Discouraged and Sick of it All

I hear you and have had some similar experiences. I am also struggling with finding relevance in the church, or at least any more relevance than I’d find in any other church.

I believe in the gospel, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Bible, but honestly the Book of Mormon has had no real power in my life during the pandemic. I was always told that the Book of Mormon will help you overcome the evil in your life, and help you overcome any addiction, and problem like it is a panacea. Honestly it has done none of these for me.

I have felt this way for a long time (decades). The BoM is simply not magic and like NIbbler I find it mostly uninteresting (and I find the D&C at least equally uninteresting). I hear very similar things about the temple – again, it does none of that for me. I think as Nibbler says some people have possibly had such experiences while others are just trying to will it to be so (the power of positive thinking?). Others I think are nothing more than parrots.

I am lukewarm when it comes to the Come Follow Me curriculum. I don’t see why people are so ecstatic about it like it is the best thing since slice bread.

I only like it because it’s better than what there was before (a curriculum that hadn’t been updated in 30 years). That said, I don’t actually use it. I put in minimal effort from time to time to keep up with the reading but I don’t generally read the stuff in the book or teacher’s manual. Thanks to COVID I have not been to SS (or PH) in almost a year . (We have Zoom meetings I don’t attend.) The second hour is at least half of what is unfulfilling at church (the first hour is around the other half).

I have some financial problems and the Bishop questions me about why I need financial assistance when my hours got cut down to 20 hours per week due to the pandemic. Honestly, you are questioning why I need financial help. Then my Elders Quorum President says, I do not think the Bishop is going to accept any of your utility bills any more. I’m glad my hours got increased again, but honestly I pay tithes and offerings my whole life without fail, and I am getting scrutinized for a few utility bills?

I feel this and it hurts me that others also have this experience. I was getting monthly food orders when I was “cut off.” That’s it, just food, me, my wife, four small kids. It’s why I will never pay another penny in fast offerings, why I will not clean the building, and why I don’t feel guilty saying no to whatever calling or assignment I don’t want to do. And it’s why I’m much more stingy with tithing as well (I pay on net, or a little less). I’m sorry for you and your family.

The Church is for the Youth, and guess what I do not know if I want to attend anymore. I have been a member my whole life and now, I do not like going at all and I do not see the Church as relevant anymore. I am getting more out of Hinduism and Buddhism that is practical in helping me cope during the pandemic.

I didn’t grow up in the church so I have no fond memories of the church in those times. The church does seem to be focusing more and more on youth, which is interesting because it’s them as a whole that are finding even less relevance than most of the rest of us. I do believe there is great value in other churches, religions, and belief systems and I believe Joseph Smith believed that. Beyond some lip service I’m not sure the modern leadership (with perhaps a couple exceptions) believes that.

In the end, I think if you will just assert yourself and prayerfully read the Book of Mormon every day with real intent all of your troubles will fade away. 😈 (said with the greatest sarcasm I can muster).

I’m sorry to hear of your discouragement Jamison.

You are not alone. This pandemic has put stress on all of our support structures and upon each of us personally. One step that might be helpful is to strive to have patience and charity with yourself and others as you cope with unusual circumstances.

I hear you on the BoM. It might not feed your soul. Look for things that do. It is possible that your faith community will not be as validating for the ways and methods that you feel best feed your soul. This is part of life and establishing your identity as a unique individual. Life is an interesting pull between being just one of many and being a one and only. Between belonging and individualism. Live in the paradox and balance between the extremes.

I too can sympathize for the trouble with the financial assistance. I do not think that receiving financial assistance from the church is easy on anyone (for those that give assistance or those that receive). It seems to me that there is often a stigma against receiving help from the church – that the church is to be considered as a last resort after family and government options have been exhausted. I also believe that our organization is quite good at helping with sudden – short term issues to “get people back on their feet”. Our church is less good at helping with more complex, chronic, and ongoing issues.

