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Growing up in the “bubble” I was SHOCKED a few days ago to learn that JS had more than one wife. I knew that he taught polygamy, but for some reason I thought Emma was his one and only. I’m sure this comes from my own ignorance and my refusal to touch anything that even resembled “anti-mormon” literature. You are always counseled not to go anywhere near anything that is anti-mormon, which basically means you grow up only learning what the church wants you to know about their history. For obvious reasons they don’t teach about JS and his wives in primary and young women’s, but I still feel like it was a lie of “omission.” I don’t remember any of my teachers saying that JS wasn’t polygamist, but it was assumed he wasn’t. The information about his polygamy may have been there all along, but it was buried. And I was completely in the dark. I had my faith crisis about a year ago, and I would say I’m still very fragile. I’ve definitely come to terms with a lot of my “issues” and learned to separate what I believe to be the “gospel” and what I believe is just “culture” of the church. I’ve learned a lot about agency and my own personal relationship with Heavenly Father. I’ve learned not to care what other people think when my husband and I leave after sacrament each week. I’ve learned to be true to myself. It’s been such an enlightening and amazing experience, and even though sometimes I wish I hadn’t ever had my crisis (because my life within the church was definitely MUCH easier before) I have to remember that all this doubt and confusion has really made me stronger.
A few months ago my friend, who is no longer active, mentioned casually that JS was polygamist and I didn’t believe her. I told her there was NO way. Even though I was in the middle of my crisis and was actively researching things in the church’s past, I just thought that she was wrong. You can imagine my surprise when a few days ago my husband called me and told me about the article on CNN about Joseph Smith’s 40 wives.
Now I’m spiraling again, just when I thought I was comfortable in my shoes and comfortable with “agreeing to disagree” with many of the issues I have with the church. What I can’t seem to wrap my head around is how I’m supposed to trust this church that has continually shown that they aren’t perfect… but then continually asks us to “follow the prophet” because he “won’t lead us astray.” I don’t trust how polygamy “conveniently” came to an end because Utah wanted to become a state. I don’t trust how these essays the church published were basically hidden, but when CNN and other major news outlets got wind of them, the mormon newsroom published an article talking about the essays and how they’ve been there all along. Well yes, they’ve been there, but hardly anyone knew about them. They go on to say that JS having 40 wives is not news to the church members… well it was for my husband and me, and I’m sure we’re not alone in that regard. The timing of the release of the mormon newsroom article just bugs me… I wish SO bad it would’ve been published BEFORE all the media attention.
Anyway, I agree with almost everything that has been said on this forum and appreciate all the discussion. I’m just not sure how to move forward from here. I feel like my balancing act of church vs. gospel could easily tumble out of control as I learn more and more. I can’t keep using the excuse that, “prophets are people and make mistakes too” and “the church isn’t perfect, but the gospel is” because we are supposed to be THE church. The only true church on the earth. The church that believes in revelation and God speaking directly to his prophets. I don’t know how much more I can bear…
Don’t despair, Molly, we’re here for you. While I did learn about Joseph’s polygamy many years ago in church, I agree that it is not regularly taught. I think I may have gotten it in an Institute class, and I do recall having some discussion about it. Frankly I did not know the extent of it, I didn’t know about the polyandry, marrying women who were married to other men, and marrying teens. I did know that Emma did not know about all of it and didn’t necessarily approve of it – although the evidence there seems to be contradictory and incomplete. My advice is continue to try to separate the gospel and the church. I don’t believe it is possible to completely separate them because the church
doesteach the gospel (Pres. Uchtdorf was right). The gospel itself is very simple, and the church has no monopoly on it. I am coming around to the idea that the church is a tool to help us on our journey, it is not the journey (the walking stick analogy that is being kicked around a bit here). I’m going to share something I haven’t shared before, something our SP told us recently after training with the AA (after he trained at GC). The brethren believe part of the “problem” with faith crises is that we each need to have our own “sacred grove experience” and many have not. I interpret this to mean that we must each come to an understanding of our own relationship with God – with or without the church (the church did not exist when Joseph had his). To the idea of God speaking to the prophets – if you read detailed information about OD2 and the events that led up to that you will find that God spoke to the prophets the same way he speaks to us – it was a feeling/impression upon the hearts and minds of those present (two were not present). I’m not trying to burst any bubbles or rain on anybody’s parade here – but Pres. Kimball did not have a chat with the Savior in the Holy of Holies. I believe that if God did have something to say to us he’d say it in that same way, and we’d all know it. I am still reconciling the whole “prophet won’t lead us astray” thing, but I currently lean toward that meaning he won’t do anything to lead us away from returning to God (but I also think there’s nothing stopping him from doing so other than his own commitment).
So we’re left with my standard advice: take it slow, don’t dump all at once (1. just because you don’t believe one thing doesn’t mean all the rest is wrong too 2. don’t dump all your unbeliefs/doubts/questions on your spouse/friend/loved one in one sitting) and focus on what you do believe. I gather you do believe in God and you do believe in the Savior – start there.
ConfusedMolly, You are hitting the nail on head of where I am at. I have come to some peace with some of our history, but it has come at the expense of feeling leaders are even generally inspired. I think I would say “maybe occasionally” they are and often they are dead wrong. So when listen to conference and hear GA’s say “we have all the truth, just follow your leaders” I feel they are overspending the level of their inspiration. I have moved from listening and try to start from a position of needing to believe to now starting from “they could be wrong” and seeing if the Lord tells me otherwise.
