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QuestionAbound wrote:
I said that our foundation of faith should first be based on the Savior. Period. That way, when people are offended and jump ship, they aren’t abandoning the Lord. They are abandoning the social interactions with members of our Church Organization.I reminded the class that the Church and the Savior’s gospel are two different things. Understanding how both play into our lives is very important.
Fabulous answer!!! Sometimes, getting away from the church and nasty people is the best way to keep your relationship with God intact, and your testimony working.
dande48 wrote:
LookingHard wrote:
I really like this from a guy named David Ostler. Very much a TBM, but very open to trying to understand those that leave (and educate those that are leaders).
He used to be my neighbor, many years ago. He’s a good man. He served as Stake President, and later mission president. His kids are all over the LDS spectrum. One of his daughters is a lesbian; SS-married, with children, and later divorced. He’s got the hard life experience necessary for being a good leader.
Cool. He seems like a SP that I wouldn’t mind going to talk with if I were to decide not to attend church again. My bishop, I would be OK doing that, but NOT with my SP. In fact out of 5 of my SP’s there is only one I might consider talking with.Love the discussion. My take is an attempt at generalizing the hundreds of exit stories I’ve read.
Almost everyone who has a faith crisis loses trust in the Church and its leaders. It usually doesn’t take very long if it’s not immediate.
In the Church, trust in leaders is founded on belief in their God-given authority. When that belief goes, trust evaporates or becomes tenuous. Often, the member in transition tries to re-establish trust based on normal minimal expectations: honesty, treating members with basic dignity, and reconciling with them when trust is broken.
And they find the Church to be untrustworthy.
It almost always fails to meet their minimal expectations. Its culture is steeped in self-deception that looks every bit like lies. Leaders treat rank-and-file members like children and disaffected members like a plague, and try to shame members who don’t fit into being who they can’t be. And they almost never try to reconcile with anyone.
Why?
Because the entire burden of trust is on the members.Follow the prophet, he knows the way. It doesn’t take long after losing trust entirely to realize that the Church will never earn it back. Oh, its leaders try. They try to earn it back by building belief in their authority, which not only doesn’t work, but actually erodes trust. And because they feel like they’ve done everything they can, they blame the disaffected for not trusting them.
The best characterization of disaffected members I’ve come up with is that they no longer shoulder the burden of trusting the Church and its leaders.
dande48 wrote:
LookingHard wrote:
I really like this from a guy named David Ostler. Very much a TBM, but very open to trying to understand those that leave (and educate those that are leaders).
He used to be my neighbor, many years ago. He’s a good man. He served as Stake President, and later mission president. His kids are all over the LDS spectrum. One of his daughters is a lesbian; SS-married, with children, and later divorced. He’s got the hard life experience necessary for being a good leader.
This is one of the the things I like about my own bishop. His six adult children are also all over the map from TBM to almost anti. And he has had other life experiences like being unemployed. He understands because he’s been there or loves someone who has been there.
Reuben wrote:
The best characterization of disaffected members I’ve come up with is that they no longer shoulder the burden of trusting the Church and its leaders.
I couldn’t agree with you more Ruben. Over the years I have tried to really distill what my most essential issue is with my problems with the church. A few years I was able to point that I don’t trust the top leaders. It has moved at this point where I have deep distrust as I have seen them handle issues of church history. And I agree that it will be nearly impossible for them to earn trust from me. There are not enough decades left in my life for them to make such a turnaround.Reuben wrote:
The best characterization of disaffected members I’ve come up with is that theyno longer shoulder the burdenof trusting the Church and its leaders.
That’s it. When you stop believing they are inspired, that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, why bother with the endless chair setting up, home teaching/ministering, conscription into service, boring temple excursions, tithing that goes “you know not where”? Particularly when the services are inaccessible and the focus, when the chips are down, seems to be on organizational interests rather than support of individuals?
It becomes an incredible burden, and one that is devoid of joy.
Then there is a risk that you will see no point to it. I now see each Ward as a a profit center. I am not saying the motive of the leaders is profit — they are not like other religious organizations in that respect, but the “all things are spiritual” principle makes the temporal security of the church every bit, if not more important than sticking to our spiritual values/mission.
Of course, this is based on my personal experience, which I know some people will say is highly atypical. But I agree that when you cross the line, and stop buying into the narrative of inspiration and divine commission, the church experience seems very hollow. You have untrained, unqualified people as your spiritual advisers, and an expensive proposition that interferes with goals for retirement and the pursuit of joy.
And if you children don’t buy into it, that’s another whammy — because having something grounded for your kids is important. You lose that when theyu lose faith in the church too.
