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I think you just do whatever works for you. If you want to attend church great. If you do not that is fine. If you want to pay tithing go ahead, if not that is just fine. To me the middle way is not viable. It takes to much effort. It implies I am trying to fit into some category that may or may not define me. I simply am who I am. Maybe that is the middle way maybe it is not. My actions anymore are not defined by the church at all. I still attend regularly but it is because I choose to. I just happen to like the conversation in HP. I think on a journey like this you never know for sure where the path will take you. So to try and find some kind of middle ground may be difficult if not impossible for some. I once heard the analogy if you are walking down the road stay on the right or on the left. If you walk down the middle you will tend to get run over.
Just be the best person you can be to yourself and others. If others can not accept that well that is their lose.
Cadence wrote Quote:think you just do whatever works for you. I think on a journey like this you never know for sure where the path will take you.
Brian Johnston
Quote:Based on your post, it sounds to me like you aren’t quite done blasting away the dead wood and cracked foundations. It sounds like you are doing a lot to step back and evaluate things.
Cadence/Brian,
I think this is the most practical approach in my journey right now. I’ve had some time off from work and I was reading some old journals from my mission and years later when I was called to a bishopric. I was reading about all my doubts even back then.
It kind of dawned on me that I have always had these doubts about many things regarding the church. I was trying very hard though the years to put the square peg into the round hole as it were, blaming myself, wondering what was wrong with me because I was not getting the answer to prayers and so forth.
What I’m interested in now is just trying to be a good person, husband and father. I am not interested in replacing my mormonism with some other “-ism”. After 30 plus years I just want to step back and gain some perspective.
Maybe with time I will be interested in exploring something else or coming back. Right now it feels just fine staying away.
ElCid wrote:Maybe with time I will be interested in exploring something else or coming back. Right now it feels just fine staying away.
Follow the feelings. Call it whatever you want: holy ghost, intuition, higher self, subconscious mind, whatever… That is what we were taught growing up, that we should follow that still small voice. I’ve found it still works. I just don’t feel attached to a particular meaning or label for that feeling.
ElCid, I like what you said in your posting. Twenty+ years ago I went completely inactive & didn’t seem to miss church, scriptures, prayer, etc. Now I’m in my 60’s. Maybe it’s because I’m old(er). Maybe it’s because I want to reconcile my life & beliefs. I’ve started to come back to the Church.
I’m trying to seek a different path from what I did in the past. That’s why I keep coming back to this site.
For what it’s worth: life is constantly changing. In the current issue of the Ensign, Pres Uchtdorf wrote an article titled: Always in the Middle.
In the conclusion, he wrote:
Quote:Being always in the middle means that the game is never over, hope is never lost, defeat is never final. For no matter
where we are or what our circumstances, an eternity of beginnings and an eternity of ending stretch out before us. We are alway in the middle.
I find that this life is very interesting. I know that I will never regret the life I’m living. This includes the years of what some would define as “inactive”.
Mike from Milton.
Mike makes a good point, we don’t need to feel like there is an imminent decision that must be made today for all time. We can always return to church whenever we are ready to. It’s not going anywhere. Sometimes a break is a good thing, and can remind us what we miss or what we want to try to do when we re-engage. The Atonement tells me things aren’t final. I like the way Wendy Ulrich put it:
Quote:The fourth and final stage of committed relationships is about renewal. Not exactly a renewal of the honeymoon, but a more mature, realistic, and truly loving renewal. We come to accept our spouse or our parents or the Church, and we come to accept ourselves. We allow God to run the universe, and we become more content to let go of things we cannot change. A deeper, more mature love begins to emerge, with fewer power struggles and less disengagement. We do not need to see all the answers, and we do not need perfection by our standards in order to not be embarrassed or ashamed of our Church, our partner, or our God. We reinvest in the relationship, not because we have decided to risk yet one more time that we will not get hurt only to have the rug pulled out yet one more time from under us, but because we have learned that hurt can be survived, that this is a risk worth taking, and that it does not mean we cannot be happy or that we are irrational suckers or that we are doomed to failure because we take another chance on trust or because we fail or are failed again. We see ourselves and our partner more realistically, and we do not run from either vision. We recognize that we can be hurt by being betrayed or we can be hurt by not trusting, but we don’t get the no-hurt choice because there isn’t one, at least not until we simply choose not to read betrayal into every ecclesiastical failure, or abandonment into every unanswered prayer
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http://www.fairlds.org/fair-conferences/2005-fair-conference/2005-believest-thou-faith-cognitive-dissonance-and-the-psychology-of-religious-experience ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.fairlds.org/fair-conferences/2005-fair-conference/2005-believest-thou-faith-cognitive-dissonance-and-the-psychology-of-religious-experience Mike/Heber13, Thanks for the encouraging posts. I wonder if anyone has posted steps to disaffection on the board somewhere. I am not saying that to be facetious in any way because I feel like it is almost a grieving process that I am going through. After putting in so much time (a mission, temple marriage, tithing, etc.) and then to step back from it, it really quite an emotional roller coaster.
