Hey everyone! Have you missed me? I’ve sure as shoot missed you! How are you? How are the kids? The Fam? Good?
So even though I am not a permanent fixture in the Cultural Halls these days, I still like to keep tabs on everyone and the goings on…going on…
Recently, one of our distinguished panelist asked me to weigh in a a meme that is getting passed along a bit in the Mormon Webasphere.
Showing Here:
For those of you who read my Why I left Cultural Hall post…
http://www.theculturalhallpodcast.com/2015/01/why-i-left-the-cultural-hall/
You know that my decision to leave the Hall, and the Church was not one that I made on the spur of the moment, and I’ll be totally honest, it hasn’t been easy. It’s been almost 2 years since I first began my journey that would ultimately lead me away from the faith of fathers and my childhood, young-adult-hood, and adult-hood. I could write pages upon pages about my experience, and maybe I will someday, but for now, let’s just focus on the task I was given, namely, to give my reaction to this adorable little meme.
Just so we are on the same page, this is a tongue-n-cheek attempt to explain why people leave the church, using Basket Ball Games as a metaphor. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVES me a good metaphor, but this one in particular….
Here’s the thing…And I’m gonna just be super honest here…I have spoken to a LOT of people who have left the church..like A LOT…and (in my biased experience) almost nobody I have talked to has ever given a reason that even resembles those listed above for why they left the church. Now, before we continue let’s clarify something.
I have heard plenty of people give these reason for why they go Inactive from the church.When we talk about people who go inactive, we are talking about (in general) people who are not going to church/activities/living the standards/and so on but still have a Testimony of the gospel. When I talk about people who have Left the church, I am specifically referring to people who no longer have a testimony of the gospel. If this chart is trying to illustrate why believing members go inactive, then I have no problem with it and I think it is a funny and clever way to describe the very natural human condition of complacency and offend-ability.
However. Let’s assume that this is an attempt to explain why people leave the church. This is where I feel like I must speak up on behalf of the “others” as it were. Keep in mind, I am sure that this meme does not necessarily reflect the opinions of every or even most church members, but I will tell you that since leaving the church, I sure see a lot of Facebook postings that cite reasons just like these.
In general, I try to be a very respectful human. I don’t go around burning synagogues, or pointing and laughing at Nuns, or posting memes explaining why an Amish person decided not to be Amish anymore. I don’t do these things for several reasons, one being that so far as I know, this life, my life, is the only life that I have lived, and for this reason, I don’t get to make assumptions about other peoples motivations for their actions. If I want to learn the reasons for someones actions I am afforded the opportunity to ask them. That doesn’t mean they will give me an honest answer or any answer at all really, but at least it has taken the question out of the world of biased speculation and into the personal human narrative.
Another reason I don’t do those things is because I find it fairly insulting. As someone who has left the church, I (like many still active members) see a clear distinction between the Gospel, the Church, and the People. I may not personally have a testimony of The Gospel at this time in my life, but that doesn’t automatically make the Gospel untrue. I have said time and time again, in conversation after conversation that I make no claims to absolute Truth. I have my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, and my working theories, but ultimately, I have NO IDEA is there is a God, much less if that God wants me to be a Mormon. If someday something happened to me that led me to believe that there is a God and that this God indeed wanted me to be a Mormon then you can bet your sweet bippy that I would be making a Bee-line back to the church as fast as my little misguided legs would carry me. But see that’s just my point about myself and about most people I have spoken to who have left the church and lost their testimonies.
We are (again in general) a group of people who are devoted to the truth, more than we are devoted to any particular religion or dogma. This is of course not to say that an active believing Mormon isn’t devoted to the truth, for if you think about it, if you truly thought that the church was true, and you were devoted to the following the truth above all other things, then it makes total sense that you would be totally devoted to the church right? Conversely, if ever there came a day when you decided that for whatever reason the church wasn’t true, then being a person who values truth about all things, it would make sense that you would leave. That was one of the hardest things for me personally when I left the church to make peace with. I felt a tremendous amount of guilt, and I was CONSTANTLY checking and re-checking my motivations in order to be absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt be sure that I was leaving for the right reasons.
Unfortunately…there seem to be a decent sized group of members that believe that there is no “right” reason ever for leaving the church ever….Ever. I don’t know what to say to those people. I have yet to combine words into sentences that form cohesive thoughts that is sufficient enough for them to believe me when I say that there are indeed good and moral reasons for leaving the church. So on this point, those folks and I must needs agree to disagree…AND THAT’S FINE!!
You wanna know why it is fine??? It is fine because ultimately, I do not care what anyone else chooses to believe or not believe. Other people beliefs do not threaten my own. Other peoples beliefs do not devalue my own, or make them less valid, or less precious, or less significant. From a strictly sociological standpoint I would love to hear why you personally have come to the conclusions you have. That being said, I fully recognize that hearing your story doesn’t make my story any less true or valid to me. Our individual beliefs shouldn’t feel threatening to one another, even if we use to believe the same thing and now no longer do.
The internet is a fantastic tool. At our fingertips we have access to a wellspring of information, historians, apologist, archaeologist, scholars, theologians from all around this great big blueberry. There are people out there who know a whole heck of a lot more about the church, the gospel, than I ever could, that are still fully invested and believing members of the church. Conversely, there are also very learned and studied humans out there than I who have that same pool of information and choose to leave the church…So what’s that all about? How can two people with the same amount of information come to two such vastly different conclusions about something like Eternal Truths?
