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Thanks for the additional replies. I’m slowly starting to “get” where people are on this site, including that many of you are in many different places. I’ve been a devout Mormon all my life, meaning I have gone to church and tried to live “the program.” I did have a few years when I got burned out from work when the noise and crowds were too much for me and I did the minimum as far as church attendance. And I have certainly had “shocker” moments when learning about the gospel and church history, when my faith wavered. I guess I’m a TBM, but these kinds of labels are new to me. True Believing Mormon, especially capitalized like that, sounds like someone who blindly follows and never questions and never had doubts. That’s not me. I think if Mormonism is true then it can stand up to any and all questioning and scrutiny. It always has for me so far. And we certainly don’t have all the answers. But I think the veil exists for a reason and many times faith is the most important thing.
Maybe I’ll never one of you as far as variety belief, or orthodoxy (another term I dislike when applied to Mormonism). But it has been valuable to understand and learn. That’s what life is, a school, I think. Hopefully I will be more understanding of my fellow church members who have travelled a path different from mine.
shoshin wrote:I guess I’m a TBM, but these kinds of labels are new to me. True Believing Mormon, especially capitalized like that, sounds like someone who blindly follows and never questions and never had doubts. That’s not me.
shoshin, FWIW, we’ve had discussions here in the past about whether “TBM” is a term we should really use or if it is too disparaging of others. For my part, I don’t like to use it, and in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. I don’t really like labels. I would hate for believing members to have label like that for people like me. And as you pointed out, your faith belongs to you and you have had different experiences from other believers, so it’s not fair to put you in the same column as other Mormons who have had different experiences. The term “Mormon” should be way more than enough, and it includes you and me together.I want to stay because I did have spiritual feelings that led me to join, because it would kill my marriage if I totally quit, and my daughter is very engaged with the gospel. Why is it so hard?
1. Boredom; tired of the repetition
2. Tired of the lack of critical thinking on Sunday.
3. Don’t have any friends; can’t be myself or my true thoughts will go straight to the Bishop and SP.
4. Don’t feel like I’m part of the clan anymore.
Being in a different ward than our own doesn’t help either.
Haven’t been in about 3 weeks now and my family is getting mad at me, but it was because I was working on school assignments.
Good set of questions in the OP.
shoshin wrote:Thanks for the additional replies. I’m slowly starting to “get” where people are on this site, including that many of you are in many different places. I’ve been a devout Mormon all my life, meaning I have gone to church and tried to live “the program.” I did have a few years when I got burned out from work when the noise and crowds were too much for me and I did the minimum as far as church attendance. And I have certainly had “shocker” moments when learning about the gospel and church history, when my faith wavered.
I guess I’m a TBM, but these kinds of labels are new to me. True Believing Mormon, especially capitalized like that, sounds like someone who blindly follows and never questions and never had doubts. That’s not me. I think if Mormonism is true then it can stand up to any and all questioning and scrutiny. It always has for me so far. And we certainly don’t have all the answers. But I think the veil exists for a reason and many times faith is the most important thing.
Maybe I’ll never one of you as far as variety belief, or orthodoxy (another term I dislike when applied to Mormonism). But it has been valuable to understand and learn. That’s what life is, a school, I think. Hopefully I will be more understanding of my fellow church members who have travelled a path different from mine.
I’m glad this is helpful for you, Shoshin. I like that you are participating here because I think sometimes we can get caught up in ourselves without the diversity of having the perspective of more believing members. That brings me to something else. I agree that it would be great if we didn’t have titles like TBM or orthodox and it that wasn’t a sort of us and them thing. Reality, though, seems to indicate that there really is an us and them at least to some extent. It is my hope that in the future that won’t be the case. So, you said you don’t really like being referred to as TBM and you don’t like the term “orthodox” in relation to Mormonism. (Some of us use orthodox to avoid using TBM.) Being that there really is a group of us StayLDSers here (some of whom, but not all, also identify as New Order Mormon or NOM), and that there really are people who are more believing than us (probably the majority of active church members) how would you propose we identify ourselves and the more believing types?
Shoshin – I too am glad your here. I am glad you are whatever you are. In the Spirituality Forum I referenced a quote from a BYU Professor. He is devout, dedicated, fully participatory and introduces himself as Zen or Buddhist Mormon. Like you I had never heard of TBM, until faith crisis came along. Besides the TBM reference it was often common to read DH, DW for Dear Husband or Dear Wife. I found it offensive and complained to my husband, he began typing wife, my wife, spouse – sometimes even my name. Under DW I was a nobody. TBM can be the same and we do try hard not to use it often here.
For myself I would select either TPM – Traditional Practicing Member/Mormon – because that is accurate. Better yet – Christian Mormon because,in or out, that is what I hope to be.
I do hope you stay or pop in from time to time. You bring balance to our circle and help us think less selfishly.
I stay because I have a lot invested and a debt of gratitude to pay. I’ll choose the temple as just one example of why it’s hard. It’s always been difficult for me to find beauty there, and my reading over the last 2-3 years has only heightened my terribly conflicted feelings, new film notwithstanding. Going to church every Sunday with the drumbeat of temple, temple, temple – never with any expansion or discussion of its history and doctrinal underpinnings is distressing and boring at the same time. Thanks for inquiring. I think it will be great to have your perspective here.