I know I have to start looking at the church from a different point of view and I guess that is what is hard at this point. I just can’t sit in another F/T meeting as an example or a lesson on the importance of temple attendance, home teaching or missionary work. I begin to think critical thoughts, get angry and ask myself “how can they say that”. I don’t want to feel negative toward the church and its teachings so staying away is the best thing right now.
Being away now I’ve had time to just reflect and I pulled out my old missionary journal. It is hard not to shake my head as I read my journal entries. Many entries express feelings of guilt for either not being worthy enough to accomplish some mission goal (usually baptisms), seeking strength by trying to pray harder or saying to myself “you’re not working hard enough!”. When I read that right now I don’t feel any nice sense of nostalgia. Instead I feel like I committed two years of my life to baptizing people that, for all I know, are going through the same thing I am.
I could see myself warming up to the idea of even coming back but I really don’t know how I can be in the church without either objecting and feeling uncomfortable versus simply keeping quiet and try not disagree. It is funny that when you are a believer you go along and think “all is well” right? It is helpful for me to read the posts of everyone because it helps me to see that there yet may be a way for me to re-align in some way.
Getting other’s perspectives helps and I guess that is why I ask if there is some 5, 6 or 7 step process that someone may have posted. I’m surely in one of those stages now. I have read some of the posts on James Fowler’s Stages of Faith but I think this is more like stages of grieving/disaffection. Like I said, I don’t know if there are some posts on this site already. John Dehlin’s podcasts on navigating a faith crisis have been helpful as well.
Again, thanks for all the encouragement. Some of you regulars on this site might think you see so many similar posts and maybe it starts to get old but I just want to say thanks for the support because when you are going through this there are not many places to get help.
I understand the love/hate relationship you are talking about. I went to SM today….it has been a long time.
90% of it was excellent. That 10% though….
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2
ElCid wrote:I just can’t sit in another F/T meeting as an example or a lesson on the importance of temple attendance, home teaching or missionary work. I begin to think critical thoughts, get angry and ask myself “how can they say that”. I don’t want to feel negative toward the church and its teachings so staying away is the best thing right now.
This is how I feel as well. About three weeks ago I decided it was time to take a Sabbatical. It was such an internal battle every week, and it would take me three or four days to recover from it. Home teaching and missionary work are really sensitive subjects for me as well; I think because when you are experiencing serious doubts the last thing you want to do is convince other people to come into the church.
ElCid wrote:Being away now I’ve had time to just reflect and I pulled out my old missionary journal. It is hard not to shake my head as I read my journal entries. Many entries express feelings of guilt for either not being worthy enough to accomplish some mission goal (usually baptisms), seeking strength by trying to pray harder or saying to myself “you’re not working hard enough!”.
I think I can honestly say that my mission helped me grow enormously as a person, but in hindsight, I have recognized that a lot of the guilt I experienced as a missionary was completely misplaced like you are describing.
As far as the steps… I’m not aware that anything like that has been written. James Fowler’s Stages of Faith is probably the closest, but that lumps the entire disaffection process into one step. I think it would be helpful to have something like what you are describing as a road map, to say, “Ok, I’m here, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel”. From my limited experience talking to people, it seems like the initial phases of disaffection are pretty similar, but the directions people choose to go after that are pretty diverse. I’m not sure if there is a general pattern everyone follows.
ElCid wrote:Getting other’s perspectives helps and I guess that is why I ask if there is some 5, 6 or 7 step process that someone may have posted. I’m surely in one of those stages now.
ElCid, thanks for posting such sincere and open thoughts about where you are and what you’re going through. I am sure there are many reading that are grateful to hear your thoughts as you work through it, because it is helping them.
Regarding the steps you are looking for…I think there comes a point where there are not meant to be prescribed steps for the individual, or a program, or a script any longer. You’ve been led to a certain point, and now, there is no longer a guidebook to get to where you need to go next. You need to write it for yourself. Its part of the process, and it takes a while, but I fully believe you can get back to F/T meeting, listen to what everyone else has to say, and not have to cringe all the time…but love them for the way they see things, glean what messages you can from others, and keep a hold to your views and your faith based on your experience.
There is a way to find conjunctive faith, and it can be worth the struggle to find it, because staying in a place that is painful is not usually a long-term strategy, even if it is sometimes a necessary or inevitable stage.
Heber13, I was just going to say that. I agree completely.
Mike from Milton.
Mike wrote:Heber13, I was just going to say that.
…in that case…I agree with you completely!
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