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I’ve been thinking about this general idea on and off since I lost faith in the Church years ago and I’m still not sure what exactly to make of it as far as what it means and understanding why it has happened. Basically it irritates me to hear about how bad and wrong the world supposedly is multiple times in almost every conference. One reason that this bothers me so much is because I don’t think it is really fair to act like so many non-Mormons and inactive members that are decent people are sinners that need to repent. Once I started to lose faith in the Church what really started to bother me much more than the possibility that many of the Church’s doctrines are not true after all was mostly the relatively high costs involved with full activity in the Church and the overbearing expectations of other members that you absolutely need to believe and do everything the Church teaches and if not then it is not alright. I started to see doctrines like the WoW, testimony, temple marriage, and garments as being primarily about maintaining some level of separation from the world. So I guess my question is why is it so important to be different from the world to this extent to begin with? What purpose does it serve? What are the pros and cons of this approach? Was it deliberately planned out this way (by men or God) or was it mostly an unintended side-effect of tribal instincts and other human idiosyncrasies combined with the basic idea that the prophets and scriptures are always right? Certainly you can find scriptures to support the idea of very limited and exclusive salvation and even fellowship such as the ideas of separating the sheep from the goats and that only a few would find the “Strait and narrow path.” However, you can also find scriptures talking about Jesus directly associating with sinners (Matthew 9:10-13) and condemning self-righteous and judgmental attitudes (Luke 18:9-14) so it seems like it mostly depends on what Church leaders wanted to focus on the most for whatever reason.
Also, how are we supposed to define evil and why? For example, if we define evil mostly in terms of how far out-of-sync with what the Church teaches you are then of course the world is going to be evil because most people just don’t have nearly as much of a clear-cut reason to feel constrained by what already happened in previous generations as most active LDS Church members including the leaders currently do. Suppose I prefer to use more of a utilitarian approach to defining what is bad or not. For example, forget about what God supposedly wants and any promised rewards in the next life and simply consider how healthy and happy people really are or not on average and how much they are suffering unnecessarily. Where does the Church rank in that case? Is it really making the world a better place for its members or is it adding pain in many cases to subtract from whatever pain it helps members avoid? In addition, I question the long-term wisdom of calling such a high majority of people “unworthy” especially when the Church puts so much emphasis on the importance of families and depends so much on children raised in the Church to maintain support.
I think the “us vs. them” mentality has its roots in the early millennialism of the church. This became exacerbated after the church expulsions from Missouri and Illinois and finally calcified in the isolationism of the Utah period. When I read some early accounts of how major cities were prophesized to be destroyed and how “fleeing from Babylon” was thought to be more literally seeking refuge from the coming apocalypse, I think that the current rhetoric is rather tame. I think we focus too much too often on the “hardcore TBM perspective” and forget that most members (the large majority) don’t see things that way. I also think we tend to over-analyze lots of things and, in many cases, create mountains out of mole hills.
We have multiple threads about the title topic, including one very recent one. I’m in a hurry right now, but if I remember I will find at least one and bump it up for more commenting.
Old-Timer wrote:I think we focus too much too often on the “hardcore TBM perspective” and forget that
most members (the large majority) don’t see things that way…I also think we tend to over-analyze lots of things and, in many cases, create mountains out of mole hills…We have multiple threads about the title topic, including one very recent one. I’m in a hurry right now, but if I remember I will find at least one and bump it up for more commenting. Almost every topic here has been re-hashed multiple times. I understand that there are some old threads that are good discussions to look at before starting a new one and maybe you feel like you have already heard it all before and are tired of it but I don’t remember any threads that sound similar to this one that really answered my basic questions about this very well. Most of the similar ones I remember were about Church leaders claiming the world is getting worse because in the past the values and standards of society in general were not as different from those in the Church but now we are seeing more of a disparity so to me it all sounds like doomsday prophecies and warnings that we are supposedly getting closer to the end of the world.