For me, I find it helpful to 1) lower my expectations from the church, 2) try to only expect things that the church is adept at delivering, and 3) try to clearly communicate those expectations/requests when I need them. For example, I think the church is good at helping people move and at bringing in meals for sick or injured individuals. I might ask the church to send some guys to help me load up a moving van for a one or two hour period. I might also ask for some meals to be brought in for a one to three day period if my wife or I are recovering from a surgery. These steps for managing expectations help me to feel cared for as a member of my faith community and that in turn helps reduce my feelings of resentment.

your mileage may vary.

I’m reluctant to give too much advice these days as it always comes off as either self-righteous or pollyannish and, tbbf, I fail to follow my own advice more often than not (maybe the reason we naturally focus on certain things ‘for other’s benefit’ is because subconsciously those are parts we need to work on ourselves?) Anyway fwiw here’s my .02 shiblum …

I have had some great experiences spiritually until the last few months of last year. I participated in the worldwide fast on Good Friday and felt a spiritual awakening. I had some great revelatory experiences and miracles happen since December 2019 and then bam, I feel like a hit a brick wall.

‘Spiritual’ experiences are great and can be good indicators of ‘progress’ as it were along the given path but in my experience it’s not helpful to place too much importance on them long-term. I’ve had some mind-blowing experiences over the years, felt to be making huge leaps from peak to peak in my 30s, then seemed to land on a long plateau that just keeps going on. Maybe that’s a normal course of development, maybe it’s about impatience, I don’t know.

I think at some point we are expected to make best use of the wisdom or insights we’ve been granted by sharing them and using them to magnify our own callings and those of others around us, in our own way and using our best judgment. Then we tend to get more supply / awakenings and can shift to a higher ‘plateau.’

Also sometimes it does just feel like you hit a ‘brick wall’ and come to a stop or even regress at some point or another. I’ve felt it myself in recent years … w/me it’s more a sense of paralysis or suspended animation and only now beginning to wise up to my own need to make positive changes if I expect to receive any more energy from the highest.

I have gone to therapy, I don’t see the Church has any meaning or part of my life anymore.

Therapy can be a helpful instrument to make use of, it’s sad that many churches discourage secular therapies as a valid resource for members who might need it. I had a great therapist, mainly focused on CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy) and got a lot of issues cleared out in short order, even though in retrospect all she did was sit and listen! I miss therapy a lot since the pandemic restrictions have ended in-person counselling (I can’t deal w/phone therapy, feels weird), and this seems to be a real stress-inducer for a lot of people.

(But therapy doesn’t have to be in opposition to or in competition with the church! Good therapy can get your head straight about your basic core values and you may return to church reinvigorated and better able to get more out of it, or you may decide it’s not for you, but you’ll know your own mind and be making your own judgments one way or the other.)

I believe in the gospel, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Bible, but honestly the Book of Mormon has had no real power in my life during the pandemic. I was always told that the Book of Mormon will help you overcome the evil in your life, and help you overcome any addiction, and problem like it is a panacea. Honestly it has done none of these for me.

It seems that the power said to be in the BoM lies more in the fact of its existence as a token or totem of something greater / more spiritual, rather than the specific words themselves. Certainly there are memorable high points in the tome; the only two real insights I’ve really taken away from the book to the point that I see them almost as the core of the entire enterprise: the Law of Opposition (2 Nephi 2) the Law of Being-As-Joy (“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”) (2 Nephi 2:25) Other high spots are allegories the the Great & Spacious Building, the Rod of Iron, etc.

That said, I can’t help but feel the BoM could’ve been vastly improved at, say, half to a quarter the current length. The more interesting scenes (the various false churches set up by the Nephites, several of which sound disturbingly similar to currently existing sects; the snarky undercutting of sceptics in the cries of ‘a bible? we have got a bible!’; battle scenes so wonderfully depicted in the old Arnold Friberg illustrations like something out of a pulp Conan novel or a Hollywood sword & sandal epic; much of the stuff culled straight from the New Testament) are diluted and weakened by the morass of excess verbiage and endless battles that tend to blend in to one another.

