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I am struggling with trust right now. I don’t know if I trust my bishop. I don’t know if I trust the prophets of the church. What exactly is it that I don’t trust them about? I’m not exactly sure. They say don’t ever meet your heroes. I used to think as a kid “I would love to meet President Hinckley, and I know that he would never disappoint me. He’s our prophet, and he speaks with God.” Turns out, I didn’t even need to meet him for him to disappoint me. His dealings with the Hoffman forgeries and his black and white thinking pertaining to the first vision was enough to disappoint me. That’s on me though, because that’s not fair to him. I had put him on a pedestal so high that no mortal would be able to live up to those expectations. BUT that’s what i was taught. I learned that he could make no mistakes, because if he did, the Lord would remove him. I had complete trust in Gordon Hinckley and Thomas Monson. While listening to the lessons on Sunday about faithful obedience vs. blind obedience, and how our church leaders don’t make mistakes and how we should perfectly obey them, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I do not trust what our leaders are telling us. How can i obey people who I don’t even trust. I don’t think this is healthy.
How am I supposed to teach my kids about the church, when I don’t even trust the church leaders? I don’t want my girls being second class members because they have doubting parents. (I realize my thinking here may be irrational.)
My wife told me today that she has no more interest in being a member. She said that she would go with us to church in support, but that was it. I’ve spent about 18 months racking my brain over what to do (I realize that this is probably a lot less time than a lot of you). I’ve gotten nowhere.
I’m now thinking about taking a sabbatical for 6 months or so to clear my mind and reassess where I’m at. I’ve read posts by other people about taking sabbaticals, and I think it could be helpful. However, the big problem with that is that I would have to give up my calling and out myself as a “less than”. I’m thinking about when a good time might be.
Sorry for all of my ramblings.hat’s just how my thoughts came out. Hopefully I got some kind of point across. Thanks for reading.
I know for me, since deciding that the prophets are no different than regular members and can make mistakes, it’s made it easier for me to forgive them when they say something that seems wrong to me (the new policy for instance). I just tell myself that they heard God wrong because people can easily misunderstand God. So that’s how I personally deal with it. Idk why it was easy for me to just accept that when I’ve been told all my life they were perfect. Probably because them having flaws makes more sense to me. As far as God getting rid of them for being wrong, I’ve come to my own conclusion that God will let them make mistakes sometimes, as long as His main plan isn’t thrown completely off by something they do. If His plan will still turn out fine, I think He lets them have their agency and make mistakes sometimes. As for the sabbatical, it may help. I know I skipped several Sundays because I had an excuse (morning sickness). I was probably gone from church for 2-3 months. After a while I actually found myself wanting to go, mainly for the socializing and to support my husband as well.
As for what I’ll tell my kids, I’m not sure on that yet. It worries me sometimes
Similar to what AT said, I also concluded at some point that the presidents are just plain old human beings, just like me. After recognizing that their communication with God does not consist of regular chats in the Holy of Holies but that they communicate the same way I do and revelation to them really consists of the same feelings and impressions I get, it made them much more human. I agree with AT that God will let them make mistakes, just like he lets me make mistakes. They see through the same mirror/glass just as darkly/dimly as I do. I appreciate that Pres. Monson focuses more on core gospel principles, especially loving others. I have also discovered that I get to choose (or recognize) what is and what isn’t prophetic – hence, one set of earrings not prophetic and just personal opinion, love your neighbor probably prophetic because it’s a core gospel principle. Taking a break: Certainly taking a break can be helpful. I took a 10 year break, which probably was not overall helpful. I’m not opposed to taking breaks or cutting back to just SM or two Sundays a month, etc. I will warn that coming back can be hard, and it only gets harder as time goes by. Coming back might be especially harder if your spouse decides staying home/doing other things is great and doesn’t have a particular desire to go back. As a side note, I think there are far more people than we know who go for strictly social purposes (which would include going to support family members).
I’ll agree with what has already been said. Like DarkJedi said, the longer you stay away the harder it will be to go back so set a timeline for yourself if you can and start going back then otherwise you may never start.
I think we just need to remember that even if these men are called of God they are still just men. We also need to be careful of what we hear in church. I think opinion works it’s way into church ‘doctrine’ at every facet but especially on the local level. There may be teachers in your ward bringing forth ideas that will only cause you to doubt more but just remember they too are just people and we can’t take everything they say as gospel. Don’t let the opinions of other members discourage you because you feel differently. Odds are there are others in your ward who feel the same way you do about certain things.
