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{I don’t really understand how this infernal contraption called a computer works (or more frequently doesn’t work) and so I have been unable to figure out how to “PM” you. Or even what that means.* I don’t want to appear apathetic about this matter. So I started another thread which you may consider a PM and immediately close it down as needed. } I have reread your website mission statement and have been thinking about your site and what y’all are trying to do. Perhaps from my perspective what you are trying to do is fundamentally misguided and anything I have to say tends to not further your goals. Hence the strong feelings and conflict.
My perspective:
I have experienced no recent heart-wrenching disillusionment about the LDS church. I have been made aware of many of these things from an early age and some members of my family have been fighting them for generations while others have had the wool pulled over their eyes.
The LDS church promoted for decades if not from the start a deceitful version of its history/doctrine and made it so much worse with the correlation movement. Not just on a few obscure topics for a few short years but doctrines and practices of fundamental importance over long periods of time. We all know (or are getting to know) the list although we might have variations of items on our own list.
Many people were devoted to the church and its teachings, giving of their time, talents and their heart and soul. Part of this effort resulted in rapid growth of the LDS church and accumulation of vast wealth. Part of it resulted in many good lives lived for God and the improvement of society.
The coming of the digital information age exposed many of the deceptions, clearly and undeniably, to a growing contingent of members. Many of them have experienced a faith crisis and not a few have left the church. Others are trying to hang on. Large numbers remain unaware or unconcerned about these problems.
The purpose of this website as I see it stated is to help people with a “faith crisis” hang on or Stay LDS . (To smell the roses in a barrel with several rotten apples).
Now here is where we probably are going to part company. I think most all of your so called “faith crises” are a farce. You don’t have a faith crisis. You have only been trying to be true to yourself and what you know and what you have come to know.
Rather the LDS church has a truth crisis. And are making you feel bad for it.
An isolated truth crisis might be tolerable for some if there wasn’t another associated crisis. This one is much more of a patch work and based on individual experiences and not entirely ubiquitous. But it is not small either.
The LDS church also has a compassion crisis. We collectively (with many exceptions) are being mean to way too many people. We nourish a collective persecution complex and then when we treat others badly and they respond with any anger or hostility, we blame it on them persecuting us. We do not see our actions as the cause of their anger. We are so nice about being so mean.
Many other churches have vast numbers who leave, but there is nothing on the internet that approaches the level of anger and hostility that we see waged against us. Why? Because we draw that out of people by the petty ways we are not nice to them. These are not overt acts of violence but more subtle, based on arrogance and skillfully cultivated ignorance. We also turn families on each other in our attempts to control people.
People are responding to the crisis by leaving in droves. The long-term financial well-being of the church is probably starting to be compromised to some extend but not seriously, I suspect. The mass apostasy is getting harder to ignore.
The LDS church is doing too little and too late to address either one of these problems. Even the things we celebrate such as the articles on the LDS website with rich scholarly content are fundamentally deceitful. They give ground already essentially lost and dig in at a seemingly more defensible position. They are cleverly displayed in a way that few read or understand them. They are not entirely truthful with many omissions and will only kick the can down the road. More problems will emerge and they will have to be redacted.
I believe your attempts to find peace and comfort is destined to fail eventually in most cases. It is the slow winding path out. I have watched several sites go from middle-of-the-road to more critical to pretty much out. You and yours has moved some and will follow them if you continue on this path.
The only way for us to stay in the LDS church and maintain our integrity is for the LDS church to change, not incrementally but fundamentally. So that it as an institution has full integrity restored, if it ever had that. Full integrity!
This will require apology, attempts at repair and resolution to not repeat the damage. It will require the entire membership to be made aware of the full extent of the perfidy and the subsequent massive loss in membership and income that will probably result and the hard path of moving forward after words.
Because the LDS church has destroyed what few internal mechanisms of change from the ground up we ever had and does not seem to be listening to the heavens either (which cry out for honesty, integrity and compassion) and because the LDS church is so authoritative and so wealthy and becoming so quietly arrogant, this change is not going to be easy. It is going to hurt.
I am no prophet or revolutionary. I am too old and too windy and too confused to be a leader of any kind of successful movement. But I think that I can help stir this pot in my own small way until it boils over. It is my responsibility as a 7th generation Mormon, mostly aware of our flaws. The sooner the better.