Anyway I’m rambling. Point is you can get from the BoM whatever you want to ‘pull’ from it, as with any other scripture or source of inspiration. If you’re motivated to find further meaning or power in it, you can find a way to do so, otherwise not. It may be that this is not meant to be your path right now!

Then my Elders Quorum President says, I do not think the Bishop is going to accept any of your utility bills any more. I’m glad my hours got increased again, but honestly I pay tithes and offerings my whole life without fail, and I am getting scrutinized for a few utility bills? The Church is for the Youth, and guess what I do not know if I want to attend anymore. I have been a member my whole life and now, I do not like going at all and I do not see the Church as relevant anymore. I am getting more out of Hinduism and Buddhism that is practical in helping me cope during the pandemic.

I don’t know what you expected as charity from the church, clearly in retrospect it was naive to expect anything from them or that they would ever place the welfare of a real person ahead of that of the institution they serve. This situation is not unique to the LDS church however.

If you still want to find meaning or value in the church, that’s possible if you want it, but you can’t go ‘back’ and pretend you haven’t been disillusioned. Reality is what it is, and you can control very little except your own response to it. If you find there’s something beneficial in participating (socializing, which is good for psychological health, for one thing), then continue to do so and let your faith deepen if it will.

If you’re okay with not going back to the Temple, you don’t even have to make tithe or any other payments. Now if it’s necessary, say, for maximum socializing or exploiting whatever other long-term goal you have regarding life in the church, then go ahead and fulfill all the requirements, at least you’ll be honest / at peace w/your own motivations (as so many in the church are not, it seems)

Or just keep showing up at church and show your enthusiasm for your newfound reality. Simply be honest in your interactions, and totally frank and sincere with other members. This was one of the responses I found to be most helpful when I was going thru a similar phase in my membership years ago. Ironically, this is also among the surest ways to get oneself disinvited from church (and most polite society) altogether, so deploy judiciously.

I think if it’s an authentic pull that one feels, towards a particular manifestation of what seems most “true” to you, then it’s a powerfully positive phenomenon, but if it’s enacted superficially or without full investigation it can be just as dysfunctional as any other group project.

You didn’t say it was bad but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with dysfunctional projects.

Several years ago I spent some time “vacationing” in other religions, I’d attend services one or two weeks then move on. Some interested me more than others, in fact I ended up spending a year or so with one of them. I went into each experience with eyes wide open.

Everyone’s different but for me I purposely avoided the full investigations when visiting with other religions, I wanted to keep it superficial. The theory was that a superficial investigation allowed me to skim off any good elements, hopefully before experiencing/internalizing any bad elements.

I contrast that with my full investigation (to the point of obsession) of Mormonism. At several points along the investigation of Mormonism it became difficult to see any good at all because it felt like the bad was shouting at me, demanding attention. Granted, it’s different when there’s a long established relationship. Maybe it was more about rooting out bad things that I had internalized when immersed in orthodoxy.

When visiting with other religions I didn’t want to focus too much on the correct way to be in religion xyz, that would feel like moving from one orthodoxy to another. It was more about discovering and adhering to my spirituality than discovering how to adhere to someone else’s defined spirituality.

But it’s a conundrum. It might not have been a dedicated investigation of a particular religion or belief system but it was a dedicated investigation of self.

Focus on what works for you. It is a relationship.

Work on what makes you a better person and finding new things that do the same. Focus on movement, not desired outcome. Mormonism teaches eternal progression – so there is no need to rush.

This is exactly what I needed to hear. Thanks for the support. My EQP feels the Church should help me. At least I have friends who help me and listen to my plight. I will work on myself and keep a distance from those who bring me down within the Church.

Good point Sam. I’ve experienced that as well.