I try to factor motives into the equation to take some of the edge off. All I could ever do is guess at motives but when I attend meetings with area leadership I feel like the motives are pure. The ways in which we act on those motives may be completely misguided but the motives are pure. The circumstances surrounding George Washington’s death come to mind. From the
wikiQuote:On Saturday morning, Washington awoke to an inflamed throat and difficulty breathing. He ordered estate overseer George Rawlins to remove nearly a pint of his blood, a common practice of his times.
…
Doctor Brown thought that Washington had “quinsey” or “quincy”, while Dick thought that the condition was a more serious “violent inflammation of the throat”. When medieval remedies, continued blood-letting (over 80 ounces total), proved to be unsuccessful, Doctor Dick proposed an emergency tracheotomy to save Washington’s life. The other two doctors, unfamiliar with the new procedure, disapproved and it was not used.
…
Various modern medical authors have speculated that Washington probably died from a severe case of epiglottitis complicated by the given treatments (all accepted medical practice in Washington’s day), most notably the massive deliberate blood loss, which almost certainly caused hypovolemic shock
I find it interesting that, according to the entry, Washington himself ordered the blood letting, which was a common practice. Kind of reminiscent of that example I gave on the first page of this thread, the peepstone is an anti-Mormon lie, a common accepted answer at the time, one that’s perpetuated at all levels at church and one that could be “fatal” for specific testimonies.
The motive? Heal the president. The method? The best medical procedures that people at the time knew about… which only made things worse.
Dr. Dick proposed an emergency tracheotomy but the other doctors weren’t familiar with the procedure and overruled him. Who knows whether that would have saved Washington’s life but the parallel I wished to draw here is that we’re an
ultraconservative church. The top “doctors” are more likely to stick to the practices and procedures they know rather than try procedures that people at the intern level suggest, even when the patient is in the dying stages… and the motive of the top doctors is still to save the patient, they believe what they are doing and the decisions they are making truly are best for the patient, even though they may not be. Regardless of whether a tracheotomy would have saved the president, one thing is clear, he’d be dead by now regardless. That and at some point Washington accepted his fate. That probably factors into the analogy somehow.
All that said… I feel we focus far too much on trusting the leaders of the church during our instruction. It’s an ever-present theme at church. If we aren’t talking about it in direct terms, we enforce the idea indirectly. The culture sets the boundaries of Overton’s window and the window of acceptable dialog is extremely narrow and is usually related to what church leaders say.
tl;dr; I try to factor in motives, but we’ve got to do more at church than talk about how great the leaders are all the time.
Reuben wrote:
It almost always fails to meet their minimal expectations. Its culture is steeped in self-deception that looks every bit like lies. Leaders treat rank-and-file members like children and disaffected members like a plague, and try to shame members who don’t fit into being who they can’t be. And they almost never try to reconcile with anyone.
I have some pretty low minimal expectations. I try to be charitable knowing that I was once where they are now and that I
neededmy sense of certainty to make sense, meaning, and purpose of the world and my place in it. A few ideas that have been helpful to me personally in my effort to stayLDS: 1) I do not go to church every week and use my work schedule as a cover. Church community in that regard is similar to extended family – it is easier to maintain relationships with them when I do not need to sit through dinner with them every week.
2) The YW leaders genuinely seem to care for my daughter. I have some concerns about what they are teaching (holy prepare for marriage Batman!) but in general it is nice for young people to have as much community adult support as they can get their hands on.
3) I do resign myself to a sort of second class citizenship within the church. My decisions not to pay tithing and to attend church only sporadically means that I will likely always be talked about in terms of struggling and “less active”. I feel that my continuing participation in an environment somewhat lacking in respect and admiration is a sacrifice that I make for my family connectedness. I am like the worst player on the basketball team. I never get the ball for offensive plays. I may spend entire games on the bench. But I am still on the team and my family are the beneficiaries.
Most of the time people are polite enough to your face. Every once in a while a tactless member will more or less call me to repentance for not contributing enough. In a twisted sort of way they actually feel that they are being helpful. I can put on my manager hat, listen until they finish, and then thank them for their input/concern.
4) I totally expect most people to be somewhat oblivious to any needs my family may have. Everyone has busy lives and are wrapped up mostly in themselves (just like me). I do find that when I am assertive in making a need known (like help moving or a meal a day brought in for a three day period) the church members seem good about helping out. I work hard to keep my requests reasonable (considering what is culturally acceptable to need help with) and go out of my way to express gratitude afterwards.
In short, I try to balance my minimal expectations for the church community with my reduced contributions of both time and money. It is not perfect but it can be done.
Quote:It almost always fails to meet their minimal expectations. Its culture is steeped in self-deception that looks every bit like lies. Leaders treat rank-and-file members like children and disaffected members like a plague, and try to shame members who don’t fit into being who they can’t be. And they almost never try to reconcile with anyone.
