DiscussMormonism.com

I may be conjuring this out of nothing, tell me what you think.

Sometimes I see critics or exmos eventually calm down a little bit and decide to make peace with the church in some way. Rather than re-engage or make Mormon friends they will try to come onto the side of the Mopologists a bit. It's almost as if DCP would like and accept them on some shallow level, this means they have moved on. When I was a believer I knew next to nothing about NAMIRS or FAIR and certainly never argued with anyone there until after my disaffection. Why would making up with them ever equate with making up with the church?

Is it just me?

It might also be RayA.

My views on Mormonism and the Church have little to do with apologetics. If apologetics really influenced me, I'd probably have been active and fully believing for the past 25 years (i.e., a "TBM"), but the opposite is true. While I admire and respect Dr. Peterson, and while it is true that his writings largely influenced me to re-join the Church in 1995, the ultimate end of that journey was name-removal in 2001, and while I can say that in the 1990s I wavered back and forth (five times to be exact), at no time since 2001 have I ever seriously reconsidered my 2001 decision. No doubt partly because I like my freedom and "the pleasures of sin for a season" (I'll let God decide my final fate, and whether I have a corrupt heart), so I haven't exactly gone out of my way to "come onto the side of the Mopologists".

As for "Mormon friends", I had many of them on Facebook, including some very active "TBM" ones, who, apparently, weren't offended enough by my views to "defriend" me.

With my "mellowing", or "making peace" if you like, I still see two real problems: 1) "Bad" or ineffective apologetics, and 2) Equally "bad" or misguided criticism. So I still stand somewhere "in the middle", and find no solace on this board nor MDDB, who in my view represent two extremes.

Ultimately, I have "made peace" with Mormonism/the Church, and still have a great deal of admiration for them, flaws and all, but I don't feel comfortable being either a defender in the "Mopologetic" sense, nor a critic who can come here (as I once did) and enjoy picking out every fault and failing of Mormons/Mormonism, and especially not to do so as some kind of self-justification for my own disaffection. Thus I will continue to remain largely aloof from message boards, with occasional exceptions like this post (I'm banned from MDDB anyway so can't comment there), because I have "my own mind", and I will continue to blog on Mormonism independently, and hopefully positively.

All Things Mormon.

That said, I'll once again take leave and let the speculation and commentary continue, but I just wanted to clear this up on a personal note.

I hope you all find greater peace in your own journey (hint: message boards won't help you find it). I probably won't check back here for a few days, because I now find this "place" to be very unpleasant (but that's just me).

RayAgostini wrote:Thus I will continue to remain largely aloof from message boards, with occasional exceptions like this post (I'm banned from MDDB anyway so can't comment there), because I have "my own mind", and I will continue to blog on Mormonism independently, and hopefully positively.

All Things Mormon.

That said, I'll once again take leave and let the speculation and commentary continue, but I just wanted to clear this up on a personal note.

I am pleased to find you are blogging, Ray. I checked out some of your entries the other day and found that I enjoyed it every bit as much as I used to, before your hiatus.

I hope you never stop writing. You have real talent.