why I can't "leave the church alone"

Post by **_beastie** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:15 am

I had a revelation tonight. Considering how long I've tried to figure out why discussing Mormonism still interests me, obviously I am a slow learner.

It's not the church I can't leave alone. It's exmormons. I can't leave exmormons alone.

Reading mms' painful explorations reminded me of how exquisitely painful it was to lose faith in the LDS church, to have my entire world view ripped from me. There are a couple of experiences I've had in life that have been so horrendously painful that they "marked" me in a way, and while I have learned to deal with these losses or traumas and still enjoy life, I can't pretend these marks aren't there. They make me me.

Being an exmormon is one of those marks. It will always be. And I still crave the company of those who share that mark, the only people who really understand it all - other exmormons.

(insert brokeback mountain soundtrack... "i wish i could quit you..."

not really, I actually enjoy the company of exmormons, I just couldn't resist the reference)

In fact, this experience marked me so deeply that I always knew I could only be really intimate with another exmormon. I really don't think anyone else could understand me.

I'm really not that all interested in the LDS church per se, or even apologia anymore, although I admit I am "recovering from internet Mormon apologetics". I just like being around and talking with other exmormons.

Post by **_truth dancer** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:25 am

Hi Beastie...

In fact, this experience marked me so deeply that I always knew I could only be really intimate with another exmormon. I really don't think anyone else could understand me.

I don't think anyone unfamiliar with the LDS church can possibly grasp what it means to be a member and what it means to have lost belief.

In my experience, those who are still LDS don't want to discuss the church with former believers, and most of those who have never been involved with the church just have no clue what it means to be an active member. What we have left is former believers! :-)

~dancer~

(I'm including those who ARE familiar with the church, those who are not members but have spent considerable time in an effort to understand Mormonism)!

Post by **_beastie** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:29 am

Exactly, TD. I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out.

Post by **_Inconceivable** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:12 am

SECTION 123

Duty of the saints in relation to their persecutors, as set forth by Joseph Smith the Prophet, while a prisoner in the jail at Liberty, Missouri, March 1839. HC 3:302–303.

1 AND again, we would suggest for your consideration the propriety of all the saints gathering up a knowledge of all the facts, and sufferings and abuses put upon them...;
2 And also of all the property and amount of damages.., both of character and personal injuries, as well as real property;
3 And also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions..
4 ..a committee can be appointed to find out these things, ..take statements..affidavits..gather up the libelous publications..
5 etc.. and by whom..that have been practised upon this people—
6 That we may not only publish to all the world, but present them to the heads of government..
7 It is an imperative duty that we owe to God, to angels, with whom we shall be brought to stand, and also to ourselves, to our wives and children, who have been made to bow down with grief, sorrow, etc..
8 It is an iron yoke, it is a strong band; they are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell.
9 Therefore it is an imperative duty that we owe, not only to our own wives and children, but to the widows and fatherless, whose husbands and fathers have been murdered under its iron hand;
10 etc..
11 And also it is an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart—
12 For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it—
13 Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—
14 These should then be attended to with great earnestness.
15 Let no man count them as small things..
16 bla bla bla
17 Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; ...

(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 123 prettymuch

Is turnabout fair play? They can dish it out, but can they take it?

It got long and windy so I truncated it. If anyone wants to gripe about what's missing, I will refer you to the victims of the Mountain Meadows Masacre and young girls losing their virtue to a 38 year old married man.

Post by **_Sethbag** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:21 am

truth dancer wrote:Hi Beastie...

In fact, this experience marked me so deeply that I always knew I could only be really intimate with another exmormon. I really don't think anyone else could understand me.

I don't think anyone unfamiliar with the LDS church can possibly grasp what it means to be a member and what it means to have lost belief.

I bet you're wrong. I bet a lifelong, devout JW who loses his faith knows what you feel like. I wish I had a URL to it, but I recall a year or so ago listening to a podcast on some site where a former JW described his experience, his feelings, etc. If you took out a couple JW-specific things like the officially mandated shunning, and globally search and replace "JW" with "Mormon" you would have thought he was just like us, in almost every way.

I don't know how many of you saw the thread where DCP disagreed with me on the JWs' similarity to the LDS. He thought that the similarity wasn't nearly as great as I think it is, and his primary reason was that LDS encourage higher education while JWs, according to him, don't. Newsflash: the similarities lie in the mind control, concentration and focusing of energies in support of the church, creating an investment that's hard to give up, strong socialization so that the church group becomes, to a large extent, synonymous with one's social group, etc.

I will have to just keep looking and find that interview. It was remarkable.

In my experience, those who are still LDS don't want to discuss the church with former believers, and most of those who have never been involved with the church just have no clue what it means to be an active member. What we have left is former believers! :-)

I do wonder what it would be like to have a big party and invite a bunch of exmos and ex-JWs. I wonder how surprised we'd all be to realize we actually understand each other?

Post by **_Sethbag** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:27 am

Check out this ex-JW site.

I haven't read much of it yet, but I did come across this paragraph:

Why Bother?

Every few weeks, I get a letter from somebody asking me why I run this web site. "Don't you have better things to do?" is one common query. "Can't you leave the Witnesses alone?" is another. Another theme runs along the lines of, "Don't you have a life?" It seems that there are a lot of people who wonder why anybody would run a web site like this one.

Deja vu anyone?

