wenglund wrote:Shifting the blame to others for our own mistakes, may also be a function of cognitive distortions.
Wade, in the context of the truth claims of the church, I have to defend my right to feel that my anger and frustration upon discovering that the church is not what it claims, was not a cognitive distortion based on shifting blame onto the church for my own mistakes. What mistakes are you talking about? Could it be the "mistake" of trying to learn more about the doctrines of my own church, in the hopes of being able to defend it better to my non-mormon co-workers? Is that a mistake? I don't believe that it is. Could it be the "mistake" of assuming that all of the truth claims of the church were, in fact, genuine? I guess you could categorize that as a mistake, but it wouldn't be my mistake it would be the church's mistake for making unreasonable claims about church history and eternal doctrines, that I have found to be inaccurate. I guess the mistake you could be talking about is my mistaken belief, as a young person, that all of the lessons I received from primary teachers, Sunday School teachers, Seminary teachers, and Institute teachers, were totally accurate. If that is the mistake you are talking about, then "yes" I did make a mistake. I trusted people who told me that they loved me, and didn't want to mislead me, and wanted me to be happy. I trusted these people, including my parents, from a young age, that they wouldn't teach me things they didn't know to be true, as if they were true. My naïvété and trusting nature was lead astray by all of these believing people, who I trusted with my upbringing. Yes, Wade, I did make a mistake. It was trusting the church and its officers to teach me the truth. This was my mistake.
Now, should I shift the blame to others for this mistake? I don't really know. Who is to blame in all of this? Is it the good-hearted primary teachers who actually loved me, but persuaded me to believe the 1838 version of the first vision, instead of relating all 10 versions to me and letting me decide for myself? I don't know. The loving primary teachers that I had, bless all their hearts, probably had no idea to their dying breath that Joseph Smith penned multiple versions of the first vision, and that the official version wasn't even written by Joseph himself. So, should I blame my primary teachers? I think not.
Should I blame my Sunday School teachers for not teaching me of the thousands of grammatical errors in the Book of Mormon, and the substantive changes that have taken place in the book since the original 1830 printing. Should I blame them? Did they sugarcoat it for me? I think not. I think they actually loved me, and actually believed every word they taught me, without having the knowledge themselves that the original concept of the trinity has been substantial doctored in 1 Nephi. I had to rely on an exmo pseudonamed Scottishboy, in my 40s to learn about that. Should I hold it against all of the Sunday School teachers who "knew with every fiber of their being" that the Book of Mormon was true, that major portions of the Book of Mormon were plagiarized from the King James Bible, including translation errors, George Washington's writings, and ideas taken from A View of the Hebrews, and A Manuscript found? Should I hold it against them that BH Roberts proclaimed that the Book of Mormon very well could have been the product of a man, not of God? I don't think so. I think they were innocent in their honest approach to teaching me things that they really didn't know anything about, but told me they were absolutely true.
I can't blame all my teachers. How am I to know of their true depth of knowledge about the church they proclaimed every Sunday as "true." So who is there to blame? I guess just little old me. Gosh, I should have known, as a small child, not to trust adults who say they love you and care about you. That was my mistake. Not fornication, not pornography, not WoW issues, or Tithing issues, or any of those things. I always worked hard at obeying all of the commandments, so those weren't my mistakes. My mistake was believing the leaders and teachers of the church, I admit it.
Is it a cognitive distortion to toss the blame onto others that I should accept for making the mistake of trusting people who told me they loved me? Hmm, I don't know. I know that it is a cognitive accomplishment to discover the errors I was taught, try to understand them in the context of an objective reality, and make my life decisions on the basis of the true, authentic history of the church, untainted by correlation committee hands. I can bear my testimony of the truth of that statement. I, DV, do hereby testify that analyzing and praying in accordance with actual history, and actual documentation is TRUE, and a cognitive accomplishment in the midst of so many "approved" church resources that have been taught to me as authoritative, when they actually only contained parts of the truth. It seems, many of the plain and precious parts of the restored gospel, have been changed and/or removed by parties who are seeking to deceive and distract from the fulness of the gospel. Many unseemly aspects of the restored gospel, polygamy, blood atonement, the true nature of God, the source of the Book of Abraham, have been changed and/or whitewashed. It is unfortunate to realize that these parties have the approval of the leadership of the church itself.
So, is it a cognitive distortion to shift the blame onto others for my mistake of trusting them. No, it is not. It is their fault. These people all violated my trust by teaching things as objectively true, that were not objectively true. The irony lies in the fact that they did it with the purest of motives, and were relying on truth claims they were taught as children. Irony however does not remove responsibility. When we teach a principle as objectively true, and it is not, we carry the blame. Therefore, your premise that people suffering anguish and pain upon discovering the church is not what it claims, is flawed in the sense that they are not shifting blame, they are placing blame where it belongs. A small child is incapable of cognitively determining whether or not he/she is being deceived by a trusted individual. Therefore the blame rests on the person who is teaching that the Book of Mormon is objectively true, when it is a matter of faith whether it is true. The blame rests on the person teaching that the Book of Abraham is an actual translation of papyrus written by the hand of Abraham, when objectively it was neither written by Abraham, nor is it an actual translation of Egyptian. Check your premise, because you will find that placing blame on the responsible parties is different from shifting blame.