Our scriptures say not to trust in the arm of flesh. There are no qualifications in that statement. (although I interpret it to mean not to trust completely and uncritically)
I think learning to NOT trust the prophets blindly is part of becoming a self-reliant person. When I realized they DO lead us astray, that our local leaders are not always inspired, that their advice can often be bad for us, that was liberating. So, continue not trusting them — I don’t mean being suspicious of them, I mean believing what they say after it makes honest sense to you. I mean honest sense — you’ve gotten rid of any bad reasons for not following their advice (selfishness, lack of willingness to give up certain things), and then you’ve run their advice through your own personal situation and conscience. THEN decide what to do. We believe in worshipping God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and that means that we act after we feel right about it. If a leader says something we should do and we are uncomfortable with it after HONEST introspection, then the buck stops there. As far as your wife goes — I would respect her decisions. I would advise against a continuous sabbatical, but how about a once every two weeks attendance rate? I found when I was away for long periods of time it was hard to go back. Everyone wants me to introduce myself in priesthood meeting like I am a newbie, I feel inactive, etcetera. But if you go every other week, you maintain a presence in the Ward, people don’t forget about you, and it makes it easier to stay in the game.
You need an excuse for getting out of your calling now. Be creative while sticking to the truth as much as you can. These leaders don’t have to know every nook and cranny of our thoughts — come up with your story and stick to it!!
Read about setting healthy boundaries, and make your own happiness and those in your family a top priority…and then enjoy the sense of liberation!
SD
I agree with everything that has been posted. SD said: Quote:I think learning to NOT trust the prophets blindly is part of becoming a self-reliant person. When I realized they DO lead us astray, that our local leaders are not always inspired, that their advice can often be bad for us, that was liberating. So, continue not trusting them — I don’t mean being suspicious of them, I mean believing what they say after it makes honest sense to you. I mean honest sense — you’ve gotten rid of any bad reasons for not following their advice (selfishness, lack of willingness to give up certain things), and then you’ve run their advice through your own personal situation and conscience. THEN decide what to do.
Be Careful about who you communicate this with. I wouldn’t do it in the middle of SS for example.
I firmly believe that God doesn’t want us to blindly obey or follow. IMO God expects us to question.
dtrom34 wrote:While listening to the lessons on Sunday about faithful obedience vs. blind obedience, and how our church leaders don’t make mistakes and how we should perfectly obey them, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I do not trust what our leaders are telling us. How can i obey people who I don’t even trust. I don’t think this is healthy.
I don’t think this is healthy either. Do you still trust in God or Jesus? That’s where I’m putting my trust (what little I have left). When Church leaders say or do something that doesn’t seem in harmony with what I feel is right or what Christ would do or say, then I have no problem rejecting it (now), even if it is “revelation” or “inspiration.”dtrom34 wrote:How am I supposed to teach my kids about the church, when I don’t even trust the church leaders? I don’t want my girls being second class members because they have doubting parents. (I realize my thinking here may be irrational.)
Teach your kids to trust in the Lord and teach them values that feel right to you. IMHO (and most here agree), Church leaders are human, and sometimes they get things wrong. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to anything they say, however. I believe that at least most of the time, they are at least trying to do or say what is right.dtrom34 wrote:My wife told me today that she has no more interest in being a member. She said that she would go with us to church in support, but that was it. I’ve spent about 18 months racking my brain over what to do (I realize that this is probably a lot less time than a lot of you). I’ve gotten nowhere.
I’m now thinking about taking a sabbatical for 6 months or so to clear my mind and reassess where I’m at. I’ve read posts by other people about taking sabbaticals, and I think it could be helpful. However, the big problem with that is that I would have to give up my calling and out myself as a “less than”. I’m thinking about when a good time might be.
I think a sabbatical could be good for you. I wish it were an option for me as well, but I value my marriage more than anything else. If you do decide to take a sabbatical, the longer you’re away, the harder it likely will be to come back. Best of luck to you!Minyan Man wrote:I agree with everything that has been posted. SD said:
Quote:I think learning to NOT trust the prophets blindly is part of becoming a self-reliant person. When I realized they DO lead us astray, that our local leaders are not always inspired, that their advice can often be bad for us, that was liberating. So, continue not trusting them — I don’t mean being suspicious of them, I mean believing what they say after it makes honest sense to you. I mean honest sense — you’ve gotten rid of any bad reasons for not following their advice (selfishness, lack of willingness to give up certain things), and then you’ve run their advice through your own personal situation and conscience. THEN decide what to do.
