My3GirlsDad

[Anonymous]

I actually like the guy, and I have no doubt he’s happy and has found peace with his wife and kids staying LDS. However, I don’t believe he wants to “stay LDS” in any way whatsoever that is meaningful – and I really don’t want to challenge him right now about the obvious blind spots in his faith paradigm. He is a non-Mormon TBM in a very real way, and I’ve done about all the probing I want to do – since I don’t want to shatter his black-and-white worldview again. I want him to be happy, but I don’t want him pitching his solution here as the best one or the only legitimate one. He wants every person here to have no doubts, and the only way that he will accept is if everyone here becomes convinced that he’s right. That, at least, is my perception.

I am concerned about two things in his response about his motivation and goals:

1) His use of “if they desire” – with which I agree technically, but which I still think means “if I can’t talk them out of it through my testimony that the LDS Church is wrong”. I think he really wants to help people who are struggling with their faith to leave the Church, and I’m not sure he will back off until they say, “I’m not interested in seeing things the way you do, so please stop” – and we aren’t set up as a site to ask people to please stop very well. (I don’t want that to be the general default. I’m just saying that it’s not how we encourage participants to respond.

2) His desire to debate, even if he considers it to be healthy. He wants to debate – which, I believe, he means as permission to challenge people who want to stay LDS doctrinally or actively or emotionally or in any way other than purely physically.

Again, I think he doesn’t mind a butt in the pew, as long as the heart and mind aren’t there, as well – and that just isn’t our mission here at all, no matter how nice a guy he is.

I’m not going to do anything unilaterally, but I am really concerned about him.

[Author]

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