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I guess I’m so far gone I started wondering why anyone would be a member. I know that I had spiritual feelings that made me want to join years and years ago. But hard experiences have sort of torn away all the benefits I once held based on faith, community, and happiness.
For example, recent experiences, and the internet seem to have lessened the sheer blessings from faith aspect. I find the community loves you if you are mainstream and contributing. But fall off the wagon they can be really nasty and not at all accepting. They will talk negatively about you behind closed doors. Happiness — all it took was a diagnoses of depression, triggered by church stuff, for me to realize the church experience wasn’t conducive to happiness.
Can you describe the benefits you personally feel? It might help me out of my slump.
For me it’s like a neighborhood bar. You want to go where everyone knows your name. The flip side of that analogy is that you’re expected to take your turn tending it. 1) purpose and meaning! Life is better with it than without it. 2) Strong families! Nothing is perfect but the church emphasis on families combined with chastity and WoW tends to produce stronger families.
3) community! The church becomes the nexus for those families to band together and serve one another.
I know that as one moves through a faith transition some of these benefits decrease.
Roy wrote:
2) Strong families! Nothing is perfect but the church emphasis on families combined with chastity and WoW tends to produce stronger families.3) community! The church becomes the nexus for those families to band together and serve one another.
For me Roy’s 2 and 3 summarize it well. My marriage and children are better off because of the Church. I have some real issues with the Church (capital C) but I genuinely love my ward. They are my 2nd family and in some ways I’m closer to them than my parents and siblings. I could ask for help and people would be on my doorstep in an hour. They drive me nuts sometimes but they are genuinely good people.
I would add that I received a quality church education for a fraction of the cost of my non-BYU alumni friends, and the professional network is pretty strong. My wife and I graduated with no undergraduate debt which was a huge blessing early in our marriage.
For me the benefits are: – I feel connected to something bigger than myself. Otherwise I expect the universe to revolve around me.
– We have social contacts we wouldn’t normally have. I have friends that I can trust & they in return know they can trust me.
– Family History demonstrates that we are all connected over many generations throughout time & eternity.
– I like the idea of eternal progression. We learn & progress in our spiritual life time. Whatever that is.
– When I was in the Methodist Church, everything was a mystery. The LDS church has more certainty. More things seem to be defined.
– The older I get, the spiritual journey seems to be an adventure to be discovered. Fewer regrets.
I hope this makes sense.
I think there are lots of benefits. The main ones for me are the community and structure for raising children. In Richard Rohr terms, we do first half of life better than anyone. This structure provides people with stability, clear boundaries and ways to find meaning in life. In my experience, this is great for young people (most of the time) and a good motivator to avoid a lot of pitfalls people encounter in their teens and twenties (pregnancy, STDs, alcoholism, drugs, etc.). A lot of adults are very happy to stay in this bubble and it gives them great meaning and purpose. We have great youth programs and provide great educational opportunities, as was mentioned. Up until now, we have largely refused to acknowledge second half of life questions and viewpoints (moving away from literalism and tough questions about church history and doctrine). We propped up the dam well enough for a long time, but it seems to have burst and we need to find away to lead people through a faith crisis to continue to find meaning in the religion and to be able to continue to participate. Things are getting a little better, but too often we treat people with doubts like parasites and push them out because they make it difficult for others who are happily still in the bubble.
felixfabulous wrote:
Up until now, we have largely refused to acknowledge second half of life questions and viewpoints (moving away from literalism and tough questions about church history and doctrine). We propped up the dam well enough for a long time, but it seems to have burst and we need to find away to lead people through a faith crisis to continue to find meaning in the religion and to be able to continue to participate. Things are getting a little better, but too often we treat people with doubts like parasites and push them out because they make it difficult for others who are happily still in the bubble.
This is VERY insightful! I agree — the last half of life questions are not addressed. They have tried recently with the 2 hour block, and ministering program — that has removed some of the monotony, I think. There is this perpetual monotony in what we do in the church. And as health problems and the need to sustain oneself in retirement looms on the horizon, I personally start seeking value out of my church experience. Not a completely selfless experience that ignores my personal needs at the same time. That never seems fair when that happens in any context.
To you, what are the second half of life questions?