What interests me more than all that is the whole concept that it is supposedly this important to be so different from the world to begin with so it’s not really the same thing at all. Also, I don’t believe it is insignificant; this could actually be one of the single most significant characteristics of the LDS Church at this point. Basically the Church is saying that more than 99% of the people in the world are not “worthy” until they are converted to full compliance with all these beliefs, rules, and routines. If most active Church members don’t think this way then why is it that so many of them insist on only marrying other active and obedient Mormons?
Also, large numbers of Church members have effectively been weeded out because they drink, smoke, and/or had sex before they were married and most of them will probably never return. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal if you already like these strict standards or are at least comfortable with them and gladly willing to go along with them mostly to fit in and get along with other members. However, many members that went along with all this mostly because they thought they were supposed to will inevitably be left feeling bad about it when they lose faith in the Church. There have been divorces where it looks like one partner’s loss of faith in the Church was a major factor as well.
DA, I apologize for not being more clear in my earlier, rushed comment. I meant “we” as a community, not “we” as participants here. I also offered to try to find earlier threads not to dismiss this one but to add previous commentary to the topic. It’s not that I’m tired of these topics; it’s that I actually like to discuss them in the context of the insights offered by previous participants in excellent threads. I want to consider them more fully – not dismiss them. Again, I apologize that my quick comment didn’t make that clear and gave the wrong impression. It happens a lot when I am rushing and is a prime example of why I try not to rush any more than necessary. It almost always bites me in the butt when I do.
I think the post topic is very important, and the battle mentality our general exclusionary attitude creates is one of my soapbox issues. I just believe most members, when it comes right down to it, don’t accept “hardcore TBM perspectives” and reach the extremist conclusions you reference.
For example, I know relatively few members who really believe that all people who are invited to investigate the Church but don’t join have forfeited their shot at the Celestial Kingdom – or that everyone who isn’t Mormon is “unworthy” and beneath “us”. Absolutely, there are some (too many), but I don’t believe they are anywhere close to the majority – or even a huge minority.
The world is a mixture, but sometimes and somewhere, evil does come to the fore. As I’ve said elsewhere, the twentieth century was nasty and not just because the evil was publicized. When church leaders heard of the Soviet purges and artificial famine, holocaust, great leap forward and cultural revolution etc, I am sure they felt glad to be separated from them, physically and morally. SamBee wrote:The world is a mixture, but sometimes and somewhere, evil does come to the fore. As I’ve said elsewhere, the twentieth century was nasty and not just because the evil was publicized.
When church leaders heard of the Soviet purges and artificial famine, holocaust, great leap forward and cultural revolution etc, I am sure they felt glad to be separated from them, physically and morally.I’m not really trying to say there isn’t still some serious evil going on in the world but I guess I wasn’t thinking about criminals, terrorists, murderous dictators, etc. as much as the average Joe that drinks beer and had sex with some of his girlfriends before getting married. Currently people like this will typically fall away from the Church in large numbers and often never return. So is this really the way it should be and why? Personally I don’t agree with it and I don’t think it should be this hard to stay active in the Church or return after being inactive for a while especially when the Church puts so much emphasis on the importance of families.
I agree completely with that, DA. At the practical level, I think what has happened is that we’ve conflated “temple worthiness” with “membership worthiness” and, going even further, “communal worship” worthiness. In my ideal world, speaking generally, almost anyone (obvious, very rare exceptions) would be welcome in our chapel doors to worship with us – no strings attached, anyone who is willing to worship with us respectfully and
tryto live ( or work on learning to live) certain basic principles would be welcome to join us as fellow members ( essentially, a repentant heart and not necessarily a fully repentant body, if you will), and those who want to try to live “a higher law” would be encouraged to attend the temple. By blurring the lines so much between those categories, we essentially have cut the heart out of the middle ground and forced those who can’t or don’t want to be temple worthy toward the other extreme – complete non-participation or only partial participation.
Fwiw, I believe we generally are much harder in practical terms on “our (inactive) own” than on “outsiders”, even as the official rhetoric we tend to use for “the world” is harsher.
Old-Timer wrote:…I think the post topic is very important, and the battle mentality our general exclusionary attitude creates is one of my soapbox issues.