My views are evolving and sometimes fluctuate from day to day, or hour to hour, so I reserve the right to change my answers at any time. It’s hard for me to stay because I’m agnostic about the existence of God and therefore don’t see great value in a big portion of what goes on at church. I don’t relate to the worldview of most members and don’t feel like I can be authentically me when I’m at church. Being authentically me makes me a second class citizen at church and makes my life harder in a lot of ways—and it’s kind of screwed up to feel the need to be inauthentic in order to make my life easier.
I like the parts of church that teach about service, kindness, honesty, and other basic human values—those parts make me a better person, and the church is a pretty good vehicle for self improvement in those areas. I also think it’s good for me to keep challenging my natural belief tendencies so I don’t get complacent—I always try remain open to further knowledge and experience, and staying LDS helps keep my mind open to the faithful side of the spectrum. But I stay mainly for my wife. Without her, it’s highly likely that I would be completely inactive right now (and I recognize that that wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing).
Thanks for asking! My introduction is here:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1937 I had lived my religion with the idea of being blessed for it in mortality and ultimately in heaven. I also wanted to call those same blessings down upon my family.
When my daughter was stillborn a few days before her delivery date I was hit with a double disappointment. 1) What expectation do I have a right to have about my family being blessed or protected? 2) As a stillborn there is no doctrinal assurance as to the eternal fate of my daughter. We simply don’t know. This led to a long journey of reevaluation of what we actually do know and how we know it.
Early on in this journey I had a spiritual experience of love and acceptance for my daughter and myself. An important element was that this love and acceptance was not based on accomplishments – it was “I love and accept you and always will” rather than “I accept your sacrifices.” It surprised me.
So staying in the church is hard because I feel that sooooo much of it is based upon assumptions about what we must do in order to be loved, accepted, blessed, and eternally rewarded by our Heavenly Father. This is compounded by people looking at you with suspicion if you don’t see the gospel quite the way that it is commonly understood in the church.
I want to stay because this is my community and community has value. My ancestors have left me an inheritance of faith that spans back on both sides of my family tree. How could I hope to replace that support structure for my kids or my kid’s kids as they grow up? Just because my “family” has some quirks doesn’t mean that I want to disown them. To continue the comparison – my family shouldn’t run my life or abuse me either. There needs to be some balance there.
It’s hard to articulate in such few sentences why I stay and why it’s hard. First being a INFJ is hard enough in itself. But to compound outside judgement and policing of thoughts and control don’t sit well in me in any setting. Particularly when others try to emhart control over others, thoughts, feelings in church(quite common). I’m the other hand there is nothing I love lure them help help people find meaning and happiness in their lives. Nothing brings me joy then to see others happy and with meaning being free to be themselves. Like the movie pay it forward could by my life moto. I think church is a great place to do it at times. At other times it can also be the worst. I like the idea of GC, the execution is rather business like though and impersonal and tonsure talks focus on the least important things on my mind and goals, while some are destructive and against my moral values. On the other hand some talks are truly magnificent and speak highly to my moral values and more importantly to those I know that share and help them. It is a paradox, fixed systems, administration, closed though, judgmental talks, lack or authentic self expression(it feels and reads like a marketing book to me in manual), trying to change and work on people without their consent, pressure, lots of pressure. To quote feria Bueller….
Quote:If anybody needs a day off it’s Cameron. He’s got a lotta things to sort out before he graduates. He can’t be wound up this tight and go to college. His roommate’ll kill him. Pardon my French, but Cameron is so uptight, if you stuck a lump of coal up his butt, in 2 weeks, you’d have a diamond.
small tent syndrome, lack of talks speaking to real positive world change and much more talks on theological change in the afterlife(things you do now that don’t change anything in this life according to research study and history but theologically make you a better person in the afterlife and are more important then the here and now good of this earth).
On the other hand friendly people, place of services(although extremely limited), hopefully a chance to work as a team)Co-operation(hopefully), chance to bring meaning and joy to others lives, occasionally feel the spirit(hard to in a repetitive business like environment with dogma:3 things that make the spirit flee fast). Connection to others in a meaningful way(hopefully). Altruism(my life moto) it’s. Huge plus and to big to ignore since it’s one of the core Motivators of life(to me). Occasionally beautiful music(extremely limited and monotone though and lacking authentic expression(to me).
Long story short it’s hard on any introvert or person with a intellectual or value process internally. It’s a very strongly administration, policy and principles that don’t correlate well and in fact can be very destructive to certain personality types. Of the person stays at all in that situation it’s because they care deeply about something one way or another. To stay in spite of that. Those people unfortunately are the easiest ones for strong extroverts to push out. But if they are there, they are fighting back a lot of internal conflict and trying to help. It’s exhausting though if you are A NF type. Where you will spend 10 times the energy to accomplish the same things extroverts do. Without replenishment they will disappear without notice even if they do care.
There’s a lot to like, including the people. But it’s outright taxing on the senses or and brain for nF and NT types. Like redlining a engine, it won’t hold up for long. Unless there is a way to take out out of redline which is hard to find for most in that category.
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