I’m with GBSmith: it’s a social contract. The church is just where members meet other members and work together. When we moved to Singapore, there are social clubs there primarily for expats from different countries. Membership at the American Club was $20k per year. These clubs are somewhat exclusive, but lots of expats told me they would have been lost without it–the club connected them with others there temporarily, people who helped them with advice and connections and so on. But what I discovered was that belonging to the church was literally the same benefit for us, and probably even better because of our organized weekly contact.
I also had a lunch with the Chief Risk Officer of Amex years ago, a man who lived in NYC, but was from India. When he heard I was a Mormon, he was very animated and said it was a great community, and that what he had seen is that when a member of our church moves from one area to another, we have an instant local family via the church, people who help us, welcome us, serve us, and become our friends in the new area. He said this was exceptional, and not something replicated in the other Christian religions he saw, perhaps because they can shop their congregations a little more.
BTW, I wrote up an OP this week that is interesting to think about with social contracts and how early settlers in Massachusetts Bay Colony created and signed covenants in their communities:
https://wheatandtares.org/2018/11/20/mixing-money-and-religion-puritans-to-today/ There are lots of reasons people criticize this mixing of “secular” and “religious,” but all religions are secular once they try to assist human flourishing.
I have a tribe of really good people, even though I see many things differently than many of them (and I see many things similarly as many of them). It gives a whole lot of people a wonderful sense of self-worth – of being special and divine in an important way.
I like studying religion. I am a social scientist by nature. Mormonism is absolutely fascinating to me.
Most of all, perhaps, I have been able to find my own balance in the LDS Church as an active, “faithful”, heterodox member – and I know I am needed as that non-traditional combination.
Happiness doesn’t come from others in church talking great about you, or the absence of them talking negatively behind closed doors. The benefits of being a member are in the social contract, which requires some personal sacrifice or compromise to be part of the group and partake of the benefits.
Lose yourself in the service of others, and find yourself.
There are plenty of imperfect and wrong things with others at church, you can’t focus on that. You gotta let it go.
I like Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast on “Generous Orthodoxy” and how he describes the tension of “generosity” to accept new things and others as they are (like SSM) with the orthodoxy of respecting the institution and way things always have been (which opposes SSM based on doctrine).
Fighting against the institution and also wanting others, who hold it sacred, to like you for doing it, will not likely lead to peace and acceptance. It may cloud the benefits from the dust devils.
There is a balance. A middle way. There are benefits to being part of a group. If you strive to be part of it.
A member of our Ward just went to the hospital with sepsis (blood poisoning). The EQ and RS have been mobilized to help their family. That is one example of the benefits. There are many. But they come with a price.
Pay the entry fee. Do things your way. Shake off what others say about you. Seek inner godliness. Serve others. Find the middle way.
Heber13 wrote:
There is a balance. A middle way. There are benefits to being part of a group. If you strive to be part of it.Pay the entry fee. Do things your way. Shake off what others say about you. Seek inner godliness. Serve others. Find the middle way.
Wouldn’t this all depend on the group? Different members in different wards have different fees. Sometimes, the “middle way” is still full of mud and holes, and you’re better off taking a new way altogether.
Not suggestion SD or anyone in particular should abandon ship… but I don’t believe the LDS Church is a “one-size-fits-all” solution for happiness and fulfilment. It’s going to be a lot more fulfilling for some than for others, and even simply holding unorthodox beliefs will, at times within the Church, cause a good amount of distress. A benifit for some, will be a major pain for others. We’ve each got to weigh out the benefits ourselves… especially when we’ve got a lot of different factors to consider.
Here’s my benefit list:
-I like Mormons. As a whole, they’re pretty great people
-I love my wife, and the Church means a lot to her
-Good stories
-Good socials
-Very keen on helping one another out
That’s enough to keep me in for now. But if any number of factors were changed, I’d either be a lot more in, or a lot more out.
Yes, dande. I think we are saying the same thing. The church is not one size fits all, and middle way is not one prescribed measure the same for everyone. Middle way is finding YOUR way. You either stay or you go. And go through the mud and holes that will be there with either option, just perhaps different ones.
But happiness isn’t the absence of mud and holes, or the perfect church group to pay entrance fees and always be appreciated and accepted.
