truth, only one authority, narcissistic traits will be present in the culture. Two things come to mind:

1) You will always have the poor among you. Humans aren’t perfect. There will always be people at church telling our stories for us.

2) The frog and the scorpion. A stage 3 organization (which for the record, I believe play important roles in this thing we call life) is going to do what stage 3 organizations do. Humanity has a looooong way to go before it can stop the trauma that Bill describes.

Maybe my view comes across as being extremely defeatist but the person with mental illness that abused me and continues to abuse me will abuse me in the future. They can’t change, only I can change.

So in this context… people are going to tell your story. They are going to tell it incorrectly, even grossly misrepresent your story. That ain’t changing. I don’t know that there are more options other than to ignore people and tell your story far and wide to anyone that will hear… but that’s useless advice to someone that’s in the thick of dealing with abuse and trauma. Useless… and Bill is correct. Abuse is often magnified by the very people that we feel caused the abuse.

I don’t have the answers. I don’t even have an answer. These last several years have been me trying to find peace by letting go of that demand for justice. Letting go of the hope/expectation that my abuser will change their ways, the continued abuse will someday stop, and that the person will be held accountable. I’ve got to let it go. It’s been the absolute hardest thing I’ve ever attempted to do but after exhausting my soul it would appear to be the only remaining path forward.

In my case it’s a person with mental illness but I think maybe there’s a similar way forward for people that feel abused by the church.

Earlier I said I feel elements of the culture remind me of the abuses I’ve dealt with from someone with mental illness. Hell, I’d probably see that sort of thing in the clouds or ink-blot tests, who knows, but I do feel it in the church culture… but those are only elements. For the most part there is good to counterbalance. But perhaps I read too much into things. “Church” is just a reflection of life itself and it stands to reason that the challenges that life presents us would be found in the church as well.

One last note:

Based on my experiences…

When other people are telling your story they aren’t telling your story, they’re telling their story about you.

It’s almost sure to be different, especially when compared against the same story from a different perspective, but I think it helps to realize that.

I hope that makes sense.

Good points, nibbler. I also can agree with some of the points raised.

I agree with you.

The main problem in Bill’s approach is the same as with so many sweeping generalized statements. Seems to me, he has become so emotional about it and irrational, it basically could be applied to any organization you feel slighted you.

But who is the abuser in that scenario?

I think you nailed it. I basically think like you do with much of this.

It seems to have moved from reality to the court of public opinion and how people tell their stories of how they felt they were treated, similar to how some people find therapy as a good forum to blame their parents for all their problems. Very much like SD approaching his past experiences with people at church, and then projecting that outward to all church leadership, or some living organism called the church that is evil and abusive by nature. I hear what Bill is saying, it is just 8 years old…and Bill is just getting to the point others got to before him when they left the church. None of it changes the approach I take or the path I’m on.

Pick your battles, Bill. Regardless of what hill you decide to die on, the church will move forward doing the best it can to help people, in a very inept way…but Joseph Smith started something better than anything Bill will ever do in his lifetime.

I’m getting off base. Bottom line…the ship turns slowly, as we always say. Yelling from the top mast “This must stop now!” doesn’t turn it any faster, it is what it is. Deal with it. Bill is another step closer to sending a letter of resignation, IMO, based on how he sounds.

I think the church is stepping back from demanding conformity and a zion of cookie cutter mormon families. The pressures nibbler shared will not be as strongly pressuring our children, I don’t think. Mormonism, like most other religions, is changing it’s tune to fight to stay relevant to people.

There is a link to Bill’s podcast in the OP.

So far, the thread seems to be adhering to the purpose and the discussion is respectful, apart from calling the Q15 as having abusive value system which I called out.

I’m proud of our forum participants. People try to make it productive. Very sincere. And take time to share thoughts. I like the forum.

I hope others chime in. I’m waiting for Joni’s post on it.