I have spent the last decade debating this very thing in my mind.
On a large arching scale – I concur with a resounding yes. Some of it is generational. Some of it is true tone-deafness. Some of it is inexperience. Neither of those reasons make it right.
However, I sense movement in the water. I posted a brief synopsis of our 3rd hour lesson yesterday.
Quote:Today’s 3rd hour was mind blowing in a good way.
The Stake Presidency sent a lesson about loving our members and non-members with Same Sex Attraction.
Feel free to choke on the title – but this was monumental. I don’t know how it went in other wards, but in ours the lesson brought so many tears. It was beautifully delivered. None of the standard tropes were thrown out. Quotes were from Mormonandgay.org. In the end the teacher shared about her gay son and his recent marriage. Both the challenge and the joy of that experience.
The closing song was Carol Lynn Pearsons Primary Hymn. “I’ll Walk With You”
The woman offering the closing prayer could barely get the words out through her tears.
It was a great meeting.
The lesson wrapped with the following quote from Elder Holland.
Quote:Brothers and sisters, we live in a mortal world with many songs we cannot or do not yet sing. But I plead with each one of us to stay permanently and faithfully in the choir, where we will be able to savor forever that most precious anthem of all—“the song of redeeming love.”11 Fortunately, the seats for this particular number are limitless. There is room for those who speak different languages, celebrate diverse cultures, and live in a host of locations. There is room for the single, for the married, for large families, and for the childless. There is room for those who once had questions regarding their faith and room for those who still do. There is room for those with differing sexual attractions. In short, there is a place for everyone who loves God and honors His commandments as the inviolable measuring rod for personal behavior, for if love of God is the melody of our shared song, surely our common quest to obey Him is the indispensable harmony in it. With divine imperatives of love and faith, repentance and compassion, honesty and forgiveness, there is room in this choir for all who wish to be there.
To me that tells a differing story or attempt at a differing story.
Again we have
milesto go in these areas. The back and forth to get there may take our entire lifetime. But we don’t call people Gentile’s or Jack Mormon’s anymore. That’s awesome, mom3. And I love that Primary song. It’s become one of my favorites. I also see movement. I think a lot of members, including leaders, realize that “because God said so” isn’t enough of a basis for trust. It has to be backed up with honesty and treating people with dignity. We wouldn’t have the JSPP otherwise, or your amazing third-hour lesson.
Reconciling will be impossible as long as belief in the Church’s effective infallibility is a matter of identity. I think the new history will necessarily chip away at this.
Like Roy and nibbler, I account for motivations. It’s maddening to be put in a position of not trusting a collective that has good motivations and a lot of power over your family. It would be easier, at least at first, to paint them as villains and make them into enemies. A lot of disaffected members go there. That’s where my instincts want to take me, but it would lead to disaster and just isn’t accurate or honest.
Here’s an important thing: my current levels of trust have nothing to do with the Church’s motivations or movement. My
currenttrust can and should be based only on currentbehavior. Going with nibbler’s analogy, I could never trust a 19th-century doctor to operate on me or my family no matter how much he cared, or even whether he was improving, not when I know for myself that while he often gets good results, he still practices a fair bit of quackery that could kill someone. Where motivations and movement do affect my trust is being willing to reevaluate it. They allow me to make my trust provisional and flexible. It hasn’t consistently increased, but it’s not fixed, and seems to be ever so slowly trending upward.
To have some normal amount of trust will require the doctor to stop regarding not trusting him as an illness.
Good points Reuben. It’s one thing to determine your own level of trust and it’s another thing entirely when external forces try to make the determination for you. At least one of the traits of the community that sets the us/them boundary is trust and faith in the leaders. How easy is it for someone belong to a community when they don’t meet the minimal community requirements for one or more of the community boundaries?
nibbler wrote:
At least one of the traits of the community that sets the us/them boundary is trust and faith in the leaders. How easy is it for someone belong to a community when they don’t meet the minimal community requirements for one or more of the community boundaries?
I’ve been thinking about a similar question for a while now. Here are my tentative answers for the factors of belonging to the community:
a) Personal Desire – how much do you want to belong to the community and why? Are you doing it for yourself and/or to make/keep someone else happy? Can you set up protocols to communicate how and where you serve (if at all)?
b) Family Support (if applicable) – the reaction(s) of family members and extended family members play a part in personal desire and in having the resources to accomplish community membership.
c) Location aka how badly do they need you? – We lived in larger wards in CA before moving a branch in MI. We got lost in those wards in CA – but we can’t get lost here. They need us here – our numbers of 4 family members, my husband’s church calling (and my personal nursery leader assignment).
d) Leadership Roulette – Upper leadership can set the tone for how you and your family members are treated.
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