The question I ask myself is: How can I help? It is my intention to stir you up; to thoughtfulness, to emotional investment for real change, to the anger over what has been done that is going to be needed to fuel the changes. Yes anger. We have every right to be angry. Like Jesus when he cleansed the temple with a whip. I wish to not be nice, but to be honestly mean about my meanness. Fight fire with fire. I get a sense of quiet satisfaction and joy (confirmation of the Spirit) making people angry about legitimate problems in the LDS church. It is my calling, my spiritual gift.
This is my not-so-new, personal path of active faith. You may be the judge as to how successful I have been around here.
Your choice- whether I am tolerated here and whether I can add anything to your discussions or not. You can heavily edit and discard part or most of what I write, it doesn’t bother me. It is your website and I am your guest at the beginning and in the end. If you don’t like me throwing the furniture around then who will blame you when you throw me out permanently. I will have nothing but forgiveness and compassion (hopefully not pity) for you.
God bless us all every one.
*I asked my elderly father what a PM means and he said: “A BM? …” I said: “No! Dang git. P! M!” He replied: “Probably in your case a punch in the mouth.”
Porter – I am not a moderator, I can’t even guess what 10 minutes from now will bring in life, but I appreciated your “PM”. On many of your points I see spot on observations. My husband is closer to your point of view than to mine. He now says he won’t fight, as he see’s it the church doesn’t need his help, it’s collapsing on it’s own just fine. He just wishes I would jump out before it does and save us the long slow agony. I have a different point of view. There is much I don’t “know” anymore. There are so many things on hold and back burners it’s crazy, but I am not convinced that a cleansing of the temple is necessary or can even happen. I have never lived on foreign soil, but I have heard from other LDS people who have, that the church is very different there. Yeah the hymns, the sacrament, etc,. but the conversations, the focus – different, in a good way. Yes some serious work exists and should be taken on by the powers that be – but Jesus didn’t just go from place to place whipping and overturning. For every one of those there were 5 – 10 instances of quiet dialogue, pastoral intervention, courtesy, charity and love. Jesus even attended Sabbath services on a regular basis, even though he had great gripes with what Judiasm had become.
I believe many of us here, are not blind to the things you speak of. I have seen middle of way, nuanced, big tent people morph and retire. I agree that the Caucasian hemorrhaging of Mormonism is continuing at an alarming rate, but I don’t know if it’s time for me to jump ship. Maybe it will come, or I will need a break, but if I can contribute some Christlikeness to my little ward – even if all the truth claims are just claims. I believe I am helping. So I try to be like Jesus in a tiny way.
[Admin note: The PM is a personal message which goes into your inbox so that some things can be discussed with another member without posting online for all to read.
To get to your inbox, after you log in across the top you should see under the Board Index another menu which reads “User Control Panel” and next to that (0 new messages). Or it may have the number of new messages waiting for you to read. Clicking on the “new messages” will take you to your inbox where you can read and reply to members and it keeps a history in your inbox.
I hope that helps, Porter]
I will reply to the content of your post separately. I think you make some valid points and some discussion could be helpful for many who feel like you.
To send a PM (private message), click on the user’s name you want to message and click “send private message.” I’m not sure who this message is intended for, I presume one of the mods. I can respond, but I can’t speak for the mods. Basically I can say this, perhaps before the thread gets locked (or it may not). There are many different perspectives here, and mostly what people here request and expect is mutual respect. For instance, my own faith crisis was in no way a farce – it was a long and painfully drawn out process which did include my loss of faith, for a time, in God and Jesus Christ. I understand what you’re trying to say about historical issues – I am much the same as you, I have known about them for a long time and they don’t bother me a lot. Not all crises of faith are about historical issues – mine wasn’t. In either case, it is not respectful to refer to something someone else takes very seriously as a “farce.”
I will also say that as far as I can tell, this group, and this site, are not about changing the church. We’re about changing ourselves to make the church “work” for us. Many of us here agree with you that the church has hid its history for too long and that this has been detrimental. I see change in the new essays, and I am confident there is more change on the way – but it is a slow process (which I also understand).
