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I struggle with those against the Church on social media. Example, it really hits me hard when I will be reading an uplifting post from a general authority and can’t help myself not to read the comments and see all the hate and the comments from those who have left the Church and about how those of this faith are blind, unwilling to know the ‘real’ truth, brainwashed, bigots, racists, fools, believer of the lies of the church… I don’t know why I let it bother me. I’ll let it bother so much that at times I’ll think to myself “This is just getting so hard to listen to and ignore that it would be easier to just attend another church that is less hated and easier to be apart of.” I don’t know why I allow myself to read the comments that are cruel or try to tell the ‘real’ deal. I read these comments and it angers me and feel so sick to my stomach yet I continue to read. I love my relationship with Christ. I live and love the gospel, so why should what others feel towards the Church and it’s teachings bother me so? Does it mean I’m weak?
I have the same problem. I purposely avoid reading comment sections in newspapers because it is such a hate-fest. I think avoidance is the best you can do. There was an interesting post at W&T on this phenomenon: https://wheatandtares.org/2018/01/19/how-to-deal-with-umm-a-holes/ On social media it is best to leave politics and religion alone. And anti-religious people on Facebook etc are amongst the worst and the most bigoted and ignorant (in the proper sense of the word) people online often fall into category, though they like to think they have science and reason behind them (even when they don’t). Among the trash I’ve seen promoted online recently is that God created Adam and Eve with original sin (no church believes that); Mormons are anti-education; that the Vatican removed books of the Bible in the 17th Century (the Apocrypha was removed by Protestants) and so on. The people who post such things are so full of confidence. They like to portray religious people as all uneducated, low intelligence, brainwashed, bigots, war mongers, homophobes etc… yet often if you cross-examine them you often find they know little or nothing about theology or philosophy themselves.
I have a comment that seems unrelated, but it is in fact related to your post. Had a bad boss a few years ago. She was so bad she had half her employees on Lexapro and anti-depressants. In spite of people being normally “politically careful”, people talked openly about what a terrible manager she was in the trenches. I got a book to help me through it. One of the principles was to “Ignore” the person. Not ignore their requests for work, but to ignore their annoying behavior.
That really helped me. When she did stuff that would tick me off, I would just ignore it. Look at it as an expression of the deficits in her character. That helped. The other principle was to Avoid the person where possible. That also helped. So, I would a) not read the comments and b), if you do inadvertently see a negative comment, ignore it.
Other churches have haters too….the grass isn’t always greener…
Full disclosure: I don;t have my own Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts. I do sometimes look at my wife’s stuff, often because she shows it to me. I agree with the comment about religion and politics on social media – just like parties. That said, I do often read the comments sections in the Trib and find it somewhat similar to what you describe. The solution for me seems to be to either not read the comments or to put on my alligator skin and ignore it. I have gotten much better at ignoring these past couple years – I do it almost every Sunday in church (yesterday’s endless Sabbath lists of do’s and don’t’s in SM for example).
As an aside, the reason it took me years to find this place was because whenever I Googled stuff I only found the negative sites. I’m grateful we are here.
DarkJedi wrote:
As an aside, the reason it took me years to find this place was because whenever I Googled stuff I only found the negative sites. I’m grateful we are here.
I am grateful that all y’all are here as well. It provides a sanctuary for truth from multiple viewpoints and a pattern to develop narratives that work in “real time”. The honesty in potential pitfalls in family life is also helpful and clears up my black-white thinking while helping me protect myself.
On many (most?) things I don’t spend too much time looking at comments. It isn’t because of the negativity (at least that alone). It is the lack of any progressive discussion/interaction. “I am right. You are wrong.” is responded to with, “No, I am RIGHT! You are WRONG!”, then “NO – I AM RIGHT!!!! YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!” I learn NOTHING from those.
I get rather frustrated at “both sides”. TBM’s not even trying to understand what those that are critiquing the church and angry-exmo’s just saying TBM’s are fools.
I recently read the Blog post from Josh Weed about his life as a gay man, his mixed orientation marriage to his best female friend, and how they had finally mutually decided that they had to get divorced to heal and grow. The blog post was so very vulnerable, genuine, real, and compassionate. It touched my heart and soul. Comments were awful! There were comments from Mormon defenders that felt that they were helping the church by attacking Josh. There were anti-Mormons that attacked Josh for being so dumb and masochistic to be a gay Mormon. It hurt me that such honesty and vulnerability was being responded to with such hate and combativeness. I had to stop reading because it was detracting from the positive message that I received from the blog post itself.
There may have been some wonderful nuggets of wisdom among the comments. I will never know. I do not feel inclined to sift among the trash comments to find out.
Tabitha wrote:
why should what others feel towards the Church and it’s teachings bother me so? Does it mean I’m weak?
No, it does not mean that you are weak. I feel that many of us are hardwired somewhat differently with different personalities etc. Your personality might make it harder for you to shrug this off. Still, there are some strategies or coping mechanisms that might help. Living a balanced and reasonably fulfilling life is the goal and it sounds like you have much that is good in that category.
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