I just believe most members, when it comes right down to it, don’t accept “hardcore TBM perspectives” and reach the extremist conclusions you reference…For example, I know relatively few members who really believe that all people who are invited to investigate the Church but don’t join have forfeited their shot at the Celestial Kingdom – or that everyone who isn’t Mormon is “unworthy” and beneath “us”.Absolutely, there are some (too many), but I don’t believe they are anywhere close to the majority – or even a huge minority. Maybe most active members don’t really think about it enough to follow the official doctrines to their logical conclusion and maybe some of them still hold out hope that non-Mormons or inactive members that don’t deserve to be condemned will have another chance to come around later in life or even in the spirit world before judgment day. However, to me the simple fact that so many active Church members only marry other active Mormons and their parents will be very disappointed with them if they don’t already says that they really do believe active Mormons are better than others and there is something not quite right about inactive members and non-Mormons that aren’t very interested in the LDS Church. It’s like saying we’re all equal in terms of deserving the same basic rights but some of us are still more equal than others. I know many Church members see the “high”standards set by the Church and the idea of being “in the world but not of the world” as being good things and maybe in some ways they are.
However, it looks to me like most active Mormons are still very much “of the world” when it comes to things like arrogance, selfishness, gossip, materialism, trying to keep up with the Joneses, holding grudges, dishonesty, etc. so to act like things like not drinking coffee or beer are so important compared to everything else the Church could focus on instead just doesn’t make much sense from my perspective. To me it seems like such an obvious ego-trip that I don’t know how more members haven’t already seen through it by now. Throughout history we have seen many different groups that were convinced they were right/superior and others were wrong/inferior but now it mostly looks unfortunate and ridiculous. The same kind of thing has probably been even more common in politics and racial/ethnic groups than religion. Also, it looks like one fairly easy way to rally support and fire people up is to have a common enemy and in our case it is none other than Satan and his army of darkness. I guess the Church will go with this message as long as it works to some extent but I think the biggest problem with this is that the Church currently appeals to such a small minority of people because there are so many different potential deal-breakers that have already been established (the WoW, tithing, chastity, testimony, etc.). So if it’s not one thing there’s always a good chance something else will prevent long-term activity in the Church more often than not.
Roy wrote:I think the “us vs. them” mentality has its roots in the early millennialism of the church. This became exacerbated after the church expulsions from Missouri and Illinois and finally calcified in the isolationism of the Utah period.When I read some early accounts of how major cities were prophesized to be destroyed and how “fleeing from Babylon” was thought to be more literally seeking refuge from the coming apocalypse, I think that the current rhetoric is rather tame. I think that’s a big part of it; the Church was so isolated from the outside world for so long that it didn’t have much competition for several generations and the leaders became accustomed to having Church members go along with almost everything they were asked to believe and do without much resistance. This general attitude of strict compliance has continued to this day even though members are increasingly exposed to the non-Mormon world because most of the members that don’t fit this profile very well end up falling away from the Church which leaves behind mostly obedient TBMs. It looks like the leaders have not been overly concerned about consistently losing over 60% of members to inactivity because they think these traditions are the way God wanted it and it’s not their place to change things to accommodate popular opinions and on top of that the Church has continued to grow because the large families on average and new converts have more than made up for the losses so far.
Also, the way the top leaders are currently selected basically ensures that the Church Presidents and senior apostles are generally going to be relatively old and old-school. For many of them the Church is all they have really known their entire lives so that’s one reason why it’s so easy for them to say that things like drinking and pre-marital sex are absolutely unacceptable if it is completely foreign to their own experience and they have no way of knowing that in some cases these supposed sins are not nearly as serious as they have been led to believe. I’m sure to many of them the world really does seem radically different and scandalous compared to what they remember growing up in the Church with increasingly permissive attitudes about sex outside of marriage, widespread birth-control and abortions, openly gay couples portrayed as normal on TV, and now porn and vocal “anti-Mormons” getting through to an increasing number of active Church members through the internet. So we see them react to these trends as if Satan himself is taking over in lessons and conference talks.