FWIW, I do not share your pessimism that this site will evolve as you describe. There are other sites already in place that play to those kinds of attitudes. This is our home, our niche. It’s up to the mods, but if you can’t play by our rules, or more accurately refuse to do so, they’ll ask you to leave and I support them. There are other sites where rudeness and militant attitudes are more accepted – you might fit in better on one of those.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Porter. You have a lot to say. You’re very passionate about it. While I respect your position, and think you have valid reasons for your feelings, you are not a fit for this group.
You see no solution, and you are going to proselytize this group to leave the church, which goes directly against our mission. There are other websites you can find to embark on your misguided mission to stir the pot. I am confident both the Church and our supportive tone on this website will be around for a while should you change your mind and want to choose to engage in meaningful supportive conversations.
The rules are clear for all members of this forum:Quote:Please share your feelings, even if you have sometimes been disappointed with something in the Church. That is ok. It is helpful and positive to share these feelings. You will probably find a lot of kindred souls here. PLEASE NOTE: Sharing stories of disappointment and frustration must be done in a way that fosters a discussion about solutions. Feel free to share something that bothers you along with a solution that worked for you personally. Feel free to share something that bothers you and ask for help or alternative viewpoints and solutions from the community. If you only post a problem, and we can’t figure out how to turn it into a discussion in line with the mission of StayLDS, it will probably be deleted or a moderator will ask you to edit the post.
Please share things that have helped you. This is a support group.
Please feel free to openly discuss difficult and challenging topics. Only a couple items will be “taboo.”
Please feel free to disagree with anyone. Nobody here has all the answers. We can all benefit from being challenged. This is not a debate club though. There is no winning or losing. Please try to stay supportive and positive with those who might not believe the same way.
It is ok to be analytical about the Church, but not to the point of demeaning those who want to believe. You don’t have to believe and support everything about the Church. We do ask that participants be respectful of those who choose to have a traditional faith.
I more or less agree with you Porter, but i have the commom sense not to post my feelings and opinion in detail on this website… I appreciate and enjoy your participation here, and will miss you when you are banned, which the mods justifiably have to do to protect the integrity of this website’s mission. Love you, cwald. 
Porter wrote:It is my intention to stir you up; to thoughtfulness, to emotional investment for real change, to the anger over what has been done that is going to be needed to fuel the changes.
No thank you.Porter, you talk of the people on this site as if we are the Church and as if we need to change to your vision of what the Church should be. That simply isn’t accurate. What this site, more than any other resource, has helped me to do is to make changes for myself… not waiting for the Church. I don’t need the Church to tell me it is time to change, I have already done so and continue to do so. I pull from the Church what is good, I ignore the stuff that isn’t important to me, and I work to help moderate the Church from the inside; not by stirring the pot, but by being a voice for good.
I wish you well. Take care.
You make some very succinct points in your post and I happen to agree with some of them. Many people claim there are 5 stages of grief that accompany loss or that come at the end of a deep relationship:
1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance
I think most people that end up here may have already worked through denial. People at StayLDS may be looking for support to overcome anger, overcome depression, look past the bargaining, to be lifted up from depression, or to get to a point where they can accept their new worldview.
Anger is a natural response and can be an important part of our development. Some people may want to move on from anger but might find it very difficult to do.
I view StayLDS as a place that helps people regardless of where they are at. If you are struggling with denial, we’re here to help. If you are struggling with anger, we’re here to help. If you’re struggling with bargaining, we’re here to help. Etc. I don’t think the goal of the site is to help people remain in denial, help people remain angry, help people continue to bargain, etc. I think the community is more interested in helping people that want to move on, regardless of where they are at.
Last Sunday on 60 minutes they interviewed Matt Bissonnette (the man who wrote a book about his firsthand account on the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden). During the interview, and I’m paraphrasing, Matt talked about freezing up during a rock climbing exercise. He was essentially stuck while in a very precarious position. His instructor told him to live in the “three foot world,” meaning the looming rock face and many of the other obstacles before him were irrelevant. He only had a reach of about 3 feet so that was all he could reasonably worry about. He used that instruction to work within his “three foot world” which helped him break the fears that had seized his mind. He overcame the obstacle.