Be Careful about who you communicate this with. I wouldn’t do it in the middle of SS for example.
Definitely — it’s the kind of thing I would say openly n this forum, but never in real life. I might say that learning to internalize the things the prophets tell us is something JS and many other prophets ask us to do — to pray about their advice and act on testimony.
That is the soft way of saying it….
I had a question about some advice I see repeated a few times in this thread. DarkJedi wrote:I will warn that coming back can be hard, and it only gets harder as time goes by.
unsure wrote:Like DarkJedi said, the longer you stay away the harder it will be to go back so set a timeline for yourself if you can and start going back then otherwise you may never start.
SilentDawning wrote:I found when I was away for long periods of time it was hard to go back.
FaithfulSkeptic wrote:If you do decide to take a sabbatical, the longer you’re away, the harder it likely will be to come back.
Sorry if I missed one.
Would you mind expounding on this idea, the longer you’re away the harder it is to come back. I can guess a few reasons:
You’re in a position to explain yourself to everyone.
You’re starting over in building friendships.
You hit the reset button on your social status/callings.
You get used to having a “Second Saturday” and the extra free time becomes difficult to part with.
etc.
I’m just curious. If coming back is so hard perhaps that’s an indication of something. Of course it all comes down to the reasons.
dtrom, this will be a lot of pasting in, but I found Thomas Wirthlin McConkie’s book, Navigating a Mormon Faith Crisis, so helpful. It’s about spiritual maturation afterreaching adulthood. (He left the church for a decade or two, and has returned, at least on some level.) Long story short, we’re
supposedto lose a certain kind of trust in others. But that doesn’t mean that that stage of our lives was a mistake or that we retain none of the strengths and benefits of having gone through it. Quote:
Diplomat/Obey StageHigher Purpose, Fulfillment, Belonging/Blind Follower, Judgmental, Guilt & Shame
There is a “specific tension many Mormons will feel when reading about the Diplomat. The …obedience to authority, yielding to the collective – are cornerstones of our faith community. And yet they have fallen on tough times elsewhere. Critics will even point to these characteristics as hallmarks of immaturity. [But] qualities that arise at the Diplomat stage are foundational and essential for flourishing in adult life. When we hold ourselves accountable to tradition, to lineage, to the collective, we draw from some of the deepest resources available in human life. We strengthen freedom with responsibility. To leave the considerable gifts of the diplomat behind is to be left to our own strength, to be rootless.”
“Repressed or embraced, Diplomat is certainly present is all of us as a load-bearing structure, there to offer its considerable gifts and support our continual unfolding. “
Expert/Defend Stage
Personal Authority, Open-minded, Curiosity/Closed-minded, Dark Night of the Senses, Perfectionism
“The ‘truth’ as dictated by one’s culture is no longer an absolutely reliable touchstone.”
“There is a deeper vulnerability that can present at this stage. …Because someone negotiating this new terrain is shifting from a concrete to more subtle worldview, their relationship with the Divine … undergoes a dramatic transformation. People in this phase can feel a certain dryness in the spiritual practices that one fed them very deeply. … St John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and poet, originally referred to this shift as the ‘dark night of the senses.’ What was tangible and certain can now feel vague and ungraspable. … It can be helpful as parents, mentors, and friends of Experts to help them recognize that a simple thought, a feeling, an impression are all potential forms of Divine guidance.”
Achiever/Choose Stage
Personal Goal-Setting, Agency, Character Development, Patience/Sense of Deficiency, Self-Centered, Polarized
“More in touch with the interior life than ever before, at the Achiever stage we develop a great capacity to recognize the interiors of others. Our shared humanity is a more steady presence in awareness. We start to clearly discern the dignity of all humans and advocate for equality in all aspects of civic life. This is the stage of universal human rights. From a religious standpoint, we can begin to deeply sense the worth of a human soul.”
“We’re intimate with our own beliefs at this stage, and we’re more affected by what others believe, too. ‘If others think this way, they must have their reasons, just like I have mine.”
“The culture of scapegoating doubters can be alienating to [Achievers.] At Achiever, our instincts call us to a deeper reckoning with ourselves and what we hold to be true. We start to build momentum of Faith [He’s talked earlier about “Faith” and “faith”]. It’s a kind of fearlessness … willing to encounter almost anything in the name of our search, wherever the path may take us. Those who warn the Achiever against such a search can start to sound like the opposition itself.”