Honesty Comes in Different Flavors

Witnesses justifiably take pride in their honesty. As you know, sometimes honesty can be difficult. If you find a wallet containing a thousand dollars, it's tempting to pocket the cash. We know that a good JW wouldn't do that if they could find out who owned the wallet. But there's a different kind of honesty that is even more difficult: if you are faced with the possibility that the Society is not the sole channel of enlightenment, can you bear to even think about that?

Giving up $1000 is hard, but giving up a way of life is ever so much more stressful. Can we be honest enough to acknowledge that we suffer from the human frailty of wanting to possess the Big Answers? Can we dispassionately observe our desire to cling to our concepts of eternal and undying truth?

Honesty Can Hurt

If there's one thing I've learned from running my web site, it's that people suffer greatly when they are ripped away from the world of the Witnesses. Giving back $1000 is nothing compared to touching upon the idea that you might have been living in a world seeded with delusion. The slightest contact with the idea that the JW's might be wrong is as unpleasant as being seared by a red-hot poker.

Honesty can hurt so much that we seek any reason at all to find fault in the information set before us. It is for this reason that I try so hard to ensure that my web site doesn't contain any mistakes. It is a very human tendency to find one little flaw and use that to dismiss everything else that is being said.

We are not robots. We feel pain. We want to protect ourselves. Sometimes logic has to take the back seat.

If you replace JW with Mormon, is this not exactly what we'd say about our experience?

Post by **_Inconceivable** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 5:32 am

I suppose the above policy (Section 123) could be justified by just about anyone.

I would prefer to fade quietly away - and I still would like to. Even though it probably won't end up entirely that way because of what is happening to my family.

I am the type of person that is willing to pull over and render assistance in an accident, yell "heads up", point and say "your shoe's untied" or walk up in the middle of a general priesthood conference broadcast and adjust an out of focus projector.

Post by **_Mary** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:53 am

I would prefer to fade quietly away

I guess I did that over a few year period.... Never made a fuss....In the main kept my doubts to myself....and then just stopped going....

You know what though, I think that psychologically it is far more damaging to a person to leave the church and pretend the whole thing just didn't happen.

Can you imagine. grief.... yes, we move on, yes, we have new ideas, new beliefs, new confusions, but hey isn't that what life is all about, and underpinning that is still the undeniable fact that I for one thought religion was important enough, and my belief strong enough that I gave pretty much all of myself to it for 20 or so years....

It made me what I am, it indicates what has been important to me (I was a convert and not born in the faith), and it was where I had many very good friends.

There's no way that I'm going to pretend that it didn't happen and never talk about it anymore....not for now anyway.

Anyone that can do that, I think is putting their head in the sand and burying a part of their life without really coming to terms with it.

I've been talking on internet sites for a couple of years now, and I found the whole experience to be utterly cathartic. It has tied up a lot of loose ends and has also confirmed my belief that Joseph wasn't what he said he was.

Every time I miss the Mormons, (and I miss the culture a lot sometimes), I think ...well ...do I really believe in Joseph Smith, ....and always I come up with a no. To go back would be hypocritical of me....but I still admire those whose belief is different to mine...

Sorry this is jumbled Beastie....

I also like chatting over on Mad, because it gets boring if everyone agrees with you all the time, and over there, people will not agree...I find it keeps me on my toes....

Mary

Post by **_truth dancer** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:41 pm

Hi Seth...

Yes, I think you are right! There are many similar belief traditions with similar dynamics... JWs, Amish, Scientologists, to name a few.

Actually, two books I have read demonstrate a similar phenomenon of having faith in a particular religion, and losing it.

Karen Armstrong's, The Spiral Staircase, describes her journey out of Catholicism where she was one a nun for many years.

And, Sue Monk Kidds', The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, about her journey out of evangelical Christianity.

Both books describe s journey similar to my own... the details are different but the heartache is the same.

~dancer~

Post by **_beastie** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 1:59 pm

When I first left the church, long before I got online, long before amazon became my expanded library, I relied on my small local library. They did have Mormon enigma and Mormon polygamy, but other than that, not many books about Mormonism per se. But they did have a shelf full of books written by people who had left other faiths. I read all of them. Seth is correct, there are many, many, similarities. Reading the book from the former witness did sound as if it could have been written by an exmormon. That was the first time I realized that the LDS church was not unique in its teachings about "why people leave the church", and realized that any religion that teaches it is the one sole fount of divine authority or teachings MUST have some justification for why decent, sane people would reject it. And yeah, they're the same reasons the LDS give. Of course, the LDS church was a bit better, in my opinion, because it didn't force its members to ostracize exmembers at the risk of their own membership, which the JW do.

So yes, those people could also understand me, and I actually did read things on an exJW site years ago - but I found that the vocabulary difference, and what they wanted to talk about, was too different for me to relate to.

Mary -

I do understand liking to hear opposing opinions. I agree it becomes boring with just one side presented. I posted on Z for years due to that fact. I just can't tolerate the way MAD is managed, so I don't participate.

Inconceivable -

I have pointed out many times that the negative cycle that exists between Mormons and exmormons will continue to exist as long as the LDS church continues to teach its bigoted, negative spin on "apostates". It's like all those negative teachings that we were all exposed to throughout our time as LDS creates the need for self-defense and justification as soon as one leaves the faith. And then LDS use that need as more reason to criticize and align us with satan.