Just like in all walks of life there are obstacles to overcome in church. They can appear daunting at times and cannot be tackled all at once. If we want the church to become better we must become better ourselves. Each of us has our “three foot world,” our limited area of influence in the church. I believe that over time anger can reduce our “three foot world” down to nothing. If anger takes hold we quickly become “that angry guy” that people easily discount. Anger can take us to a place where we have no influence on helping the church become better. Conversely I believe that love increases our area of influence.
If we are angry, and if we are the church, the church will be angry. If we love, and if we are the church, the church will love.
nibbler wrote:If we are angry, and if we are the church, the church will be angry. If we love, and if we are the church, the church will love.
Pretty profound Nibbler.
:thumbup: nibbler wrote:Anger is a natural response and can be an important part of our development. Some people may want to move on from anger but might find it very difficult to do.
I view StayLDS as a place that helps people regardless of where they are at. If you are struggling with denial, we’re here to help. If you are struggling with anger, we’re here to help. If you’re struggling with bargaining, we’re here to help. Etc. I don’t think the goal of the site is to help people remain in denial, help people remain angry, help people continue to bargain, etc. I think the community is more interested in helping people that want to move on, regardless of where they are at.
This is well said, nibbler.Honest responses are welcome. Anger is understood. So to help frame the discussions on the threads, if it is geared towards solutions or questions to find solutions and come to acceptance, that is what we are about.
Porter, or others who feel like him, are welcome, when it is approached in this way. I feel for those who are in the anger stages and just need to justifiably vent, but to start discussions “knowing the church is false” and trying to “enlighten the group to an inevitable outcome of leaving” is not going to fit in, and will be moderated.
The forum serves as an example to believers and non-believers alike that there is another path that works for some. We ask you to join us and give it a try.
I always enjoy cwald’s comments, and find that a model to follow for contributing to the forum from his point of view.
Thank you for the support and the wisdom. Thank you for not kicking me off yet. Perhaps I could be allowed to stay with some very heavy handed editing. Perhaps not.
I do want to make a few clarifications:
First I am NOT trying to lead people out of the church or burn the church down. Quite the opposite.
I am trying to make the church a place where fewer people will leave.
Actually, where some of my family members who have left might be willing to come back and give it another chance.
I am following my path of rescue.
for me the decietfulness has got to stop. Integrity is something we should legitimately demand.
I appologize if calling your faith crisis a farce was painful. I mainly wanted to point out that you did nothing wrong to cause this faith crisis. It is not like you cheated on your wife and now this other woman is threatening to tell your wife and you are having a crisis trying to figure out what you want. And you might get dumped by both. And you have some tall explaining to do to both. No, it is not like that at all.
I am trying to put the saddle on the right horse. I want to make it clear that the LDS church was deceitful and you trusted it. The church violated your trust in it and that is painful. For most of us, we do not need to correct weak faith. Maybe other adjustments are made to achieve our personal goals. I think “faith crisis” is a misnomer but I can’t change the meaning of verbal terms. I think it would be less painful if you realized it was not you who did anything wrong as the term faith crisis implies to me. Calling it a truth crisis puts the responsibility where it belongs and it does not trivialize your suffering.
I found the review of the stages of grief very helpful. After anger is followed by bargaining. In my experience I have not been able to bargain in a way that did not cause more pain. It is hard to bargain with people who try to break up your marriage and physically abuse your children and destroy friendships and exclude you from your tribe to which 7 generations of ancestors have given their lives. The truth crisis kills the faith of those I love (or makes idiots of them) but it is the compasssion crisis that gets me and I was pretty immune to that until it hit my family.
I agree with the rules of engagement quoted by Heber13. I am honestly perplexed how my account (Let Every Man Learn His Duty) of a rather uneventful night at the church which raised a couple of important issues has strayed so far from them. (My PM is out of these bounds I agree).
For those of you who wish not to be stirred up then just move on. This is only a computer, an idiot box to be easily ignored and that is its greatest advantage. You can’t possibly view even one billionth of the material on it. One thing that would surprize some of you is that in real life I am a very nice and generous person, almost always laughing and cracking jokes, some of them warm prickles and I will do just about anything to help another person. You will only see the tiger out of the cage: in a closed leadership meeting, with very close friends/family who understand, privately to leaders who are screwing up, on line.