Not trying to be flippant… but the answer is Because We Can and Because We Do. Because along with all of this information we have our minds, our biases, our experiences, and our hearts that are also part of this process. All of these things play into why a person decides to stay, or leave, or even return to the church, and this is why I get just a little bit hurt (and probably more than I should) when members pretend and assume to know why I left.
Going back to the meme…
1. I didn’t leave because nobody came to visit me. Let’s be honest, I am an awkward duck. I hated going into other people’s home and so I never blamed my HT’s or VT’s for not wanting to do the same.
2. If God wants 10% of my income He can have it. Along with the other 90%, the shirt off my back, and my very life. My decision had nothing to do with money.
3. There are literally unfriendly people everywhere. I feel like most people could use a refresher course in decorum and common human decency. Are there rude people at church? Sure. But they aren’t rude because of church, they are just continuing to be their normal rude selves at church. I like to just grin like a baboon at these people and kill them with kindness, but I don’t walk away from my faith because of it.
4. The seats? What? Really? I mean, I was in relief society so I always had the cushion seats, and pews have cushions, unless you came late and had to sit in the back and yes those seats are terrible, but not church leaving terrible.
5. This one I feel. The church and its leaders have some …let’s call them opinions that I don’t always share, but ultimately I was content to know that they were inspired from God and that any difference we shared would be worked out eventually.
6. Again…this is a person problem and not a gospel problem. I don’t walk away from truth because people are flawed humans. I’m a flawed human.
7. Church takes up A LOT of your time. This can annoying, but not testimony destroying. How does the amount of hours I put into something make it either more or less true?
8. I don’t think I actually get this one….Like you learn some new doctrine that you didn’t know before? That one can be very jarring and send someone down a path of deeper probing into church history and such. Some people love learning new stuff. Some people don’t like what they hear. I will give half credit to this one for being more of a catapult than a cause. I guess I do get this one.
9. Sleeping in has nothing to do with Truth.
10. Frequency has nothing to do with Truth.
11. Are we talking about fringe Mormons who believe in reincarnation and stuff? The ones that have basically created a new religion entirely and are just waiting for the rest of us to catch up? I’ve met those Mormons, they are fun to talk to.
12. “I’m not going to teach my children correct math because I want them decided with number combinations feel best to them.” If you feel like you know the truth, then why wouldn’t you present them with at least the option? If you don’t know that it is true then I could see how you might want to expose them to many different ideologies and see where their hearts and minds take them. But again, this is more of a bi-product rather than a cause of someone leaving the church.
We all know that I am a sarcastic kid. I use my humor to hide my soft soft vulnerable underbelly. I hope that you get that if anything, this is me trying to express something that has been a great source of pain for me as I have tried to pick of the pieces of my broken heart. If I could ask something of the members it would be to try and have a little more compassion for those of us who on the other side of the fence, or even straddling the fence. I know that there are really hostile and bitter ex-Mormons out there who probably post hateful and demeaning things on their walls about the religion that you love. All I can say is what I know about human emotions, namely that Anger is a secondary and not a primary emotion. If someone is lashing out in anger it is usually coming from a place of either fear or pain. When people say (either behind my back or to my face) that I left the church because I “Gave up too soon”, or “Didn’t try hard enough”, or “Wanted to live the life I really wanted unhindered by the rules of the church”, it makes me VERY angry. So angry that I think about how I can lash back and post really mean memes pointing out all the flaws in their arguments, and throw a mountain of “evidence” at them to back up my argument, and then tell them that the only reason why they haven’t left is X,Y, or Z (none of those letters representing nice or flattering things). But then I stop, I take a breath, and I go inside and ask myself why I am feeling so angry about this. 9 times out of 10 what comes back to me is that I am not angry, I am deeply and profoundly hurt. That anger is coming from a place of pain, caused by feelings of rejection and the unwillingness to try and understand me before judging me.
If you want to know why someone left the Church then ASK THEM. Please ask them. If you are just looking to validate what you already believe to be true, namely that we are lazy, selfish, hedonistic creatures who loved the world more than we loved God, then you are certainly entitled your opinion, regardless of how much it might hurt people like myself . I am going to unofficially speak on behalf of the vast majority of tenderhearted ex-Mormons I have met.
To the members of the church,
We love you. We have no ill will towards you or for you. We are happy that you are happy in the church. We have no desire to see the church burn, or to destroy your faith. We want you to be HAPPY. We want you to live the longest happiest lives that you can. We honor your path and the choices that you have made and continue to make, and respectfully request that you do the same for us. Please do not talk behind our backs, please do not speculate to people whom we still have to interact with on a daily basis about our worthiness, please stop posting things on your walls that trivialize or reduce what has been the hardest decision of our lives to a lack of conviction, or a judgement call on our very characters. We are not trying to destroy your faith, please stop attempting to shame ours. It is not Christlike, is it not charitable, it is hurtful, it breaks our hearts. We are brothers and sisters still, you are still our friends, our co-workers, our spouses, our families, and we love you. We understand that you love the gospel and that it is hard for you to see us leave something you know is true and right. We know you worry about us, we appreciate your concerns, truly. We want you to continue to love us, but we struggle when it seems like your love comes with conditions. We don’t love you despite what you believe, we love you because we love YOU, and we want to be loved for the same reasons.
Thanks for listening.