Individualist/Include Stage
Process-Oriented, Innovative, Richness in Diversity, Robust Faith/Trouble Prioritizing, Exclusive Inclusion, Poorly Understood
“The Individualist begins to part with the surety that Truth can be absolutely comprehended by a limited mind. They begin to search out the different contexts that inevitably shape human understanding. What Terryl Givens calls the ‘rhetoric of certainty’ in Mormonism can particularly grate on us at this stage.”
“With this new capacity to see ourselves and the world contextually, we become enthralled by all the factors that affect and influence our understanding. The challenge is to get to the kernel of what matters most. We can’t quite see which contexts are more important than others at this stage. This trouble prioritizing can devolve into rampant relativism and rigid claims like ‘nobody can know anything absolutely,’ (Except for me – I know that nobody else can know anything….)
We begin to appreciate life in all its guises and permutations
.
Strategist/Integrate Stage
Development Itself, Lifelong Learning, Principled, Truth as One Whole/Impatience with Growth, Subtle Fundamentalism
“The Strategist phase has a distinctively Mormon flavor. There is an inherent hunger to keep growing, and an intuition of what a long way we still have to go.”
He talks about a tendency at this stage to “overweening pride.”
“At Strategist we’re aware that it’s not just what we know that is constantly changing, but how we know it. … Because we can see that we’re growing, we often become supercharged with a desire to take up practices that allow us to continue along our developmental trajectory. Marcel Proust beautifully writes: ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ At Strategist we’ve reached the first stage of adult development dedicated to forming those new eyes, realizing that there is no end to the landscapes we can see, no final pair of eyes from which to gaze.
How I wish that I’d been introduced to these ideas young. I would have spent less time thoughtlessly coasting and my crash wouldn’t have been so hard. Your kids will love you for telling them how it really is.
Ann – you just pushed me enough to take this book off my “to buy list” and go get Amazon Prime to send me a copy! unsure wrote:I think we just need to remember that even if these men are called of God they are still just men.
Old Timer wrote:Our scriptures say not to trust in the arm of flesh.
There are no qualifications in that statement.
These seem to be what a lot of people are saying. When I first visited Staylds, these kinds of statements are what drew me in. It seemed so right to hear that prophets and other leaders are members just like everyone else, and that they are prone to making mistakes just like everyone else. However, it sucks to think that I will spend the next 40-50 years of my life hearing about how perfect the prophets and the church is, and that any issue I have is my fault. I think that is one of my triggers that I need to learn how to deal with. I feel a lot better now that last Sunday is in a more distant past.
nibbler wrote:Would you mind expounding on this idea, the longer you’re away the harder it is to come back. I can guess a few reasons:
Perhaps one reason is that it’s just habit.
The thought of taking a year off sounds so enticing. I also like knowing I have the free agency to take a year off even if I don’t actually do it. (I’m not talking about the “we are all free to choose, but if you choose wrong you’ll go to hell” kind of free agency). I do wonder if I would even come back if I did take a long sabbatical. I would have to train myself to make it a habit again.
Ann- Thanks so much for your post. Those stages gave me a lot to think about. Navigating a Mormon Faith Crisis will now be the next book I buy after I finish my Michael Quinn book.
Ann wrote:Your kids will love you for telling them how it really is.
Thank you for saying that. It’s a huge worry for me.
LookingHard- I’ve skimmed through Gina Colvin’s blog post. I’ll go back and read it thoroughly. She’s awesome, and someone I feel like I can learn a lot from.
Silent Dawning- Thanks for your great advice.I really do need to get out of my calling.
Thank you to everyone for your words. It’s reassuring knowing that there are people out there struggling or who have struggled with the exact same things as me.
I couldn’t help but think of the koan “If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill the Buddha.” It means something like this: Quote:“the Buddha, according to this thinking, is the pointer to enlightenment: it is not a person journeying on a road, but an expression of and pointer to our own path through life. We are each journeying on our own road. Finding a Buddha on that road is in effect looking outside of ourselves and making the mistake of trying to follow another person on their road. In so doing, we forget that their road can never be ours; attempting to follow them to enlightenment is folly. So when we find ourselves looking outside of ourselves to another and trying to walk their road, to mimic their search for enlightenment, we have to “kill” that Buddha, forget and forsake that outward seeking, and return to our own road.”
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