I have found that patience with those who abuse youth doesn’t work and if you mess with my little kids…
Except my 23 year old daughter has me out flanked both directions.She is about as polite and polished as any product of her ivy league schooling and quite a bit more nasty than I in a passive way when she needs to be which is rare. I fear tangling with her. My son is a college level athlete and a beast who can easily take care of himself. So protecting my children is a thing of the past.
That leaves the computer which I find as the ideal device to stir the pot. Relatively harmless physically with a potentially huge audience and access to more wisdom that I would find in my ward in a decade -just in this discussion.
The problem with firebombing those already out is that it doesn’t do anything to fix the problem. Fun but useless. No time for that.
Image if even 10% of the 10 million Mormons who have left (or 15% of the 7 million or whatever) had stayed. Image if they were angry and demanded honesty. Image if the didn’t move to bargaining until concessions were made which is part of bargaining. Where would we be?
Now my boss is after me and I have to go. I will try and figure out how to use some of the other features available later.
Perhaps if I as Porter am terminated from this site, I could come back as someone else after a 6 month sabbatical and try again with more caution.
Digital Reincarnation? Is it a principle with a promise around here?
Thanks for coming back and explaining yourself a bit more, Porter. I do think you have valuable insight to share here and I see no reason you shouldn’t be allowed to do so – as long as you remain civil and abide by the norms of our community. This post seems to be much more in line with those norms (notice I avoided the use of the word standards, which is really what I wanted to say). I accept your apology, and see that as is often the case here we have suffered from a case of misunderstood semantics, and perhaps somewhat different perspectives of the same event. I do understand the anger – I have experienced it myself. I was angry at God, at first (and for a long time) but realized it was not God who presented this untruth. I was then angry at the church, but the church didn’t do it, either. People in the church did it. But I’ve moved beyond that – new great oaks of my own understanding have helped me do so. I do not blame God, the church or others for my beliefs or lack thereof, I now take full responsibility for myself.
I like those stages, too. They are modeled after Kubler-Ross, of course. In her model, not everyone goes through all the stages and not necessarily in the order presented. I don’t think I ever did the bargaining stage of my faith crisis, unless bargaining includes my own internal idea that I might be able to remain in and attend church if a few things happened. To some extent I did have such thoughts, and some things actually did happen. I am no longer dependent on those things, however.
Perhaps your use of “stirring the pot” is another of those semantics that I read one way and you intend another. I said this earlier, and I repeat it – most of us here understand and believe that the church could be more forthright. We also see that there are baby steps – but important baby steps – in the right direction. We usually refer to it here as the ship turning. The ship is turning, albeit very slowly. That said, I think much of what you perceive (and I’m willing to admit I may be wrong here) as the church acting in a way that is disconcerting to you is not actually the church at all, rather it is a few members. The church being secretive about its own history – which is changing – is far different from those who testify of things you know, or at least perceive, are not true. I have not heard a GA testify in GC that God helped him find his cars keys so he could get to the meeting on time. I have heard many of them repeatedly testify of Jesus Christ.
Porter wrote:
I am trying to put the saddle on the right horse. I want to make it clear that the LDS church was deceitful and you trusted it…
I’ve never seen fit to blame the “church” for being deceitful or lying. I expect that generations of general authorities believed in the stories that I now find suspect and continue to testify of the truthfulness of scriptures that I now have a hard time believing. Their lives have been filled with spiritual experiences that have supported their belief in a church that today is very different than the one founded by JS and brought across the plains by BY. I’ve made my peace with what is now because of the visible efforts of people to make it and continue it as a good thing. I don’t have much use for individuals that claim authority for doing things that I don’t agree with even though they may try and act as though it’s the “church” as DJ pointed out. And remember that when somebody says something they believe, they’re not lying and they’re not stupid. Just sayin’
As others have said, you’re welcome here but we all live by the rules.
Porter, thanks for further clarifying and perhaps by keeping this thread open, other lurkers who read can see our intentions more clearly also, and hopefully feel welcome to join in also.I better understand where you are coming from, and perhaps some of your intentions. As you said, its a computer and its just words. There is value in the anonymous approach to online sharing of ideas, it can be safe for some. But there is also value in rules of engagement and purpose for sharing. There is so much to read on the Internet, and we all have bosses looking for us or demands of life making our time precious. So the rules are there to guide us and we know there are a gajillion other websites for those who just want to say their own thing that doesn’t help people StayLDS.