To me it looks like the Church is basically caught in a largely subconscious feedback loop (vicious cycle). Many members that don’t want to stop (or don’t feel like they can stop) drinking, smoking, and/or having sex before they are married get the impression that obeying strict rules against all this is what being Mormon is all about so instead of giving up these habits they simply stay away from Church and get used to being inactive. So then Church leaders see these members fall away and interpret it as confirmation that these sins led to these members’ downfall and are so dangerous to members’ eternal salvation that they need to harp on strict abstinence even more. These negative reactions lead to continued judgmental attitudes that these sins are extremely serious which perpetuates the cycle of “sinners” feeling very uncomfortable with the Church to the point that they continue to become inactive in large numbers.
Let’s not forget there was a revenge prayer in the temple for a number of decades where they pursued that the world would get its comeuppance for all the mean things it did to the saints. That leaves a pretty strong seperational foundation from our forefathers.
After that..well throw in the whole “we are the chosen” add the normal human pride and desire to be better than others…pop it in the sacrament meeting for an hour and ten minutes then voila! A perfectly formed lds judgmental soufflette …all nice and puffed up…
To be fair we are not the only org with the recipe either..this is just the lds recipe
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johnh, it’s pretty much the human recipe – just with slightly unique ingredients group-to-group. I wish badly we could live up to our theology better, which really is just about as liberal as it gets, but we don’t, unfortunately. It’s not just the big things, sometimes I go through areas on a Fri/Sat and see drunken fights and thank my lucky stars I’m not mixed up in that anymore. Or I think of my old neighbors… who got most miserable through forced enjoyment.
Great discussion here. Have to agree with DA on this in general. This is one of my main hangups. As a high school teacher I see so many students come through who are from good families that I just can’t help but feel optimistic about life, the world and the future of mankind. It really bothers me when people in church paint the picture of a world that has been on a deep decline since the 1950s. Even the stats that are thrown around on marriage and divorce don’t paint the whole picture. Last time I looked, marriage rates in the last 5-10 years (in the UK) are actually on the rise, and divorce rates have been falling for years. (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8485132.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8485132.stm” class=”bbcode_url”> On the whole, the vast vast majority of people I meet who are my age (30ish) are family orientated, either with their own spouse and children or with parents and siblings.
SamBee wrote:It’s not just the big things, sometimes I go through areas on a Fri/Sat and see drunken fights and thank my lucky stars I’m not mixed up in that anymore…Or I think of my old neighbors…who got most miserable through forced enjoyment.
I guess I see this as the kind of thing that can generally be avoided without having to go so far as never allowing anyone to drink. Even the JWs don’t prohibit alcohol and I doubt they are any more likely to end up in bar brawls than Mormons on average. Plus in many cases the Church is not really preventing drinking and smoking as much as simply excluding and driving away existing members and investigators that drink or smoke. These people don’t just disappear; they are still there in the community. Maybe outside of Utah inactive members mostly just blend in with all the non-Mormons and are basically out of sight and out of mind but here they are a large segment of the population and many of them don’t like the Church very much specifically because they didn’t really appreciate some of the overbearing expectations in the Church. I have seen so many Bishop’s sons and daughters and others with extremely strict parents rebel so far the opposite direction that I honestly think some of them would have turned out much better off if they hadn’t been pushed so hard.
Personally I think it is a fundamental flaw in the Church that many of the members and leaders act like there is almost no limit to the level of importance that can be attached to so many different doctrines at the same time because they are all supposedly so true and right. To me it couldn’t be more obvious that even if you start out with all the good intentions in the world and pet causes that actually are essentially true, right, and/or worthwhile in principle, acting extremely zealous and intolerant about it can often easily end up causing far worse problems than just letting people be wrong in peace ever would. At the same time, I think many popular ideas in the Church that are almost certainly false would not matter nearly as much anymore if most active Church members didn’t take them all as seriously as they typically do at this point.
This is one of the main reasons Elder Cook’s talk, “Can ye feel so now?” (
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3744
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