Happiness is following your heart to good things in life, wherever you can find those.
Not all of church will talk bad about you behind your back. Some may. But not all. And I haven’t found that it is any different with other groups outside the church either. It’s just humans and social tendencies. We navigate through it. There are benefits to be found.
But you are right…for some with varying degrees of it…the costs may outweigh the benefits. That isn’t to say the benefits aren’t there…just different for everyone.
I also agree with Heber and Dande. Part of the benefits of my personal membership is the heritage of being part of a multi-generational Mormon family. This is an added benefit for me because all the cousins have shared experiences and milestones and this helps to ground my children with a sense of belonging. This benefit would not be available for a first in the family convert for example.
I have also said that if any of my children came out as gay I would stop attending as a show of solidarity with them. This would swing the cost benefit analysis for me.
Heber13 wrote:
Happiness doesn’t come from others in church talking great about you, or the absence of them talking negatively behind closed doors.
I do not care much what might be said about my struggling faith. For the most part I do not look for approval or validation at church. The YW leaders seem generally interested in the wellbeing of my 12 year old daughter – which I appreciate. My 11 year old son has a Sunday School teacher that has known DS for many years and has always been kind to him (despite DS’s quirks and sometimes cold ASD exterior). The RS president always remembers the anniversary of the date we lost our third child and brings something over. The EQ generally leaves me alone. I am a big boy with broad shoulders. If enduring some people talking in a patronizing fashion about me behind closed doors is part of the exchange then I am willing to make the trade.However, It is very important to me that my wife admire and respect the effort I put in as husband and father. Because I feel that admiration and respect from DW, I am mostly able to ignore any tut-tutting that may be coming from church members. (As an example I work in management and I work most Sundays. One Sunday another man made the point that I could fix my work schedule to have Sunday off if I really wanted to. I countered that business is busier on Sundays and I work according to business needs and he responded that this is still a choice. I am mostly able to ignore this man’s disapproval as irrelevant to my journey.)
Related to this point, if I felt constant diapointment from DW over my unorthodoxy – this would be a heavy burden for me.
Each of us have our own cost benefit analysis and I fully respect any that may need to step away.
This is cost/benefits analysis I do quite often. Like many, I’m in the church for social or heritage reasons. I have found as I have evolved that people are and have been much more kind than I expected. I live in an excellent ward. I have witnessed this first hand these past few months as my family is experiencing a very public challenge with one of our children. Others may quietly condemn or gossip, but I don’t care about them. People are going to people.
Yesterday I was having a conversation with a member about some trials in their family. One of the points I brought up is that it’s been my experience that I gain back in benefits at least what I put into volunteer organizations. But, you have to have reasons to be in that organization in the first place. So it’s a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum for me.
What I’m dealing with acutely now is how to maintain the social benefits of the church community while allowing myself authenticity while I transition to my new framework (whatever that means). My wife and I are actively working on this together, for which I am very grateful (her as a TBM and me as something else).
I can say that I don’t often gain spiritual insight or sustenance at church. I do achieve this from time to time. Sadly, I feel more of what I seek when I’m in nature or spending time with dear family or friends. So, this is what I seek now more than church attendance/participation, even though I attend some part of church nearly every week. That said, the church has and always will have a role in my life. I just don’t see a scenario where it will be as large of a factor as it once was.
Quote:To you, what are the second half of life questions?
“If no one really knows what happens after we die, what are parts of our religious practice that can benefit my life here and now?”
“Is this Conference talk meant to improve my spiritual life or to inspire loyalty to the institution?” [some conference talks contain very valuable spiritual truths, a lot are just about doing what you’re told]
“How are the wealthy and powerful in the western world ‘grinding the faces of the poor’ and what can I do to help change this system?”
“How can I truly mentor my children and youth in my ward that will teach them strong values and help them become moral people that could survive a transition out of Mormonism at a later stage of life with their values in tact?”
Like I said, these are usually questions that would make a lot of people uncomfortable and want to get back to the routine easy answers and are usually not very popular. In a first half of life frame of reference, being a good person and being loyal to the institution are one in the same, for me, second half of life perspective is still finding value in the institution, but seeing the difference between personal spiritual progress and helping the institution.
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