We’re happy to have you share, and appreciate your willingness to agree to the rules.
So here are some comments to help you further:
1) Change your tone of who you are talking to.
Porter wrote:I mainly wanted to point out that you did nothing wrong to cause this faith crisis.
Porter wrote:I want to make it clear that the LDS church was deceitful and you trusted it. The church violated your trust in it and that is painful.
Who are you talking to? And what is this about?I assume you’re talking to me, Heber13, and yet…you know nothing about me. How do you know what I trust, what I call a faith crisis, what I went through, or what was painful to me? Do you assume I am inactive? That I don’t have a temple recommend? That I’m leaving the Church? That I feel lied to? Or that I’m not educated to the history or what church leaders have said in the past?
If I go to church and a bishop tells me I’m being prideful, and to read and pray…that is not helping me and my needs. If I come here and you tell me what I call a faith crisis is wrong and I need to demand the church be honest with me…that is not helping my needs either. What I need is a safe place to share thoughts, get new ideas, and figure things out, because I want to stay with my family in the Church.
I guarantee you I have experienced religion differently than Ray, Orson, Hawkgrrrl or anyone else on this board.
Had I just posted in a thread “I feel the church lied to me” then I could understand your response on how you feel about what I said…but you’re making large sweeping statements as if this whole group of people are all one way, the way you see us, and you are here to set us straight. That won’t fly.
Change your tone and drop the quest to stir people up who are not asking to be stirred, but are trying to find a safe place to say what they feel, and be validated on how they see things, and get new insights on what to do about such feelings, so they can develop their own solutions to their problems in their own way.
2) Share your experiences related to how you deal with problems and want to stay positive about the church.
Porter wrote:I found the review of the stages of grief very helpful.
This is a great response. Someone else’s viewpoint from the website was helpful to you, and you explain why. That is helpful for me to know about you.My analogy: Dark Jedi and Silent Dawning are building a bridge that has collapsed. Ray stops in to tell them they should consider making it a little wider, to serve more people. That helps. Porter stops in to say he hates the last contractor who built a bridge in his area, the guy was a jerk and did a lot of unethical things. DK and SD look at each other and say, “So?? That has nothing to do with how we’re trying to build a bridge here, you’ve wasted our time.” Porter then sees, if he wants to help, he rephrases it by saying, “What I mean to say is, I’m building my bridge, and to me the integrity of the bridge is only as strong as those building it, and I’m building my bridge and will be treating people different. It’s worth it to be ethical.” Ahhh…good input, ya…that is something DJ and SD might consider as they build their bridge, which ends up looking completely different than Porter’s bridge, but it works for them.
You may think that is nit-picking and just word play…but hopefully you get the difference between you telling us what you think we need to hear or simply ranting about bad stuff that happened to you, and how that differs from you sharing something constructive, whether I listen to you or not.
3) Avoid campaigning
This is not a group demanding the church make concessions. We have no platform. We are support to those working through issues within the church. We will not demand the church change for us. We might hope, but we focus on how we cope with the church, respecting it’s authority and leadership.
Quote:We are not here to judge or condemn or challenge others’ views “in doctrine”. We all see things in our own way, and we strive to honor that individuality. We are here to reach out and share and interact with all who desire a safe and caring place to converse about their own attempts to endure to the end on their uniquely individual journeys within our collective LDS community.
Mission Statement
I’m not trying to judge or condemn your views or ideas, but your approach to others on the board, as moderators are tasked to make such judgment calls.Here is my suggestion:– Go to the Introduction section and read a few others’ introductions to get a feel for the group.
– Post an introduction letting us know briefly your background, who you are, what you experienced in your trials, and why you want to join the group.
– Ask some questions to hear what others have to say on what you feel strongly about, such as what you see as deceit from the church. Do others see the church as lying? Why or why not? In other words, join the round table discussion, don’t go take the pulpit. Can you understand GBSmith’s point of view and how he deals with it? Does that work for you?
We’re happy to have you join, and will be glad to edit and monitor as we see you’re contributing to the mission. We hope you find it worth participating according to the rules.
- The topic ‘Porter’s "PM"’ is closed to new replies.