I have made a hard distinction between the church and the gospel of Jesus. I used to see them one in the same. Now I would say they can be at times not close to the same. I am feeling that God let’s his church drive a bit like an irresponsible teenager before he corrects it at all. That puzzles me.
Old-Timer wrote:[
Admin Note]: Knock it off, DA. We have had to warn newcomers about sweeping insults, and just because you have been here for a long time doesn’t mean you can do it. Sorry Ray; I didn’t mean this as an insult or the way it sounds like you interpreted it. I was thinking mostly of my own experience where I believed some of the Church’s claims as long as I did mostly because I wasn’t ever aware of some of the worst problems with these stories and basically gave the Church the benefit of the doubt based on what limited information I had from the scriptures and what they specifically told me in lessons, conference talks, etc. Even when a few things bothered me I would typically rationalize and make excuses for it. For example, in the case of the priesthood ban I believed that God never directly approved of it but I thought maybe he allowed it to continue mostly because too many Church members were not yet prepared to accept blacks as priesthood leaders (I.E. maybe God understood their weakness and limitations).
In the case of polygamy I rationalized that it wasn’t necessarily wrong to begin with it just wasn’t a Western European custom but the Bible makes it sound like it wasn’t that unusual in different times and places so Church members practiced it when they were largely isolated from the mainstream culture anyway but then it made sense for them to stop practicing it mostly to re-integrate into the US society and have Utah made into a state. In the case of evidence supporting evolution versus what Bruce R. McConkie said about it I rationalized that this was just his opinion and it wasn’t that important to know exactly how God created man and there was no reason he couldn’t have used evolution to do so.
In the case of the initial un-correlated information I ran into on my mission about the Book of Abraham translation and Joseph Smith marrying other men’s wives while he sent them away on missions I rationalized that the people saying this were obviously biased and full of hate so I basically dismissed it as anti-Mormon lies and after that I had no interest in reading anything that sounded marginally “anti-Mormon” again until after I already didn’t believe in the Church anymore after reading the scriptures and apologetics in detail for a while. The reason I thought this way was simple; basically I did not want to admit the possibility that the Church could easily be a man-made fabrication and I didn’t really know all the convenient answers I got from assuming everything worked the way the Church claims. This is also why I think some of this information could take a lot longer to really impact the Church in a critical way if ever than many disaffected members and ex-Mormons think.
Thanks for the clarification, DA. As we say a lot, when all we have are words on a screen, it can be difficult to communicate what we really mean.
ConfusedMolly, I grew up in the Mormon Corridor too and can truly relate to the teaching here that you should only get information about the church from the church and that anything negative is the world fighting against it. It makes me feel kind of dumb that I was so trusting now. But hey, I am in the one and only true church, so why should I doubt their judgement. I don’t think you can go through this whole transition experience without coming out knowing that leaders have their limitations. I’ve come to believe that when they say they won’t lead us astray, it’s more of a wish they are expressing than anything. They do care about us and want that idea to be true.
As for me, I’ll listen to the talks and ask God what I need to be following from them.
ConfusedMolly wrote:I’m just not sure how to move forward from here. I feel like my balancing act of church vs. gospel could easily tumble out of control as I learn more and more. I can’t keep using the excuse that, “prophets are people and make mistakes too” and “the church isn’t perfect, but the gospel is” because we are supposed to be THE church. The only true church on the earth. The church that believes in revelation and God speaking directly to his prophets. I don’t know how much more I can bear…
It sounds like your faith crisis a year ago helped you cope with a few things and you bandaged up the shelf good enough. The problem is…more stuff keeps happening. The shelf seems to crash easier.My guess is, that there is more things we don’t know about the church and it’s past yet. There are more issues the church is dealing with and will not be perfect at. I just don’t think it can work to just try to keep shelving stuff, and using the excuses that don’t stand up over time.
Perhaps grappling with the most repellent things of our doctrine is the thing that will lead you to your own Sacred Grove experience DJ referred to. Perhaps that is what God wants for you.
Quote:F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
As we become more aware of some of these things about the church and the gospel, we start to see the paradoxes that exist, and have always existed, even if we did not open our minds to see them in the past. Becoming more familiar with paradox is a growing opportunity.
The same news article that ran here in the NYT and other papers apparently also ran in some major South American papers (according to my missionary son). he said the headline that ‘Joseph Smith had 40 wives” caused some waves there. He says the problem is that most people (members and non-members alike) are unfamiliar with polygamy at all anyway, and the essays are only in English. FWIW, he is only aware of the essays because I tell him about them (all have been released since he has been out), but his mission president has been forced to make them known to the missionaries in general (at least the polygamy ones) some of who can’t read them. FWIW, his MP is one of the more aware members and does know quite a bit about LDS history and does openly share it with the missionaries – I think that’s a rarity by itself. DarkJedi wrote:The same news article that ran here in the NYT and other papers apparently also ran in some major South American papers (according to my missionary son). he said the headline that ‘Joseph Smith had 40 wives” caused some waves there. He says the problem is that most people (members and non-members alike) are unfamiliar with polygamy at all anyway, and the essays are only in English.
I agree. I remember one of our stake missionaries in Chile coming to us becuase she had heard rumors about us becoming gods and populating our own planets with our offspring. My companion and I both felt that this was commonly understood doctrine. Looking back I can see how references to “becoming like heavenly parents” and “eternal progression” might not quite spell this out for members without the same LDS background.
I am sure the 40 wives part would have been a double shocker since not even the missionaries were not well versed in this stuff. I bet if the situation was reversed and it was coming out that the founder of the Jahovah’s Witnesses had 40 wives, we LDS would generally make assumptions about the truthfullness of their church from this information.
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